Recommend a good bit of Freeware!

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Free software listing as of this moment

File management:

• Total Commander-- by far the best file-manager ever. Includes a great customisable interface, achievers (such as .zip and rar), FTP client and a large amount of other great nifties. It's NOT freeware, but shareware, which can however be used for an unlimited amount of time and only bugs you to press a couple of buttons at the start. I strongly recommend it. ~~ Discord
  
  
• 7-Zip Archive Manager--Open source file archiver, a fantastic alternative to Winrar and Winzip. Mostly because it gives you the features that those two require you to pay to use, on top of supporting a better archive format. ~~ Hsu // 2nd'ed: crono_logical
  
  
• WinDirStat--displays how big each of your computer's folders are. ~~ rubah
  
  
• Foldersize--to show how big my folders are. It's up to you what program to use, since they're all small programs. ~~ Pureghetto
  
  
• ZipGenius--a compression archiver that kills small kittens. ~~ bipper // Editorial note: :tongue:
  
  
• FTP Wanderer--It's like Windows Explorer, only it's an FTP client. Simply click and drag files from your Windows Explorer window into FTP Wanderer and it'll copy them to your server/webspace in a jiffy. Works the other way around, too. ~~ Loony BoB
  
  
• PDF Creator-- When you install PDFCreator, it adds a printer to your computer (or a network printer), when you print to the printer, it opens the program and converts it to a pdf file, and you can save it wherever you want. You can auto-save documents you ‘print’ by using tags such as the date, time, your name or the computer name. There are also specific options for each save format. For example, with pdf you can set image compression, dpi and security, and with the image formats you can set the number of colours and dpi. Other Features include: Add passwords to documents; Send documents by email; Merge multiple files; Install as network printer; Supports other formats as well. ~~ Nominus Experse

Networking:

• Free Download Manager--definitively belongs here. Probably the best download manager I've seen in ages. Great speed boost, (more or less)high stability and a feedback system that warns about malicious downloads. ~~ Discord
  
  
• Apache Server--a web server. Highly configurable. ~~ bipper
  
  
• Hamachi--allows you to emulate a LAN network over the net. Encrypts the data for secure connections, works very well and is very user friendly. ~~ Discord

Communication:

• Trillian--advert-free instant multi-protocol messenger supporting AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, ICQ, IRC, Jabber and various other networks. ~~ ZeZipster // 2nd’ed: Discord
  
  
• Ventrilo - Surround Sound Voice Communication Software--a popular VOIP client that is used extensively by the gaming comunity for clan matches and talking with friends and such. ~~ FatalImpurity
  
  
• TeamSpeak--a popular VOIP client that is used extensively by the gaming comunity for clan matches and talking with friends and such. ~~ FatalImpurity // 2nd'ed: Discord
  
  
• SKYPE-- Free long-distance calling via PC to other Skype users. Good video support, sound quality, ease of installation and use, and pretty much everything. The paid services aren't too bad, either, but that's not what this is about. ~~ Spuuky

Graphics Editing:

• Blender--a fantastic open source 3D modeling program. ~~ Omecle // 2nd'ed: Sagensyg
  
  
• Ogre3D--possibly one of the best and most versatile open source graphics engine I have ever come across. ~~ Omecle
  
  
• Gimp--I've been told it is a very good tool if you can't afford Photoshop. ~~ Omecle
  
  
• PNG Crush--a command line utility to convert files to PNG or pngs to smaller pngs in batches. ~~ rubah
  
  
• Paint.NET--a wondeful freeware graphics editor thing!xD It's like Photoshop ~~ Dynast-Kid
  
  
• Irfanview-- Fast, lightweight image viewer; it doesn't let you draw (use a slow-loading program like the GIMP or even mspaint for that), but will let you sharpen, crop, resize/resample, or grayscale an image, convert between many formats, and even add transparency to GIFs just by clicking on the colour that you want to be interpreted as transparent. It loads faster than the splash screen on most image manipulation programs--on my PC, this means "instantly, before my finger has even left the mouse button" ~~ Citizen Bleys // 2nd’ed: Heath

Video/Sound Editing:

• VirtualDubMod--very good video converter. ~~ starseeker // 2nd’ed: Discord
  
  
• cdex--you can record from a mic or convert wave to mp3/ogg/etc. ~~ rubah
  
  
• DVD Flick--Converts video files into DVD format to be burned onto a disk. ~~ Odaisé Gaelach
  
  
• ImgBurn--DVD Decrypter Replacement (even made by the same guy) with HD-DVD and BluRay burning support ~~ crono_logical // 2nd'ed: Loony BoB
  
  
• Avisynth--NLE script. ~~ starseeker
  
  
• Combined Community Codec Pack--the only audio/video playback codec pack worthwhile for Windows without all the bloat other packs (especially Kazaa) try to bundle onto your computer. ~~ crono_logical
  
  
• InfraRecorder--great for making your own ISO images which you can then burn with ImgBurn if InfraRecorder can't burn it, and it's open source too :D ~~ crono_logical
  
  
• ACE Mega CodecS Pack 6.03 - Professional Edition--an absolutely excellent codec pack that pretty much supports and video you throw at it and comes with packaged in software of equal quality such as BSplayer and Media player classic. ~~ Fatal Impurity
  
  
• DivX free codec--a codec permitting high level compression of videos. ~~ KingdomHeartsKing and o_O // 2nd'ed: Discord
  
  
• CamStudio - Free Screen Recording Software--neat screen capture thingy! ~~ Jessweeee♪
  
  
• SampleCalc-- This tool calculates a given length in seconds of an audio sample into temp in BPM and reverse. You can also adjust Number of measures and beat resolution. Length can be read directly from wave files. Also included a calculator for time/tempo stretch rate calculation if you want to adjust tempo or time to a fixed value (e.g. matching to the tempo of a sequencer song). Length of a song can also be calculated from tempo and number of measures as well as length of single notes.
  
  Additionally the frequency of note lengths is calculated (e.g. for oscillator adjustment) An integrated beat counter allows DJs to measure the tempo of a running song. ~~ Nominus Experse

Office:

• Open Office--your typical office package (like Word, Excel, etc.). ~~ Omecle // 2nd'ed: Discord
  
  
• Semagic--a utility to update one's Livejournal. ~~ rubah
  
  
• yWriter-- This program is a writer that allows you, the author, to easily create and organize various types of written forms of media. Organise your novel using a 'project', add chapters to the project, add scenes, characters, items and locations. Display the word count for every file in the project, along with a total. Tracks your progress: it saves a log file every day, showing words per file and the total. Saves automatic backups at user-specified intervals. Allows multiple scenes within chapters. Viewpoint character, goal, conflict and outcome fields for each scene. Multiple characters per scene. Storyboard view, a visual layout of your work. Re-order scenes within chapters. Drag and drop of chapters, scenes, characters, items and locations. Automatic chapter renumbering. ~~ Nominus Experse
  
  
• EDXOR-- EDXOR is a versatile, convenient and optimal text editor and file processor that far surpasses the capabilities of other Notepad-like applications. It offers innovative clipboard handling, cryptographic options and logic text conversions, great for education, fun, or privacy. EDXOR is small, self-contained, dependency-free and very fast. It provides over 90 menu items, including many unique functions and options, for diverse applications. This light, free application is quite useful when editing web pages and the like.
  
