Top 10 Software Titles Every Home PC Needs?

eabell asks: "I'm buying a new mid-grade laptop computer, which I plan to dual-boot between Windows XP Home and Mandrake 9.x. Before its arrival in a few weeks I'm trying to think of what 'essential' software I'll need to make a usable home system. In general I'd like to spend as little money as possible (free is good). As far as my needs, think 'typical family PC' without an emphasis on gaming. I know I can get something like Open Office for word processing, presentation, etc. needs, but is there such a good thing as a good free virus checker? A good free email client? A handy web browser? What would you consider the top 10 (or so) pieces of software for a new home system, bearing in mind that I need software for both the Windows and Linux side of things?"

If you are too cheap for an AV program....

[jawtheshark]

For a free Antivirus software go for AVG Anti-Virus [grisoft.com]. Free for non-commercial, non-networked use. It's what I install on people's machines when they are low on cash, and want to continue running Windows.

Mozilla

[TimCrider]

I've been using Mozilla firebird for my main browser and it's been really solid.

I also use Mozilla thunderbird for my email, and have been really happy with it.

You can get them from mozilla.org [mozilla.org]

ad-aware

[HaveBlue34]

ad-aware, free for private use.
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/

Top ten Windows apps to install.

[EggMan2000]

Here is my top ten list (in no particular order) for Windows. I'll let everyone argue about the Linux tools.
CygWin [cygwin.com] the Linux-like environment for Windows.
Mozilla [mozilla.org] naturally.... Use this for mail, news, and browsing if you like.
WS FTP Light [ipswitch.com] a FREE, FTP client that works great.
PuTTY [greenend.org.uk] a free SSH client for Windows.
VNC [realvnc.com] remote controll software, NOTE: the location is no longer on the ATT Labs UK site.
GNU-EMacs [gnu.org] for Windows. I usually install it, but use Vi more.
Dev-C++ [bloodshed.net] a free C++ compiler. I use VC++ 6.0, but this is free, and I think it's pretty good.
NetHack [nethack.org] You MUST have NetHack installed on everything...
Free-AV [free-av.com] free Anti-Virus software for Windows.
Boingo [boingo.com] to see where the closest hotspot is. (free) you don't need the service.

Mozilla Firebird

[cbqwinner]

It's small, fast and has a ton of built in features.

Some windoze essentials

[T-Kir]

AVG Free edition [grisoft.com]

Zonealarm [zonelabs.com]

Winamp Classic [winamp.com]

..they are the first things I install.

Re:Kazaa Lite

[Sir Haxalot]

Once you have that, everything else is only a few clicks away...
Along the same lines... Bittorrent [bitconjurer.org]
oh and here's a link to Kazaa Lite [edskes.com]

Quicken or equivalent

[mccalli]

I came out of University ten years ago, got a job and wondered why I was still broke at the end of every month. I finally bought a spanking new 486 as development/Doom machine, and decided that for that amount of money I'd better try to do something useful with it too.

Quicken.

Now, I have no real experience with alternatives so this is a rant about using financial software in general, not Quicken in particular. However, the use I've got out of that piece of software is astounding. The information it gives you for planning is just priceless. You always know where you are, roughly what to expect, can play with what-if's to check how your situation might change...it's excellent.

Get a home finance package, and get into the habit of using it about once a week. I guarantee you won't regret it.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:If you are too cheap for an AV program....

[cK-Gunslinger]

I will second this comment, as I like AVG.

I keep a CD of free Windows software for people (helpful when I build them a new PC.)

AVG Anti-Virus (AV)
OpenOffice (Office)
Firebird (Browser)
Thunderbird (email)
AdAware (Spyware seek-n-destroy)
Winamp (Multimedia)
3DMark (benchmarking)
some game demos
etc...

Pricelessware

[cybermace5]

Go to the Pricelessware [pricelessware.org] site maintained by the alt.comp.freeware Usenet group. On the group, they post and evalute freeware, and the winners make it on to the pricelessware list. Nagware, adware and shareware are frowned upon; the vast majority of the programs listed are no-strings freeware.

For IM...

[CGP314]

For instant messaging, I'd go with gaim. [sourceforge.net] Its ability to let you talk to people while leaving an away message up is a lifesaver for avoiding ex-girlfriends.

