DescentBB

As I was browsing the last Awesome Free Software topic I thought it had grown a little cluttered so it was time to scan through and clean up / orginize things a bit so here we go. Note that this topic is mostly windows software, although some linux/OSX software may be included (and no operating system/platform is off limits so post whatever you like as long as it is free).

I'm going to sum up most of the old thread (which can be found here: viewtopic.php?t=11099 ) in no particular order. The format I am going with is posting the name of the software / the person who originally posted it followed by a link to the software followed by any notes or comments I might add.

I'm going to highlight the software I recommend/use or is particularly notable/awesome in bold text.

Antivirus / AntiSpyware / AntiMalware:

Avira AntiVir / Grendel
http://www.free-av.com
Personal Edition is freeware

Avast! Antivirus / Stryker
http://www.avast.com/

AVG Antivirus / Kyouryuu
http://free.grisoft.com/

Microsoft Security Essentials / Krom
http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/
Requires genuine copy of Windows.

Windows Defender / Grendel
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/securit ... fault.mspx
Usually comes preinstalled with Vista and newer.

Spybot Search and Destroy / Skyalmian
http://www.safer-networking.org/
Free spyware/malware removal tool, I highly reccommend using and updating the immunization feature regularly.

Malwarebytes antimalware / TechPro
http://www.malwarebytes.org/
Supplement to Spybot Search and Destroy, use them both together for the best results.

SUPERAntiSpyware / TigerRaptorFX
http://www.superantispyware.com/

Ad-Aware / Kyouryuu
http://www.lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php

Bazooka Scanner / Skyalmain
http://www.kephyr.com/spywarescanner/in ... bassmanual

Combofix / Krom
http://www.combofix.org/
The 12 pound sledgehammer of malware removal. Warning: improper use can cause irreperable damage to your operating system. Use only when all other options fail.

Virtualization / Emulation / Remote Control:

Virtualbox / Krom
http://www.virtualbox.org
Relatively easy to use virtual machine, can run most common operating systems, experimental 3d support can get older games working.

VMWare Player / Krom
http://www.vmware.com/products/player/
Another easy to use virtual machine, supports 3d acceleration.

DOSBox / heftig
http://www.dosbox.com/
MS Dos emulator for running old DOS games/programs on modern systems.

VDMSound / Skyalmian
http://sourceforge.net/projects/vdmsound/
Realmode sound emulator for old DOS games.

UltraVNC / Top Wop
http://www.uvnc.com/

RealVNC / MD-2389
http://www.realvnc.com/

TightVNC / MD-2389
http://www.tightvnc.com/

NoMachine NX / Sllik
http://www.nomachine.com/
Termamal seriver / VNC replacement

Synergy / Sllik
http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/
Share one keyboard and mouse between two computers, control them as if it was a single computer using dual monitors.

CoRD / TechPro
http://cord.sourceforge.net/
Mac OSX remote desktop client for connecting to windows machines.

File / Disk / Encryption:

7-zip / Kyouryuu
http://www.7-zip.org
Use this instead of winrar or winzip, supports most formats and is multi-threaded for people with dual/quad cores.

Explorer++ / Krom
http://www.explorerplusplus.com/
Alternative to Windows Explorer (Because Windows Explorer went downhill in Vista and got worse in 7).

Servant Salamander / TechPro
http://www.altap.cz/salam_en/

Sequoiaview / CritterB
http://w3.win.tue.nl/nl/onderzoek/onder ... quoiaview/
Graphical representation of files on your hard disk.

SyncBack / Kilarin
http://www.2brightsparks.com/downloads.html#freeware
File backup utility.

TrueCrypt / Skyalmian
http://www.truecrypt.org/
Create encrypted and double encrypted (hidden) drives.

Eraser / Skyalmian
http://sourceforge.net/projects/eraser
Secure file eraser, overwrites and permanently deletes files (note Spybot Search and Destroy comes with a similar tool called Secure Shredder)

DBAN (Darik's Boot And Nuke) / Krom
http://www.dban.org/
Secure drive wiping utility (caution, will completely and permanently destroy all data on a system).

hkSFV / Krom
http://www.big-o-software.com/products/hksfv/
Somewhat outdated but functional file verification utility, able to check entire directories against *.sfv / *.md5 hash lists.