  
• Win32Pad: Notepad replacement, very small in size, doesn't require any extra runtime dlls, very fast and powerful. Has a ton of features like MRUs, Find/Replace, Intellimouse support, shows current location, # of lines, file offset, file size, Goto Line #, Shows Insert/Overwrite editing mode, Can change Font Color/Size/Character set/etc. This is a more general notepad replacement, and I have found it to be incredibly useful when writing FAQS and/or Walkthroughs for various websites (mainly GameFAQS). ~~ Nominus Experse

Security:

• TrueCrypt--very powerful Disc/File encryption software which mounts the encrypted data as separate drives. Supports key-file encryptions, installation-free mode, 3 different algorithms (AES-256, Serpent and Twofish) as well as the possibility of encrypting with two or all three algorithms in series. Allows plausible deniability. In other words, if you want something to remain hidden on your drives, this is the way forward. ~~ Discord
  
  
• AVG--Best virus detector I've ever used. ~~ ZeZipster
  
  
• CCleaner--another brilliant program, which simply put, will clean all the cookies and other crap off your PC and helps with a very reliable registry cleaning function as well as a program boot manager. ~~ Fatal Impurity
  
  
• PuTTY--a bog-standard SSH client for Windows, amongst other things. ~~ crono_logical
  
  
• Spybot Search&Destroy--one of the best anti-spyware tools, which also appears to be free. ~~ Discord
  
  
• Comodo Firewall--apparently the best personal firewall out there. Apparently even better than it's shareware competitors. ~~ Discord
  
  
• Ad-Aware 2007 Free--It always seems to get stuff that other anti-spyware programs don't. Quick, effective, easy and user-friendly. ~~ Loony BoB
  
  
• Dr.Web CureIt--an autonomous, free version of Discord's all-time-favourite Dr.Web Anti-Virus Scanner accompanied with the latest virus library. In other words, if you're uncertain of what's going on, you might well want to run a scan or two. ~~ Discord

Media Players:

• Democracy Player--Think of it like a version of TiVo for web-based video. That's a gross oversimplification, but y'know. It's great. Note that they're changing the name soon, with the release of 1.0. ~~ Hsu
  
  
• VLC Player--media player capable of reading damaged and incomplete files as well as insert subtitles during the playback. ~~ Namelessfengir // 2nd’ed: Discord
  
  
• Winamp--popular media player with playlist, visualisation and media library functions. ~~ ZeZipster // 2nd’ed: Discord
  
  
• Sheep Friends - billy-- Billy, a small and unintrusive MP3 player that is basic, but has enough features to make it not suck. ~~ Bipper

Entertainment:

• Joost--Internet (stored) film, series and shows network-player. Reasonable selection of films and series. Legal. ~~ Discord
  
  
• TVU-Player--Internet-television (streaming) player with a solid selection of channels. Legal. ~~ Discord

Games:

• Nexuiz--Open source FPS. ~~ Hsu
  
  
• Urban Terror--A TC of Quake III Arena, now completely free to play for all using the recently GPL'd version of the Quake III engine. It's super fun. ~~ Hsu
  
  
• Battle for Wesnoth--Open source tactical turn-based strategy game. ~~ Hsu
  
  
• Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory--a 6-map stand-alone multiplayer WW2 shooter based on the famous RtCW game. Includes multiple classes with specific weaponry and skills as well as a temporarily promotion system unlocking additional abilities. ~~ Discord // 2nd'ed: Loony BoB
  
  
• America's Army--a propagandistic tactical, multiplayer shooter released by the US Army in order to recruit more teenage boys into the armed forces, by displaying the enemies as terrorists and yourself as US troops. Apart from that, a very good and fun game with permanent (RP-)advancement system. You can even get sent to jail for war-crimes in this one. ~~ Discord
  
  
• Anarchy Online--a ex-commercial huge MMORPG demo of the original game (no expansions), which the developer never gives a chance to expire. Pretty futuristic-cyberpunk environments, two opposing and one neutral fractions, large selection of cold-steel and firearm weaponry as well as an extensive collection of armour sets and clothes, cars/planes/boats, furnishable apartments. Despite having (IMHO) an incredibly dull combat system, AO has one of the most innovative and breathtaking sceneries I've seen in an MMO, e.g. a huge battle-cruiser passing slowly above you for about 10 minutes, from one to the other end of the horizon, with hundreds of little fighters escorting him. Definitely worth trying. ~~ Discord
  
  
• Silkroad Online--a good FREE MMORPG with pretty graphics (compared with most FREE MMO's or even WoW) a evolving economy and neat setting. ~~ Fatal Impurity
  
  
• Conquer Online--a great MMORPG where you can be either a taoist, a warrior, an archer, or a trojan. It's created with the ancient Chinese Kungfu and magic in mind, and in my opinion, a great play. There's something new for you to work on almost every new level-up, whether it be a new sword you can buy or the ability to mine. A game that can really keep you busy, and definitely worth a shot. ~~ ~*~Celes~*~
  
  
• DOFUS--a really fun little french MMORPG, it's done with flash and the graphics are very nice. It's basically your standard MMO - quests, upgrades, monsters, character classes, all that jazz. You will get frequent updates sent to you by email and they might be classed as spam. ~~ scrumpleberry // 2nd'ed: Discord (Indeed a very good MMO. Very tactical and inovative. You do however spend quite a bit of your time just waiting for the opponent's/friend's move or trying to figure out what's going on providing you are not a French native speaker.)
  
  
• Project Touhou-- Project Touhou is a game series mainly revolving around 'danmaku-style' shmups (vertical scrolling shooters with pretty but complex bullet patterns), but there is also 'The Highly Responsive to Prayers' which is more of an action puzzle game; 'Immaterial and Missing Power' is a Street Fighter-styled fighter. The games were created, programmed, written and composed by basically one guy. ~~ Momiji // 2nd'ed: crono_logical

Utilities:

• Process Explorer--extended version of task manger. ~~ Discord, 2nd'ed: Loony BoB (Very useful for figuring out what the hell "obscurefilename.exe" actually relates to.)
  
  
• Daemon Tools--tool that mounts disc images saved on your HDD and displays them as CD/DVD drives. ~~ ZeZipster // 2nd’ed: Discord
  
  
• Disk Defrag--nice lightweight and fast disk defrag that even tells you how much its improved your disks with a performance percentage. ~~ Fatal Impurity
  
  
• ATITool--an overclocking tool that lets you overclock and fiddle with pretty much EVERY setting on your graphics card. Has support for Nvidia cards despite its misleading name. ~~ Fatal Impurity
  
  
• VirtualBox--OS emulator. Very nice as an alternative to VMWare or MS Virtual PC for virtual PC stuff. ~~ crono_logical
  
  
• Inno Setup-- Inno Setup is a free installer for Windows programs that rivals and even surpasses many commercial installers in feature set and stability. Support for all 32-bit Windows versions in use today, create a single EXE to install your program for easy distribution online or on disk (disk spanning is supported), standard wizard interface, including support for the latest Windows 2000/XP wizard style. Full source code is available, features include; Creation of shortcuts anywhere, including in the Start Menu and on the desktop. Creation of registry and .INI entries. Customizable setup types, e.g. Full, Minimal, Custom. Complete uninstall capabilities. Installation of files. Silent install and uninstall. ~~ Nominus Experse
  
  
• WordWeb-- WordWeb is an English pop-up dictionary, thesaurus and word finder, free for personal use. It includes a comprehensive English thesaurus and dictionary, and can be used to look up words from within most programs. Features of the free version include: Definitions and synonyms, Proper nouns, Related words, Pronunciations, 140,000 root words, 115,000 synonym sets. Look up words in almost any program. I personally love this program, and find myself using it every single day. ~~ Nominus Experse
  
  
• GraphCalc-- GraphCalc is an all-in-one solution to everything from everyday arithmetic to statistical analysis, from betas to Booleans, from cubes to calculus, from decimals to derivatives. GraphCalc combines all the features of a professional mathematics package with the simplicity of an easy to learn windows interface. It provides user-friendly help and tutorials to guide you through the easy and fun process of mastering GraphCalc. Although I am no longer in Calculus, I still fiddle with this application from time to time, simply because it's terribly fun to graph 6 equations at once and create some interesting designs from various functions. ~~ Nominus Experse
  
  
• AllerCalc-- This is a calculator that allows you to directly enter an expression to be evaluated. It features a rolling display storing all your recent inputs and results. More than 40 functions are supported, including algebraic, transcendental, trigonometric, hyperbolic, and financial functions. Also included is a detailed help file containing syntax, usage, and examples for all supported functions. The calculator also provides a list of common physical constants, and it performs various conversions between English and metric units. It supports more than 100 built-in functions, as well as the ability to define your own constants, conversions, functions, and calculations in any numeric base from 2 to 36, and it has the ability to store results in an unlimited number of variables. ~~ Nominus Experse

Misc:

• Ubuntu Linux--Free operating system. No strings attached. Lots of free software pre-installed and the ability to install even more free programs. 99% unlikely to get you viruses, spyware, adware, or hacked. Won't steal your soul (unless you want it to). ~~ Hsu
  
  
• WinRoll 2.0-- Make a window roll into its title bar, send it to the back or make it stay on top. Minimize, maximize or close all visible windows, including minimizing to the tray area. Make a window translucent on Windows 2000 or above. Likely has limited usage for most, but I have found it useful when I have around 15 or more windows open at once (which I strangely seem to have quite a bit). ~~ Nominus Experse
  
