A list of useful programs!

http://nmaps.net/user/z3phyr · Postby **Zephyr** » 2010.04.29 (09:17)

Hi, I'm trying to compile a list of handy programs every computer needs.
Everything is compatible with Windows unless it is said to be for something else.

Antivirus:
Kapersky Paid
Norton Paid
Avast! Paid
Spybot Search and Destroy Free
MSE Free

Audio/Editing
Grooveshark Free
iTunes Free but content can be bought
Last fm Free
VLC player Free
Spotify Paid/Invite (Ask a happy song) Only in Finland, France, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the UK
Foobar 2000 Free
Winamp Free
Audacity Free, Audio editor
TagScanner Free, manages your music

Burning:
CDBurnerXP Free

Cleaners:
CCleaner Free, Windows
Appcleaner Free, Macs only
Ad-Aware Free, pay for premium
Appcleaner Free, Macs only: Cleans out your unnecessary stuff I think

Compression:
Winrar Free trial but never expires
7-zip Free

Conversion:
Freestudio Free
Handbrake Free
MPEG streamclip Free

Customization:
Stardock Free
Customization Free
Geektool Free, OS X

Emulators:
Dosbox Free, x86 emulator
VirtualBox Free, Virtual machine emulator

Filesharing/Torrents:
Bittorrent Free
Utorrent Free
Frostwire Free
Filezilla The free FTP solution!
Torrent Harvester Free
Cloudapp Free, OS X

Gaming:
Steam Free but content can be bought
Gamebooster Free

IM/Chat:
MSN Free
Skype Free but content can be bought
Pidgin Free
Trillian Free
http://adium.im/ Free, OS X

Images/Editing:
Photoshop Paid, expensive but worth it if you use it alot.
Paint.net Free
GIMP Free
IrfanView Free, Image viewer

Internet Browser:
Firefox Free
Opera Free
Google Chrome Free

IRC client:
MIRC Free trial but lasts forever
Xchat Free
Chatzilla Free, Firefox addon

Office software:
Openoffice Free
Microsoft Office Paid
Foxit ReaderFree, PDF reader
Convert Free, Unit converter
Graphcalc Free, Graphic calculator

System:
WinDirStat Free, File/directory size stat analyzer
Process Explorer Free, explores processes!
Resourcehacker Free, edit resource files
iStat Menus Free/Paid, System Information for OS X
Recuva Free, File recovery for shit your little baby cousin deleted.
SIW Free/Pay for premium, System Information for Windows, stuff like temperature and processor speed.
XVI32 Free, hex editor

Video/Editing:
VLC player Free
iTunes Free but content can be bought
Miro Free
Virtualdub Free, Video editor

Other:
AIM adhack Free, Removes ads from AIM
Alarm Free
Hott Notes Free, Sticky notes

If you guys can find any other handy programs I'll edit them into the list.

http://nmaps.net/user/astheoceansblue · Postby **a happy song** » 2010.04.29 (09:55)

Game Booster: download
Open Office: download
VLC player: download
Spotify: download

http://nmaps.net/user/z3phyr · Postby **Zephyr** » 2010.04.29 (10:53)

Wow, spotify looks really good, I'll check it out.

*edit* Should have guessed it wouldn't be free ;_;

http://nmaps.net/user/astheoceansblue · Postby **a happy song** » 2010.04.29 (11:07)

Zephyr wrote:Wow, spotify looks really good, I'll check it out.

*edit* Should have guessed it wouldn't be free ;_;

It is free. Entirely free.

There's an option to remove adverts for a monthly fee, but otherwise there are no payments needed at all.

http://nmaps.net/user/ · Postby **Vyacheslav** » 2010.04.29 (12:28)

I'm only adding what I have on OS X right now. All freeware.
Alarm Clock - http://bluefive.pair.com/alarm.htm
AppCleaner (OS X) - Free OS X software uninstaller
Audacity - Cross-platform sound recorder/editor.
Google Earth - http://earth.google.com/
Handbrake - Video conversion utility
Miro - Video player with YouTube support and a library
MPEG Streamclip - A MUST have for video conversion. Requires Quicktime.

I have more, just not free ones.

http://nmaps.net/user/rennaT · Postby **Tanner** » 2010.04.29 (19:27)

Audio: foobar2000
IRC: XChat http://www.silverex.org/news/

http://nmaps.net/user/z3phyr · Postby **Zephyr** » 2010.04.29 (20:35)

I'll get around to putting up links for all these, probably after school today.

@atob: Isn't it invitation only though?

http://nmaps.net/user/astheoceansblue · Postby **a happy song** » 2010.04.29 (20:44)

Zephyr wrote:I'll get around to putting up links for all these, probably after school today.

@atob: Isn't it invitation only though?