Easy Hash
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Fil ... Hash.shtml
Another file verification utility, not as good as hkSFV but probably crashes less.

Flexible Renamer / Krom
http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA014830 ... /FlexRena/
Insanely powerful (if sometimes difficult to use) mass file renaming utility.

Folder Size / delveneto
http://foldersize.sourceforge.net/
Show folder size in windows explorer (probably doesn't work past Windows XP)

gparted / Skyalmian
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/
Disk partition management utility.

Ext2 IFS driver / Skyalmian
http://www.fs-driver.org/index.html
Allows Windows systems to access and modify Ext2 partitions and drives.

CD Burners / Rippers:

CDBurnerXP / suicide eddie
http://www.cdburnerxp.se/
Free and considerably less bloated alternative to Nero / Roxio.

InfraRecorder / Nosferatu
http://infrarecorder.sourceforge.net/
Another free and considerably less bloated alternative to Nero / Roxio.

ISO Recorder / Kyouryuu
http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com/isorecorder.htm

ImgBurn / Grendel
http://www.imgburn.com/
Possibly the best basic burning / copying suite available.

CDex / Kyouryuu
http://sourceforge.net/projects/cdexos
Probably the best free audio CD ripper.

Boot Disks / rijruna1
http://www.bootdisk.com/

Codecs:

FLAC / Skyalmian
http://flac.sourceforge.net/
Free Lossless Audio Codec (note most players support playback automatically these days).

Lame MP3 & Razorlame / Skyalmian
http://lame.sourceforge.net/
The LAME MP3 project is probably the best free MP3 encoder out there
http://www.dors.de/razorlame/
GUI Front end for LAME MP3

Monkey's Audio / delveneto
http://www.monkeysaudio.com/

Media Players:

foobar2000 / Kyouryuu
http://www.foobar2000.org/
Best music/audio player out there, has extremely powerful plugin system and can handle mass tag editing.

Combined Community Codec Pack (CCCP) / Krom
http://www.cccp-project.net/
Best codec pack for windows period, fast, light and doesn't junk up the system. Includes Media Player Classic Home Cinema edition.

VideoLAN VLC Player / Skyalmain
http://www.videolan.org/
Highly portable media player, also runs in almost any operating system (Windows users should use CCCP instead though).

Winamp / Skyalmian
http://www.winamp.com

Quintessential Media Player / Kyouryuu
http://www.quinnware.com/
Winamp alternative.

Filters / Editors / Misc media related:

Audacity / Kyouryuu
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Freeware audio editor and recorder.

SUPER © / Gekko71
http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html
Multimedia conversion tool.

Aegisub / Skyalmian
http://www.aegisub.net/
Soft subtitle editor.

MKVtoolnix / Skyalmian
http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/
Took kit for creating Matroska files (*.mkv), container for storing video, less overhead than AVI, also supports more advanced video codecs and soft subtitles.

MP3tag / Zantor
http://www.mp3tag.de/en/
Mass MP3 tag editor (if you don't want to use foobar2000).

Free Studio / Gekko71
http://www.dvdvideosoft.com/
Video encoding / editing software.

Debug Mode / Gekko71
http://www.debugmode.com/
Digital Video effects program.

Text Editors / Office Suites / PDF tools:

OpenOffice / Skyalmian
http://www.openoffice.org/
Microsoft Office alternative.

ConTEXT Programmer's Editor / Stryker
http://www.context.cx/
Automatic syntax (programming) highlighting / tabbed text editor, great notepad replacement.

Crimson Editor / Kyouryuu
http://www.crimsoneditor.com/

Notepad++ / Kyouryuu
http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm

Nvu / Kyouryuu
http://www.nvu.com/
WYSIWYG HTML editor.

NoteTab / Kilarin
http://www.notetab.com/
Lite version is freeware.

