My Core Software (Windows)
Submitted on July 4th, 2005 by admin
Filed under Software and Windows
I was reloading Windows on my laptop tonight and had an idea for an article: the software I install on every machine right after a Windows install. Hit up the link below for more info, and please post a comment with your selection.
Being a bit obsessive compulsive, I reload my OS often. At least with Windows and Linux, for some reason I’m content to leave OSX as it is for a longer time. Because I reload so often, I basically keep a folder with the set software that I use on every install. It has of course evolved over time, but what I will list is my current setup. Bear in mind that this is only what works for me, I certainly wouldn’t say that the programs I use are the best for most people, which is why I hope this spurs on some conversation in the comments as to what others use. Now onto the apps!
First and foremost, I keep the network cable unplugged, and install SP2. A recent report said that an unprotected Windows machine can get infected within 12 minutes! I then install any needed network drivers, plug in the cable, and hit Windows update. After that I hit the web for other drivers, most importantly video card and chipset. Once the basic housekeeping is done, it’s time for applications and utilities.
- Norton Antivirus- The security stuff still isn’t quite done. You have to have your system secure first, or else all your hard work is wasted and you might as well format and reinstall again.
- SpyBot- I’ve read that you really should install AdAware, SpyBot, and a couple of other spyware searchers to really be protected. I’m actually pretty militant about avoiding anything with spyware, so I just run this one, but if you download and install a lot of stuff, I would certainly recommend getting a few apps. I stick with SpyBot because it’s solid and easy to use.
- Firefox- Firefox is certainly the most important thing on my personal system. I certainly think Opera and Safari are great, but if you are using anything else, drop it now and use one of these three. Firefox is the type of app I love, lightweight but extensible. You can customize it to death, or have a great setup with the basic install. One really necessary thing for your web endeavors though is the Macromedia Flash Plug-in. Too many sites use it.
- iTunes- This is second to Firefox in most important app on my computer. I’m a music freak, and I love iTunes. It is big and slow, but I love the interface, it syncs with my iPod, and the Podcasting features with 4.9 are great. I haven’t tested it out yet, but someone even told me today that with the new iPod firmware if you are listening to a Podcast in iTunes, then stop it and go start up the same Podcast on your iPod it will start where you left off. Great stuff. But the audio software category has lots of great choices. I still don’t totally hate Windows Media Player, and for the past two months I did a bit of an experiment with WinAmp and love it, for a power user it provides so much more flexibility than iTunes. But I like the simplicity of iTunes, and so I jumped back on it.
- Nero- This one isn’t free, but I’m yet to find a really good free CD burning app for Windows. It is a good do it all program. It’s not too dumbed down for the poweruser, but still quite user friendly. Combined with DVD Shrink you have an easy and quick way to back up DVD’s.
- Picasa- Picasa was totally worth $30 before Google bought it, and now that Google has made it freeware, it’s hard to pass up. The interface is Apple pretty and user friendly. I love fixing redeye. You just drag a box over the subject’s eyes and it fades out the redeye. Everything works like that. I dare say I prefer it over iPhoto. I’ve never tried it on an older system, but I’m sure it is a bit slow on an older system because of all of the eye candy, but if you have a fairly fast system it should be no problem.
- Trillian- I feel like a traitor to OSS for this one. GAIM is an awesome product, and is in some ways better than Trillian (like the option to show buddy icons next to the name iChat style), but for some reason since the Trillian 3 series came out, I’ve used it. It does all the neat things I loved in GAIM like sorting buddy’s by status, tabbed chat, and history/logging. I don’t really know why I use Trillian over GAIM, but I do.
- MS Office- Another blast to OSS, but for a good reason, Outlook. If you don’t need Outlook, go with OpenOffice.org. The only real complaints I’ve had with it have been the ugly interface and trouble with very complicated cross app programs, like when I had a textbook that was word files with embedded Excel. The MS Office compatibility is only getting better, and the interface woes are totally gone with 2.0, which isn’t quite final yet, but the beta is very usable. But I use MS Office for Outlook. I have a Pocket PC that I can’t install GNU/Linux on, and the only thing I can sync with it is Outlook. If anyone knows a good way to sync it with Thunderbird/Sunbird or other apps, let me know, but for now I’m stuck with Outlook. It’s a great product though, the contact management, e-mail, tasks, and especially calendaring apps are great. MS Office in general is a good product these days. It tends to be a bit bloatware-ish, but stays fairly stable on Windows 2000/XP. It’s the industry standard, so you really have to have one of these products.