  
• Cool PDF Reader-- Cool PDF Reader to view, print, and convert PDF files. Extract PDF to TXT; Support PDF files of all versions; Work with 68+ different languages; Zoom in/out and Rotate page displays; Slide show PDF document with full screen; and more. 3 download options - 1) Standalone Package; no installation required (just unzip & run) ; 2 ) All-in-One Installer; reader and its installer are made into one EXE. 3) Standard Installer; installer with wizard to setup Cool PDF Reader. ~~ Nominus Experse
  
  
• NumericalChameleon-- The NumericalChameleon is a free, open source, platform-independent and localized software to convert units. It converts numbers with a precision of up to 1000 significant figures. It supports more than 3200 units in 82 categories, including not only all important physical units of categories like length, area, volume, electricity, magnetism, force, power, energy, pressure, mass, temperature, velocity, acceleration, radioactivity and time, but also exchange rates, timezones, spoken numbers (literally and by audio*), roman numbers, 35 radixes, bits&bytes, screen resolutions, colorcodes, unicodes, international dial codes, calendar and holiday calculations, phonetic alphabets and more. It provides a modern, dynamic and graphical user interface. You have unlimited access on all categories, units, icons, filters and themes. You can add, modify, hide or delete them. All configuration data are stored in flat files. You can update exchange rates from several webservices. ~~ Nominus Experse

Macintosh-specific Applications and Programs

• Quicksilver:-- application launcher and a searcher apparently, but application launching is sufficient reason to install it xD
  
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  Text Wrangler:-- Pretty awesome free text editor. Syntax highlighting, line numbers, and a convenient file drawer for editing multiple files. Plus, it has built-in functionality with another of my favorite osx apps. . .
  
  
• Cyberduck!:-- Cyberduck is shareware, but it's such good shareware that you will always update it and always click 'uh remind me to donate next time' unless you are just ASTOUNDED and have to donate. It has a drawer to hold your ftp bookmarks (it's a ftp program btw!) and doesn't suck to use xD
  
  
• Adium:-- Adium is the osx version of GAIM, in a nutshell. It's very pretty for being related to gaim. You might say it was the city cousin. The only disadvantage to using it over ichat is that since gaim doesn't support video and audio (YET) it doesn't either, but it sure does more protocols and better!
  
  
• NeoOffice-- a java-fied version of open office (you don't have to run x11), it's a little behind, and is pretty bloaty, but man it has pretty buttons. And with a recent update, it can run most excel macros i wish that came earlier this semester when I was having to do a ton of VBA coding xD
  
  
• Pixen-- This is a pixel program. Don't compare it to gimp, it's closer to MSPaint and it sucks about as hard to use, but if you don't know how to get x11 running and you don't want to donate to macgimp to get it easily, pixen can serve your needs, if you have a lot of patience. Since osx doesn't come with a paint program, you might as well download it until you get fed up and find something else out of desperation. Or maybe you just don't find it as irritating as I do xD but this is still a recommendation because sometimes you just NEED something, and it will definitely be something xD
  
  
• KVIRC-- if you're like me and have to have IRC, it's a lot easier to get used to a new program than to figure out how to install x11, wine helper, and get mirc to kinda run (with 8 fonts, YAY). Therefore, kvirc will suit you fine! The "official" versions are horribly behind, and these SVN releases don't really crash that often (if they do, then I can give you the .app for older ones that were pretty stable for me) There's still things horribly broken since it's like one guy recompiling it for osx, but it's a hell of a lot better than all of those other 'irc' programs. Most of them are just IM over an irc protocol and are pathetic. Ircle is just dead. KVIRC is wonderful :]
  
  
• Audacity-- If you use the beta version, it doesn't crash so much (such can be said for so much osx software xD) It records sounds just like in windows/linux!
  
  
• Emulators-- Boycott Advance (gba), Nestopia (NES), SNES9x(snes),
  
  
• Ez7zip-- extractor
  
  
• Growltunes-- actually, if you see growl anything with an application you use, get it
  
  
• iTunes helpers: ltjbpm moody
  
  
• mplayer
  
  
• Games-- quinn= tetris
  
  
• util= smcspeedfan for your macbook pro
  
  
• xjournal = livejournal

~Rubah has recommended all of the Macintosh specific applications, but she is also lazy, and has yet to include all the links.


Recommended sites:

• File Hippo ~~ Namelessfengir
  
  
• Anime Music Videos ~~ starseeker
  
  
• Mayang's Free Texture Library--a huge range of high quality textures, royalty free. ~~ Omecle
  
  
• OSSwin Project--a large list of various programs that can be used in the Windows environment. Some can also be used in other Operating Systems as well, such as Linux. ~~Skt

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Let's play a game.

There seems to be an awful lot of great free programs that we simply don't know about. Let's share our knowledge.

Recommend one very good program, that is free (or has a version that's more or less usable while being free), which you really like and are totally happy with and describe it shortly. The program has to work under the Windows systems (as most of us are using a Win operating PC). Please use the template below.

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EXAMPLE: Hamachi--allows you to emulate a LAN network over the net. Encrypts the data for secure connections, works very well and is very user friendly.

You may also second programs that you've found to be particularly useful. Unclear entries might not be processes.

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Free software listing as of this moment:

File management:
Total Commander-- by far the best file-manager ever. Includes a great customisable interface, achievers (such as .zip and rar), FTP client and a large amount of other great nifties. It's NOT freeware, but shareware, which can however be used for an unlimited amount of time and only bugs you to press a couple of buttons at the start. I strongly recommend it. ~~ Discord
7-Zip Archive Manager--Open source file archiver, a fantastic alternative to Winrar and Winzip. Mostly because it gives you the features that those two require you to pay to use, on top of supporting a better archive format. ~~ Hsu // 2nd'ed: crono_logical
WinDirStat--displays how big each of your computer's folders are. ~~ rubah
Foldersize--to show how big my folders are. It's up to you what program to use, since they're all small programs. ~~ Pureghetto
ZipGenius--a compression archiver that kills small kittens. ~~ bipper // Editorial note: :tongue:
FTP Wanderer--It's like Windows Explorer, only it's an FTP client. Simply click and drag files from your Windows Explorer window into FTP Wanderer and it'll copy them to your server/webspace in a jiffy. Works the other way around, too. ~~ Loony BoB

Networking:
Free Download Manager--definitively belongs here. Probably the best download manager I've seen in ages. Great speed boost, (more or less)high stability and a feedback system that warns about malicious downloads. ~~ Discord
Apache Server--a web server. Highly configurable. ~~ bipper
Hamachi--allows you to emulate a LAN network over the net. Encrypts the data for secure connections, works very well and is very user friendly. ~~ Discord

Communication:
Trillian--advert-free instant multi-protocol messenger supporting AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, ICQ, IRC, Jabber and various other networks. ~~ ZeZipster // 2nd’ed: Discord
Ventrilo - Surround Sound Voice Communication Software--a popular VOIP client that is used extensively by the gaming comunity for clan matches and talking with friends and such. ~~ FatalImpurity
TeamSpeak--a popular VOIP client that is used extensively by the gaming comunity for clan matches and talking with friends and such. ~~ FatalImpurity // 2nd'ed: Discord

Graphics Editing:
Blender--a fantastic open source 3D modeling program. ~~ Omecle // 2nd'ed: Sagensyg
Ogre3D--possibly one of the best and most versatile open source graphics engine I have ever come across. ~~ Omecle
Gimp--I've been told it is a very good tool if you can't afford Photoshop. ~~ Omecle
PNG Crush--a command line utility to convert files to PNG or pngs to smaller pngs in batches. ~~ rubah
Paint.NET--a wondeful freeware graphics editor thing!xD It's like Photoshop ~~ Dynast-Kid

Video/Sound Editing:
VirtualDubMod--very good video converter. ~~ starseeker // 2nd’ed: Discord
cdex--you can record from a mic or convert wave to mp3/ogg/etc. ~~ rubah
DVD Flick--Converts video files into DVD format to be burned onto a disk. ~~ Odaisé Gaelach
ImgBurn--DVD Decrypter Replacement (even made by the same guy) with HD-DVD and BluRay burning support ~~ crono_logical // 2nd'ed: Loony BoB
Avisynth--NLE script. ~~ starseeker
Combined Community Codec Pack--the only audio/video playback codec pack worthwhile for Windows without all the bloat other packs (especially Kazaa) try to bundle onto your computer. ~~ crono_logical
InfraRecorder--great for making your own ISO images which you can then burn with ImgBurn if InfraRecorder can't burn it, and it's open source too :D ~~ crono_logical
ACE Mega CodecS Pack 6.03 - Professional Edition--an absolutely excellent codec pack that pretty much supports and video you throw at it and comes with packaged in software of equal quality such as BSplayer and Media player classic. ~~ Fatal Impurity
DivX free codec--a codec permitting high level compression of videos. ~~ KingdomHeartsKing and o_O // 2nd'ed: Discord
CamStudio - Free Screen Recording Software--neat screen capture thingy! ~~ Jessweeee♪