Irfanview

[Anonymous Coward]

The best, lightweight graphics viewer, also does movies and sound clips. Great for slideshows keyboard shortcuts for everything. Even my mum can use it and she can't even use a mouse (seriously)

www.irfanview.com

Lets see...

[Lord Kholdan]

1) Firewall. You will need a good firewall. I've had good experience with Sygate personal firewall. But I'm by no means expert on this.

2) New Browser. Some people are happy with IE but most appreciate the choice. I suggest Opera. As a plus, that'll also include a mail program but I cant comment about that.

3) Audio. Winamp is the winner here, hands down.

4) Video. If you're unhappy with WMP I suggest ZoomPlayer. Remember to download few codec packs too.

5) This isn't really something to buy but I'll say it anyway. Newest service pack/patches. When starting from a clean table they're much easier to install and it's good to start with a patched computer, even if you're too lazy to keep it that way.

Oh and links:
www.sygate.com
www.opera.com
www.winamp. com
http://www.inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_down load. shtml

Those should get you started.

Spyware stuff

[zapp]

The best Ad-ware / Spyware removal tool I've found is
SpyBot Search & Destroy [com.com]

There is also Ad-Aware [lavasoft.com] though.

Other stuff (non spyware related):
Winamp [winamp.com](2x is best)
Trillian [trillian.cc]/Gaim
Browsers (and mail): IE6, Mozilla, Opera are all fine

I've found both SlickRun and PopupPopper from Bayden Software [bayden.com] to be useful as well.

ZoneAlarm

[TheTomcat]

I was discussing the virtues of software firewalls with my co-workers this morning.

It's REALLY nice to be able to see what's "phoning home", on top of the regular firewall.

There's a free version, too.

S

Re:Some windoze essentials

[millahtime]

Don't install Zone Alarm. It can cause your internet connection to stop working and is a pain to fix. There are several documented issues with it and to fix it is a total pain. They used to have some of these issues and fixes documented at their site but pulled them. One of their reps told me that the only fix for one of the problems was a reformat and reinstall of the OS because they were never able to trace the problem.

Re:Top ten Windows apps to install.

[cavemanf16]

I completely agree with the above poster's advice. Add in:
OpenOffice 1.1 [openoffice.org]
and
Winamp 2.x [winamp.com] for audio/video usage in Windows, or
XMMS 1.8 [xmms.org] for audio/video usage in Linux.

Re:mozilla & cygwin

[maxume]

I tend to prefer unxutils [sourceforge.net] and MinGw [mingw.org].
Why depend on cygwin, when msvcrt is already gonna be there?

Kerio Firewall, Norton Ghost.

[Tackhead]

> Openoffice and Zonealarm.

Kerio [kerio.com] Personal Firewall.

Kerio is a rules-based GUI-configurable software firewall tool. It ain't a hardware firewall, but it's IMO much more configurable and flexible than ZoneAlarm.

And Norton Ghost. Because if you're smart enough to keep your personal data on a separate partition from the OS and applications, re-dumping a partition takes 15 minutes when things get b0rk3d, thereby beating the fuck out of reinstalling Winblows and downloading patches.

Re:Top ten Windows apps to install.

[EisPick]

A few (free) alternatives:

• Instead of Mozilla, I prefer the leaner Firebird [mozilla.org] for browsing and Eudora [eudora.com] for email. If you take the time to learn how to use the Filters feature, Eudora's pretty good at filtering spam. Especially if you crank up the size of the History of addresses you sent to and store your contacts in the address book. You can then filter messages whose sender "doesn't intersect" your address book or history into a spam folder.
• Instead of WS FTP, I prefer Filezilla [sourceforge.net], which is truly free (you have to pretend to be a student or a non-profit to use WS FTP for free) and does sftp as well.
• TTSSH [zip.com.au] is a much less clunky ssh client than PuTTY.

Also:

• If you use a Palm, PalmEudora Sync [wanadoo.fr] keeps your addressbooks synchronized (which will help with those Eudora spam filters).
• Mark's Adding Machine [freeyellow.com] is much better than the Windows calculator for balancing checkbooks.

Re:ZoneAlarm

[Karhgath]

Stay Away from ZoneAlarm. I'm serious. It causes more headaches than anything, have some bugs when unistalling, is generally not very good at doing it's job and takes stupid decisions if you don't configure it correctly from the get-go. It also is the worst UI i've seen.

