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List of recommended Windows software: Difference between revisions

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== Multimedia ==
== Multimedia ==


=== Media Players ===
=== Video Players ===
* [[MPC-HC]] - open-source; can use the madVR renderer for GPU rendering and more features.
* [http://mpv.io/ mpv] - open-source, supports H.265 playback. A fork of mplayer(2). (Download [http://mpv.srsfckn.biz/ here])
* [https://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html VLC] - Open source, doesn't cost, and plays almost anything. (Download [https://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-windows.html here])


=== Disc Burners ===
[[File:mpc-hc.png|48px]] '''MPC-HC (Media Player Classic)'''
* [http://www.imgburn.com/ ImgBurn] - Make sure to uncheck any of the 'freebies' (Conduit Toolbars) and you'll be fine.
* [http://www.burnaware.com/ BurnAware] - free and non-free version
* [http://cdburnerxp.se/en/home CDBurnerXP] - free, download the version without botnet (OpenCandy) [http://cdburnerxp.se/download?more-options here]


=== Music Organisers ===
[http://mpc-hc.org/ MPC-HC] is an extremely light-weight, open source media player for Windows. It supports all common video and audio file formats available for playback. No adware, spyware or any bloat included. Features countless different renderers and shaders from the community.


* [[Foobar2000]] - freeware; lightweight and customizable
[[File:kcp.png|48px]] '''KCP (Kawaii Codec Pack)'''
* [http://getmusicbee.com/ MusicBee] - freeware; less customizable than foobar2000, but still powerful and better out-of-the-box
* [http://www.mediamonkey.com// MediaMonkey] - freemium; powerful media player with a great database
* [http://www.aimp.ru/ AIMP] - Freeware, considered successor to WinAmp
* [http://www.musicpd.org/ Music Player Daemon] – Renowned on Linux, also functional on Windows. Great for ricing with your lawlie desktop. [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XDnnKjuOZ0vlb8Q9xTS5atlfzu4n22Yk2MKQe6WjjE0/ 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.


=== Audio Tagging ===
[http://haruhichan.com/forum/showthread.php?7545-KCP-Kawaii-Codec-Pack KCP] is a codec pack that contains the latest DirectShow components, utilized to decode an array of media types. Its basically a fork of MPC-HC, instead of manually installing the recommended filters, this does it all for you.
* [http://www.mp3tag.de/en/ Mp3tag] – A native Windows music tagging utility that not only tags every audio format under the sun, but also lets you auto-fill tags based on filename, rename files based on tag data, copy tag fields from one place to another, and so forth. Supports automation of batch-tagging operation through basic scripting. Supports MusicBrainz metadata/album art scraping from various sources.


* [https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/EasyTAG EasyTAG] – A GNOME application, great for basic tagging, however the executable distributed for Windows is dreadfully outdated an thus lacking in features. Try compiling this if you plan on using it.
[[File:mpv-logo.png|48px]] '''MPV (MPV Plays Videos)'''


* [http://musicbrainz.org/doc/MusicBrainz_Picard MusicBrainz Picard] – A great cross-platform utility for tagging music with information from the MusicBrainz database, named after some gay-ass character from a kids show. Includes guessing and identification of music through scanning and metadata queries. It can determine the correct metadata for files that have no existing tags based on audio fingerprints.
[http://mpv.io/ MPV] is a fork of mplayer2 and MPlayer. It features ffmpeg playback, high quality scaling algorithms, opengl output and is completely open sourced.


=== MP3 Specific Tools ===
[[File:vlc-logo.png|48px]] '''VLC (VideoLAN Client)'''
* [http://mpesch3.de1.cc/mp3dc.html mp3DirectCut] – Non-destructive editor for compressed mp3s. Useful for cropping out silence on hidden tracks without re-encoding.
 
* [http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/ MP3Gain] – Non-destructive volume normalizer for mp3s. Uses statistical analysis instead of peak normalization to adjust volume levels. Changes are recorded as ReplayGain data, without re-encoding.
[http://videolan.org/vlc/index.html VLC] is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.
 
=== Audio Players ===
 
[[File:foobar-logo.png|48px]] '''Foobar2000'''
 
[http://foobar2000.org/download Foobar2000] is an advanced audio player for the Windows platform. Some of the basic features include ReplayGain support, low memory footprint, and native support for several popular audio formats.
 