- Copernic Desktop Search- So the Mac has Spotlight now. Everybody is talking about it. But there are a few utilities for Windows that do a lot of the same things. Of those my personal favorite is Copernic’s. It seems to be the most flexible and complete.
- Thunderbird certainly deserves a mention here. I don’t even install it anymore because of GMail, but if you still use an older POP or IMAP email account, Thunderbird is the way to go. It cuddles right up to your “mailto:” links from Firefox, and is just overall a stable, feature-rich program without lots of bloat.
- 7-Zip- Windows XP actually has a good built in ZIP program, but I still find that I need an external program to handle a few other formats, in particular RAR. 7-Zip is good and open source. Also WinRAR is good, but not free.
- Acrobat Reader- So much stuff on the web is in the Acrobat format. You gotta have this reader.
- BitTorrent- So many things are distributed via BitTorrent these days. Many Podcasts, GNU/Linux distro ISO’s, and online videos (such as fan films) are available through BitTorrent. It allows distrobution of large files without killing the host server.
Update 07-05-05:: I forgot a couple of big ones.
So that’s my list, what’s yours?
July 5th, 2005 at 12:06 am
PeerGuardian
Spyware Blaster
Azureus
July 5th, 2005 at 5:45 am
Have you tried Miranda IM for instant messaging? It’s OSS and native for windows.
July 5th, 2005 at 5:54 am
It’s a Mac list but hey:
- AdiumX: Best. Messenger. Ever.
- Dashboard/Spotlight blocker: A small utility that lets you block or unblock Spotlight and/or Dashboard. I use it to block Dashboard, after seeing it eat my RAM like crazy.
- Tigerlaunch: A small app that puts a menu in the top bar listing all apps in the Application folder. Handy.
- Office:Mac 2004 and iWork: I use them both. Office:Mac is for me the best piece of software MS has ever made. iWork is Apple-good ;).
- Missing Sync: Hand app for syncing my PalmOne Tungsten E2 with iCal, and also lets me share my internet connection over BlueTooth so that I can browse the web wirelessly with my Palm.
That’s about it.
July 5th, 2005 at 6:27 am
This is my core collection on Windows machine:
NOD32 - antivirus
Firefox - web browsing
Thunderbird - e-mail, newsgroups, RSS/Atom
OpenOffice.org - office work
GIMP - image editing
Irfan View - image viewing
Psi - Jabber instant massenging
foobar2000 - listening to music
Zoom Player - watching videos
eMule, Azureus - filesharing
Nero - burning CDs/DVDs
July 5th, 2005 at 6:40 am
Just been referred here by OSnews. One thing you should defintely do is Slipstream ( the way to intergrate services pack or hotfix into a Window instllation is called Slipstream ) SP2 and All hotfixes into a Single Windows backup CD. There are also ways to include all your required Driver using nlite. This way you save so much time than to download all the fixes and drivers.
Slipstreaming also allow you to do a *proper* clean install.