The best one, in my previous experience as an ISP tech support, is Tiny Personal Firewall. I'm not sure it has a free version(I think it has one, but it's an older build), but it's about 50$ IIRC for the full version. Sygate is also nice.

Total Commander

[Karamchand]

A perfect file manager. No mouse needed, fully customizable, packer and filesystem plugins.
For the Linux side use for example midnight commander.

My top 10

[webscathe]

My suggestions for the Windows side...

For email I'd definitely recommend Eudora [eudora.com] as it can be used free (ad based, but small add window) and isn't suceptible to propagating the many viruses that target Outlook.

As someone previously mentioned, I'd also recommend Opera [opera.com], again, ad based, but a solid browser and mouse gestures rule!

Someone else also mentioned AVG [grisoft.com] for antivirus, probably the best option for free antivirus.

CDEX [com.com] is a great MP3 ripping program that I've always used.

We can't forget Sonique [sonique.com] and WinAmp [winamp.com] for playing your MP3's. I prefer Sonique but that's just me.

Then of course there's Winzip, Adobe Acrobat, QuickTime, VNC, and ZoneAlarm or BlackIce (all available at download.com). These are all (except perhaps VNC) must have utilities for a Windows box.

Re:Some windoze essentials

[Ost99]

NEVER ever install ZoneAlarm!
It corrupts downloads, uses a *lot* of system resources and shuts down connectins at random (IMAP is a real pain with ZoneAlarm).

Use Kerio [kerio.com] instead. It's free, and just as easy to set up.

- Ost

Re:Top ten Windows apps to install.

[yerricde]

use openssh from cygwin

Does Cygwin OpenSSH have GUI configuration? PuTTY does.

use emacs AND vim from cygwin

Cygwin Emacs seems to have problems with key bindings [gnu.org]. And does Cygwin Emacs support use of a pointing device without having to install Cygwin XFree86? Or is it a TTY app?

>Dev-C++ a free C++ compiler.

*cough* cygwin

Dev-C++ is an IDE that wraps GCC, either the GCC from MinGW or the GCC from Cygwin. Does Cygwin come with an IDE (and don't say Emacs)?

Re:If you are too cheap for an AV program....

[mechugena]

I personally would add Spybot - Search & Destroy [safer-networking.org] to that list. It has some of the same functionality of AdAware, and even supercedes it in some cases. My laptop and home system run them concurrently, and I'm gradually throwing it on the systems at work. I hate having to go around removing all that spyware manually. When will the users listen?

Knoppix

[jonfelder]

Every home machine needs a copy of knoppix sitting next to it. This way when an update causes their machine to blue screen on start up, they will have everything they need for to allow for their techy friend to do a data recovery.

Re:Some windoze essentials

[NexusTw1n]

I used to rave about ZA being the king of firewalls.

However I've now seen with my own eyes several machines totally screwed by ZA - and yes, by trial and error I've proven it was ZA that was causing the problems.

It can do weird things to the TCP/IP stack that can only be undone under XP with an NETSH IPRESET command, or by uninstalling and reinstalling the protocol in 2000/ME/98. The problem will reoccur as soon as you reactivate Zone Alarm.

I wouldn't recommend it, even in it's free form anymore. Which is a shame, because it used to be damn good.

Irfanview is a must (and other picks)

[gosand]

Some of my must-haves....

Irfanview [irfanview.com] - hands down the best image viewer out there for Windows. Free. Windows only (but will run under Wine if you want)

Gimp [gimp.org] - if you want to edit images. Free. Linux and Windows.

MAME [mame.net] - for games, period. Free. You can buy some ROMs, or *ahem* ask around. Windows and Linux. (Xmame)

CDex [n3.net] - for CD ripping in Windows. Free. Windows only, but several good ripping programs are available for Linux. (search freshmeat)

GNUWin [gnuwin.epfl.ch] - a collection of free apps for Windows. Worth the download.

Audacity [sourceforge.net] - if you want to create/edit sound files. Free. Linux and Windows.

Winamp [winamp.com] - for listening to audio files. Free. Windows only. I like XMMS for Linux over Freeamp.

Opera [opera.com] - web browsing, email. Free. Windows and Linux. I prefer it over Mozilla, but not by much.

