Use Wikipedia as a software directory

Wikipedia!
bravo!!bravo!!

You can use Wikipedia,the free online encyclopaedia, as a software directory.ie to search for free, open-source over doing a simple search for a software in search engines is that most of the quality and proprietary softwares of a particular purpose.The advantage of Wikipediasoftwares are listed there.You will get an overall impression about a software if you read a nice article about it.


You can get information about a particular software directly(like "GIMP") or lists of softwares of the same niche (like "List of pdf viewers").You can get tables in articles showing comparisons of different features of softwares of same niche (eg;"Comparison of raster graphics editors").This is the feature i find most useful.

To get what you want you can simply search it in default Wikipedia search.Like if you want a software for video editing search it.

I also recommend doing a site specific search in google.
eg; search "site:http://en.wikipedia.org/ database software".