Software i can’t live without include
Firefox
Thunderbird ( i wish they could make a O2k3 style interface )
OpenOffice 2.0 Beta
MSN Messanger and ICQ
SpywareBlaster
Spybot
WinRAR
July 5th, 2005 at 6:54 am
Got to have:
WinRAR (archiving)
Sygate (firewall)
MS Office 2003 (so for the best around)
Symantec Corp. (antivirus)
DU Meter (DL/UPload statistical meter)
mirc (IRC client)
DVD Decrypter (a fallen soldier)
FlashFXP (FTP client)
Nero (cd/dvd burning)
Winamp (music)
Hush messenger (the best to date encrypted file messenger)
Tor (Anonymous surfing)
Privoxy (works with Tor, proxy routing)
cygwin (got to run those Linux apps)
July 5th, 2005 at 6:58 am
my most used tools:
total commander - without this windows would be totally obsolete
geoshell - alternative windows shell
firefox - browser
thunderbird - mailer
putty - ssh/telnet client
scite - ascii text editor
irfan view - image viewer/converter
foobar2000 - audio player/converter
mpc (media player classic) - media player
abiword - quick rtf writing
openoffice - office stuff
miranda - instant messenger (various protocols/services)
emule, abctorrent - p2p filesharing
blowfish advanced - file encryption
gnupg+winpt - pgp alternative
keepass - store passwords secure
sysinternals - various system utilities (such as pagedefrag and process explorer)
audacity - free waveform editor
eac - convert cd to wav/mp3/ogg
xvid - codec for xvid and divx
colorcop - tiny color picker
dvd shrink - shrink dvds
inkscape - vector editor
pngout - optimize pngs
tweakpng - verify & optimize pngs
snico iconeditor - edit icons
slimftpd - tiny ftp server
wget & curl - download tools (commandline)
harden-it - secure the windows networking
frhed - free hex editor
cliptray - clipboard history/management
katmouse - mousewheel utility
rainlendar - desktop calendar
rmclock - powermanagement the athlon64
speed fan - control your fans
startup - control/edit autostarting programs
antivir classic - free av-checker
July 5th, 2005 at 7:09 am
FileZilla (open source FTP)
Opera (Firefox is too slow on my old computer)
Explorer2 (file manager)
Solo Antivirus (very easy on the system resources)
AllSnap (snaps windows to edges when dragging)
Sylpheed Claws (open source mail client)
Foobar2000 (audio player)
Media Player Classic (video player)
eMule, Azureus (file sharing)
July 5th, 2005 at 7:22 am
I completely agree about reinstalling Windows often…if only for performance improvements. Anyway, a couple suggestions that I have developed over the years anf use all the time now.
1) Install a working system…update it as necessary…add core software, drivers, etc. (or not…whichever you prefer)
2) Scan sys with all antivitus/spyware/misc security software you desire
3) Dump the drive to a network share with Ghost (my favorite is a combination of BartPE + ghost plugin…a quick google for BartPE and you’ll see how easy it is to use)
In this way, one can constantly “reload” their system without all the tedium of constantly going through all the petty steps to get a working system. I have used this rechnique for a couple years (except the BartPE part…that’s just recently and A LOT easier) and it works flawlessly. The nicest part is that you can use it with multiple machines, too…
A bit offtopic, but maybe helpful…
July 5th, 2005 at 7:28 am
Some extras:
EditPlus - my favorite text editor is going to be even more powerful with the next version due RSN
freeSSHd - free SSH daemon for Windows, very simple to use and free.
Directory Opus - the ultimate file manager, worth the money.
Foxit Reader - free PDF reader, very small & fast.
Cygwin - for when you need *real* command line tools.
Damien
July 5th, 2005 at 7:39 am
putty - excellent SSH client
WinMTR - Windows implementation of Matt’s Trace Route
WS Ping Pro pack - essential networking utilities such as WHOIS, DNS lookups.
July 5th, 2005 at 7:45 am
1. TweakUI to clean the desktop and add focus-follows-mouse. Also disable autoplay.
2. Cygwin. Zsh in rxvt means I have a working command-line environment.
3. PuTTY. Best ssh client/terminal emulator around, plus it’s small and free.
4. Firefox. Of course.
5. XEmacs, or lacking space/time, PSPad.
6. Nethack. Well, duh.
July 5th, 2005 at 7:50 am
Clamwin - Antivirus
7-Zip - Archive
AntiVir - Antivirus
FileZilla - FTP
Firefox - Browser
Ad-Aware & Spybot - Spyware
BZFlag -
July 5th, 2005 at 7:55 am
Total Commander
foobar2000
mplayer
July 5th, 2005 at 7:58 am
DTSearch for indexing - i’m using it since 2000
but now i will look at Copernicus - when i did it last time it was quite immature, now it seems better.
July 5th, 2005 at 8:15 am
for windows:
total commander - Windows would be unusable without it
Borland C++ Builder - as i spend more than 8 hours a day with coding GUI apps
mplayer
azureus
Gimp
Mozilla nightly build with SVG support
Copernic Desktop Search
Kerio Personal Firewall
AntiVir (good, free, daily updated antivirus from www.free-av.com)
July 5th, 2005 at 8:18 am
Crimson Editor (text edit with tabs, color, etc. FREE)
X-Setup (Configure Windows, Look around for the free version)
AVG (anti-virus, FREE)
MSN search/toolbar (I find it more useful then Google’s, FREE)
ExplorerXP (Windows Explorer replacement that is useful, FREE)
Just some things I didn’t see already mentioned.