Re:other programs

[aldoman]

Mozilla Firebird has the best popup blocker ever.

All popups are blocked by default. If you run into one of those dodgey websites that spring a nice flash window right up in a popup, you just click the little Blue 'I' icon, press 'unblock' and refresh.

Also, if you want to open a link which opens in a popup, double click on it. That lets Firebird know that you really want this and it isn't a popup ad attached to a link.

0.7 is nearly finished (its out roughly the same time Moz 1.5 is out) and it is far better than the others. Better password manager, web sidebars etc.

Personally, I think firebird has a little while to go for the 'great unwashed' but most of the problems will be fixed by 1.0. How about an intellegent web installer that only installs the things you want? Basic browser? Choose the basic option. Developer? Choose the developer option and get a bunch of useful web development extensions downloaded and built in. RSS/Blog maniac? Choose the news option etc.

Personally if Mozilla Firebird moves quicker, I can't see why PC manufacturers won't load it as default. Dell could advertise they have a 'custom' web browser with popup and ad blocker. Dress it up with a custom Dell skin, and they can make it seem like they have made a brand new browser.

Re:If you are too cheap for an AV program....

[gpinzone]

Try Irfanview [irfanview.com] instead. It's free.

Windows suggestions

[W2k]

Mozilla [mozilla.org], powerful and free web browser/mail suite.
OpenOffice [openoffice.org], powerful office suite.
Ad-Aware [lavasoftusa.com] for keeping spyware (Gator etc) out.
BitTorrent [bitconjurer.org] for all your P2P needs.
ZomeAlarm [zonelabs.com] a good firewall.
Avast! Antivirus [avast.com] good AV app, free for home use.
TextPad [textpad.com] powerful and easy-to-use text editor.
SmartFTP [smartftp.com] powerful and free FTP client.

On top of these, I always install these non-free apps (non-development related):
Paint Shop Pro [jasc.com] all the relevant functionality from Photoshop at a much better price.
Klient [klient.com] the best IRC client. Ever.

Some people have mentioned:
CygWin - a home, non-dev PC doesn't need it
VNC - a home, non-dev PC doesn't need it, and it has security issues
Dev-C++ - not needed on a home PC, it's for development.
NetHack - huh!?
Boingo - the article submitter didn't mention anything about having a WLAN card, so why would he need to find hotspots?
Winamp - redundant since Microsoft released WMP9, which I've found to be just as fast, more stable than WA3, and better at playing movies. Of course, YMMV, and some people prefer to stay away from MS stuff for ideological reasons.

Re:Some windoze essentials

[EinarH]

Or Sygate [sygate.com]

Much better than ZoneAlarm.

And do not think that "XP allready got a firewall" because that firewall don't stop outgoing connections. So when one of those trojans has snagged all your banking information the Xp firewall won't help you stop it.
Having a firewall that detects outgoing connections is vital to learning about new spyware/malware/trojans/virus on your computer.

My top ten picks

[guacamolefoo]

Sorry for the repeats of others' picks, but you wanted my advice, and here it is:

1. AVG Antivirus - free for home users with free updates
   
2. OpenOffice.org 1.1 (office suite)
   
3. Irfan (for image viewing)
   
4. Mozilla - tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking and email filtering
   
5. Pegasus Mail (an alternative email client if you hate Mozilla's)
   
6. Winamp for audio playing (I prefer the 2.x versions)
   
7. CDex (for making MP3 files from CD)
   
8. MAME (for playing old arcade games)
   
9. Nero (for burning CDs)
   
10. Qcast media player (lets my PS2 read video, photo, and MP3 files from my computer so that it can display same on my TV rig)
    

Other tools that I use extensively, but which are not necessarily "home user" applications are:

1. Putty (for ssh connections to servers)
   
2. WS-FTP (ftp - free for non-commercial use)
   
3. VNC (lets me take control of other machines remotely using the GUI, also lets me control my home machine remotely the same way)
   

As far as entertainment titles go, it really depends on your preferences, but mine are:

1. Baldur's Gate I/II
   
2. Neverwinter Nights (tons of free modules extend the playability tremendously)
   
3. Civil War Generals II (very, very cheap and it's a neat (American) Civil War game, also lets you create scenarios to play. The stuff they give you is really easy to beat, though. I'd like to see a third edition of this title.)
   

