Starvard.
Starvard University · The Free Software Toolkit
You will replace expensive software subscriptions with free, capable alternatives for office work, photos, and more. This course builds your toolkit piece by piece, from documents, spreadsheets, and presentations to photo editing, drawing, and sound, grounded in the Free Software Foundation and the official guides of each project.
Hello, my name is Finn, and I'm going to help you understand this course.
Here it is, explained like you are 10:
Some computer programs are like tools you are only renting: stop paying and they stop working. Free software is yours to use, share, and even change. This course shows you friendly free programs for writing documents, making spreadsheets and slides, fixing photos, drawing, and editing sound. You will also learn how to keep your passwords and files safe, and how to give an old computer a new life.
The Free Software Foundation defines free software by four freedoms: run the program as you wish, study and change it, redistribute copies, and distribute your changed versions. The source code must be available, because nobody can study or change a program they cannot read. Licenses such as the GNU General Public License protect those freedoms, while permissive licenses grant them with fewer conditions.
This course turns that idea into a working toolkit. You will write in LibreOffice Writer, budget in Calc, present in Impress, and trade files with Microsoft Office users without fear. Then you will edit photos in GIMP, draw in Inkscape, and record sound in Audacity, before finishing with password safety, backups, and a fresh start for an old computer with Linux. No experience is assumed, and every program named here can be downloaded and kept for free.
The whole course in brief
What you will be able to do after this course
The ten lessons
Lesson 1
Free software means software that respects your freedom, not software that merely costs nothing. The GNU Project puts it plainly: free as in free speech, not as in free beer. You may pay for a copy or receive one at no charge, and either way the license gives you control over what the program does on your computer. When users do not control the program, the program controls them, and the Free Software Foundation calls that kind of program proprietary or nonfree.
The definition rests on four essential freedoms. Freedom 0 is the freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose. Freedom 1 is the freedom to study how the program works and change it so it does your computing as you wish, and access to the source code is a precondition for this. Freedom 2 is the freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others. Freedom 3 is the freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others, so the whole community can benefit from your changes. Open source is a related term with a different philosophy, and nearly all open source programs are in fact free.
Licenses are how those freedoms are granted and protected. Copyleft licenses, like the GNU General Public License, require that redistributed and modified versions keep the same freedoms, so the software cannot quietly be turned into a closed product. Permissive licenses, like MIT and Apache, also grant the freedoms but place fewer conditions on redistribution, asking mainly for credit and license notices. Both families are free software licenses. They differ in how they keep software free, not in whether it is free.
Lesson 2
Writer is the word processor in LibreOffice, and for most people it is the easiest place to leave a paid subscription behind. The official Getting Started guide describes Writer as a feature rich tool for creating letters, books, reports, newsletters, brochures, and other documents. If you have ever written in another word processor, the screen will feel familiar: a page in the middle, menus and toolbars around it, and your words where you left them.
Start with the habits that make documents easy to manage. Use styles for headings and body text instead of formatting every line by hand, so a change to one style updates the whole document at once. Save early, keep file names clear, and let the spelling checker and thesaurus help you, since LibreOffice provides both in its shared tools across the suite. You can insert pictures and objects from other LibreOffice programs, such as a Calc chart, straight into a Writer page. Templates give you a head start on common documents, so you are rarely staring at a truly blank page.
Writer also speaks other languages of the office world. It can export your work to PDF and EPUB, save in several versions of Microsoft Word format, and connect to your email program when you are ready to send a document. For a letter, a resume, a school report, or a community newsletter, Writer covers the job completely, on Windows, macOS, or Linux, with no account and no monthly bill waiting at the end of the month.
Lesson 3
Calc is the spreadsheet program in LibreOffice, built for budgets, lists, inventories, grades, and any other information that lives in rows and columns. The official guide says Calc has the advanced analysis, charting, and decision making features expected from a high end spreadsheet. You enter values into cells, write formulas that calculate with those values, and the sheet recalculates the moment anything changes, which is what makes a spreadsheet so much more useful than a paper table.
A good first project is a simple household budget. Put categories down one column, amounts beside them, and a SUM formula at the bottom to total each month. Calc includes hundreds of functions for financial, statistical, and mathematical work, so the same sheet can average your spending, find your largest expense, and project next month with the Scenario Manager, which the guide describes as a tool for what if analysis. Small formulas, checked carefully, beat big guesses. Sorting and filtering help you ask questions of a long list without changing the list itself.