Office
Open Office--your typical office package (like Word, Excel, etc.). ~~ Omecle // 2nd'ed: Discord
Semagic--a utility to update one's Livejournal. ~~ rubah

Security:
TrueCrypt--very powerful Disc/File encryption software which mounts the encrypted data as separate drives. Supports key-file encryptions, installation-free mode, 3 different algorithms (AES-256, Serpent and Twofish) as well as the possibility of encrypting with two or all three algorithms in series. Allows plausible deniability. In other words, if you want something to remain hidden on your drives, this is the way forward. ~~ Discord
AVG--Best virus detector I've ever used. ~~ ZeZipster
CCleaner--another brilliant program, which simply put, will clean all the cookies and other crap off your PC and helps with a very reliable registry cleaning function as well as a program boot manager. ~~ Fatal Impurity
PuTTY--a bog-standard SSH client for Windows, amongst other things. ~~ crono_logical
Spybot Search&Destroy--one of the best anti-spyware tools, which also appears to be free. ~~ Discord
Comodo Firewall--apparently the best personal firewall out there. Apparently even better than it's shareware competitors. ~~ Discord
Ad-Aware 2007 Free--It always seems to get stuff that other anti-spyware programs don't. Quick, effective, easy and user-friendly. ~~ Loony BoB
Dr.Web CureIt--an autonomous, free version of Discord's all-time-favourite Dr.Web Anti-Virus Scanner accompanied with the latest virus library. In other words, if you're uncertain of what's going on, you might well want to run a scan or two. ~~ Discord

Media Players:
Democracy Player--Think of it like a version of TiVo for web-based video. That's a gross oversimplification, but y'know. It's great. Note that they're changing the name soon, with the release of 1.0. ~~ Hsu
VLC Player--media player capable of reading damaged and incomplete files as well as insert subtitles during the playback. ~~ Namelessfengir // 2nd’ed: Discord
Winamp--popular media player with playlist, visualisation and media library functions. ~~ ZeZipster // 2nd’ed: Discord

Entertainment:
Joost--Internet (stored) film, series and shows network-player. Reasonable selection of films and series. Legal. ~~ Discord
TVU-Player--Internet-television (streaming) player with a solid selection of channels. Legal. ~~ Discord

Games:
Nexuiz--Open source FPS. ~~ Hsu
Urban Terror--A TC of Quake III Arena, now completely free to play for all using the recently GPL'd version of the Quake III engine. It's super fun. ~~ Hsu
Battle for Wesnoth--Open source tactical turn-based strategy game. ~~ Hsu
Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory--a 6-map stand-alone multiplayer WW2 shooter based on the famous RtCW game. Includes multiple classes with specific weaponry and skills as well as a temporarily promotion system unlocking additional abilities. ~~ Discord // 2nd'ed: Loony BoB
America's Army--a propagandistic tactical, multiplayer shooter released by the US Army in order to recruit more teenage boys into the armed forces, by displaying the enemies as terrorists and yourself as US troops. Apart from that, a very good and fun game with permanent (RP-)advancement system. You can even get sent to jail for war-crimes in this one. ~~ Discord
Anarchy Online--a ex-commercial huge MMORPG demo of the original game (no expansions), which the developer never gives a chance to expire. Pretty futuristic-cyberpunk environments, two opposing and one neutral fractions, large selection of cold-steel and firearm weaponry as well as an extensive collection of armour sets and clothes, cars/planes/boats, furnishable apartments. Despite having (IMHO) an incredibly dull combat system, AO has one of the most innovative and breathtaking sceneries I've seen in an MMO, e.g. a huge battle-cruiser passing slowly above you for about 10 minutes, from one to the other end of the horizon, with hundreds of little fighters escorting him. Definitely worth trying. ~~ Discord
Silkroad Online--a good FREE MMORPG with pretty graphics (compared with most FREE MMO's or even WoW) a evolving economy and neat setting. ~~ Fatal Impurity
Conquer Online--a great MMORPG where you can be either a taoist, a warrior, an archer, or a trojan. It's created with the ancient Chinese Kungfu and magic in mind, and in my opinion, a great play. There's something new for you to work on almost every new level-up, whether it be a new sword you can buy or the ability to mine. A game that can really keep you busy, and definitely worth a shot. ~~ ~*~Celes~*~
DOFUS--a really fun little french MMORPG, it's done with flash and the graphics are very nice. It's basically your standard MMO - quests, upgrades, monsters, character classes, all that jazz. You will get frequent updates sent to you by email and they might be classed as spam. ~~ scrumpleberry // 2nd'ed: Discord (Indeed a very good MMO. Very tactical and inovative. You do however spend quite a bit of your time just waiting for the opponent's/friend's move or trying to figure out what's going on providing you are not a French native speaker.)

Utilities:
Process Explorer--extended version of task manger. ~~ Discord, 2nd'ed: Loony BoB (Very useful for figuring out what the hell "obscurefilename.exe" actually relates to.)
Daemon Tools--tool that mounts disc images saved on your HDD and displays them as CD/DVD drives. ~~ ZeZipster // 2nd’ed: Discord
Disk Defrag--nice lightweight and fast disk defrag that even tells you how much its improved your disks with a performance percentage. ~~ Fatal Impurity
ATITool--an overclocking tool that lets you overclock and fiddle with pretty much EVERY setting on your graphics card. Has support for Nvidia cards despite its misleading name. ~~ Fatal Impurity
VirtualBox--OS emulator. Very nice as an alternative to VMWare or MS Virtual PC for virtual PC stuff. ~~ crono_logical

Misc:
Ubuntu Linux--Free operating system. No strings attached. Lots of free software pre-installed and the ability to install even more free programs. 99% unlikely to get you viruses, spyware, adware, or hacked. Won't steal your soul (unless you want it to). ~~ Hsu

Not a bloody clue:

Recommended sites:
File Hippo ~~ Namelessfengir
Anime Music Videos ~~ starseeker
Mayang's Free Texture Library--ahuge range of high quality textures, royalty free. ~~ Omecle