CutePDF / TechPro
http://www.cutepdf.com/products/cutepdf ... p#download
Free PDF writer.

Foxit PDF reader / CritterB
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader/
Free alternative to Adobe reader, only about 15 times faster and doesn't need a quick launcher that clogs up the system.

Image editing / 3D modeling:

Blender / Skyalmian
http://www.blender.org/
Open source software for 3D modeling, animation, rendering, post-production, interactive creation and playback.

GIMP / Skyalmian
http://www.gimp.org/
Adobe Photoshop alternative.

IrfanView / Kyouryuu
http://www.irfanview.com
Graphics viewer for basic graphics editing, along with batch processing.

Paint.NET / TechPro
http://www.getpaint.net/
Another Photoshop alternative (requires Microsoft .NET framework 2.0).

JAlbum / delveneto
http://jalbum.net/
Create online photo albums.

Caligari trueSpace / AlphaDoG
http://www.caligari.com/
3D modeling/animation software.

StereoPhoto Maker / Kilarin
http://stereo.jpn.org/eng/stphmkr/index.html

General/Misc System utilities:

NirSoft Utilities / delveneto
http://www.nirsoft.net
Many handy utilities, some of the most useful are are ShellExView and ShellMenuView.

den4b utilities / delveneto
http://www.den4b.com/projects.php

Windows Sysinternals / Skyalmian
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysi ... fault.aspx
Think of them as powertoys on steroids, has many extremely useful tools like Autoruns and Process Explorer. The absolute best at everything they do.

Wizmo / Krom
http://www.grc.com/wizmo/wizmo.htm
Old but very useful little gadget if you create the right shortcuts.

RocketDock / Krom
http://rocketdock.com/
Customizable toolbar for Windows, ultimate quicklaunch replacement that doesn't take up space in the taskbar.

KeyTweak / Grendel
http://webpages.charter.net/krumsick/
Sick of bumping the windows key and getting booted out of whatever game you are playing? Remap the Windows key and its solved.

ccleaner / suicide eddie
http://www.ccleaner.com/
Fast housecleaning / anti-paranoia tool. Deletes bloated IE cache faster than IE ever could.

NullSoft scriptable install system / Kilarin
http://nsis.sourceforge.net/Download

CoreTemp / TechPro
http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/
Reads the Digital Thermal Sensor on newer CPUs to give you the most reliable temperature reading possible.

RealTemp / TechPro
http://www.techpowerup.com/realtemp/
Alternative to CoreTemp; reads the same sensor, gives the same results.

Network / Routing utilities:

Tomato router firmware / BUBBALOU
http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato
Alternate firmware for various old/slow and no longer supported routers.

Ethereal / Grendel
http://www.ethereal.com/
Packet monitor for tracking down network/internet issues.

NetStumbler / TechPro
http://www.netstumbler.com/downloads/
Wireless network signal scanner/analyzer.

inSSIDer / TechPro
http://www.metageek.net/products/inssider
Another wireless network signal scanner/analyzer, unlike NetStumbler doesn't require disconnecting to use.

Network Notepad / TechPro
http://www.networknotepad.com/
Create graphical interactive diagrams of your network.

LAN Lights / TigerRaptorFX
http://www.paulmather.net/lanlight.asp
Replaces the missing activity icons in Windows 7 and other OSes, includes bandwidth monitor and other useful components.

Browsers, Mail clients & add-ons:

Mozilla Firefox / Skyalmian
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/
No introduction necessary.

Essential Firefox Add-ons / Krom
+ http://easylist.adblockplus.org/
+ Rick752's easylist + Adblock Plus + ABP Element Hiding Helper.
++ http://noscript.net/
++ NoScript javascript whitelist firefox addon.
The two of them combined make for a safer more secure and largely advertisement free web browsing experience.

Mozilla Seamonkey / Skyalmian
http://www.seamonkey-project.org/
All in one web suite (shares much of the firefox/thunderbird codebase).