Re:ZoneAlarm

[YomikoReadman]

I've read over half a dozen posts like this so far, but this is the last on my viewables, so I'll post my reply here.

Personally, I don't see why everyone is bashing ZA. I have been running it since they started releasing a free version, and have never had a single problem ever. On the other hand, I have watched BlackICE, Tiny, Sygate, and every other personal firewall I have tried let everything through that I didn't want coming in. Can ZA be a bit of pain as far as configuration goes? Yes, it can. I personally find it to be a bit of a pain whenever any of my MMOs are patched, because I have to reallow access. On the flip side of that, do I have to worry about script kiddies getting in through my mail or FTP ports? No, I don't because if an IP isn't on my ZA allow list, it doesn't get through, period. As far as an Uninstall bug goes, I have never run into that, while I have had that problem with all the Firewalls I mentioned.

Mac OS X and iLife

[Anonymous Coward]

All you need is Mac OS X and iLife. Mac OS X gives you Safari, Mail, TextEdit, iCal, Address Book, and iSync, plus the built-in firewall, DVD player, and DVD/CD burner. iLife is iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie, and iDVD.

For home use, you literally don't need anything more than these.

What's that? You don't have a Mac? Ohhhh, you poor thing.

Here's my standard list...

[msimm]

Windows:

Kerio [kerio.com] /or Sygate [sygate.com] for firewall (both are good)
Aladdin's free StuffIt Expander [stuffit.com] (unpacks a lot of different compressed files, including SIT and Gunzip's)
AVG antivirus [grisoft.com] (free for personal home use)
QuickClear lite [macrospeed.net] (deletes IE cookies/cache/empty's trash)
StartPro [daesoft.com] (well, it used to be free. Gives you a nice list of programs set to load at bootup, including registry keys.)
Ad-Aware [lavasoftusa.com] everybodies favorite adware/malware answer.

Mandrake is (of course) easy:

Got the Easy Urpmi [zarb.org] and follow the directions to install all the different media sites. Once you do that (its just a cut and paste job) you can fire up rpmdrake and search for software by name/description/type/etc. Mandrake installs with a lot of the right stuff already. I'd recommend maybe installing nano (easy command line text editor if you hate VI/VIM/EMACS/ETC) and of course if you running a system with a NVidia card get the NVIDIA drivers (rpmdrake, but if their not listed NVidia [nvidia.com] will have them).

Re:Total Commander

[Murdoc]

I have to agree with this one here, I've been using TC since it was still called Windows Commander (after Norton Commander) but M$ sent them a "nasty" letter [ghisler.com] about using the word "windows". Rather than fight them at all they just changed the name because they felt that it was limiting them anyway, so now they can go cross-platform. I love it when someone can turn a disadvantage into an advantage. Best ability you can have in life!

One feature you didn't mention was the wicked FTP client. Since the program is two-pane, the ftp client works virtually identical to your local files. Not to mention the file sorting tools, the multi-rename tools, MIME en/decoders, etc. And the built-in packer treats zip and arj files like directories. Thus, I don't need Win Explorer, WinZip, or an FTP client. All combined in one easy package!

And btw you can get it here. [ghisler.com]

Good free software for Windows

[doodleboy]

Despite Microsoft's press releases to the contrary, Windows machines are not secure and need decent firewall and antivirus software. I see others have already mentioned the Kerio firewall [kerio.com], so I'll just add that it can be easily extended with Sponge's excellent, freely available filters [geocities.com]. (I'm using set 2, but there are versions that are both more or less rigorous). I've also AVG Antivirus installed it seems to work well enough.

Some other useful free utilities:

Tclockex [iafrica.com]
A small utility that greatly increases the usefullness of the system tray clock. You can have the date as well as the time, as well as a resource monitor that lets you know at a glance how the system is doing.

AboutTime" [arachnoid.com]
A little applet that sets the system clock from a list of time servers. Works well and unobtrusively.

7-zip [7-zip.org]
An easy to use explorer plug-in that understands most kinds of compressed files.

CDex [sourceforge.net]
A great tool for ripping / converting CDs and mp3s.

X-teq> [xteq.com]
A very powerful utility that lets you change pretty much everything that's changeable in Windows. Allows you to set Windows update registration done, which would only be useful to pirates and won't be mentioned here.

The Proxomitron [arcor.de]
A web proxy that strips out ads, pop-ups and other garbage.

