This document summarizes the author's experiences using various free and open source software (FOSS) programs for their research on the effects of habitat fragmentation on amphibians. The author used JabRef as a reference editor, XnView as an image editor, Audacity as a voice editor, PAST as a data editor, QGIS and DIVA-GIS for spatial data analysis, Fragstats for fragmentation analysis, and openModeller for distribution modeling. The author learned that free software is not necessarily flawed and that more interaction is needed between developers and users of FOSS programs.