Avant Browser / Kyouryuu
http://www.avantbrowser.com/

Mozilla Thunderbird
http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/

FireFTP Mozilla Firefox FTP add-on / WillyP
http://fireftp.mozdev.org/

Grab and drag add-on / Isaac
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1250
iPhone style browsing support in Firefox.

Instant / Messaging:

Miranda Instant Messenger / Skyalmian
http://www.miranda-im.org/
Minimalistic multi-protocol instant messaging client for Windows.

Trillian / Skyalmian
http://www.trillian.cc/
Another multi-protocol instant messaging client for Windows.

mIRC / Krom
http://www.mirc.org/
The most widely supported IRC client.

Teamspeak 2 Client & Server / Skyalmian
http://www.goteamspeak.com/

WordPress / Skyalmian
http://wordpress.org/
Blogging software (for use on your own server).

Semagic / Kyouryuu
http://semagic.sourceforge.net/
Update blogs like LiveJournal.

Wikka / WillyP
http://wikkawiki.org/HomePage
Open source Wiki software.

phpBB / Skyalmian
http://www.phpbb.com/
The forum software that the DBB runs off of currently.

Simple Machines Forum / WillyP
http://www.simplemachines.org/
Another forum software, alternate to phpBB, also PHP based.

HTTP / FTP clients & Severs / Peer to Peer / Other:

Apache HTTP Server / Skyalmian
http://www.apache.org/
Industry standard HTTP server, host your own site (Note hosting might violate your ISPs ToS).

FileZilla FTP Client & Server / Nosferatu
http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/
Fast and easy FTP client. Server is also relatively easy to setup.

SmartFTP / Krom
http://www.smartftp.com/

FTP Commander / Gekko71
http://www.internet-soft.com/

µTorrent / Krom
http://www.utorrent.com/
One of the best Windows torrent clients, light and fast.

Free Download Manager / WillyP
http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/
Segmented download manager (Remember download accelerator? Same concept only free.), don't use the browser plugins though.

Notefish / TechPro
http://www.notefish.com/install-tools.php
Simplify internet research/note taking.

Pencil / Nergen-Ak1-Defender
http://www.pencil-animation.org/
Adobe flash alternative.

Videocard/CPU/Memory utilities:

Drivercleaner Pro

Great little app for cleaning out drivers that their respective uninstall utility does not get rid of.
http://www.afterdawn.com/software/downl ... leaner_pro


GPU Caps Viewer

- Displays supported extensions, CUDA capabilities
- Stability testing
- Temperature readouts
- Video memory capacity

http://www.ozone3d.net/gpu_caps_viewer/

CPUID

http://www.cpuid.com/


Speedfan

http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

GPUZ

Supplement to CPUID but for your video cards

http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

No Firewall post? Here are some free good ones.

Outpost Firewall
http://free.agnitum.com

Comodo
http://personalfirewall.comodo.com

Online Armor Personal Firewall
http://www.tallemu.com/products-online-armor-free.php

Bulk Image converter - self-explanatory

http://sourceforge.net/projects/bulkimageconver/

Nice App installer:

http://ninite.com

just choose and click.

(btw, nice job Krom in reorganizing this thread! )

A collection of \"best\" free software: http://www.techsupportalert.com/

***

K-Lite Codec Pack
http://www.codecguide.com/faq.htm
http://www.codecguide.com/download_kl.htm
Windows
Excellent collection of codec packs. Comes with various download packages depending on needs.

Folder2ISO
http://www.trustfm.net/divx/SoftwareFolder2Iso.php?b2=1
Windows
\"Folder2ISO just creates an *.iso from any kind of folder (with the subfolders). It's a GUI of mkisofs. No need of installation; really small exe. Some of you can say: 'What is the point of this tool? Seems useless.' Well, dvddecrypter/imgburn can burn cd/dvd for free so if you make an iso easily you can burn your movies on cds/dvd for free. It is also useful for the dvd2avi guide... So dvddecrypter/imgburn + Folder2ISO combine an totaly freeware burning kit for all kinds of avi/ogm/mkv!\"

TrayIt!
http://www.teamcti.com/trayit/trayit.htm
Windows 95/98/ME, NT/2000/XP and does not require any installation.
Moves programs / windows to system tray.

