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There are tons of software available for Windows out there but today I came across a site which lists the best free and open-source software for Windows, aptly named Open Source Windows. 

What I also liked was their six point advice on how to increase downloads of your software:

• if you have a nice icon, show it off prominently.
• put a download link and a screenshot on your front page.
• if you use mirrors, use a script to pick a random mirror and just give people one link that says ‘download now’.
• if there’s any way you can avoid sending people to the sourceforge download mirror page, you should.
• if you really want to make things easy for people, and you have a cross-platform app, detect what OS they are on and give them the correct link.
• test your page on a novice!

Very good points there. One another thing they mentioned was to put a big prominent button on the page which says “Download”.

They have split the page into 2 pages. “Basic” page covers basic utility software for Windows and “Page 2″ covers specialized software. This split is good to avoid unnecessary clutter and confusion for a basic user but they should name  ”Page 2″ as ”Advanced” or something else and not “Page 2″. Also, their “Page 2″ becomes left aligned half way down in Firefox 2.  I guess this is because the page was manually created and is missing a “div” tag. I have mailed them about it.

Visit OpenSourceWindows

Popularity: 4% [?]

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