I thought they'd removed that restriction, but if it's still in place I have some invites I can send out.

There man be a country restriction in place, you'll have to do a little more research to see if the free service is available to you. I know it works for the US and England, France, and Germany (as I have friends who use it in these places).

If you find you can use it, let me know and I'll send you an invite (Pm you email to me).

http://nmaps.net/user/chase16/ · Postby **Chase** » 2010.04.29 (21:29)

I can't believe MSE isn't on the Antivirus list, it's free and outclasses almost all others in tests. Only one bests it and that's a paid solution.

http://nmaps.net/user/toasters · Postby **toasters** » 2010.04.29 (21:33)

a happy song wrote:
Zephyr wrote:I'll get around to putting up links for all these, probably after school today.

@atob: Isn't it invitation only though?
I thought they'd removed that restriction, but if it's still in place I have some invites I can send out.

There man be a country restriction in place, you'll have to do a little more research to see if the free service is available to you. I know it works for the US and England, France, and Germany (as I have friends who use it in these places).

If you find you can use it, let me know and I'll send you an invite (Pm you email to me).

As far as I can tell from their site, Spotify is still unavailable in the United States. How did your friends get it?

http://nmaps.net/user/astheoceansblue · Postby **a happy song** » 2010.04.29 (22:00)

Perhaps I'm lying through my teeth. Let me review this and get back to you...

EDIT:
a happy song is confusing spotify and Last FM. Spotify is only available in the following countries:

Finland
France
Norway
Spain
Sweden
United Kingdom

If you can, enjoy!

http://nmaps.net/user/Nexx · Postby **Nexx** » 2010.04.29 (22:55)

The title, "a list of programs every computer needs", seems rather inappropriate. In the first place, it just seems more like you're compiling a list of useful free programs. In the second place, every computer does not need all of those programs. Like for example, my computer really really doesn't need iTunes. It also doesn't need VLC player. Or Skype. Or an alarm program. Or MSN messenger.

Speaking of messengers, are you aware of Pidgin?

http://nmaps.net/user/T3chno · Postby **T3chno** » 2010.04.29 (22:59)

I actually like Trillian for IMing more than Pidgin as it has more functionality.

http://nmaps.net/user/astheoceansblue · Postby **a happy song** » 2010.04.29 (23:06)

Nexx wrote:The title, "a list of programs every computer needs", seems rather inappropriate. In the first place, it just seems more like you're compiling a list of useful free programs. In the second place, every computer does not need all of those programs. Like for example, my computer really really doesn't need iTunes. It also doesn't need VLC player. Or Skype. Or an alarm program. Or MSN messenger.

Yeh, I'm pretty sure the title isn't taking itself as seriously as you are. Just for fun, and all that.

http://nmaps.net/user/ · Postby **Vyacheslav** » 2010.04.29 (23:08)

Windows freeware essentials.

AIM Adhack - Anyone who uses AIM, get this. Removes ads and other crap that comes installed with AIM.

CDBurner XP - Flexible CD burner.

Convert - Convert many kinds of units

DOS Box - DOS emulator

FileZilla - FTP browser, server software freely available

Foxit Reader - PDF reader (download free version)

Frostwire - P2P client. Requires Java.

GraphCalc - Graphic Calculator

IrfanView - My favorite image viewer.

Recuva - File recovery utility

SIW - System information program. Sensor support for temperature readings.

Sun Virtualbox - Virtual machine emulator

Torrent Harvester - Torrent searcher

Winamp - Powerful media player with tons of features.

VirtualDub - Amazingly versatile video editor

Postby **t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư** » 2010.04.29 (23:40)

Obligatory Linux trolling

All of the following are totally free. Links are not provided to any software listed here because it can all be directly obtained without needing to visit each site individually, searching for the download link, and then running an installer. Painless installation and automatic updating are built-in with all of these.

Alarm:
Just use crontab and your favorite media player and music.

Antivirus:
First off, lol.
ClamAV is fine if you really want antivirus software.

Audio:
Amarok
Banshee
Dragon
Juk
Exaile
Rhythmbox
VLC
(plus countless more)

Audio Editing / Recording:
Audacity
Ecasound (for batch audio editing)
Jokosher
Muse

BitTorrent Clients:
The original bittorrent client is native in Linux as well, and uTorrent works fine through Wine.
Transmission, Deluge, and kTorrent are also all fantastic.

CD/DVD Burning:
Brasero

Compression:
Just use tar and gzip.
Alternatively, the "p7zip-full" and "p7zip-rar" packages will handle silly proprietary compression schemes your Winblows-using friends will send you.

Conversion:
ffmpeg beats all, no contest.

Download Manager:
wget will kick the crap out of any download manager you've ever used.