July 5th, 2005 at 8:26 am
msys - Good & small POSIX command line with Bash.
MinGW - easy to configure GCC, works w/ msys.
msysDTK - lots of nice *NIX tools: CVS ssh, sftp, scp, perl, tar/gz/bz2.
- Easier to install and use than Cygwin, although Cygwin is more comprehensive.
GnuWin32 - other misc *NIX tools that msys may not have yet (like wget).
DriveScanner - http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/ - visualizes disk usage.
Winroll - roll up windows into the titlebar.
VirtuaWin - multiple desktops.
Process Explorer - helps spot spyware. www.sysinternals.com
Vim - www.vim.org
Cream if you’re new to Vim - http://cream.sourceforge.net/
Privoxy or Proxomitron - kills ads and popups in any browser.
Clam Free Antivurus for Windows: http://www.clamwin.com/
CutePDF - print to a PDF.
Paint.NET - better than mspaint, easier than GIMP.
Other dev tools:
SharpDevelop - OSS .NET development
Eclipse (eclipse.org) for Java - but NetBeans is good too.
WinMerge - visual diff tool for Windows
TortoiseCVS or TortoiseSVN. Sometimes easier than cmd line tools.
July 5th, 2005 at 8:35 am
we definitely need to do a Mac list…here’s what I have on all my PCs. I actually use a lot of web services so I don’t have that much software installed:
Latest Mozilla Firefox
Photoshop
AntiVir (antivirus, free) and Sygate Firewall (also FREE) though these have been replaced by McAfee which came with my new laptop
Filezilla (FTP, free)
GAIM (IM client, free) though I’ve been playing with Miranda a bit
Skype (IM/VOIP ’cause I don’t have a landline)
BitTorrent (p2p, free)
Audacity (sound editing, free) and Mixcast Live (audio recording, $30) to produce the TipMonkies podcasts
iTunes and Quicktime
K-Lite Codec Pack
Macromedia Flash
Office suite depends on how I feel…i often switch between MS Office (expensive), OpenOffice (free) and Abiword (free)
July 5th, 2005 at 8:37 am
JEdit
WinAmp (I admit I’m using WMP more and more)
Google Earth (I installed it today and won’t remove it ever!)
EditPad (so much better than notepad and postcardware)
WinRar
CODA codec pack
Windows Draw & Picture Publisher ( I bouth both for 70 euros some years ago I guess they are discontinued now)
Outlook
Firefox (Just left Mozilla :’|)
July 5th, 2005 at 8:47 am
Aston Shell - Shell replacement that is extensible
gVim - OSS Text Editor
FileZilla - FTP
ZoneAlarm - Firewall
PuTTy - ssh client
PDF Creator - for publishing PDF’s
VNC - remote access
July 5th, 2005 at 8:57 am
CDBurnerXP Pro
CDBurnerXP Pro is a free CD/DVD burning solution.
With this software you can burn CD-R, CD-RW DVD+R/RW DVD-R/RW discs.
http://www.cdburnerxp.se/
July 5th, 2005 at 9:05 am
must-haves for work (in no particular order):
1. UltraEdit - Column Mode is a life saver
2. JEdit - syntax highlighting and regex engine are superior to UltraEdit’s
3. Firefox for use, IE5, O5, etc. for reference rendering
4. FileZilla or FlashFXP (FileZilla is free and multithreaded, but FlashFXP has a superior UI)
5. Photoshop CS2
6. pngout - for superior PNG-8 compression
7. Apache HTTP Server
8. MySQL Server
9. PHP
10. EMS MySQL Manager Professional
11. OpenOffice.org
12. ACDSee - image browing and management are more powerful than that of IrfanView
13. native GNU utilities for win32
14. PuTTY
15. EyeFidelityTools
16. VirtualDub
17. The Font Tool
for play:
VideoLAN
Winamp with the DFX and file writer plugins
Nero 6
Trillian Pro
Azureus
CloneCD
QuickTime Alternative
Real Alternative
Media Player Classic
Monkey’s Audio, FLAC, XviD, and MPEG-2 codecs
To keep things moving along:
WinRAR
7-Zip File Manager
Ad-Aware SE
TweakUI
Fix-It Utilities - AV, disk defragmenter, scandisk, clock sync, diagnostics, etc.