[[File:musicbee-logo.png|48px]] '''MusicBee'''
 
[http://getmusicbee.com/ MusicBee] is basically a souped version of Foobar2k, it supports everything that you want in an audio player plus more! The GUI is very different than most, but can be customized to your will. Completely free and open.
 
[[File:musicpd-logo.png|48px]] '''MPD (Music Player Daemon)'''
 
[http://musicpd.org/ MPD] is a flexible, powerful, server-side application for playing music. Through plugins and libraries it can play a variety of sound files while being controlled by its network protocol.
 
=== Image Viewers ===
 
[[File:honeyview-logo.png|48px]] '''Honeyview'''
 
[http://bandisoft.com/honeyview/ Honeyview] is a very fast image viewer supporting various formats. It also supports viewing the images in compressed ZIP, RAR, or 7z files without extraction.
 
[[File:irfanview-logo.png|48px]] '''Irfanview'''
 
[http://www.irfanview.com/ Irfanview] is a very fast, small, compact and innovative freeware graphic viewer for Windows. It features an inbuilt ''editor'' along with many other extra tools that you may need or require.


== Office ==
== Office ==

Revision as of 09:15, 18 January 2015

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CLEANUP CANDIDATE
Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Reason: No reason specified.


This page is for good quality software on Windows, based on the contributions of /g/ users. This page is not for solidifying preferences or ideology; I consider it to be "value-free" and thus permitting of both reference to open source software and closed source software, for-profit and non-for-profit. This is not your soapbox, your ballot box, or pulpit. Stay constructive and avoid politics and arguments.

Package manager

You can (and should) install a package manager. It gives you the benefit of being able to download and install a lot of popular software via a single command on the command line, instead of having to navigate to a website, download it and run it. Take a look at Chocolatey NuGet and NPackd for more info. This is an advantage that OSX and Linux users have been enjoying for years, and now you should too.

For an all-at-once installation to install all of your selected favourite software in one go (useful on a fresh install of Windows), check out Ninite.

*nix environment on Windows

If you're feeling a bit limited or alienated with windows' command line tools, you can set up a native *nix environment on Windows.

  • Cygwin – "Get that Linux feeling - on Windows." Basically the Wine of Windows, but without recreating system libraries and such. GOW is considered an improvement on it
  • GOW – GNU on Windows. It's like a much lighter Cygwin, it comes with a terminal option in Windows explorer, and also comes with over Linux 100+ binaries natively compiled for Windows.
  • MinGW – Another minimalist set of *nix binaries natively compiled for Windows.
  • Msysgit – Not as big a *nix environment like the others, this is the native Windows build of git, which also provides a shell with simple *nix utilities with cp, mv, rm, etc. and other basic coreutils you might need. Read the page for details

Communications Software

Before being v&, weeaboo nonces often use communications software to exchange nude images with police officers posing as kawaii lolis.

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.

Icon Thunderbird small.png 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.

Opera Mail.png Opera Mail

Opera Mail – Formerly a component of the Opera browser, now a separate free product. This is based on Opera 12.6 and still uses the Presto rendering engine. Getting started. Doesn't have IRC and xmpp for whatever-the-fuck reasons.

Opera Mail is bundled in Opera 12.16 and several prior versions.

Instant Messaging Clients

Icon Pidgin small.png 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 (IRC) Clients

Graphical User Interface (GUI)

HexChat.png HexChat

  • HexChat – HexChat is a popular replacement for the XChat IRC client, a client which offered a free binary for Linux but charges money for the Windows version. HexChat is a continuation of XChat and makes both its source code and binaries available to users of all platforms it's created for. Like its parent software, HexChat is licensed under the GNU GPL.

HexChat includes all the basic features one would need, and can be ideal both for new users and IRC veterans.

Smuxi.png Smuxi

  • Smuxi – Smuxi is another crossplatform IRC client and uses the GTK. It has some scripting capability and looks about the same on all systems. It doesn't have many features but it does those that it has well.

ChatZilla.png ChatZilla

  • ChatZilla – An IRC client that's an addon for Firefox. Great for people who want basic IRC features without having to install an additional application. FAQ.

Terminal/Command Prompt

Irssi.png Irssi

  • Irssi – The father of rice clients and easily accessible for all systems. The author of the Metacity window manager for Linux describes his software as follows: "Boring window manager for the adult in you. Many window managers are like Marshmallow Froot Loops; Metacity is like Cheerios." Irssi is the terminal IRC client equivalent of that sentiment. Irssi is extensible through plugins.