---

~~~~

I guess cdex was the last good free thing I used. You can record from a mic or convert wave to mp3/ogg/etc

Probably all the stuff that came with the AMV app from animemusicvideos.org:
Besuite (DVD audio converter)
Avisynth (NLE script)
DGIndex
ZarxGUI (h264 encoding)
VirtualDubMod (very good video converter, designed to work with Avisynth)

Everything you need to video edit bar an editing program.

ImgBurn, the DVD Decrypter Replacement (even made by the same guy) with HD-DVD and BluRay burning support :p

Process Explorer - extended version of task manger.

Blender is a fantastic open source 3D modeling program.

Also, Ogre3D is possibly one of the best and most versatile open source graphics engine I have ever come across.

There's also Gimp. I've never used it, but I've been told it is a very good tool if you can't afford Photoshop.

Apache. Simply the best piece of free software out there. It is a webserver. Highly configurable.

i got loads of stuff on this pos.
lesse.....
utorrent
tcmp4
vlc player
adobe reader 8
divx
pcdocpro
comodo fire wall
spybot search & destory
google video player

most of the other thing are just updates i got at filehippo

ps is their a virus out that prevents your scanners from updating?
cuz i think i got it

DVD Flick
Converts video files into DVD format to be burned onto a disk.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Namelessfengir

ps is their a virus out that prevents your scanners from updating?
cuz i think i got it

---

More than likely, yes.

Nexuiz - Open source FPS.
7-Zip Archive Manager - Open source file archiver, a fantastic alternative to Winrar and Winzip. Mostly because it gives you the features that those two require you to pay to use, on top of supporting a better archive format.
Democracy Player - Think of it like a version of TiVo for web-based video. That's a gross oversimplification, but y'know. It's great. Note that they're changing the name soon, with the release of 1.0.
Urban Terror - A TC of Quake III Arena, now completely free to play for all using the recently GPL'd version of the Quake III engine. It's super fun.
Battle for Wesnoth - Open source tactical turn-based strategy game.
Ubuntu Linux - Free operating system. No strings attached. Lots of free software pre-installed and the ability to install even more free programs. 99% unlikely to get you viruses, spyware, adware, or hacked. Won't steal your soul (unless you want it to)

Quote:

---

adobe reader 8

---

You can't be serious. I'd use foxit reader over whatever incarnation of acrobat reader they've released now xD

The Core Media Player. I have been using it for over two years now and I love it. It is long between updates but I never had a problem with videos (at least not due to the program, more of my own lack of knowledge).

DivX isn't a free application. It's a format. Even more so, it's not even a free format. Xvid is free though, but I don't like it very much.(not many people use it)

Psk... keep to the rules. Name + short description.:p

Free Download Manager - definitively belongs here. Probably the best download manager I've seen in ages. Great speed boost, (more or less)high stability and a feedback system that warns about malicious downloads.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Discord

DivX isn't a free application. It's a format. Even more so, it's not even a free format.

---

I believe they mean the DivX video player which comes with the DivX codec that is very much so free. Also, heaps of people use Xvid, it's an extremely popular format.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hsu

Nexuiz - Open source FPS.
7-Zip Archive Manager - Open source file archiver, a fantastic alternative to Winrar and Winzip. Mostly because it gives you the features that those two require you to pay to use, on top of supporting a better archive format.

---

Zip Genius. While not open source, it is amazing.

Firefox - web-browser from Mozilla with a huge selection of useful add-ons for it. (I know that this one is obvious, but somebody might not have known about it.:p)
Sunbird - not-yet-so-ready calendar and time manager from Mozilla. Has a great potential.

OOC:	Could we actually get this thread sticky?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Discord

OOC:	Could we actually get this thread sticky?

---

I think it would have a better chance if the first post contained an updated list of the technology with links and a detailed description for each, then yeah. I would definitely like to see something like this stickied.

Oh, PSXE

Aslo, osalt.com is a great site for finding opensource alternatives. Put in like Microsoft Money in there search field, and you willget GNUcash and other Open Sourced Alternatives.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by bipper

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Discord

OOC:	Could we actually get this thread sticky?

---

I think it would have a better chance if the first post contained an updated list of the technology with links and a detailed description for each, then yeah. I would definitely like to see something like this stickied.

Oh, PSXE

Aslo, osalt.com is a great site for finding opensource alternatives. Put in like Microsoft Money in there search field, and you willget GNUcash and other Open Sourced Alternatives.

---

Good thinking, bipper.

good list: you for got ZipGenius though. A compression archiver that kills small kittens.

Also, perhaps add slackware (slackware.com) as another linux distribution that focuses on stability, ease of use, and customization.

Gentoo as one that aims to by completely configurable and a spawn of many a migrane.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Discord

DivX isn't a free application. It's a format. Even more so, it's not even a free format. Xvid is free though, but I don't like it very much.(not many people use it)

---

XviD can encode and decode XviD, and decode DivX. DivX can only encode and decode DivX.

Tons of anime releases use XviD.

Open Office ain't too bad. It's basically your typical office package (like Word, Excel, etc.).

PNG Crush is a command line utility to convert files to PNG or pngs to smaller pngs in batches

Semagic is a utility to update one's Livejournal

Bink and Smacker is a way to convert videos to different types (like mov to avi)

windirstat displays how big each of your computer's folders are.

Things I install on new computers:

Daemon Tools (or well I use to, it comes with adware and doesn't work on Vista now)
Trillian. Hands down the best IM solution. Even if you just use 1 Instant Messenger, it'd be better to have this just because it's adless.
AVG. Best virus detector I've ever used.
Winamp. Self explanatory. You've all seen this old name by now.

and my all time favorite free program (besides Firefox)... Soulseek. It's a filesharing client, specifically for music. It doesn't really hold any advantage over other p2p clients, it's just most people who use it share ENTIRE albums, not singles. When you download, you can download the entire album, you right click and 'Download containing folder' and 99% of the time that person had the entire album in the folder you downloaded from. I guess I'm partial to it because it reminds me of the glory days of Napster (the original Napster).

Updated.

For future contributions please follow this scheme:

Quote:

---

7-Zip Archive Manager - Open source file archiver, a fantastic alternative to Winrar and Winzip. Mostly because it gives you the features that those two require you to pay to use, on top of supporting a better archive format. ~~ Hsu

---

Other than that, good stuff everybody. The list is looking great. (and thanks for the sticky to whoever put it up)

NB: If I miss something out, it's not a conspiracy against you, but me overlooking it or not getting what to do with it (ergo, it doesn't even fit into the "Not a bloody clue category"). Do it like bipper.:p Just remind me about it. And psk... don't forget to second your favourites from the existing list.

I moved avisynth to the video editing section for you, since that's what it's good for, and pretty powerful at that too :p Also, you might want to consider seperating CD/DVD/similar tools into another section :p

Also, Combined Community Codec Pack is the only audio/video playback codec pack worthwhile for Windows without all the bloat other packs (especially Kazaa) try to bundle onto your computer :p

Paint.NET is a wondeful freeware graphics editor thing!xD It's like Photoshop, but not nowhere near the extravagant price, because it's free!

But yeah, it's really awesome. I make all my signatures and avatars with it now, including the one i'm using now.

:greenie:

Updated.

I've also decided to give a lime-green font to the programs that were seconded at least once. Considering the fact that so far only I've seconded those are the programs that you suggested and I liked as well. More seconding is still accepted.

Winrar must be put on there! Its a VERY easy to use, fast acrchiver with practically support for every archive type!

Another brilliant program is CCleaner which simply put will clean all the cookies and other crap off your PC plus helps with a very reliable registry cleaning function and program boot manager.

Also Silkroad Online gets an honourable mention from me as a good FREE MMORPG with pretty graphics (compared with most FREE MMO's or even WoW) a evolving economy and neat setting.

Updated! Added "Security" and "Entertainment" sections! "Fun" became "Games"!

More(/any) seconds people!(/?)

Sadly, WinRar isn't free.:tongue:

Actually they did a thing a year or two ago where you could download a serial from their website to run it without the nag screen :p like officially. It's perfectly easy to use it with the nag screen, I've been doing so for a long time xD

Just a thought. Differentiate between freeware and open source apps.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Yamaneko

Just a thought. Differentiate between freeware and open source apps.

---

What difference does it make for the end-user? I want a program that works well, not its header files.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by rubah

Actually they did a thing a year or two ago where you could download a serial from their website to run it without the nag screen :p like officially. It's perfectly easy to use it with the nag screen, I've been doing so for a long time xD

---

Meh, I've got the key, so I wouldn't know.

I prefer 7-zip to winrar anyway :p

You can add InfraRecorder to that list of decent CD/DVD tools - great for making your own ISO images which you can then burn with ImgBurn if InfraRecorder can't burn it, and it's open source too :D

Conquer Online-a great MMORPG where you can be either a taoist, a warrior, an archer, or a trojan. It's created with the ancient Chinese Kungfu and magic in mind, and in my opinion, a great play. There's something new for you to work on almost every new level-up, whether it be a new sword you can buy or the ability to mine. A game that can really keep you busy, and definitely worth a shot.