occasionally I need:
Sony Sound Forge
Adobe Illustrator
ImageMagick
Zbrush
IconCool Studio
Adobe Premiere or Sony Vegas
Corel KnockOut
Painter
July 5th, 2005 at 9:13 am
media player classic ( and ffmpeg, qtalt, realalt codecs + few more )
is a good core app for me too ( check www.doom9.org to see a lot of AV free soft that really rocks )
July 5th, 2005 at 9:28 am
Norton Ghost: Unless you’re some kind of masochist that enjoys re-installing Windows and all your other software from scratch, this is a must-have application. Just install everything, configure everything the way you want it, and immediately make a ghost image.
Whenever you need to, you can restore the ghost image of the fresh install and save yourself many hours of installation time. From then on, all you’ll need to install are the latest patches for Windows and your other software.
Tip: When you start to find yourself installing a lot of software after restoring from your ghost image, it’s time to save a new image.
July 5th, 2005 at 9:30 am
I’m sure there are and will be other worthwhile contributions to this list but I have a different question that is somewhat related. For years I have performed the same process described here, systems bogs down, blast hard drive, reformat and reinstall OS and basic essential programs… very tedious, very time consuming.
There must be a way to do all this and back it up to a DVD or other large storage media so it can easily be reinstalled again later when the process needs to be repeated.
I’ve tried numerous programs with little or no sucess including Norton Ghost, DriveImage and so on. I know this is possible as I have an old HP desktop that came with a CD and uses Ghost to do this very thing.
Has anyone done this and/or possibly documented the process - this would be a tremendous help for a lot of people!
Thanks
July 5th, 2005 at 9:30 am
BitDefender +
CPU Idle
Norton Ghost
opera
flashget
du meter
clonecd
dvd decrypter
clonedvd
clonedvd2
ultraedit
ultraiso
isobuster
many more…
July 5th, 2005 at 9:44 am
I do a lot of digital graphics work so:
Photoshop
Dreamweaver
Illustrator
Videolan- Plays most video formats and codecs
July 5th, 2005 at 9:59 am
the best tool for windows:
format
July 5th, 2005 at 10:02 am
LOL @ dave…those used to be my thoughts exactly…i’ve kinda gotten used to the whole Windows thing by now though.
July 5th, 2005 at 10:24 am
AutoPatcherXP -latest-
foobar2000
Warcraft III
Photoshop
AMSN
BitTornado
FileZilla
Firefox
Firefox Preloader
Gaim
mIRC
Mozilla
Opera
7-Zip
Alcohol 120%
AdAware SE Personal
LClock
Microsoft AntiSpyware
Nero 6
PartitionMagic 8 + BootMagic
Y’z Dock
Y’z Toolbar
Avedesk
July 5th, 2005 at 10:39 am
TUGZip… Replaces both 7-Zip and WinRAR. Free… Beer, not speech.
July 5th, 2005 at 10:53 am
not mentioned but worth a look, not all ‘core’ software:
locate32
video lan client
super flexible sync
tortoisesvn
protowall
ultravnc
apache + tortoise webdav
java + intellij idea
winedt + miktex
powergrep + regex buddy
visual assist + qt (if your using c++)
July 5th, 2005 at 10:59 am
Hey why dont you made a Windows install CD thats includes the SP2, you can find a very explain how to do that at www.tomshardware.com, just made a search about windows XP and SP2 you will find the article.
July 5th, 2005 at 11:01 am
@ hip
If you don’t like using Ghost images, then try making a custom Unattended Installation disc. Instructions are here: http://unattended.msfn.org/
It’s a major pain to get working correctly, but using VMWare to test your installation will save you a lot of time and pain. It’s worth it though if you really customize your computer a lot or if you have a ton of different programs installed.
I just throw in my disc, come back in about 40 minutes and my computer is installed fresh with all the programs I want, the latest patches from Windows Update, all of my drivers, and the registry tweaks I like.
When a new version of a program comes out or when new Windows security patches come out it’s easy to just add stuff to your Unattended CD and reburn it.
