These are the open source applications I use on a daily basis. The accolades have already been written, so I won’t belabor that point. I give them all a thumbs-up review. These are the core applications I use here on unsaturated.com. Although I haven’t personally contributed to their development, I think spreading the word is the next best thing.

• SpamAssassin is spam filtering software that transformed how I look at e-mail. I don’t have a feeling of dread when I check my inbox. I know the chaff has been deleted or moved to a folder where it doesn’t get in my face. I’ve written a very detailed how-to on installing SpamAssassin, which is one of the most popular posts on my site.
• WordPress is what I use to manage my site’s content. The templates are easy to create and plug-ins are plentiful. Everything is organized by static pages, dynamic posts, and categories. It was enough to meet my requirements and most importantly, not get in my way.
• Gallery is what I use to manage my digital photos and movies. It brings order to my ever expanding collection. Security has always been a high priority for the Gallery team, which is reassuring. The plug-in list continues to expand.
• GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) is my default graphics editor. I decided to try it one day and was pleasantly surprised. It does everything I need, is plug-in friendly, and has a great base of users for support.
• phpMyAdmin is without question the best web-based app for managing a MySQL database. This is a great complement to Wordpress, Gallery, and many other web-based apps that rely on database storage.
• SQuirrel SQL Client allows you to access almost any relational database via a common user interface. That includes MS SQL, MySQL, Oracle, and many more. There’s a variety of features that make repetitive tasks faster and database management, in general, much easier.