Free your Workstation
The most commonly used systems by the Government of Canada are Microsoft Windows 7, 8, and 10. However many employees of the Government of Canada use Free Software for ethical, practical, or community reasons. This page is dedicated to them. What follows is a guide to maximize the use of Free Software in the day-to-day activities of Government employees.
Background: Free Software on Windows
The default Windows system includes the following software
| Free Software | Non-Free Software |
|---|---|
| Calculator | Microsoft Word |
| Firefox | Microsoft Excel |
| Powershell | Microsoft PowerPoint |
| Microsoft Edge | |
| Microsoft Explore | |
| Microsoft Teams | |
| Microsoft Outlook | |
| McAffe | |
| Google Chrome | |
| Acrobat Reader DC | |
| Cortana | |
| Onedrive | |
| File Explorer | |
| Camera | |
| Many many more |
Free Software Available Through Software Catalogue
Employees may request approved software through the Software Catalogue. Fortunately some of this is Free Software!
- ANACONDA
- cUrl
- Cygwin
- Eclipse Oxygen
- Ghostscript
- GIMP
- GIT
- GitLab Runner
- NodeJS
- Notepad++
- Perl
- Rstudio
- VLC Media Player
Maximizing Free Software Available Through Conda
Using the Conda package manager employees have access to much much more Free Software. First, it is necessary to request anaconda be installed from the software catalogue. Then create a local conda environment in your local files. This will give you control over which packages you'd like to install. A PowerShell script for the automated generation of such an environment can be found here.