Weechat.png Weechat

  • Weechat – Irssi + more rice, more scripting languages, some more ideal defaults, and more development. Rising in popularity as a preferred client on /g/. Weechat also includes plugin functionality.

Support By Browsers and Mail Clients

  • Thunderbird has support for IRC and other IM services.
  • Opera had similar chat support which was dropped in 10.10.
  • As mentioned above, Firefox can support IRC through an addon.
  • Chrome can also support IRC through extensions, although some of them are actually websites; 'CIRC' and 'Byrd IRC' appear to be native clients, but I have not tested them as you must be signed into Google in order to install them. They might be usable by loading their source. I'll test them eventually.

Voice-Over-IP Clients

Mumble.png Mumble

Mumble – Free and open source audio chat software. Superior in audio quality and latency by always being the first client to use latest technologies, such as the Opus audio codec.

Teamspeak.png TeamSpeak

TeamSpeak – Non-free and widely used for gaming. Lots of permissions/ACL tuning available. Servers must be often licensed to use without restrictions. The client has a backdoor that allows TeamSpeak Systems GmbH. to blacklist any server and take full control.

Skype.png Skype

Skype – Botnet mode in full effect. No seriously. Also closed source and susceptible to state snooping.

Jitsi.png Jitsi

Jitsi – “A real Skype alternative using standards compliant FLOSS”. Downside is being bulky Java.

Google Voice.png Google Voice

Google Voice – The botnet never felt so good. Free phone numbers, calling, texting, and integration into Gmail. There does not appear to be official desktop software for this; it is run in a web browser and requires a plugin for full functionality.

Ekiga.png Ekiga

Ekiga – I haven't used this but it has Windows binaries.

Tox.png Tox

Open-source alternative to Skype. In early alpha stage and almost has VOIP working.

File Compression Utilities

File compression software is widely used by various software distributors and archives to mitigate bandwidth and storage space requirements.

Icon 7zip small.png 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.

Easy 7-Zip is an alternative build of 7-zip which has some extra features such as extra additions such as icons on the context menu, extra options in many dialogs and the ability to minimize to tray while extracting. It's licensed under the same license too.

Icon PeaZip small.png 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.

Icon WinRAR small.png 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

Icon qBittorrent small.png 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.

Baretorrent.png baretorrent

baretorrent is a simple, minimalist BitTorrent client written in C++ which essentially downloads Torrents and nothing else. It's open-source and works on Windows, Linux and OSX. Useful for older machines and people who don't want extra bloat on their machines. It's also extendible but there's only a few extensions available at the minute.

Icon Deluge small.png 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.

File:Utorrent-logo.png μTorrent

uTorrent v2.2.1 is considered to be the last very last good version of what is now known as uTorrent. Before BitTorrent bought out the developers of the infamous app, it was widely regarded as the best downloader for torrents alike. After the 2.2.1 update however, many users started seeing ads, promos and even sudden spikes in memory usage as this piece of software was slowly being riddled with useless software integration and thus deeming it no more than the title it has today, bloatware.

FTP Clients

Icon FileZilla small.png 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.

Icon WinSCP small.png WinSCP

WinSCP or Windows Secure Copy is a free and open-source FTP, SFTP, and SCP client written in C++.

Maintenance

Disk Cleaners

Icon CCleaner small.png 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.

Icon Revo small.png Revo Uninstaller

Revo Uninstaller

Disk Defragmenters

Icon Defraggler small.png Defraggler

Defraggler

Icon MyDefrag small.png 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.

Icon TestDisk small.png TestDisk

TestDisk

Icon Recuva small.png Recuva

Recuva

System Information Tools

Icon CPUZ small.png CPU-Z

CPU-Z

Icon GPUZ small.png GPU-Z

GPU-Z

Icon HWMonitor small.png HWMonitor

HWMonitor

Icon Speccy small.png Speccy

Speccy

Multimedia

Video Players

Mpc-hc.png MPC-HC (Media Player Classic)

MPC-HC is an extremely light-weight, open source media player for Windows. It supports all common video and audio file formats available for playback. No adware, spyware or any bloat included. Features countless different renderers and shaders from the community.

Kcp.png KCP (Kawaii Codec Pack)

KCP is a codec pack that contains the latest DirectShow components, utilized to decode an array of media types. Its basically a fork of MPC-HC, instead of manually installing the recommended filters, this does it all for you.