I personally love these myself, and i apologize if these have already been mentioned.

WebmailNotifier add on for Firefox
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4490
'WebMail Notifier checks your webmail accounts and notifies the number of unread emails...
Supports : gmail, yahoo, hotmail, daum, naver, empas, nate and more '

ReloadEvery add on for firefox
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/115
'Reloads web pages every so many seconds or minutes. The function is accessible via the context menu (menu you get when you right click on a web page) or via a drop down menu on the reload button ...'

AdBlock Plus add on for firefox
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865
Blocks ads VERY effectively and speeds up loading of web pages

DAEMON Tools Lite
http://www.daemon-tools.cc/eng/downloads
An advanced application for Microsoft Windows which provides one of the best optical media emulation in the industry. DAEMON Tools enables you to convert your physical CD/DVD discs into \"virtual discs\" so called \"images\". It also emulated up to 4 virtual CD/DVD drives, so you can mount (insert) and unmount (eject) images.

Defraggler
http://www.piriform.com/defraggler
Better than your average Windows disk defragmenter.

McAfee SiteAdvisor
http://www.siteadvisor.com/
Application that tells you how bad or good a webpage is and what risks they may contain.

BonkEnc Audio Encoder - rip CDs into any format and convert between different formats

http://www.bonkenc.org/

Mnemosyne (What a catchy name... )
It's a flash card study program.
It seems very lightweight. Has not crashed after weeks of serious use.

Has an optional 3 sided card study mode for learning other languages (easy to activate when needed):
Side1
你好
Side2
nĭ hăo
Side3
Hello.

Supports images on any side of the card. It also supports sound files, but I haven't messed with it yet.

For anyone who's into their family history / geneology :
http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/

Phatch
Very nice photo batch editor.
Open source.
(ubuntu users: Be sure to download the gui package)

The Ultimate Boot CD for Windows

This is probably one of the best utility sets/disk I've seen to date. Ideal for getting rid of bugs and unwanted sh ..stuff At boot up.

It's free and you need a valid Windows CD.

S13driftAZ wrote: Defraggler
http://www.piriform.com/defraggler
Better than your average Windows disk defragmenter.

Maybe more effective, but Grass grows faster than this program runs. It took 12 hours to defrag my drive when it takes windows 20 minutes tops if I haven't done it in a month. (I normally defrag every couple of days or so)

I go to bed rather than wait on it.

Duper wrote:Maybe more effective, but Grass grows faster than this program runs. It took 12 hours to defrag my drive when it takes windows 20 minutes tops if I haven't done it in a month. (I normally defrag every couple of days or so)

By default the program moves fragmented files larger than 100MB to the end of your hard drive's free space. Hence the delay.

Ahhh, that would explain things.. Thanks Sky. I'll look at the settings closer now.

I figured I'd go at a contribution to this thread.
Image editing / 3D modeling:
Wings 3D
http://wings3d.com/
\"Wings 3D is a subdivision modeler inspired by Nendo and Mirai from Izware.\" Easy for a novice modeler to pick up, great for the experienced modeler as well. Definitely worth a look.

Gmax
http://www.turbosquid.com/gmax
Basically an older version of 3DSMax without the ability to render on its own, although plugins and scripts have been made to use programs such as YAFRay for rendering purposes.
Note: The original registration procedures are.. well, broken, but you must register this product in order to use it. there are two ways to do this, both found here: http://www.turbosquid.com/Forum/Index.c ... adID/15975

Miscellaneous
Joy2Key
http://www.electracode.com/4/joy2key/Jo ... ersion.htm
\"This software is a keyboard emulator for joysticks.
It converts joystick input into keyboard input (and mouse input). Use it when you want to control an application with joysticks that doesn't support joystick input. If you wish, you can control even Word, Excel, etc. with joysticks!\"

Neat little Decktop \"uncluttererer\"

Stardock Fences

As powerful as MS Office at only 24 megs!