Updated.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Discord

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Yamaneko

Just a thought. Differentiate between freeware and open source apps.

---

What difference does it make for the end-user? I want a program that works well, not its header files.

---

These things matter boatload with your liabilities and obligations. For normal use, not so much most of the time. However, if you say, edit a config file, and forward it on with out source, you can be considered in violation with GPL (especially 3, when that comes out :( ) It is good to know, just in case. It should be noted that people should read the licensing that comes with each product, as BSD, GPL, and most other open licensing is amendable.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by bipper

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Discord

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Yamaneko

Just a thought. Differentiate between freeware and open source apps.

---

What difference does it make for the end-user? I want a program that works well, not its header files.

---

These things matter boatload with your liabilities and obligations. For normal use, not so much most of the time. However, if you say, edit a config file, and forward it on with out source, you can be considered in violation with GPL (especially 3, when that comes out :( ) It is good to know, just in case. It should be noted that people should read the licensing that comes with each product, as BSD, GPL, and most other open licensing is amendable.

---

As you've said, normal use is barely affected by it. If everybody insists I could add the licence to the very end, but I think it'd be a slightly useless here.

*WE* are just trying to keep you busy. :love:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bipper

*WE* are just trying to keep you busy. :love:

---

Uhhh... thanks, but I have enough databases to organise at work already, without having to resort to such drastic measures as EoFF to keep myself busy.:p

Just remembered AppLocale, you can get it from Microsoft for free last time I checked, though whether that crappy Genuine Disadvantage crap is now in the way or not is another matter :p Useful for people like me that want to run programs or games on an English WinXP as if I'm running Japanese WinXP (or any other language you fancy) :p

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by crono_logical

Just remembered AppLocale, you can get it from Microsoft for free last time I checked, though whether that crappy Genuine Disadvantage crap is now in the way or not is another matter :p Useful for people like me that want to run programs or games on an English WinXP as if I'm running Japanese WinXP (or any other language you fancy) :p

---

I'd gladly add it if you could give me a link and a general idea what it actually does.

I use Foldersize (link) to show how big my folders are. It's up to you what program to use, since they're all small programs.

CCleaner.com = This Wins.

Alcohol Software Product homepage - Alcohol 120% and Alcohol 52% = A brilliant Image burning/creation software which comes with intregrated virtual drive's and game/software protection emulation.

Free-Codecs.com :: Download ACE Mega CodecS Pack 6.03 - Professional Edition : This is the lastest and greatest release of famous ACE Mega CoDecS Pack = A absolutely excellent codec pack that pretty much supports and video you throw at it and comes with packaged in software of equal quality such as BSplayer and Media player classic.


Disk Defrag - Reclaim the Speed Of Your Disks = Nice lightweight and fast disk defrag that even tells you how much its improved your disks with a performance percentage.


ATITool - Overclocking utility for ATI cards = A overclocking tool that lets you overclock and fiddle with pretty much EVERY setting on your graphics card. Has support for Nvidia cards dispite its misleading name.

WinDirStat - Windows Directory Statistics is what I like to check my folder sizes with, it has pacmen!

Yeah, I was gonna put blender but...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Discord

Graphics Editing:
Blender--a fantastic open source 3D modeling program. ~~ Omecle

---

Updated!

Notes:

Good list Fatal, but Alcohol 120% sadly isn't free.=( If it were, I'd second it at least thrice.:D

And rubah... you can't second you own previous suggestion.:tongue:

oh I posted it before? I just saw someone else posted a folder size app and knew that mine was better!

I actually really like Total Commander. Great filemanager. Sadly Shareware.

Ventrilo ( Ventrilo - Surround Sound Voice Communication Software ) and Teamspeak ( TeamSpeak ). Basically popular VOIP clients that are used extensively by the gaming comunity for clan matches and talking with friends and such. They are practically identical so the choice is mainly only of the person's personal preferance.

DOFUS :: MMORPG - Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game

The download's in the site :)

Dofus is a really fun little french MMORPG, it's done with flash and the graphics are very nice. It's basically your standard MMO - quests, upgrades, monsters, character classes, all that jazz. You will get frequent updates sent to you by email and they might be classed as spam.

I thought Alcohol 120% was free :p Must be a cracked one on my dad's machine then :p

I'm surprised PuTTY isn't mentioned yet, it's like the bog-standard SSH client for Windows, amongst other things :p

Also, I tried out VirtualBox which Face mentioned in a nother thread a while ago, and it's very nice as an alternative to VMWare or MS Virtual PC for virtual PC stuff :p

DivX

Updated!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by crono_logical

[j]I thought Alcohol 120% was free :p Must be a cracked one on my dad's machine then :p

---

Yeap, Alcohol 120% isn't free. It's peasy to crack though.

Quote:

---

DivX

---

Links and description would be great.

DivX isnt freeware. :(

DivX Pro and associated players are not freeware. The free edition is still free. I use XviD anyway, because it's more than capable of handling DivX-encoded streams and is properly cross-platform.

DivX free codec
XviD

Updated!

Add: FTP Wanderer - It's like Windows Explorer, only it's an FTP client. Simply click and drag files from your Windows Explorer window into FTP Wanderer and it'll copy them to your server/webspace in a jiffy. Works the other way around, too.
FTP Wanderer

Add: Ad-Aware 2007 Free - It always seems to get stuff that other anti-spyware programs don't. Quick, effective, easy and user-friendly.
Ad-Aware 2007 Free - Lavasoft

2nd: Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory

2nd: ImgBurn

2nd: Process Explorer - Very useful for figuring out what the hell "obscurefilename.exe" actually relates to.

you can use Explorer as an ftp client too :D

I don't think it's free though.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by rubah

you can use Explorer as an ftp client too :D

---

You can? Shows how much I know! I can't imagine it'd be all that good, mind you...

It's about the same as what you described. Drag'n'drop. mosey on to any ftp:// url you can think of and play around. It's pretty handy when you want to move files around at school etc

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by rubah

you can use Explorer as an ftp client too :D

I don't think it's free though.

---

It is free, yes.

just type ftp://ftpaddres.domain_suffex/ and login, if it doesn't auto ask you to login right click and go 'login as...'

It's been a while, sorry for that, but it's updated.

Loony BoB get's a special prize for seconding.

I know it's not a program, but it's an extremely useful website.

Mayang's Free Texture Library
A huge range of high quality textures, royalty free.

Websites are fine as well.:P

UPDATED!

I found this really neat screen capture thingy!

CamStudio - Free Screen Recording Software


Haven't seen how the videos turn out yet, but everything else is pretty neat-o.

Updated!

I want to recommend this but maybe it doesn't fit a category:

Undelete Plus

It is a freeware program that scans your hard drive for recoverable data. I was able to restore a vast majority of data in my D drive that was wiped out by mistake.

I was able to use it for a client with limited success (I attribute this due to the time it took for me to acquire the software on the business network), but it was quite successful regardless.

WHO WILL UPDATE NOW ; ;

OOC:

I've installed Urban Terror, and by some miracle it works on my computer. However, I've got no experience with PC FPS games, so I'd like to practice if I could... apparently, I can do this by setting up a private server and fighting bots. But the only instructions on the UT website are aimed at people who already know what they're doing, which I most certainly don't. Could anyone help, with a layman-friendly guide to getting it up and running? Thanks in advance.

Cool PDF Reader:
Cool PDF Reader to view, print, and convert PDF files. Extract PDF to TXT; Support PDF files of all versions; Work with 68+ different languages; Zoom in/out and Rotate page displays; Slide show PDF document with full screen; and more. 3 download options - 1) Standalone Package; no installation required (just unzip & run) ; 2 ) All-in-One Installer; reader and its installer are made into one EXE. 3) Standard Installer; installer with wizard to setup Cool PDF Reader.

PDF Creator:
When you install PDFCreator, it adds a printer to your computer (or a network printer), when you print to the printer, it opens the program and converts it to a pdf file, and you can save it wherever you want. You can auto-save documents you ‘print’ by using tags such as the date, time, your name or the computer name. There are also specific options for each save format. For example, with pdf you can set image compression, dpi and security, and with the image formats you can set the number of colours and dpi. Other Features include: Add passwords to documents; Send documents by email; Merge multiple files; Install as network printer; Supports other formats as well.

yWriter:
This program is a writer that allows you, the author, to easily create and organize various types of written forms of media. Organise your novel using a 'project', add chapters to the project, add scenes, characters, items and locations. Display the word count for every file in the project, along with a total. Tracks your progress: it saves a log file every day, showing words per file and the total. Saves automatic backups at user-specified intervals. Allows multiple scenes within chapters. Viewpoint character, goal, conflict and outcome fields for each scene. Multiple characters per scene. Storyboard view, a visual layout of your work. Re-order scenes within chapters. Drag and drop of chapters, scenes, characters, items and locations. Automatic chapter renumbering.