When numbers need to be seen rather than read, Calc turns them into charts. It generates two dimensional and three dimensional charts that can be placed in other LibreOffice documents, such as a Writer report or an Impress presentation. Calc can open Microsoft Excel workbooks, work on them, and save them back in Excel format, and it can export spreadsheets as CSV, PDF, or HTML when you need a simpler form for sharing or for another program.
Lesson 4
Impress is the presentation program in LibreOffice, the tool for talks, lessons, club reports, and project updates. The official guide says Impress provides the common multimedia presentation tools, including special effects, animation, and drawing tools, and that it comes with ready made styles, slide backgrounds, and templates. A presentation is a set of slides shown in order, each one making a single point that your audience can take in at a glance while you do the talking.
Build slides the calm way. Start from a template so fonts and colors agree with each other, put one idea on each slide, and keep text short enough to read from the back of the room. Add pictures, charts, or a short video clip only where they help the point land. Because Impress shares the drawing tools of the suite, you can add simple diagrams and shapes without leaving the program or learning a separate graphics tool first. Your audience remembers the point, not the transitions, so let the slides stay in the background.
Impress can open, edit, and save Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, which matters when a school, office, or conference expects that format. It can also save your presentation in many graphics formats and as a PDF, a handy safety net when you are unsure what computer will be used for the talk. Practice once with the file you will actually present, on the machine you will actually use, and you will have done more for your talk than any animation could.
Lesson 5
The most common worry about switching office software is simple: will my files still work, and will other peoples files work for me? LibreOffice answers yes, with care. Its native format is the Open Document Format, an open standard, and the official guide states that LibreOffice can also open and save documents in many other formats, including those used by several versions of Microsoft Office. Writer handles Word documents, Calc handles Excel workbooks, and Impress handles PowerPoint presentations.
In daily practice the exchange is smooth for ordinary work. A colleague sends you a document, you open it, edit it, and save it back in the same format so they never need to know which program you used. Simple letters, budgets, and slides travel well. Very complex documents can occasionally shift: an unusual layout, a heavy design, or features unique to one program may look slightly different after the trip, so check the result before you send important work onward. No vendor lock in is one of the stated advantages of the suite, and file formats are where that promise becomes practical.
A few habits make format sharing painless. Keep a copy in the original format when a document matters, use common fonts that travel between computers, and send a PDF when the layout must stay exactly as you made it and the other person only needs to read it. When everyone in a group can choose, the open formats have a real advantage: they are published standards, so your files stay readable by many programs for years to come.
Lesson 6
GIMP, the GNU Image Manipulation Program, is a free program for working on photographs and other pixel based images. Its own project site aims high: the team says it works to create a high end image manipulation application that is free for everyone to use and modify. People use GIMP to retouch photographs, prepare pictures for the web, build simple graphics, and combine images, and many treat it as their everyday replacement for a paid photo editor. It runs as a desktop program on GNU/Linux, macOS, and Windows, and its interface rewards a little patience during the first week.
Begin with the three skills that cover most photo work. Crop and straighten first, to fix composition and remove distractions at the edges. Adjust brightness, contrast, and color next, in small steps, checking the picture as you go. Then resize and export a copy at the size your use requires, keeping your original file untouched so you can always start again. Working on copies, and on layers inside the file, means no experiment has to be permanent until you say so.
GIMP is free software in the full sense of this course. Its frequently asked questions page states that GIMP is distributed under the GNU General Public License version 3 or later, that you may use it for any purpose, including commercial work, and that you may study and change it. The same page notes that GIMP can open raw camera files through plug ins such as darktable and RawTherapee, which many photographers rely on for careful work.
Lesson 7
Some pictures are made of pixels, and some are made of shapes described by mathematics. The second kind, vector graphics, can grow from a business card to a billboard and stay perfectly sharp, because the image is stored as lines, curves, and fills rather than a fixed grid of dots. Inkscape is the free vector graphics editor in this toolkit. Its home page calls it a professional vector graphics editor for illustrators, designers, and web designers, and a powerful, free design tool.
Inkscape works natively in SVG, the Scalable Vector Graphics format used across the web. You draw with shapes, paths, and a powerful text tool, using Bezier and spiro curves to bend lines exactly where you want them. Logos, icons, diagrams, posters, and simple illustrations are its home ground. Because every object stays editable, you can return months later, change a color or a word, and export a fresh copy at any size you need. Layers keep complicated drawings manageable, letting you lock the background while you adjust the details in front.
