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List of recommended Windows software
This article is in the process of being overhauled, so it will be quite messy and incomplete for several days.
Contents
Communications Software
Communications software is generally used to conduct inane conversations with one's intolerable and doubtlessly juvenile friends.
Email Clients
Desktop email clients provide off-line email storage and additional features over most web-mail clients.
Mozilla Thunderbird
Thunderbird is a free and open source email client based upon the Gecko rendering engine. Like its sibling Firefox, it offers the user extensive customisation options via third-party add-ons.
Instant Messaging Clients
Pidgin
Pidgin, formerly known as GAIM, is a free and open source instant messaging client developed in C. It is based upon Libpurple and offers support for the AIM, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk, Groupwise, ICQ, IRC, MSN, MXit, MySpaceIM, SILC, SIMPLE, Sametime, XMPP, Yahoo!, and Zephyr chat networks out of the box. Partial or complete support for additional networks like Xfire is offered through third-party plug-ins like Gfire.
Internet Relay Chat Clients
(This section is currently under construction. Please feel free to add your recommendations.)
Voice-Over-IP Clients
(This section is currently under construction. Please feel free to add your recommendations.)
File Compression Utilities
File compression software is widely used by various software distributors and archives to mitigate bandwidth and storage space requirements.
7zip Archiver
7zip is a free and open source file archiver developed in C++ by Igor Pavlov. Its primary feature is lossless compression in the 7z format, based upon the Lempel–Ziv–Markov chain algorithm. In addition to the handful of formats it is capable of creating new archives in, 7zip can retrieve files from archives in virtually any format that one is likely to encounter.
PeaZip Archiver
The PAQ and LPAQ methods are capable of an impressive degree of lossless compression, but the time and system resources required are equally impressive.
PeaZip is a free and open source archiver developed in free Pascal by Giorgio Tani. It is notable for its native PEA format and its support of cutting-edge compression technologies like PAQ and LPAQ that are not supported by other popular archivers. Like 7zip, it is capable of retrieving files from virtually any archive that one might encounter.
WinRAR Archiver
Unless one has some specific purpose in mind, the use of WinRAR is not recommended.
WinRAR is a proprietary shareware archiver developed by the brothers Eugene and Alexander Roshal. Its once ubiquitous RAR format is still used almost universally by the Warez Scene, although it has falling out of favour with many other communities due to the growing popularity of 7z. Although it is only capable of creating new archives in the RAR and ZIP formats, WinRAR is capable of extracting files from archives created by many other compression tools.
File Sharing
BitTorrent Clients
Deluge
Deluge is a libtorrent-based free and open source BitTorrent client written in Python. It is highly extensible via its plug-ins system. Deluge is notable for having originated the particular method of protocol encryption that is currently in use by every major BitTorrent client. In can be a bit of a resource hog on Windows compared to other clients.
qBittorrent
qBittorrent is a libtorrent-based free and open source BitTorrent client written in C++. According to the its developers, the aim of the client is to provide a free software alternative to µTorrent.
FTP Clients
FileZilla
Filezilla is a free and open source FTP, SFTP, and FTPS client written in C++. Sourceforge downloaders should be advised that the installer offered there potentially contains adware.
WinSCP
WinSCP or Windows Secure Copy is a free and open-source FTP, SFTP, and SCP client written in C++.
Maintenance
Disk Cleaners
CCLeaner
CCleaner is proprietary freeware disk clean-up utility developed by Piriform. Its features at the time of this writing include automated deletion of unnecessary files, automated deletion of unnecessary registry entries, secure data erasure, program removal, system restore point management, start-up entry management, scheduled task management, context entry management, and web browser plug-in management.
Revo Uninstaller
Disk Defragmenters
Defraggler
MyDefrag
MyDefrag is a proprietary freeware disk defragmenter based on the standard defragmentation API by Microsoft. It also optimises file locations.
File Recovery Tools
Visit our Data Recovery for further information.