EDXOR:
EDXOR is a versatile, convenient and optimal text editor and file processor that far surpasses the capabilities of other Notepad-like applications. It offers innovative clipboard handling, cryptographic options and logic text conversions, great for education, fun, or privacy. EDXOR is small, self-contained, dependency-free and very fast. It provides over 90 menu items, including many unique functions and options, for diverse applications.

This light, free application is quite useful when editing web pages and the like.

Win32Pad:
Notepad replacement, very small in size, doesn't require any extra runtime dlls, very fast and powerful. Has a ton of features like MRUs, Find/Replace, Intellimouse support, shows current location, # of lines, file offset, file size, Goto Line #, Shows Insert/Overwrite editing mode, Can change Font Color/Size/Character set/etc.

This is a more general notepad replacement, and I have found it to be incredibly useful when writing FAQS and/or Walkthroughs for various websites (mainly GameFAQS).

WordWeb:
WordWeb is an English pop-up dictionary, thesaurus and word finder, free for personal use. It includes a comprehensive English thesaurus and dictionary, and can be used to look up words from within most programs. Features of the free version include: Definitions and synonyms, Proper nouns, Related words, Pronunciations, 140,000 root words, 115,000 synonym sets. Look up words in almost any program.

I personally love this program, and find myself using it every single day.

GraphCalc:
GraphCalc is an all-in-one solution to everything from everyday arithmetic to statistical analysis, from betas to Booleans, from cubes to calculus, from decimals to derivatives. GraphCalc combines all the features of a professional mathematics package with the simplicity of an easy to learn windows interface. It provides user-friendly help and tutorials to guide you through the easy and fun process of mastering GraphCalc.

Although I am no longer in Calculus, I still fiddle with this application from time to time, simply because it's terribly fun to graph 6 equations at once and create some interesting designs from various functions.

AllerCalc:
This is a calculator that allows you to directly enter an expression to be evaluated. It features a rolling display storing all your recent inputs and results. More than 40 functions are supported, including algebraic, transcendental, trigonometric, hyperbolic, and financial functions. Also included is a detailed help file containing syntax, usage, and examples for all supported functions. The calculator also provides a list of common physical constants, and it performs various conversions between English and metric units. It supports more than 100 built-in functions, as well as the ability to define your own constants, conversions, functions, and calculations in any numeric base from 2 to 36, and it has the ability to store results in an unlimited number of variables.

SampleCalc:
This tool calculates a given length in seconds of an audio sample into temp in BPM and reverse. You can also adjust Number of measures and beat resolution.
Length can be read directly from wave files.

Also included a calculator for time/tempo stretch rate calculation if you want to adjust tempo or time to a fixed value (e.g. matching to the tempo of a sequencer song).

Length of a song can also be calculated from tempo and number of measures as well as length of single notes.
Additionally the frequency of note lengths is calculated (e.g. for oscillator adjustment)

An integrated beat counter allows DJs to measure the tempo of a running song.

NumericalChameleon:
The NumericalChameleon is a free, open source, platform-independent and localized software to convert units. It converts numbers with a precision of up to 1000 significant figures. It supports more than 3200 units in 82 categories, including not only all important physical units of categories like length, area, volume, electricity, magnetism, force, power, energy, pressure, mass, temperature, velocity, acceleration, radioactivity and time, but also exchange rates, timezones, spoken numbers (literally and by audio*), roman numbers, 35 radixes, bits&bytes, screen resolutions, colorcodes, unicodes, international dial codes, calendar and holiday calculations, phonetic alphabets and more. It provides a modern, dynamic and graphical user interface.

You have unlimited access on all categories, units, icons, filters and themes. You can add, modify, hide or delete them. All configuration data are stored in flat files. You can update exchange rates from several webservices.

WinRoll 2.0:
Make a window roll into its title bar, send it to the back or make it stay on top. Minimize, maximize or close all visible windows, including minimizing to the tray area. Make a window translucent on Windows 2000 or above.

Likely has limited usage for most, but I have found it useful when I have around 15 or more windows open at once (which I strangely seem to have quite a bit).

Inno Setup:
Inno Setup is a free installer for Windows programs that rivals and even surpasses many commercial installers in feature set and stability. Support for all 32-bit Windows versions in use today, create a single EXE to install your program for easy distribution online or on disk (disk spanning is supported), standard wizard interface, including support for the latest Windows 2000/XP wizard style. Full source code is available, features include; Creation of shortcuts anywhere, including in the Start Menu and on the desktop. Creation of registry and .INI entries. Customizable setup types, e.g. Full, Minimal, Custom. Complete uninstall capabilities. Installation of files. Silent install and uninstall.



Also, since Discord is now banned - though i have no idea as to why he is - I can volunteer to maintain this topic. If that means creating a new thread, then I can do that, or perhaps a moderator can work some forum magic, I don't know.

Since no one has mentioned the Project Touhou games, I'll suggest them now. The entire series (including the story, game programming, and music composition) was basically done by one guy. Most of the games are vertical scrolling curtain fire shooters (aka 'shmups' or 'danmaku'), and are pretty challenging, but a couple of the games are different ('The Highly Responsive to Prayers' is more of an action/puzzle game, and 'Immaterial and Missing Power' is a fighting game).

You can download the games here. I strongly suggest you pick up the old ones too, since the filesize is relatively low and the games are still pretty fun.

Could a mod update the first post because Discord is banned :(

SKYPE: Free long-distance calling via PC to other Skype users. Good video support, sound quality, ease of installation and use, and pretty much everything. The paid services aren't too bad, either, but that's not what this is about.

Sheep Friends - billy

Billy, a small and unintrusive MP3 player that is basic, but has enough features to make it not suck.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nominus Experse

Also, since Discord is now banned - though i have no idea as to why he is - I can volunteer to maintain this topic. If that means creating a new thread, then I can do that, or perhaps a moderator can work some forum magic, I don't know.

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Make a new thread so we can merge them and work the magic to place your post before the old posts in the old thread :p

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Momiji

Since no one has mentioned the Project Touhou games, I'll suggest them now. The entire series (including the story, game programming, and music composition) was basically done by one guy. Most of the games are vertical scrolling curtain fire shooters (aka 'shmups' or 'danmaku'), and are pretty challenging, but a couple of the games are different ('The Highly Responsive to Prayers' is more of an action/puzzle game, and 'Immaterial and Missing Power' is a fighting game).

You can download the games here. I strongly suggest you pick up the old ones too, since the filesize is relatively low and the games are still pretty fun.

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Seconded - Touhou is great stuff, and too addictive with the nice music and pretty but difficult bullet patterns :p Which reminds me to finish my new touhou-related sig at some point :p

WTF, why was my Merge thread deleted?

Because void can't read xD I'll restore it and stick it and unstick this one xD

start editing stuff in now :p

Wait so which thread is which?

At any rate:

The OSSwin project: Open Source for Windows!

Oh, sorry >_>

Well basically it's just a list of open source (free as in beer?) programs for Windows (I think they throw some linux in there too but I'm not sure) it's not a complete list but I've found some gems. I use linux now, but I swear there are some good ones!

Nommy, I compiled all of the leftover links together for you so all you have to do is copy/paste it from the attachment into the first post. Sorry, it's in MS Word, it wouldn't save on Notepad for some reason.

What? I have too much time on my hands.

Oh, and Skt, you need to provide information about your link.

Thanks Momiji - you've saved me a very large portion of time.

EDIT: Updated.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nominus Experse

Thanks Momiji - you've saved me a very large portion of time.

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Hey, no problem. Like I said, I have way too much time on my hands. :D

man, I have a million new recommendations after using osx for a while xD

THESE ARE ALL FOR MAC OSX TIGER; THEY MIGHT WORK IN PANTHER, THEY PROBABLY WILL WORK IN LEOPARD, THERE *could* BE A WINDOWS/LINUX VERSION :D

Quicksilver: application launcher and a searcher apparently, but application launching is sufficient reason to install it xD
Blacktree

Text Wrangler:
Bare Bones Software : PRODUCTS : TEXTWRANGLER
Pretty awesome free text editor. Syntax highlighting, line numbers, and a convenient file drawer for editing multiple files. Plus, it has built-in functionality with another of my favorite osx apps. . .

Cyberduck!: Cyberduck is shareware, but it's such good shareware that you will always update it and always click 'uh remind me to donate next time' unless you are just ASTOUNDED and have to donate. It has a drawer to hold your ftp bookmarks (it's a ftp program btw!) and doesn't suck to use xD
Cyberduck | FTP for Mac OS X.

Adium: Adium is the osx version of GAIM, in a nutshell. It's very pretty for being related to gaim. You might say it was the city cousin. The only disadvantage to using it over ichat is that since gaim doesn't support video and audio (YET) it doesn't either, but it sure does more protocols and better!
Adium - Download

speaking of OSX version of open source favorites. .
