What are your favorite freewares?
Asked by
jlm11f (
12413
)
May 31st, 2008
Please also tell us (very briefly) what each freeware does.
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35 Answers
Handbrake: DVD video ripper
iTunes: yeah, it’s freeware
VLC: multi-format video player
Senuti: iPod to iTunes copying
VLV (again)
iSquint: convert videos for iPods
Handbreak: More video conversion
Mac The Ripper: DVD ripping
VLC (again tooo)
Azureus: Bit Torrent
Dougs Apple Script: Not technically a program but there are loads of great scripts here
Twitterriffic: Twitter Client (add suported for the free version)
Skype
All on Mac although lots have windows versions.
Aduim—The mother of multi-protocol chat apps.
Cyberduck—A rockin’ free FTP client.
VLC—I would die without it.
The Unarchiver—If someone compressed it The Unarchiver will make the file usable.
VirtualBox—When the cock-punch doesn’t drop me to my knees and my boss makes me run Windows in OS X.
JP – I share your sentiments about VLC.
Copernic search (indexes all files on computer for quick search)
Firefox !
Avast! antivirus
@ lifeflame – how is copernic search different from running a regular computer search (Winkey + F)? is it just faster?
Agree with many of the above. Also:
growl (notifier)
quicksilver (app launcher and so much more)
@phoenyx Yeah I agree with Growl, forgot about that!
Mozilla Firefox – browser
InType – best css editor
Trillian – best IM client
Adove Fireworks CS4 Beta
Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 Beta – best web design software in the planet, now free while its still in beta
eSword is my fav freeware.
oh yeah eSword is a free Bible software.
Thanks Mirza, I forgot Firefox, which I love!
im missing transmission here, best torrent client for the mac!
What the hang is VLV & VLM? I’m so far out of the loop i’s ridiculous. Only Gail understands my situation (both being senior citizens). I do have and love gmail and Firefox though! So there!!
MenuMeters It’s a system monitoring tool, lets you see CPU load, net usage, RAM all at a glance in the menu bar.
…unless you’re not on a Mac.
For Windows, I’d have to say Snarl, which is a Win32 port of Growl, essentially.
@ chaos – thanks for mentioning Snarl, when I heard about Growl from phoenyx’s answer, i was hoping there was a similar thing for Windows!
Im pretty found of Pidgin. Its a multi protocal messenger with lots of cool plugins. (ie when someone opens a window to start a convo with me, before they even send the message i have their window pop up and it says ” i sense a disturbance in the force“so i know they are going to say something before they do.)
Iwa i use transmission on ubuntu as well, its a solid torrent client imo.
CCleaner – cleans temp files, etc.
DC++/Shakespeer – DC Client
7Zip – archive tool
Azureus, Utorrent – BT Clients
Dev/C++ – great C/C++ IDE for windows
Adblock Plus, greasemonkey – Firefox extensions
MediaCoder – media converter
Portable Apps – firefox, etc. optimized for portability
GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program)
K-Lite Media Codec Pack/Media Player Classic
FileZilla, cyberduck – FTP Clients
putty – sftp/ssh/telnet client
OpenOffice
Spybot Search & Destroy
Audacity – simple audio editing
KisMAC/iStumbler – wireless utilities
@ zarnold – wow you have quite the list there.
Can we include widgets?
keybr.com: wbe clipping for typing practice
iStat pro: For system monitoring via the dashboard.
@johnpowell Unarchiver – had never heard of it, but will give it a whirl, I’m glad you mentioned it. There is nothing more frustrating than getting your hands on something and then further unable to use it because of the inability to decompress it.
My favorite freeware, one that I use on a near-daily basis is very small, it’s called Convert. It also has the ability to create your own conversion. If you have the time, the site itself is also a hoot.
There’s also an ongoing list of best freeware from Gizmo’s Tech Support Alert. It’s constantly changing and being updated, with input from users.
Xubuntu – operating system
Firefox – duh
Abiword – very fast word processor
Bluefish – very good webdevelopment text editor
Xfce – lightweight yet feature-rich desktop environment
Inkscape – vector image editor
GIMP – bitmap image editor
Compiz – pretty desktop effects, look it up on Youtube ;-)
…goes on to check his list of installed applications…
Gnome-app-install – very easy way to install software and automatically receive updates
MPD – music player that I control with my keyboard, takes a lot of configuring though
Thunar – very good and fast file manager (though you might count that under Xfce)
emesene – very good Live messenger clone
PHP – scripting language
Virtualbox – run an operating system in a window on another operating system (virtual machine)
Phew, that was quite the list…
@PnL – yes, Copernic Search is a gazillion times faster than Windows search. It indexes your computer, so most keywords take about two seconds to locate (from all e-mails, pictures, e-mail/messenger contacts, videos, etc)
@Vincentt i heart Compiz. Theres really no point to half the stuff it does, but it looks cool as hell and is just fun to use.
@Vincentt Im just curious why your running Xubuntu, i don’t have a problem with it, i just like to know other peoples thoughts and what they do, and compare it to my own techniques. I usually use Xubuntu on older PC’s because its smaller and is the lightest Official Ubuntu Distro, so it runs smoother.
I’m “actually after i press the “Answer!” Button”, going to be running Windows XP Pro RAID 0 on x2 150GB HDD’s. Then on a separate PCI SATA card, Im going to be running Ubuntu 8.04 on a 500GB, then of course dual boot it. Then i have a 320, 250, and x2 160’s to also more and copy stuff back and forth. Now to my post.
AVG
Ad-Aware
Foxit Reader
Open Office
Thunderbird
Firefox
VLC
CCleaner
Notepad++
damnNFO Reader
Winamp
Ace Mega Codec Pack
Azureus
Hamachi
Last.fm
Frostwire
nLite
TightVNC
TVUPlayer
Just click the link and read what each does Cheers! =]
@iceblu – I just find Xfce to be the cleanest desktop environment. It just “feels” better, no overly big menu’s, logical options yet enough room to customize, very user-friendly, and I suppose the speed (if your computer isn’t too old) helps too.
That, and the excellent range of available software from Ubuntu, the superb Xubuntu community and the top-notch Ubuntu tools like Add/Remove… make it my favourite. It’s just too bad that people only try it on slow computers and thus associate the Xfce experience with a slow one…
By the way, I also very much like Last.fm, but since every media player I’ve ever used (MPD at the moment) has plugins for that I didn’t list it separately.
@Vincentt Yes, i know, almost every media player in linux has a plugin for last.fm, and i love it. Its a shame windows or mac users are not even nearly as cool as us linux dudes. =]
p.s. I have successfully installed ubuntu 8.04 on my machine. I’m installing compiz-git as we speak and its customize city from there =].
Oh please, I’m way behind, I still need to install 8.04… I guess I want to do a proper backup this time but I don’t have a spare hard drive yet…
I’ve ran Beryl from subversion when Trevino offered that for *buntu, but since there’s been a “stable” official version of Compiz and Compiz Fusion for us I’ve been using that. I’m no longer on the edge as I used to be, I guess the most cutting-edge I’m running is a beta of Bluefish ;-)
@Vincentt Look Here for a screenshot of what i currently have done. =] i love firefox 3!
ahhhh giving me the run around thx =D Nice, its clean, i have a 7950GT, so i can afford to make it snow of them hoes and not worry about anything else lagging, or preventing me from functioning properly. =] I also have fishes! =P
I’m sorry, i love linux so much. Ill say it.
Haha, can’t do that with my “stable” version ;-)
Though I really don’t like every Linux distribution, and I don’t particularly like the kernel (“Linux”) either because I have hardly any idea what it does :P
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