The top 10 consumer open source projects

(Sorry, no jokes in honor of the writer's strike.)

• 10 -- Firefox, the browser.
• 9 -- Audacity, an audio editor.
• 8 -- Infrarecorder, a CD and DVD burner.
• 7 -- Pidgin, an IM client.
• 6 -- RSSOwl, an RSS reader.
• 5 -- Gimp, the picture editor.
• 4 -- 7Zip, a compression utility.
• 3 -- PlaysitAll, a media player.
• 2 -- MediaPortal, a media organizer.
• 1 -- OpenOffice, the office suite.

I've tried several of these in the past, and depend on those I marked with a the. There are others, like Miro, which I'm surprised didn't make the cut (the editors preferred MediaPortal).

There are also some, like RSSOwl, which I've tried and discarded in favor of commercial alternatives. I prefer the way FeedDemon from Newsgator organizes unread content, for instance, and find that's a difference worth paying for.

These are Windows programs, or at least available in Windows versions, which still remains a hurdle for mass market acceptance. Comparisons in quality between the Linux and Windows versions of some winners would be cool to see.

But the question remains, how many of these have you tried? And how many have you come to depend upon?

We talk the talk here. How far have you walked the walk? [poll id=63] [poll id=64]