The project points to broad file format compatibility, so artwork can move between Inkscape and other design tools for printing or publishing. Start small: draw a simple badge or sign, using two or three shapes and one line of text, and export it as both SVG and PNG. That single exercise teaches the core ideas of vector work, and it produces something you can genuinely use on a website, a worksheet, or a community flyer. Free to download and free to share, it asks only for your practice in return.
Lesson 8
Audacity is a free, open source program for recording and editing audio, and its official site calls it the most popular audio editing and recording app in the world. It runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Podcasters, musicians, teachers, and interviewers use it to capture voices and music, clean up recordings, and prepare finished files. If you have ever wanted to record a family story or start a small podcast, Audacity is the standard free tool for the job.
Editing sound in Audacity is visual. Your recording appears as a waveform, a picture of the sound, and you cut, copy, paste, and trim by selecting stretches of that picture, much like editing text. You can work with several tracks at once, mixing narration, music, and effects, and adjust volume so each part can be heard clearly. Built in effects and support for third party plug ins let you reduce noise, change pitch or speed, and polish the result. A quiet room and a close microphone do more for quality than any effect in the menus.
Audacity imports, exports, and converts between the major audio formats, so you can turn a WAV recording into an MP3, FLAC, or Ogg file for sharing. The project states plainly that Audacity has always been free and will remain free, and that its source code is open for anyone to view or modify. Record a short test first, listen on headphones, and fix problems at the microphone before you spend time fixing them on screen.
Lesson 9
A free toolkit should also keep you safe, and two habits matter most: strong, separate passwords, and working backups. A password manager is a program that remembers long, random passwords for you, so every account can have its own password while you remember only one main password. Free and open source password managers exist for every major system, and they remove the temptation to reuse one short password across your email, bank, and shopping accounts.
Choose a manager carefully, since it will hold the keys to your accounts. Prefer a well known project with open source code that others can inspect, a clear record of updates, and the option to keep your password vault on your own devices. Turn on two factor authentication for your most important accounts as well, so a stolen password alone is not enough to get in. Write your main password down and store the paper somewhere safe at home. These habits cost nothing but attention, and they protect everything the other lessons help you create.
Backups are the second half of safety. Keep copies of the files you cannot replace, such as photos, documents, and your password vault, in at least two places, with one copy away from the computer itself, for example on an external drive you store separately. Free backup tools can copy folders on a schedule, so the habit runs itself. Test your backup once by restoring a file. A backup you have never tested is a hope, not a backup.
Lesson 10
Operating systems can be free software too. GNU and Linux together form a complete free operating system, developed by the Free Software Foundation and a worldwide community so that the freedoms in lesson 1 are possible on a whole computer. The Free Software Foundation campaigns for exactly this: users cooperating and controlling their own computing. Many Linux distributions, the packaged versions you actually install, are built to run well on modest hardware, asking far less of an older processor and memory than current commercial systems do.
That makes an old laptop a candidate for a second life instead of the recycling bin. A typical path is to back up any files you still need, download a beginner friendly distribution, try it from a USB stick without installing anything, and only then install it if the machine feels responsive and your WiFi, sound, and printer work. The same free toolkit from this course, LibreOffice, GIMP, Inkscape, and Audacity, is available there, often preinstalled. Help and documentation are plentiful, because the community treats beginners as future contributors.
Set honest expectations. An old computer revived with Linux is excellent for writing, browsing, email, schoolwork, and media, and it can serve a family or community group for years. It will not magically become a gaming machine, and a failing hard drive stays failing under any system. Still, the lesson of this course stands: with free software, the useful life of a computer is decided by what you need it to do, not by a subscription calendar.
Sources
This course is grounded in the Free Software Foundation and the GNU Project for its definitions and history, and in the official sites and guides of each program it teaches, so every claim about the tools can be checked at the source.
Graduation
You learned what makes software free, in the four freedoms and the license families that protect them. You built a working toolkit: Writer for documents, Calc for spreadsheets, Impress for presentations, smooth exchanges with Microsoft file formats, GIMP for photos, Inkscape for vector graphics, and Audacity for sound. You protected it all with a password manager and tested backups, and you saw how Linux can give an old computer a second life. The subscriptions are optional now. The skills are yours.
Keep learning
This course is part of Starvard University, striving for greatness.
A note on accuracy: Much of what you read at Starvard was created with help from AI agents, working alongside people. We check what we can, but we cannot guarantee that everything here is true, current, or complete. If something really matters, your health, your money, a grade, a job, please verify it with a trusted source before you rely on it.