I'm more familiar with Redhat, but I have no doubt Mandrake will come out of the box with programs that are functionally equivalent to the ones listed here.

Re:Top ten Windows apps to install.

[Eil]

TTSSH is a much less clunky ssh client than PuTTY.

Less clunky? C'mon. I haven't used TTSSH in a long time, but I remember having nothing but troubles with it. PuTTY configuration is easy (if a little odd at first), the binary is small, and is dead simple to install.

TTSSH:
* Download Teraterm
* Install Teraterm
* Download TTSSH
* Unzip TTSSH
* Run TTSSH

PuTTY:
* Download PuTTY
* Run PuTTY

Also, I note that on the TTSSH pages it still says that TTSSH does not support SSH v2 and never will. PuTTY does, which is useful for me, because I use v2 pretty much exclusively on my network.

Re:If you are too cheap for an AV program....

[blibbleblobble]

"I keep a CD of free Windows software for people (helpful when I build them a new PC.)"

A good version of this is The OpenCD [theopencd.org] for people who want ideas, or to check your own "useful programs" CD against what other people are using.

(disclaimer: one of my programs was on the suggestions list for theopencd)

My Top 10

[LilMikey]

Windows
1) OpenOffice -- free
2) AVG -- free
3) Gaim -- free
4) Media Player Classic -- free
5) Nero -- ~$50
6) PowerDVD -- ~$50
7) PSP -- ~$50
8) AdAware -- free
9) Sygate Personal Firewall -- free
10) SecondLife [secondlife.com] :) -- tiered monthly

It's a bit unbalaced to list applications for Linux as so much ships with the distributions but so little is handcuffed to them. But here's what I seem to use the most:

Linux
1) MythTV -- free
2) OpenOffice -- free
3) Evolution -- free
4) Gaim -- free
5) MPlayer -- free
6) Xine -- free
7) Gimp -- free
8) Mozilla -- free
9) XMMS -- free
10) Dia -- free

Re:Top ten Windows apps to install.

[bcisys]

SAProxy is a free, easily setup version of SpamAssasin for Windows, and works great. Get it on the Bloomba [bloomba.com] site, at http://saproxy.bloomba.com/moreinfo.php [bloomba.com]

Other fine suggestions.

[DaedalusLogic]

HTML-Kit by Chami and can be found at www.chami.com is an excellent editor for programming. It has the ability to plug in modules. It is one of the primary reasons I still use Windows at all. There are some OSS solutions coming of age but nothing I like well enough yet.

PDF Creator as a replacement for Adobe Acrobat.
RealVNC as a replacement for PCAnywhere.

Of course you know a lot of the GPL stuff is cross platform so that's good...

Let's see other stuff I have on my CD, and I do have all the good stuff Gunslinger mentioned...

Snadboy's Revelation (Password Recovery for *** fields)
Password Safe
PuTTY for SSH and Telnet
MySQL-Front for GUI DB use.
WS-FTP for non-com use.
Audacity for sound file editing.
Divx
dBPowerAmp for music conversion
Trillian and GAIM for IM... bite me Yahoo.

I could go on for hours... I'm a professional cheapskate!

Re:If you are too cheap for an AV program....

[Pushnell]

I find that it is as good as any of the commercial ones (I am virus free).

Have I got some AV software for you! It's only one batch file, and it's open-source too! Here it is:

ECHO No viruses found.

Seriously tho, I have seen lesser software (for sake of not starting a flame-war, I won't mention any names) miss viruses, which gives end-users a false sense of security. Then they bring their computers to me and say "It's not working right, but I know I don't have any viruses. My software says so."

On top of that, when I do find viruses on their computer with commercial anti-virus software, they occasionally accuse me of lying ... "Well, it SAID it didn't have any viruses, so you must be wrong. Did you put a virus in there young man?"

I know free software is nice, but viruses & worms are one area where it's worth your $50. (at least to me it is.) If my OpenOffice or Mozilla doesn't work right, I'm not gonna be picking viruses out of my network for the next few days.

Re:Other fine suggestions.

