It's the start of term, and you've already used up your student loan. You've maxed out your credit allowance with the Parental Bank, and you're suffering from serious Facebook withdrawal. What's more, writing up that essay in the computing suite just isn't going to happen, because it's always too hot or cold, and full to boot. And besides, people complain when you go in there to do your work in your underwear...

Fear not! There are people in the world who, for some reason, are willing to write computer programs for free, and you can take advantage of this generosity. Play your cards right, and you can get yourself a computer dirt cheap, or even for free. And even if you already have a computer, you can install an office suite (word processor, spreadsheet, etc.), a sound editing program and an image editing program for FREE! How about that?

Hardware

If you don't already have a computer, this is where you need to start. You have two options for getting a computer on the cheap: buy a second-hand one, or blag a free one from a university department.

The free option is obviously preferable, providing you don't mind your computer being a little on the slow side. University departments (and workplaces, colleges and other businesses) are forever throwing out obsolete computers. With a bit of effort and good timing, you can often pick up these machines for nothing. Good, eh?

If you're willing to shell out a bit, consider finding a computer fair. They sell hardware pretty cheap, but you may need to perform some surgery on it. Alternatively, you can try buying from other students - perhaps they're leaving Oxford and can't take their computer with them, or maybe they just upgraded in order to play the latest computer game. Either way, you can pick up some real bargains. Websites like Boso are a good place to start.

Operating Systems

So your recently aquired computer turns on, but doesn't do much else. It just complains about a boot loader, or something. You need an operating system.

The operating system provides all the basic functionality of your computer. You need it to run other programs. Windows is the most well-know example of an operating system, but costs between £60 and £170. Hardly budget. MacOS is another common operating system, but, as the name suggests, it's only for Apple Macintoshes. Luckily, there are a variety of free operating systems available.

The most famous free operating system is GNU/Linux, usually just known as Linux. It has relatively good hardware support, and is quite usable as an everyday operating system. You probably won't be able to play most computer games on it, but if you wanted to do that, you'd be buying a much better computer, wouldn't you? But there are so many variants of Linux: which one to choose?

Ubuntu has become renowned as one of the most user-friendly versions of Linux around. They'll even send you CDs for free! There's also Kubuntu, which is like Ubuntu, but with a different desktop (so it looks and feels slightly different, and comes with some different programs). If you have a really slow computer, you might also want to try out Xubuntu, which runs faster at the expense of some niceties of the other two versions. There are also other versions of Linux, which you can easily find (and be swamped with!) if you search for them.

As well as Linux, there are the BSD operating systems: FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD. FreeBSD is the one that is most geared towards desktop computers, and will run most of the same programs as Linux. PC-BSD is a version of FreeBSD that aims to be really easy to install and use.

To install these, you will need to set your computer to boot from the CD-ROM drive (press Del, F1 or F2 after you turn on your computer to go into the BIOS, and change the Boot Order in CMOS Settings, then press F10 or choose the menu option to exit saving changes). Get your CD of the operating system you want to install, put it in the drive. Then turn on your computer, and follow the on-screen instructions.

Once you've started up, check out the website for the version of Linux/BSD/etc that you are using and look for the help and support sections. They should tell you everything you need to know to set up, and, if not, you can usually ask questions there.

Note that the following sections are geared towards Windows and MacOS users, since users of free operating systems will already be using free software from the moment they turn their computer on.

Office Software

Microsoft Office costs well over £150, and even Microsoft Works is £40. Why shell out that money when you can get pretty much all the functionality you are ever likely to need for free?

OpenOffice.org is a free office suite, containing a word processor (like Word), a spreadsheet program (like Excel), a database program (like Access), a formula editor, a slideshow (think Powerpoint) program and a drawing program. It is designed to be a drop-in replacement for Microsoft Office, and you can open Microsoft documents and save files as Microsoft documents without any problems, unless you've got some really complicated document involving documents embedded in other documents. It also provides a handy PDF export feature, allowing you to save documents in a format that just about everyone should be able to view (although not edit).

AbiWord is a word processor. It's lightweight, but provides most of the features you're likely to need. Other features are also available by installing plugins. It also opens and saves Microsoft Word documents, although not quite as well as OpenOffice.org.

KOffice is the office suite that comes with the KDE desktop for free operating systems like Linux. Although it is also available for MacOS, it is not currently available on Windows. Hopefully that should change in the next year. It saves in OpenDocument format (as used by OpenOffice.org), and also saves and loads Microsoft Office files (again, not quite as well as OpenOffice.org).

Multimedia Software

Well, of course there's Windows Media Player. There's iTunes. But iTunes doesn't play videos or DVDs, and perhaps you're fed up with Media Player. Perhaps you've come across one of the many sound or video formats not supported by these players. And if you're on Linux, neither of these are an option.

For those on Windows, Media Player Classic aims to take you back to the days of the simple, straightforward media player that was such a joy to use, before it got all fancy. It plays DVDs, video CDs and almost every file you'll ever come across (although some need extra plugins).

If you can't get Media Player Classic to play your file, or you're not on Windows, Video Lan Client will almost certainly play whatever file you have, as well as DVDs and CDs. The interface is a little clumsy, but it does what it's supposed to.

Amarok is a very neat music player, akin to iTunes, but not simply a clone. It's currently only available on Linux, BSD and similar operating systems (not Windows or MacOS), but the next version should be available on both Windows and MacOS.

Image Editing Software

Photoshop is expensive, currently retailing at over £460. Even Photoshop Elements is nearly £60. But surely there's no replacement in the world of free software?

Well, if you just want to make a few simple changes to your photos, Google's Picassa could be what you want. It's simple, straightforward and does the job for most people.

VicMan's Photo Editor provides more features than Picassa, but probable doesn't match Photoshop. It is, however, free to download for Windows users.

The GIMP is a powerful free image editor (you can download a version for Windows). Many people claim it matches Photoshop's power for manipulating images, although in truth it it better at some things and worse at others. Also, a lot of stuff comes as plugins, which are, quite frankly, a bit of a pain to install. It's user interface is not easy for the beginner to use, although very efficient once you get used to it. A version with a photoshop-like interface is available, however.

Graphic Design Software

Closely related to the previous section, this covers the more general field of graphic design: desktop publishing software (like Microsoft Publisher and Quark) and scalable vector graphics (Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw and Xara X). Most of this stuff is more esoteric, but some students make use of this sort of software for designing posters etc.

Inkscape is a scalable vector graphics (SVG) program. If you don't know what that is, then you probably don't need such a program. If you're still curious, head over to the website to find out.

Scribus is a desktop publishing (DTP) program. It is being improved at a rapid pace, and is already perfectly usable for most DTP work - even professionals are using it!

Sound Editing Software

Again, a slightly esoteric class of programs, sound editing software is none-the-less useful for some people. Audacity is probably the free sound editing program with the most features.

Internet

OK, so pretty much every web browser, including Internet Explorer, and email client, including Outlook Express, is free. But variety is the spice of life, isn't it? And no discussion of free software would be complete without mentioning Firefox at least once...

Firefox is a browser for viewing internet pages, a replacement for Internet Explorer. It has lots of cool features (some of which have been included in Internet Explorer 7, like tabbed browsing), and there are loads of plugins to add more. It also has spell checking of forms, meaning that incorrectly spelled words get underlined when you're writing Webmail emails or posting to people's walls on Facebook, for example. Finally, there are loads of skins available to change how it looks.

Accompanying Firefox is Thunderbird, an email client. It also has extensions to add to its functionality, as well as skins to change its appearance.

Opera is another browser, and also includes an email client.