Today is a wonderful day for us Americans. It is the 4th of July our Day of Independence, what could be a better day than today to write this article. Today I am going to tell 4 different ways you can be independent from large software companies like Microsoft, Apple, or even Adobe. Of course there is nothing wrong with software from these companies but sometimes there are better alternatives.Without further delay here is the list,

1.  Use Firefox- Right now if you are on Safari or IE 7 go to Mozilla.com and download Firefox as you’re default browser. Firefox is free, fast, and cross-platform. Unlike the other browsers you can customize the software to your liking. 
2. Try OpenOffice. OpenOffice is a free office suite that will run on either Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X, and of course it is free like all the other software on this list. If you are familiar with Microsoft Office OpenOffice will feel right at home. An added bonus for this software is that you can read and write Office made files too, very nice. 
3. Ditch Photoshop go Gimp. Ok don’t do this if you all ready own Photoshop but if need a good alternative The Gimp is perfect. Of course it runs on all operating systems as well.  Also check out Picasa from Google.
4. Go Linux. Linux is a great way to break free from all of the large software companies. All of the software you see on there today will run on Linux. If you need to know a good Linux OS I suggest either Ubuntu or OpenSuse.

 There you have it four open-source (independent) pieces of software. If you have any more you would like to throw along please feel free to leave them as a comment.