http://www.softmakeroffice.com

The 2006 version is free. The newer version 2010 is only like 70 bucks. It will do everything that MS Office does and more and Faster. It is 100% compatable as well. (unlike Open Office)

Duper wrote:As powerful as MS Office at only 24 megs!

http://www.softmakeroffice.com

The 2006 version is free. The newer version 2010 is only like 70 bucks. It will do everything that MS Office does and more and Faster. It is 100% compatable as well. (unlike Open Office)

I'm going to say it is impressive ... but NOT as powerful as MS Office, and I'll also say that their compatibility statement is ... a little misleading (but not inaccurate). They state that it can read write seamlessly your Word .doc 6.0 to 2007 files or Excel .xls 5.0 to 2007 files. By saying "to 2007" they give you the impression it's compatible with the Word 2007 and Excel 2007 formats ... but you notice they mention .doc and .xls formats ... because SoftMaker Office cannot even open the .docx and .xlsx formats introduced as the recommended formats in Word 2007 and Excel 2007.

Sadly, there STILL isn't any decent alternative to Word 2007 and Excel 2007 when the .docx and .xlsx formats are involved.

Why are we talking about software circa 2006?

http://www.openoffice.org/

OpenOffice whoops 2006's A**

because the 2006 version is free. 2010 is not.

I just discovered VirtuaWin that creates virtual workspaces similar to Linux. This allows to you to multitask on Windows much easier. Say you're developing one project and then the client calls you with an urgent issue on a completely different project. You can just slide over to the other workspace and be free and clear of all the stuff going on in the first project.

Pretty sweet!

http://virtuawin.sourceforge.net/

IBM Lotus Symphony

A FREE alternative to Word and Excel, IBM Lotus Symphony is a Word Processor, Spreadsheet, and Presentation software with a slick and intuitive interface (many say better than OpenOffice's interface). Using the Open Document file formats (ODF) and with compatibility with Microsoft Word and Excel documents (doc and xls formats), it can also open (but not save in) docx and xlsx formats.

Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms (and they all look and behave alike).

I had issues posting the link so just copy paste: Lots of fun for two people who take turns shooting at each other with gravity bending each shot.

Also, there is Crack Attack.

Xamindar wrote:Also, there is Crack Attack.

Got it! Thanks!

Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, that you can use instead of Illustrator, CorelDraw, and others. It uses the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Looks and feels nearly the same on all three platforms. On the Ubuntu box I tried it on I got it through the software packages.

I've been using it for a while now. It easily opens .ai Illustrator files for me (no questions or conversions as far as I could tell) and lets me work with all the objects. Just won't let me save it as a .ai ... just as a .svg. Liked it so well I've installed it on 5 systems so far (3 Windows, a Mac, and a Ubuntu).

Seriously guys.. games?

move on

Back to Awesome Free Software (v2.0) - not games

Secure your system by scanning for outdated applications that will need patching. Provides everything upfront.

Secunia PSI


This one is worth checking out. Quoted off the website,

"Convert video free to AVI, MP4, WMV, MKV, SWF, 3GP, DVD, MPEG, MP3, iPod, iPhone, PSP, Android, rip & burn DVD, convert online videos directly from 40+ sites, burn Blu-ray, and upload to YouTube with our free video converter!"

Freemake Video Converter

BlueGriffon
http://www.bluegriffon.org/
"A new WYSIWYG content editor for the World Wide Web. Powered by Gecko, the rendering engine of Firefox 4, it's a modern and robust solution to edit Web pages in conformance to the latest Web Standards."

KompoZer
http://www.kompozer.net/
"A complete web authoring system that combines web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing."

LibreOffice
http://www.documentfoundation.org/
Fork of OpenOffice (a Microsoft Office alternative) due to OpenOffice's acquisition by ORACLE.

TextPattern
http://textpattern.com/
Web page "open source content management system."

KeePass - http://keepass.info/

Free password management tool, that stores them all in a 256-bit AES encrypted database. You can even sync the database to a USB flash drive, and take it with you! I suggest you all start using it, and prevent your account from being compromised by a dictionary attack.