[bhtooefr]

On Windows (the only OS I'm using right now, and my Inspiron 1100 probably won't get SuSE due to it's extreme Windevice usage), here goes (not in any particular order):
1. Acrobat Reader
2. WinZip
3. Opera 7.20
4. Eudora 6
5. Google Toolbar (even if you don't use IE, you should put it on your CD)
6. StarOffice 7 (it's for educational uses, OK?)
7. UltraVNC (client only if it's not your box)
8. AVG AntiVirus (for your own box)
9. ZoneAlarm (at least 3.7 - 3.5 BLOWS big time)
10. CoolPlayer (gets around those WiMP security holes, plays MP3 and Ogg)

my cheap/free/OSware CD

[spamhog]

I have abt. 500MB of stuff on my pennyless-friend-saver Windows CD. My selection for you is not all from this CD though.

I still use Win9x, and will keep on til forced to upgrade by the Mob. (I also use Debian, of course).

On 9X the key problem is keeping the PC alive and healthy -> use as little MS products as you can.

So, in order:

1)) Use Ranish Partition Manager from a Windows boot floppy to cut up all the partitions you need. Remember to mimic on the Win side a multi-partition scheme as the one on Linux (My values: System 5GB, temp 0.5, swap 0.5, and two data partitions for hot & cold data, + a 5GB extra partition for a mirror of the clean-installed system). Leave Ranish installed on Windows to hack up partitions other than the system one, and to check if the partition table is healthy.

2) Opera or Mozilla for browser, mail, (and with Mozilla also newsreader / HTML editor), so you can use Internet Explorer ONLY FOR WINDOWS UPDATE, THE OCCASIONAL STUPID IE-ONLY SITE, AND NOTHING ELSE. Notice that Opera can also update your Java support.

3) Computer Associates' EZ Armor. Their customer service is not that good, but their sw is excellent, reasonably lightweight, non-intrusive and not very expensive. Do NOT use their firewall.

4) If you can, get an OLDER (before V.3) Zonalarm Pro firewall. Lighter, more stable, enough fine grain selective port enabling. If you can't find it, do use the Armor firewall.

5) X-teq's X-Setup for moving around key data locations (eg, putting all temp files on the temp drive etc etc) and reconfiguring the living daylights out of the irrational and selfdestructive original Windows setup.

6) Open Office is fine and getting better. Sadly, Microsoft's ugly secret formats have not been completely reverse engineered. If you have to use MS Office, see if you can get a legal 2nd hand copy of the '97 version - AFAIK, it was still the most popular with US corporations as of 2002.

7) Multimedia: try to get the old Windows Media Player 6.4 for basic use. I suggest not to touch the more recent versions, which I consider bordering on malware. But do install it, to get all the new dll's - only do not associate it with any filetypes. Also install the latest Quicktime and Real One free players. But for the actual interface, I prefer the older WinAmps (v. 2.x), which is still actively maintained. There may be issues on whether the latest Real EULA allows other sw to use its dll's... find out.

8) Basic CD burning: try by all means BurnFree! It works, stable, lots of tweaks, AFAIK not spyware, although it will explicitly install an "updater" that will later try to install an adware navigation "helper" for IE (not yet available as of last month - bizarre!). It's easy to catch and restrain the updater via ZoneAlarm.

[ Be nice, it's not OS but they give you decent free software hoping to make a buck, so let them "drive" your IE and look at some of their ads, or send them a donation. When I get a job I prolly will. And for that matter, thank generously the sources of good, decent sw you use, OS or not... perhaps not Time Warner Corp. (WinAmp), but u get the idea. ]

9) PDF READER - I avoid Adobe reader like the claps. Yes, get it, it's free and OK but it never shuts up (or down). Get GSview and the Ghostscript libraries for normal use. Leaner, stabler. Only for the nastier of pdf files you'll really need Adobe.

I do not have a 10), but a number of really-nice-to-have's, most free, some OS, or at least cheap and hi-Q shareware, in no particular order:

Picture viewer: IrfanView.

Graphic manipulation: WinGIMP.

Process management: Process Explorer.

Archiver: Ultimate Zip (also, 7-ZIP for the Unixoid formats)

HTML Reader / barebones graphic browser: Off-By-One (fast!!!)

Basic crypto: Blowfish Advanced CS

Instant Messaging: Trillian (multi-network, + IRC too)

Defragmenting (front end): Power Defrag

Linux directory

Re:If you are too cheap for an AV program....

