List of recommended Windows software

Video Players

What you can expect from playback using VLC (animated)

• 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)
• VLC - VLC is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVD, Audio CD, VCD, and various streaming protocols. (Download here) However, you can expect your playback to look something like this -->
• PotPlayer - Freeware piece of shit written by koreans that violates the GPL, Use MPC-HC or mpv instead you hipster faggot.

Audio Players

• foobar2000 - freeware; lightweight and customizable
• MusicBee - freeware; customizable and powerful
• MediaMonkey - freemium; powerful media player with a great database
• AIMP - Freeware, considered successor to WinAmp

PDF Readers

• SumatraPDF - free and open source document reader

Image Viewer

• IrfanView
• ACDSee Classic
• Picasa Photo Viewer
• Xnview

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

Video Encoder

H.264&Others

• HandBrake - Very basic
• MeGUI - Supports Hi10P encoding
• StaxRip - Supports fairly advanced audio encoding, batch processing

H.265

• x265 - Pre-alpha x265 builds

Audio Editor

• Audacity

Office Suite

• OpenOffice - If you're an idiot, and want to use a dying and deprecated program [1] for some for some bizarre reason. Oddly, things didn't work out for Oracle, so they gave the license to the Apache Foundation who released it under their own license.
• LibreOffice - After Oracle acquired OpenOffice, it asked community members to GTFO [2]. Since everyone despises Oracle, the developers all jumped ship as well [3] and stared LibreOffice.

Text Editor

• Notepad++
• (g) Vim
• Emacs

Hex Editor

• XVI32
• Frhed

Archiving

• 7-Zip - LGPL, handles every compression format you are likely to encounter, and a bunch you aren't unless you're a time traveler from a BBS circa 1991.
• WinRAR - WinRAR is also a Archiving software just like 7-Zip, does the same thing. Proprietary commercial software that doesn't respect your freedom, and doesn't handle the same number of compression formats. Basically, use if you're an idiot.

Encryption

• Truecrypt - Freeware, open source. Does it work? Maybe?

Disk Burning

• ImgBurn - WARNING: This is riddled with malware.
• BurnAware - free and non-free version
• CDBurnerXP - free, download the version without botnet (OpenCandy) here

Virtual CD/DVD Drive

• WinCDEmu
• Virtual CloneDrive
• DAEMON Tools Lite - WARNING: contains adware and send informations about the iso you mount unless you manually disable this behaviour.

Anti-Virus/Malware

• Common Sense - Free and almost 100% effective assuming it is installed correctly.
• Avira - Avira Free Antivirus
• Mircosoft Security Essentials - Designed to be bottom-of-the-barrel per Micro$hit's own admission [4].
• MalwareBytes
• Nod32 (non-free)
• Avast - Avast Free Antivirus available

Firewall

• Windows Default
• Your Router's Firewall
• Tinywall - interesting wrapper for the Windows firewall
• Comodo Firewall
• ZoneAlarm

Defragmenter

Don't use these on your SSD, you moran.

• Defraggler
• MyDefrag - Freeware, based on the standard defragmentation API by Microsoft. Also optimizes file locations.

Cleaner

• CCleaner - Clears the bloat left by the apps, from cookies to uninstalleed apps remains
• CCEnhancer - CCleaner additions
• Revo Uninstaller

File Recovery

• Recuva
• TestDisk

Computer Specs

• Speccy
• GPU-Z
• CPU-Z

Virtual Machine

• VMWare (non-free)
• VirtualBox

Virtual Desktop Manager

• VirtuaWin - Allows you to use multiple virtual desktops

Terminals

• Cygwin - Terminal that gives you the feel of GNU/Linux on windows.

Torrent Clients

• qBittorrent - Free and open source. Extendable, lots of features. The uTorrent of the FOSS world.
• BareTorrent - Also free and open source. Very minimal and lightweight - downloads Torrents and pretty much nothing else.
• Deluge - Free and open source, GPL v3. Very extendable and lots of features, but can be sluggish and hogs resources.

=FTP Clients

• Filezilla - Free and open source, GPL v2.

Misc & utils

• AltDrag - Allows you to use Alt and drag your windows. Information and guides
• Process Explorer - A better task manager