Gaming:
Wine runs Steam and most popular Valve games as though they were native.
Plenty more work besides, and updates to Wine tend to be focused on popular games, but Linux is obviously lacking when it comes to new releases.

IM/Chat:
Empathy and Pidgin both pretty much cover all bases.
There's a native Skype client for Linux, too.
TeamSpeak is an excellent VoIP server/client free from the fascism of Ventrilo, but Mangler is a Linux port of the Ventrilo client in case you want to talk on Vent.

Image Editing:
GIMP
I'm not big on graphics, but there are undoubtedly other vector graphics packages and all sorts of whatnots. Wikipedia tells me that Inkscape is good.

Internet Browser:
Firefox
Google Chrome
Opera
Dozens of others besides.

IRC Client:
Countless numbers, including the already mentioned XChat and Chatzilla.
tinyirc, Bersirc, BitchX, lostirc, and KVirc are also all excellent clients.
And of course, the best of the best: irssi.

Office Software:
Eeeewwwwwwwww.
OpenOffice if you absolutely must use Office for some retarded reason, or IBM Lotus Symphony if you like the candy-covered look.
Typeset your work with LaTeX, and the world will take you much more seriously. Not to mention LaTeX is practically a requirement for math/science/engineering grad school and industry work.

OS Emulation:
Sun Virtualbox is native in Linux, as is DOSBox.

PDF Reading:
evince
xpdf

Video:
VLC is native in Linux, as is Miro.
mplayer, Ogle, xine, and Totem all rock the Casbah.

And we didn't even get into web servers (apache2, lighttpd), remote file-transfer (scp, sftp, lftp, rsync, sshfs), remote login (ssh, VNC), systems administration (NIS/NFS, OpenLDAP, Kerberos), version control (mercurial, subversion, git), encryption (GPG, mcrypt, TrueCrypt), mathematics utilities (Octave, gnuplot, scipy, orpie), or the glory that is the shell (zsh ftw!).

And it's not surprising that you didn't even mention customizing the UI, because Winblows users and Macfags are not used to that even being an option. There's a stupidly huge list of windowing managers, all open-source and easily extensible, which are also not integrated into the goddamned kernel (a totally senseless limitation brought to you by Microsoft).

But here's my list of absolutely necessary Windows software:
Avast! Antivirus (free)
Spybot Search & Destroy (free)
Steam (free)
lots of disk space for games
and explicitly nothing else besides, because Windows is for play, not for *giggle* productivity

http://nmaps.net/user/donfuy · Postby **Donfuy** » 2010.04.30 (00:30)

Hahahahahahah I never got what's so fascinating about irssi.
What's with your need to protect linux with rage, on a topic like this?
Also, there are a lot of tools to customize how the 7's UI behaves.

Anyway, you can put Google Docs into productivity too.
Oh, oh, oh you guys are missing the ultimate productivity tool!
Notepad! (or mousepad on linux)

http://nmaps.net/user/z3phyr · Postby **Zephyr** » 2010.04.30 (06:35)

Chase wrote:I can't believe MSE isn't on the Antivirus list, it's free and outclasses almost all others in tests. Only one bests it and that's a paid solution.

If you can find a link I'll add it, google seems to have failed me.

Postby **t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư** » 2010.04.30 (07:45)

Donfuy wrote:Notepad! (or mousepad on linux)

vi/emacs
Noob.

http://nmaps.net/user/donfuy · Postby **Donfuy** » 2010.04.30 (09:52)

Tsukatu wrote:
Donfuy wrote:Notepad! (or mousepad on linux)
vi/emacs
Noob.

I fucking knew it! You couldn't resist.

http://nmaps.net/user/ · Postby **Vyacheslav** » 2010.04.30 (13:33)

Microsoft Security Essentials - http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

http://nmaps.net/user/Tunco123 · Postby **Tunco** » 2010.04.30 (16:19)

CCleaner: http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner (Cleaner)
Bittorrent: http://www.bittorrent.com/ (Downloader) oops didnt see it was already on the list
Stardock: http://www.stardock.com/ (Customizer)
Ad-Aware SE Free / Plus / Pro: http://www.lavasoft.com/ (Another Cleaner)
Samurize: http://www.samurize.com/ (Customizer)

I like this thread.

http://nmaps.net/user/incluye · Postby **otters** » 2010.04.30 (16:27)

Geektool
Adium
Quick Search Box
Cloudapp
iStat Menus

http://nmaps.net/user/ · Postby **Vyacheslav** » 2010.04.30 (16:42)

^ OS X programs.

http://nmaps.net/user/Nexx · Postby **Nexx** » 2010.04.30 (17:32)

Tsukatu wrote:Obligatory Linux trolling
[...]

Wooooow.
:O

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