[hkmwbz]

I mostly agree with you, but I also have to break it to you: Firebird and especially Thunderbird are not to be considered as "production" software. This might sound like a troll, but the response you will get if you visit the MozillaZine forums for example, and complain about the lack of an installer, certain issues with extensions and so on, is that you should consider using another browser. Also, a lot of Firebird enthusiasts are actually hesitant to spread the word too much, or to convince people to use Firebird if they are not aware of the state it is in (such as posting glowing reviews on download.com). I am not saying that it is a bad browser, but it is still at 0.x, and needs some work before Joe Blow can use it without problems.

And Thunderbird is so far from completed I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who is not willing to put in a lot of effort to actually test and report bugs for the program.

I think the Mozilla suite/SeaMonkey might be more down most people's alley.

Re:Top ten Windows apps to install.

[rulero]

For images and video I use IrfanView [irfanview.com] is like xv but on steroids, it can show images in full screen, create slideshows, batch convert/process files, download images from a digital camera or scanner, it has may useful hotkeys (like [space] to see the next file in the directory) it also plays audio files, but I prefer winamp or zinf for that

My "must have" util Cds

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm buying a new mid-grade laptop computer, which I plan to dual-boot between Windows XP Home and Mandrake 9.x. Before its arrival in a few weeks I'm trying to think of what 'essential' software I'll need to make a usable home system. In general I'd like to spend as little money as possible (free is good). As far as my needs, think 'typical family PC' without an emphasis on gaming. I know I can get something like Open Office for word processing, presentation, etc. needs, but is there such a good thing as a good free virus checker? A good free email client? A handy web browser? What would you consider the top 10 (or so) pieces of software for a new home system, bearing in mind that I need software for both the Windows and Linux side of things?""

These are the files I keep on my "Esential CDs" that I bring around to help out other non-techs (Windows users) people. (Of course because they are financially broke after paying $200 for their Operating System, they want everything else to be free.) ;-)

Anti-Virus: The best free antivirus program I have found AVG Anti-Virus 6.0 [grisoft.com]

Office Suite: (Word Processing, SpreadsThe quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumped off the edge. The quick brown fox ran off with all his toysheet, Slideshows, etc.)
Open Office 1.1 [openoffice.org]

CD/DVD data/audio Burner: (and doubles as a CD image creator .ISO and .CUE)
BurnAtOnce 0.99a [burnatonce.com]

CD/DVD image loader/emulator (perfect for people who often misplace their CDs): (loads .ISO, .CUE, .CCD, .CDI etc. files without burning them)
DAEMON Tools 3.41 [daemon-tools.cd]

MultiMedia Player (Mpeg, Mp3, AVI, etc.)Winamp Classic 2.91 [winamp.com]

or for audio only Foobar 2000 0.7 [foobar2000.org]

Zip Extractor:Ultimate Zip [ultimatezip.com] or7 Zip 3.11 [7-zip.org]

Download Accelerator:Star Downloader v1.42 [stardownloader.com]

Internet Browser: (other than IE) Mozilla 1.4 [mozilla.org] or Opera 6.20 [opera.com]

System Statistics: (Motherboard, Memory, BIOS, Video, Software info, etc)AIDA32 3.80 [aida32.hu]

E-mail (other than Outlook Express)Thunderbird 0.2 [mozilla.org] or Pegasus Mail 4.12 [pmail.com]

Spyware/Adware killer:Ad-aware 6 [lavasoftusa.com] or Spybot Search & Destroy 1.2 [kolla.de]

Pop-up Killer/Browser Enhancer (for IE)Google Toolbar 2.0.102 [google.com]

PDF document reader:Adobe Acrobat 6.0 [adobe.com]

FTP program (other than IE and the command line FTP)Winsock FTP LE 5.08 [ipswitch.com] or FileZilla 2.2.1 [sourceforge.net]

Internet Chat Programs (other than Windows Messenger)Gaim 0.70 [sourceforge.net]or Trillian Basic 0.74E [ceruleanstudios.com]

Firewall Software:ZoneAlarm 3.7.211 [zonelabs.com]

or if you have Highspeed Internet, a spare 200mhz PC, and two network cards laying around...ClarkConnect 2.0 [clarkconnect.org]

CD Ripper / MP3 Creator CDex 1.51 [n3.net]

Graphics Editor (other than Paint) The Gimp [gimp.org]

Graphics viewer (other