Essential FREE Software for Windows
| Name and home page link | Description | (UK) Archive |
| ActivePerl | Perl (Practical Extraction and Report Language) system | |
| Adobe Reader | PDF browser and printer | |
| Adobe Printer Drivers | PostScript printer drivers supporting n-up, EPS, etc. (available for Windows XP) | |
| Apache | Apache Software Foundation: HTTP Server, etc. | |
| Cygwin | UNIX environment emulation plus GNU commands and utilities (cf. RedHat Linux) | |
| Ghostscript | PostScript and PDF interpreter and processing utilities | Web, FTP |
| GSview | PostScript and PDF previewer. Nagware rather than freeware; see also XnView. | Web, FTP |
| GhostWord | An excellent Ghostscript interface to create PDF documents from Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint documents by using just a few mouse clicks; see also PDF-T-Maker. | |
| Ispell | Interactive multilingual spelling checker | |
| Java | The JavaTM 2 Platform from SUN: portable programming! | |
| LaTable | Near-WYSIWYG LATEX table editor | |
| MiKTeX | TEX, LATEX, previewer, dvips, etc. and PostScript processing utilities | Web, FTP |
| NTEmacs | GNU Emacs editor | Web |
| PDFCreator | Printer driver to create PDFs easily from nearly any application | |
| PDF-T-Maker | Word to PDF converter; see also GhostWord. | |
| RealVNC | Virtual Network Computing | |
| Rumborak | Lists of tools for creating and editing PDF files (in German) | |
| XnView | Graphic file viewer/converter with good PostScript support (via Ghostscript) |
See also Free Graphics Software for Windows
Francis Wright, 09 February 2006