—–
Some of my programs:
Macromedia Studio (making web pages)
Firefox (extensions: forcastfox, Adblock, openbook, quickNote, stockticker)
Thunderbird
Nero (cd burning)
Vim (text editor)
Putty (ssh to my Unix servers)
Python (better than making .bat scripts)
Ccrypt (file encryption)
PGP (file encryption, email encryption, file shredding)
Diskeeper (disk defrag)
Sun’s Java virtual machine
FLAC (lossless CD ripping)
Foobar2000 (music player, converts FLAC files to smaller MP3 files)
MP3Gain (makes my MP3 collection all have the same volume)
Ad-Aware SE Pro (anti-spyware)
Symantec Anti-Virus
Irfanview (image viewer)
BitTorret, eDonkey (file sharing)
7-Zip (openining compressed files)
md5sum.exe and sha1sum.exe (drop in your c:\windows directory to verify checksums from the command line)
DVD Decryptor and DVDShrink (for “backing up” DVD’s)
MS Office 2003 and OpenOffice.org
(don’t forget the office plugins “personal folders backup” to automatically back up your Outlook files and “remove hidden data tool” to remove that stuff that doesn’t get deleted from your Word documents before you send them out to the world)
July 5th, 2005 at 11:20 am
Ultraedit - absolutely
VLC - Windows Media Player is just crummy, and Quicktime is a hog
July 5th, 2005 at 11:28 am
I know this is a dupe, but it’s important enough for me to repeat.
CDBurnerXP Pro
I don’t know if the author tried this or did not know about, but I find this just as easy to use as Nero or EZ CD Creator and it’s free.
–CDBurnerXP Pro is a free CD/DVD burning solution.
–With this software you can burn CD-R, CD-RW DVD+R/RW DVD-R/RW discs.
–http://www.cdburnerxp.se/
July 5th, 2005 at 3:02 pm
test
July 5th, 2005 at 3:04 pm
Service packs and bucketloads of patches first, make sure you have offline versions available so that you can patch before exposing yourself.
AVG Free edition for antivirus
http://free.grisoft.com/
Kerio Personal Edition or Zone Alarm basic for firewall
http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/company/products/znalm/freeDownload.jsp?lid=stati
ccomp_za
http://www.kerio.com/us/kpf_download.html
Mozilla Firefox for a browser
http://www.getfirefox.com/
7-Zip for archive handling
http://www.7-zip.org/
Mozilla Thunderbird for email, miles better than OE, and, for most home users,
better than full blown Outlook.
http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/
The GIMP for web graphics, photo manip, etc.
http://gimp-win.sf.net/
Axcrypt for secure file shredding
http://axcrypt.sourceforge.net/
TightVNC for remote desktop
http://www.tightvnc.com/
SciTe for source code editing, especially HTML and CSS, that’s my web
development environment.
http://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html
Metapad for simple text editing
http://www.liquidninja.com/metapad/
Nvu for WYSIWYG web editing, if required, not essential by any stretch.
http://www.nvu.com/
GAIM for Instant messaging on various networks
http://gaim.sourceforge.net/
FileZilla for FTP and GUI SSH uploads
http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/
PuTTY for SSH
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
Inkscape for vector graphics work.
http://www.inkscape.org/
OpenOffice.org For all standard office tasks and reading/writing MS formats
http://www.openoffice.org
Gnumeric for quicker handling of spreadsheets, much lighter than OO.o but just
as capable.
http://www.gnome.org/~jody/gnumeric/win32/
Abiword as a lighter word processor, still very capable for simple tasks
http://www.abisource.com/download/
PDFCreator with GNU Ghostscript to add a highly configurable PDF printer to the
system
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
Dev C++ in the event that i need a C compiler and nice IDE
http://www.bloodshed.net/dev/devcpp.html
CDrtools and CDRDAO are indispensable burning tools
http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/cdrecord.html
http://cdrdao.sourceforge.net/
CDex for ripping Audio CDs
http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/
OggDropXPd to encode to the best lossy format there is
http://www.rarewares.org/ogg.html
Burrrn to burn audio CDs from my assembled music collection
http://www.burrrn.net/?page_id=6
Mplayer and VLC for Audio/DVD playback and stream ripping
http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/win32/
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
Audacity for audio editing/processing
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Spybot Search and Destroy is largely redundant if you don’t use IE or Outlook,
and avoid installing crap on your box, but it’s useful just in case.