Mpv-logo.png MPV (MPV Plays Videos)

MPV is a fork of mplayer2 and MPlayer. It features ffmpeg playback, high quality scaling algorithms, opengl output and is completely open sourced.

Vlc-logo.png VLC (VideoLAN Client)

VLC is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.

Audio Players

Foobar-logo.png Foobar2000

Foobar2000 is an advanced audio player for the Windows platform. Some of the basic features include ReplayGain support, low memory footprint, and native support for several popular audio formats.

Musicbee-logo.png MusicBee

MusicBee is basically a souped version of Foobar2k, it supports everything that you want in an audio player plus more! The GUI is very different than most, but can be customized to your will. Completely free and open.

Musicpd-logo.png MPD (Music Player Daemon)

MPD is a flexible, powerful, server-side application for playing music. Through plugins and libraries it can play a variety of sound files while being controlled by its network protocol.

Image Viewers

Honeyview-logo.png Honeyview

Honeyview is a very fast image viewer supporting various formats. It also supports viewing the images in compressed ZIP, RAR, or 7z files without extraction.

Irfanview-logo.png Irfanview

Irfanview is a very fast, small, compact and innovative freeware graphic viewer for Windows. It features an inbuilt editor along with many other extra tools that you may need or require.

Office

Document Readers

Icon SumatraPDF small.png Sumatra PDF

The majority of configuration for this application is done manually by editing its configuration file.

SumatraPDF is a free and open source PDF, ePub, Mobi, XPS, DjVu, CHM, CBZ, and CBR reader. Unlike most competing products for Windows, it is extremely fast and lightweight.

Evince.png Evince

Evince is a free and open source PDF, PostScript, DjVu, TIFF, XPS and DVI reader. While it is better known as a component of GNU/Linux's GNOME desktop environment, a Windows build is available.

Adobe Digital Editions.png Adobe Digital Editions

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.

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 started LibreOffice.

Security

For in-depth coverage of this topic, see our article on Internet Security.

Antivirus

Avast-icon.png Avast! Antivirus

Avast! is a proprietary antivirus program which has both a free and paid version. It is adware which spies on your web browsing and injects advertisements, so installing for security is counterproductive. Recent versions interfere with posting images to 4chan. Frequent BSODs have been reported by users.

Comodo icon.png COMODO Antivirus

COMODO Antivirus is a module part of the proprietary, free Comodo Internet Security suite. There is a paid version called 'COMODO Internet Security Pro' but it is more designed for computer-illiterates with services such as 'GeekBuddy' which is a remote-support service.

Icon Malwarebytes small.png Malwarebytes

Malwarebytes is a proprietary antivirus program popular in various security communities as a backup scanner. It is offered both as freeware and as commercial software. The free version of Malwarebytes allows the user to manually scan for and remove malware, but a license must be purchased if the user wished to take advantage of its scheduled scanning and real-time protection features.

Sandbox

Comodo icon.png COMODO Sandbox

COMODO Sandbox is a module of the COMODO Firewall; part of the proprietary, free Comodo Internet Security suite. There is a paid version called 'COMODO Internet Security Pro' but it is more designed for computer-illiterates with services such as 'GeekBuddy' which is a remote-support service.

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 icon.png COMODO Firewall

COMODO Firewall is part of the proprietary, free Comodo Internet Security suite. There is a paid version called 'COMODO Internet Security Pro' but it is more designed for computer-illiterates with services such as 'GeekBuddy' which is a remote-support service.

Tinywall logo.png Tinywall

Tinywall is a lightweight wrapper for the Windows firewall, providing a lot of new features like tampering protection, blocklists, or temporary firewall rules.

Emulation and Compatibility

Virtual CD/DVD Drive

Virtual Machine

Virtual Desktop Manager

  • VirtuaWin - Allows you to use multiple virtual desktops

PC-98 Simulators

PC-98 is a series of computers by NEC, which was a popular computing platform in Japan. There were many interesting games created for the PC-98, including many of the oldest Touhou games. For better reference and understanding its recommended to see its page on Touhou Wiki and Wikipedia.

Since not ever one is real OG enough to have one of these computers from when they were first produced or buy one of the internet, here's a list of a few emulators for the PC-98:

And here's some games other than 2hus.

Unclassified Software

These recommendations will be classified soon.

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

Comic and Manga Viewer

MComix.png MComix

  • 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.
  • GifCam - Record your desktop as a .gif
  • LICEcap - Free/open software to record your desktop as a .gif

Other Platforms