Which tools and solutions can be used to switch to home office and remote work in the company at low cost or free of charge. We show the 8 best Open Source tools.
Index
There are currently many offers for 30, 60 or 90 days free services from various companies. But if you also want to deal with Open Source solutions, you should read this list in peace and quiet and slowly and surely build your own tool kit.
Of collaboration, data storage, operating systems and also creative solutions. Here you will find everything a home office heart desires.
Operating system: Linux
Of course we start with the operating system first. If you don’t have a computer with Windows yet, you should definitely have a look at Linux. The most famous versions are
- Ubuntu
- Debian
- Linux Mint
- openSUSE
- Fedora
- Elementary (Für Mac Lover)
- uvm.
Office-Suite: LibreOffice
Not only Open Source lovers and start-ups love the Office alternatives. The free and Open Source Office Suite offers many functionalities which are known from Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc. In addition, you can also edit PDFs, manage databases including graphical interface and much more.
If you are looking for a free alternative to the Microsoft Office suite, you don’t need to look any further.
Video Conferences: Meet.Jitsi.si bzw. Jitsi.org
This tool can help to minimize the distances between colleagues. With this tool you can hold professional video conferences and this can be easily done via the URL htttps://meet.jit.si/. The nice thing is that you do not need to register, it is completely free and it is hosted in a completely secure way.
If you want and need to host the video conferences for your company (maybe because of privacy regulations – GDPR), you can also download the complete software package and install it on your own servers. In this way, no videos are stored abroad and therefore even strict data protection officers are reassured.
Brainstorming: Drawpile whiteboard
Those who use brainstorming methods must also think about joint “drawing” and “post-its”. With the open source tool Drawpile whiteboard you can shift this online. With it, virtual whiteboards can be created and everyone can dial in in a session, brainstorm, see what others are doing live and contribute themselves.
Great tool to work out ideas and sketch them together. Especially nice is the intuitive handling of the software and the minimalistic design.
Kanban Board and Project Management – Taiga.io
If you are looking for alternatives to Trello, Asana & Co., you should have a look at Taiga.io. It has several tools and can also be used for Kanban boards, project and task management etc. Due to the various integration possibilities with other services it is also relatively flexible and can be used for other topics.
Additionally it offers functions like a Scrum Board, Wiki for internal documentation, issue management and much more.
Team Chat: Riot
Mostly teams do not need complex video or voice channels to exchange information, often a chat is sufficient. If you do not want to use Slack, you can get a worthy replacement with Riot. Various functionalities, integrations and also apps for all common devices ensure that everyone can use Riot for all business processes.
Especially here it should be noted that many people go for Riot and self-hosted alternatives such as Riot, because Slack runs on US servers and therefore does not comply with all privacy regulations.
Notes: Joplin
For those not using a To-Do List software, Joplin is an intuitive but beautifully designed way to manage ideas and tasks.
By creating various notebooks, to-do lists and much more, ideas can be collected easily and quickly. With the functionalities like the integration of graphics, hyperlinks, to-do lists and much more, even more complex topics can be noted and processed.
Good to know: Joplin uses various open source services to store the data (including Nextcloud – read on below). This way various systems from computer, tablet to mobile phone can be connected.
Data and Private Cloud: Nextcloud
Nextcloud is no stranger to the scene. You could even say that Nextcloud is one of the leading applications for building your own private data cloud structures. It is especially important that you can avoid the problems with foreign servers, you should be subject to strict privacy regulations.
The design, but also the ease of installation and operation of the software are also some of the advantages. Various integrations like chat storage, e-mail storage, video chat and many more are also on board. So if you are looking for an “all-inclusive” solution on which to build your open source strategy, then you should get Nextcloud.
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