The Ultimate 'Essential' Program List

[Martin]

Here is a list of all of the amazing free programs out there, so you don't have to resort to piracy.

OpenOffice - An office suite comparable to Microsoft Office (not nearly as bloated though)

the GIMP - Image editing suite that kicks the ass out of Photoshop. Unfortunately, if you're still a windows user, you can only use version 1.2. Still good though

DevC++ - A nice, free, small C++ compiler.

Mozilla Firefox (0.9!) - Web browser with the following features:
- Built in popup blocking
- Uses less RAM than IE (by far)
- Faster renderer than IE
- Customizable GUI
- Tabbed Browsing
- Plugins, including RSS readers and ad blockers (as in banner ad blockers)
- Lots more. There is no excuse for not having this program.
http://texturizer.net/firefox/extensions/
-This is a list of the vast majority of the extensions available for firefox.


WinAMP - A media player far less bloated than Windows Media player, and no spyware (unlike realplayer). Again, essential.

PageDefrag - Windows wants its users to run disk defrag every couple weeks, which thrashes your hard drive for a few hours and then you get an amazing 2.7% speed increase until you try to run a program. The real problem is that Windows' page file gets defragmented, which disk defrag doesn't fix. This program is for you. Run it if you have more than one fragment on any of the categories, and restart your computer. It only takes a couple of minutes to run.

Linux - Get yourself a real OS, that can do everything windows can with the following exceptions:
- Doesn't crash randomly nearly as often
- You never get the message 'You need to restart your computer for changes to take effect.'
- Boot in 5 seconds flat. Nice for the one time that you have to turn off your machine a month.

Okay, so you want to steal programs off of the internet, but you realize that Kazaa is junk for everything except for music. Err, make backup copies of all of those cds that you own. That's what I mean.

Well, here's a list of some useful programs and websites for that stuff too.

Getting Kazaa is kind of hard to do lately. All of a sudden, everyone started charging money for the versions of Kazaa lite. OldVersion.com used to have a copy on it, but that site mysteriously disappeared I just found out, so I have no idea. Google it up, something'll surface eventually. Damn Nazi's.

TorrentStorm - Definately one of the best BitTorrent clients out there. As far as good torrent websites go:
http://www.torrentreactor.net/
http://suprnova.org/ (note no e)
http://isohunt.com/

mIRC - A nice IRC program, great for all of your video game and pornographic needs. And ahh...chatting. Yeah.

That's all that I can think of at the moment. Feel free to add to this list.

[Catalyst]

Shareaza nice (and opensource) p2p program. Connects to Gnutella 1&2 along with eDonkey2000 networks. Also a bit torrent client.
Apache Best (and free) Web Server

AVG Free Antivirus
Adaware Spyware removal

edit: removed (duplicate)

Winsyntax A great(and small) html/php editor

[Martin]

winAMP's already on the list.

[roer]

WinRar - http://www.rarlabs.com
Great compression program

Newsbin - http://www.newsbin.com/
Newsgroup program

i used to have a huge list of useful applications, ill try to find the url

[SuperGenius]

About open office..... I used it in the career centre at my school, and hated it because it ran so slowly on the computers. On a decent system does it run more smoothly?

[Amailer]

Spybot Search & Destory - Kills all spyware, works very well!
Emule - Good, fast working p2p client, allows you to connect to diffrent servers for downloading. No Spyware or ads!
EditPlus - Ah good editor for java/php and etc ;D nice, simple and has some nice functions
Virtual Daemon - With this you can play downloaded CD's and etc (.bin/.cue and etc files..) ya
iTunes - Sweet player, was first built only for a mac users but now also for windows users . Works with your iPod if you got 1... got a music store and etc.

EDIT: Deleted 2 repeats.

[Mazer]

Darkness wrote:

the GIMP - Image editing suite that kicks the ass out of Photoshop. Unfortunately, if you're still a windows user, you can only use version 1.2. Still good though

Glad I didn't have to edit your post or complain about that. But you are mistaken, version 2.0 is available (I have it).

[Martin]

Oh, awesome. I'm not too up on the Windows software...it pwns.

[Martin]

SuperGenius wrote:

About open office..... I used it in the career centre at my school, and hated it because it ran so slowly on the computers. On a decent system does it run more smoothly?

I think it's optimized for unix. It works faster than office did on my computer right now, so it might just be because you were on junky rigs. No idea though.

[Mint]

Opera - A pretty groovy web browser, tab browsing, very good pop-up protection, it can disguise itself as other browsers, lots of other great features such as: continuing browsing without any work (you'll see what I'm talking about), there is a banner unless you pay for it BUT it doesn't get in the way of browsing otherwise it's exactly the same as the payed version.

[wtd]

For developers PostgreSQL is a must. It's an open-source, feature-rich database. The capabilities of it make MySQL look like a child's toy.

[naoki]

EDIT: hmm, i don't know, but it seems like rizzix is an apple user. mebbe it's the praise he gives to all iApps, or mebbe how every single program he suggested is for OS X only. Hmm .....
Also, I gave them links

Nimo CodecPack - contains all the codecs you'll ever need to play music, video and stream files. Different builds allow for customization for hardcore media freaks.
[url]http://nimo.titanesk.com/modules/freecontent/index.php?id=1 [/url]

Net Transport - prolly my favourite download manager. batch downloads, and the option (only with IE ... not sure about Firefox) to selectively download anything and everything off of one page (vids, pics, files). Pretty damn fast, and plenty of options. http://www.xi-soft.com/download.htm

Visual Boy Advance/MAME - hey, I don't feel like paying money to play MvC and Advance Wars 2, so these emulators are good alternatives (ROMS are far harder to come by though, especially MAME ROM's)
http://www.zophar.net

[Paul]

Mame is pretty cool, doesn't work for my computer though, so I stick with WinKwaks, for the KoF series.

[rizzix]

Dont be lazy.. include the links plz. Now..

UltrVNC - (Virtual Network Connection(s)) This is both the server and a client.. extremely low latency.. favourite app. installed on every comp in my LAN. For those who don't know what VNC is.. its a remoted desktop-like technology. This app is opensourced and free!

Oracle 10g Database - kicks the ass of all competing database vendors. Free for non-commercial use.

Camino - fantastic (Gecko) brower for OS X

SubEthaEdit - collaborative editor for OS X

CPlot - visualizer for complex 3d functions (OSX only)

Acquisition - the best p2p program for OS X (no windows p2p app can compare to this!!)

Konfabulator - heh what can i say. its a must-have, unless of course u have Tiger (OSX only) Oh an you got to love the new Gmail widget!!

Xirc - scriptable irc chat program for OS X. And no its not the same as the unix one, this one looks and feels far better heh.

Proteus - the coolest IM app for OSX

All the iApps from Apple - Yes every single one of them rocks (OSX only)

[wtd]

rizzix wrote:

All the iApps from Apple - Yes every single one of them rocks (OSX only)

Except for iTunes, which is also available for Windows 2000 and XP.