TestDisk
Recuva
System Information Tools
CPU-Z
GPU-Z
HW Monitor
Speccy
Multimedia
Media Players
- MPC-HC - open-source; with the madVR renderer for GPU rendering and more features (Download here)
- mpv - open-source, supports H.265 playback. A fork of mplayer(2). (Download here)
Disc Burners
- ImgBurn - Make sure to uncheck any of the 'freebies' (Conduit Toolbars) and you'll be fine.
- BurnAware - free and non-free version
- CDBurnerXP - free, download the version without botnet (OpenCandy) here
Music Organisers
- Foobar2000 - freeware; lightweight and customizable
- MusicBee - freeware; less customizable than foobar2000, but still powerful and better out-of-the-box
- MediaMonkey - freemium; powerful media player with a great database
- AIMP - Freeware, considered successor to WinAmp
- Music Player Daemon – Renowned on Linux, also functional on Windows. Great for ricing with your lawlie desktop. This will probably come in handy (bear in mind this guide recommends you use 32-bit versions of the software, but that's retarded, the 64-bit ones work for me.
Office
Document Readers
Sumatra PDF
SumatraPDF – is a free and open source PDF, ePub, Mobi, XPS, DjVu, CHM, CBZ, and CBR reader. Unlike competing products, it is extremely fast and lightweight.
Evince – A surprisingly good GNOME app for displaying PDF files and certain comic archives.
Adobe Digital Editions – God-tier book-reading application; displays ePub and PDF files, and maybe more but I can't be taxed to find out. Meant for reading books and does not serve well as a conventional document viewer for other purposes.
PDF.js/PDF Viewer extension – Designed for the web, available on Firefox, Chrome/ium, Opera, and perhaps more. This doesn't seem practical at first, but with a stand-alone rendering engine, this could become an app upon itself.
Text Editors
Word Processors
- LibreOffice - After Oracle acquired OpenOffice, it asked community members to GTFO [1]. Since everyone despises Oracle, the developers all jumped ship as well [2] and stared LibreOffice.
Security
Antivirus
Comodo Antivirus
This solution is one component in a software suite. Its use as a standalone product is not recommended.
Malware Screening
Malwarebytes I don't fucking know, looks fine to me.
Sandbox
Comodo Sandbox
This solution is one component in a software suite. Its use as a standalone product is not recommended.
The Comodo Sandbox is a component of the proprietary freeware program Comodo Internet Security that allows the user to create isolated virtual environments.
Sandboxie
Sandboxie is a proprietary shareware program for creating isolated virtual environments.
Software Firewalls
Software firewalls should not be viewed as replacements for hardware firewalls. The proper configuration of modem and router firewalls remains vital to securing one's network no matter what software solutions are employed.
Comodo Firewall
This solution is one component in a software suite. Its use as a standalone product is not recommended.
Unclassified Software
These recommendations will be classified soon.
Disk Encryption
Hex Editor
Image Editor
- GIMP - A popular Photoshop alternative. Is good if you know how to use it correctly.
- Paint.NET - Started as a MS Paint alternative, now integrates plenty of features such as layers and effects
- InkScape - Vector graphic editor. FOSS.
Image Viewer
- IrfanView
- ACDSee Classic
- Picasa Photo Viewer (suspected to be a botnet)
- Xnview
- Honeyview (for weeaboo ricers)
Comic and Manga Viewer
- MComix – I picked this up when I used Linux and it turns out to be at least decent on Windows. Supports manga view and other nice features. Requires some GNOME stuff but that's easy to provide (it may come with the installer, I don't recall). Has some shakiness and non-smooth transitions when dragging images; I do not get this while using MComix on lunix.
Screen Capture
- Open Broadcaster Software - free and open source software for recording and live streaming.
Virtual CD/DVD Drive
Virtual Machine
- VMWare (non-free)
- VirtualBox
Virtual Desktop Manager
- VirtuaWin - Allows you to use multiple virtual desktops
Linux Simulation
Who needs Linux when you can just use all their software compiled as exes? :-^) More on this soon.
- Cygwin – "Get that Linux feeling - on Windows." If you can't figure this out, you're better off somewhere else.