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/
CrackAttack! is a great falling block puzzle game, especially good online.
http://www.nongnu.org/crack-attack/
BitTorrent official client for software distribution, though it unfortunately
works equally well for illegal distribution of copyrighted content too.
http://www.bittorrent.com/
JRE and LimeWire Basic for software distribution accross Gnutella, there are
obviously other possible uses for such software though.
http://www.limewire.com/english/content/home.shtml
http://www.java.com/en/download/windows_automatic.jsp
Apache, MySQL, PHP, but only if you absolutely can’t find a spare machine to run
linux versions on.
http://www.apache.org/dist/httpd/binaries/win32/
http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/articles/4.1/installer.html
http://www.php.net/downloads.php
Ubuntu or Debian GNU/Linux instead of windows, far better than windows IMHO, if
you think software installation is complicated, think again, just use the Synaptic GUI
Package manager (based on apt-get) to select the packages you want to install and it’ll
download, install and configure them all for you! Ubuntu is fantastic for new users,
Debian better for more experienced users, try a liveCD first if you want to find out
how things work, even with an ubuntu based LiveCD you can use synaptic to download and
install packages from the web to your ramdisk.
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/
http://www.debian.org/
LiveCDs
http://www.gnoppix.org/ - Bleeding edge Ubuntu
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/download/ - Ubuntu LiveCD ISOs
http://shipit.ubuntulinux.org/ - Free Ubuntu CDs, Live and Installation, delivered to
your door, no purchase necessary.
Obviously some of that collection isn’t Open Source, when behind a suitable firewall,
even a NAT router helps, most of the non-free stuff isn’t necessary, or even better,
there’s Linux, and for the most part these apps, or better, come with your
distribution, or are easy to install from its repositories.
July 5th, 2005 at 3:29 pm
ZipGenius is the file compression suite you were searching for: it is free and easy to use, plus it supports more than 20 formats of compressed archives, including RAR, ARJ, ACE, CAB, SQX, OpenOffice.org documents and the excellent 7-zip.
http://www.zipgenius.it/index_eng.htm
July 5th, 2005 at 3:46 pm
PuTTY (Secure Shell connections to remote servers)
Filezilla - FTP client
XSetUp Pro - Windows configuration tool
Ad Aware - clean up rubbish
Spybot - clean up rubbish
Firefox - more secure browsing
Thunderbird - worthwhile for the spam filter alone
RegSeeker - Registry key clean up
GIMP - image editing
OpenOffice.Org 2 Beta - excellent office suite
July 5th, 2005 at 4:10 pm
My top x86 programs are
Total Commander
hijackthis
miranda-im
Open Office 2 beta
Foobar
Thunderbird
Irfanview
Opera
Crystal Player
And I really miss a little outgoing firewall like little snitch for Mac OS… Do anyone knows a tiny outgoing connection filter for windows? I tried almost every full featured firewall are too fat for my needs, or hangs, or not good at all…
July 5th, 2005 at 4:19 pm
Anybody knows “Faststone Image Viewer”? It is free and very usable. Far better than Irfanview I think. While viewing an image the edges of the screen are connected to menues (like open/save, image list, exif info)
July 5th, 2005 at 7:25 pm
You do not have to leave your network cable unplugged. Yes it is true the default windows firewall is not loaded with the TCP/IP stack on a vanilla install of Windows (i believe SP1 fixes this). This makes it possible for your computer to be infected with a worm before Windows fully boots. The easiest way around this is to enable TCP/IP filtering in the advanced TCP/IP properties during Windows installation. When prompted for common network settings or advanced/custom network settings, select the later. You can then modify which protocols get loaded on a default installation of Windows. Enable the TCP/IP filter and this will disallow all incoming traffic to the TCP/IP stack (except for the ports you specify). You now have a protected machine from the network upon first boot.
You can also enable this in the unattended installation .SIF files and RIS builds. Please consult google for more info
July 5th, 2005 at 7:27 pm
i should note that it will allow established incoming connections, but no new connections. so make sure to disable this after you are patched if you want to use remote desktop and such
July 5th, 2005 at 8:12 pm
My list:
whatever av is around
wget or curl
mozilla suite (does ftp, mail, irc)
putty
activeperl
jedit is nice
emacs
unix utils (old pre-cygwin unix shell workalikes like grep and sort)
ghostscript
netbeans + jdk
vnc server/client
cdrecord/mkisofs (okay so I at least download the cygwin dll)
arjfolder (best archiver)
tar and gzip
if I need bittorrent I do activepython and use the btdownloadheadless.py
divx player
I guess lots! No wonder I hate setting up Windows boxes, nothing is on there!