NeoOffice: a java-fied version of open office (you don't have to run x11), it's a little behind, and is pretty bloaty, but man it has pretty buttons. And with a recent update, it can run most excel macros:D i wish that came earlier this semester when I was having to do a ton of VBA coding xD
www.neooffice.org/

Pixen: This is a pixel program. Don't compare it to gimp, it's closer to MSPaint and it sucks about as hard to use, but if you don't know how to get x11 running and you don't want to donate to macgimp to get it easily, pixen can serve your needs, if you have a lot of patience. Since osx doesn't come with a paint program, you might as well download it until you get fed up and find something else out of desperation. Or maybe you just don't find it as irritating as I do xD but this is still a recommendation because sometimes you just NEED something, and it will definitely be something xD
open sword - pixen

KVIRC: if you're like me and have to have IRC, it's a lot easier to get used to a new program than to figure out how to install x11, wine helper, and get mirc to kinda run (with 8 fonts, YAY). Therefore, kvirc will suit you fine! The "official" versions are horribly behind, and these SVN releases don't really crash that often (if they do, then I can give you the .app for older ones that were pretty stable for me) There's still things horribly broken since it's like one guy recompiling it for osx, but it's a hell of a lot better than all of those other 'irc' programs. Most of them are just IM over an irc protocol and are pathetic. Ircle is just dead. KVIRC is wonderful :] ALSO THEY JUST RELEASED AN UPDATE AND I"M REALLY EXCITED ABOUT IT.
KVirc snapshots for Mac OS X

Okay those are the ones I use a lot, so now it's time for more obscure ones!

Audacity: If you use the beta version, it doesn't crash so much :D (such can be said for so much osx software xD) It records sounds just like in windows/linux!
audacity.sourceforge.net

Emulators: Boycott Advance (gba), Nestopia (NES), SNES9x(snes),

Ez7zip; extractor

Growltunes; actually, if you see growl anything with an application you use, get it :D

iTunes helpers: ltjbpm moody

mplayer

game: quinn= tetris

util= smcspeedfan for your macbook pro

xjournal = livejournal

I'm tired of looking for links :| you can probably google them but otherwise I'll add them back when I get around to it xD

Nominus, I just noticed that your name isn't on SampleCalc. Sorry I missed it, I was doing all of this in Notepad.

EDIT: Oh sorry, I just saw that you spaced out the sentences. My mistake. :D

IrfanView -- Fast, lightweight image viewer; it doesn't let you draw (use a slow-loading program like the GIMP or even mspaint for that), but will let you sharpen, crop, resize/resample, or grayscale an image, convert between many formats, and even add transparency to GIFs just by clicking on the colour that you want to be interpreted as transparent. It loads faster than the splash screen on most image manipulation programs--on my PC, this means "instantly, before my finger has even left the mouse button"

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Originally Posted by Citizen Bleys

IrfanView -- Fast, lightweight image viewer; it doesn't let you draw (use a slow-loading program like the GIMP or even mspaint for that), but will let you sharpen, crop, resize/resample, or grayscale an image, convert between many formats, and even add transparency to GIFs just by clicking on the colour that you want to be interpreted as transparent. It loads faster than the splash screen on most image manipulation programs--on my PC, this means "instantly, before my finger has even left the mouse button"

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I'll second this. It's a fantastic little programme that's handy for all the reasons Bleys stated. The only image program I've ever bothered to download.

Of course I'm right. Didn't you know that I'm Citizen Bleys?

Hey guys, post that stuff in the new thread, okay?

This thread should be closed.

*waves a magic wand* Now there's only one thread :D

There wasn't really a need to merge them was there? Now it just looks confusing. D:

Fixing chem's computer reminded me of this software. Driveimage XML. What it does is create an xml extension 'image' of your hard drive. The space it takes up is very little (my 30 gig boot drive partition turns into 20 megs).

Then what you do is use Bart's PE with the driveimage plugin to reimage the hard drive. Since the hard drive image can be done at any time (while windows is running) you can make an image of any windows state.

You need to fix the Silkroad link.
It's .net, not .com :)

The freeware games section is severely lacking:

http://img.qj.net/uploads/articles_m...jpreviewth.jpg
Cave Story

Media Convert - free and on line - convert and split sound, ringtones, images, docs - MP3 WMV 3GP AMR FLV SWF AMV MOV WMA AVI MPG MP4 DivX MPEG4 iPOD PSP OGG WMA AAC MP4 MPC MMF QCP KAR MIDI REALAUDIO FLAC JPG PSD DOC PDF RTF TXT ODG ODP ODS ODT SXW

Converts pretty much anything to anything else :p

I haven't spotted this on the list, so I'll bring it up! jZip - a free WinZip alternative <--jZip. Very similar set up to the likes of WinZip, except that it automatically recognizes the last folder you extracted to so that if you're mass extracting a lot of things to the same folder over and over, you don't have to constantly look for that same folder every time like you do with WinZip. Also extracts .rar files! Very pleasing and easy to work with~

Also, I would like to second the awesomeness that is skype <3 I use it every day, and it has the occasional problem but overall, it's the best ever!

Aptana

If anyone is interested in web development, this is great, it's vaguely similar to Dreamweaver and I find it to be very easy to use.

CD-ex' description should be updated to include what it is most commonly used for, and what it's probably mainly made for, namely ripping CDs to MP3/other formats. I also think it's very good at doing this.

Anyone other DVD burning suggestions? I don't like DVD Flick. I'd prefer something that does menus as well. It doesn't need to be a converter, because I have a DVD player that plays .avi files so I can just use my torrent lewts.

But I'd like it not to take 6 hours like Windows DVD burner does to burn an hour and a half movie. xD

WaDF - Nifflas' Games
Fun but hard Platformer/Puzzle game
Knytt - Nifflas' Games
Ambient Exploration game with little or no challenge
Knytt Stories - Nifflas' Games
basically a build your own metroid type thing.

Don't know if these have been posted but I don't have the time to look through 100 posts. I highly recommend these games. :D

Malwarebytes - an amazing malware scanner that scans every last file in your computer to determine if it's malware or not.

SharePod a usefull application that is able to recover and save music stored on an iPod.

Bump. I'm recommending Gyazo.
Now you can take instant screenshots right from your computer! No MS Paint necessary!

Here's how it works:
Simply click the Gyazo icon, drag a box with your mouse, then Gyazo screenshots that box and automatically puts the url in your clipboard (and opens it in a new tab in your default web browser.) You'll never have to use that Prt Scrn button again!


To make it even faster, you can put it in your quick launch toolbar, like so

http://gyazo.com/159315d227f61742dcc166d541e0f72a.png

...



Image compliments of Gyazo. Heh. /smug

I was thinking about becoming a music composer for games. Anyone can recommend me any freeware to start out on?

Do you write music? Mogi uses a midi composer called GuitarPro, and he says that there's a lot that you can do with it, but that it costs a little bit of money. There is a decent freeware midi composer called Power Tab, but the interface is a bit hard to use, and if you don't know how to read music, it could be hard, regardless of the fact that it's primarily a tablature program.

If you don't write music, you should take some basic music classes first. With some powerful (and costly) software, it can be made much simpler, but it's still not an easy task. There's a higher component to Video Game Music that you don't have to consider in other sorts of music, so it takes a little more out of a composer to write something of quality for a video game than, say, for a concert or a movie.

I just realised I haven't recommended Dropbox here yet. I usually have a few complaints about an app, no matter how good, but Dropbox is pretty much magical. I don't know what it could do better. For me it was one of those things I didn't know I needed.

Fancy introduction video if you don't feel like reading.

If you do:Basically it's a magical folder on your computer (and phone if you want). Put something in it, and it's automatically synchronized to your online Dropbox account (in the background; you won't have to think about it). If you have another computer with Dropbox, when you turn it on you'll find that your files are in the Dropbox there, too. Same with your phone, obviously.

It automatically provides an online backup for your documents. It also keeps a history, so if you deleted or overwrote a file that you needed, just go to your dropbox, locate the file and download an earlier copy.

It lets you share folders with people. You can invite other Dropbox users to whichever folders you want. It's a great way to keep a "Photos" folder together with your family, sharing a folder with colleagues or classmates for your current project or just sharing files with a friend for fun. If two people are modifying the same file simultaneously, no worries - Dropbox notices and saves one person's work as a copy.

There's also a web interface where you can access your files from any computer with internet - it makes USB sticks and emailing files to yourself seem kinda redundant.

If you feel like trying it out, please use this link as it gives me some extra space for my account :D

This isn't software per se, but I've recently switched out of google search engine to the following:

DuckDuckGo


Why?

Google tracks you. We don't. An illustrated guide.
Escape your search engine Filter Bubble!

Agreed with PG. DuckDuckGo is amazing. I started using it a few months ago and I don't use Google anymore, except for images. Wish there was a good alternative for Google Images. :( Does anyone know of one?

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Originally Posted by Pike

Agreed with PG. DuckDuckGo is amazing. I started using it a few months ago and I don't use Google anymore, except for images. Wish there was a good alternative for Google Images. :( Does anyone know of one?

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dogpile.com possibly?

DDG is indeed amazing. However, I occasionally find myself missing my filter bubble when I try to find Nondrick and Nordrick. Google knows what I want immediately, whereas DuckDuckGo gets utterly bamboozled by the whole affair.

I was going to suggest dogpile, but then I remembered reading that dogpile uses google as its base.