July 5th, 2005 at 9:01 pm
I am a programmer, and amongst other proggies you guys have listed already over and over, I always install Putty and WinSCP on my Windows boxes!
July 5th, 2005 at 9:23 pm
Somone already mentioned this but Foxit Reader is free, and about 1000 times faster then Acroboat
July 5th, 2005 at 10:05 pm
i usually create a BootDVD that has the latest versions of my favorite programs and windows xp pro with sp2. And i make it unattended. but when i dont want to do that i just have a cd or dvd of all my program’s installers
July 5th, 2005 at 11:51 pm
All either Freeware/GPL or “Free”
EditPad - Text editor, or
ConText - text editor (tabs, highlighter, macros, yet light.)
Stardock ObjectDock Free edition - Mac’s Dock knock off. (appears spyware-free for the last 2 years.)
Memento - the best Post-It notes of 7-10 I tried (colors, transparancy, 248Kb!, “crap”-free) (http://www.guyswithtowels.com)
multiDesk 2001 Beta - virtual desk manager (move windows bw desks with mouse, 150kb) (search on download.com, developer is MIA)
July 6th, 2005 at 12:37 am
Photoshop
Premiere Elements (more powerful than Windows Movie Maker)
Paint Shop Pro
Foxit
July 6th, 2005 at 1:03 am
[…] Gestern bin ich per OSnews.com auf einen BLOG-Eintrag mit dem Namen “My Core Software (Windows)” gestoßen, in welchem der Autor einige seiner wichtigsten Tools auflistet. Ich habe dort auch einen Kommentar mit meinen meistgenutzen Windows-Tools hinterlassen. […]
July 6th, 2005 at 3:29 am
All either Freeware/GPL or “Free�
not wanting to confuse matters, obviously.
July 6th, 2005 at 4:06 am
I wonder why noone mentions musikCube here. In my opinion one of, maybe the best musicplayer out there for windows! Try it!!
July 6th, 2005 at 4:45 am
total commander - windows is nothing without this
irfan view - image program
winamp
winrar
azureus (torrents)
nero
the all seeying eye - i’m a gammer
firefox
open office
team speak - best program for audio conference
ace mega codecks pack with media player classic - all codecs for video files
skype
freemeter
msn messenger - i can’t find a good alternative for msn protocol
July 6th, 2005 at 9:42 am
[…] hsqldb utilities | core windows software random number generators […]
July 6th, 2005 at 1:52 pm
Hey
My core appz goes like this:
MS Office 2003 Pro.
Putty
cygwin
Macromedia Fireworks
DivX/Xvid Codecs.
Videolan vlcplayer
Take a look at http://webos.he.dk - http://webos.he.dk/v4-demo/
July 16th, 2005 at 9:04 pm
Opera for web browsing, webmail & newsfeeds.
eMule MorphXT for filesharing.
edWatch to preview my ed2k downloads.
XBT Client, tiny prog (>300kb) for BitTorrent downloading.
AllChars for typing those characters not on my keyboard.
Trillian for IM but importantly to monitor all of my webmail accounts simultaneously.
VLC (I don’t want to have to buy a separate laptop for every different DVD region I travel to).
ffdshow (multiple codec replacement), in case some odd video doesn’t work in VLC
Foxit Reader: hmmm 27mb for Adobe Reader or 1~mb for Foxit? No contest!
…as well as the other usual suspects: AVG anti-virus, Kerio Personal Firewall, Spybot S&D, IrfanView, EditPad Light for text, AbiWord for wordprocessing, WinAmp light for audio
May 19th, 2006 at 11:54 am
rough termwise Hiawatha,bookkeeper applications.fairyland boathouse
August 7th, 2006 at 1:38 am
Hello, i just wanted to say thank you for outtting up this site. I googled “Free Win .Rar” and go your site and yours is aparently the only one witht the link to a freee download of a .Rar file extractor, thanks again.
September 14th, 2006 at 11:36 pm
Are you sure 37732 about this?!?
November 2nd, 2006 at 2:14 am
Edward, I should not that you can find this free software not only here.