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?"

mozilla & cygwin

[shakah]

cygwin for the Windows-side of things, of course.

Opera!

[Marx_Mrvelous]

Opera has climbed into my "must get everyone using" category. I think it's a fantastic product and deserves a lot of attention.

Must have

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

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

Get Partition Magic : as you use get used to both systems, you'll be able to progressively shrink your Windows partition and make your home system more and more usable.

Re:Top ten Windows apps to install.

[pixelgeek]

We must have differing views on what a "family" needs for their PC as I can't see most families doing C++ development coding in EMacs on their family PC :-)

A little family get-together around the PC to do some kernel tweaking before bedtime?

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

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.free-av.com/
AntiVir(R) Personal Edition for Windows Me (Me&98&95) and XP (XP&2000&NT)

Re:Top ten Windows apps to install.

[Lord Kholdan]

Warning, snippage included

CygWin the Linux-like environment for Windows.
PuTTY a free SSH client for Windows.
VNC remote controll software, NOTE: the location is no longer on the ATT Labs UK site.
GNU-EMacs for Windows. I usually install it, but use Vi more.
Dev-C++ a free C++ compiler. I use VC++ 6.0, but this is free, and I think it's pretty good.


For a home system? For a developer box? yeah. but for a home system?

But barring that, you deserver +5 Informative for mentioning nethack.

My top 10

[Anonymous Coward]

Email is king when it comes to my desktop, and Evolution is the best I've found. I like the virtual folders, multiple accounts, search capabilities, speed, and looks. There is very little I don't like about Evolution. That's why it's number one with me.
Digital photos are big with me, too. That's why the GIMP, gPhoto, and GQview are all on my top ten list occupying the number 2, 6, and 8 spots.

For my word processing needs, I look to OpenOffice.org. I know. It's not as fast or as polished as StarOffice, but not only does it do everything I need an office suite to do, it's free. That makes it number 3 on my list.

I've been a fan of gnumeric for several years. It's still my favorite spreadsheet for Linux. It weighs in at number 4. Browsers are a different story. I've switched several times, most recently away from Galeon. These days it's Mozilla for me, and it ranks 5th overall.

Number 7 is a game. All work and no play, you know. This little jewel has been played about 75 million times since it was released earlier this year. It's not free as in speech, but Id made it free as in beer. Enemy Territory is great for killing. Time, that is.

My 9th and 10th picks are new apps. New to me, at least. Number 9 is tvtime, a really nifty Linux TV program with spectacular performance. Good enough to hook your game console's TV out up to your TV card and play at the PC, too. And in 10th spot, good enough to rank higher if only I used it more, is Scribus, the great new DTP program for Linux.

OK, those are my picks. Of course your own personal top ten are going to be driven by how you use your Linux desktop, not how I use mine.

Here are mine again, this time in order.

1. Evolution
2. the Gimp
3. OpenOffice.org
4. Gnumeric
5. Mozilla
6. Gphoto
7. Enemy Territory
8. GQview
9. tvtime
10. Scribus

Re:Top ten Windows apps to install.

[jmoriarty]

CygWin the Linux-like environment for Windows.
WS FTP Light a FREE, FTP client that works great.
PuTTY a free SSH client for Windows.
GNU-EMacs for Windows. I usually install it, but use Vi more.
Dev-C++ a free C++ compiler. I use VC++ 6.0, but this is free, and I think it's pretty good.
NetHack You MUST have NetHack installed on everything...

Sweet Christmas! The poster asked for a general family-type system. I'm not sure what sort of family YOU have, but these programs would cause my mother to die from fright.

Not that they aren't handy tools, but I don't think that is what the poster was after...

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

[DarkSarin]

You beat me to it. Having personally used AVG (free edition) for quite some time, I find that it is as good as any of the commercial ones (I am virus free). I don't know that it checks Mozilla/Thunderbird mail though. Try installing your mail client first, or AVG won't pickup the directory. Good Luck.

Also, I have to ask what need you have for WinXP. If it is not a gaming machine (ie, you won't be playing Doom 3), then you can easily run WineX and then you won't have some issues inherent with any M$ solution.

Just a thought though.

Re:Mozilla for mail and browser

[redog]

Popup blocker too, and DOM viewer/editor. Whats more he could use a fatfs to store his profile for the linux and windows side and not miss a beat.

Bloat, mabe. But he wants it limited to 10. Mozilla can account for browser mail and popup stopping very compeditively. Hows the ford commercial go? If you havent looked at a mozilla lately look again.

Re:mozilla & cygwin

[dasmegabyte]

Uhh, no. Not for a home user. Home users want to USE software, not write it, not compile it. Pretty much anything you'd want to do as a home user is better done using the standard Windows GUI, or (god forbid), DOS. Shit, I'm a developer and I still prefer the old Dos commands to Cygwin...it just seems so kludgy. Windows isn't UN*X like in most of the ways that are important (different threading, different hardware interface, different file systems, different security model), so I see no reason to have a seperate, non-Windows system for performing file operations, etc. Unless you've got a really good reason for emulating Linux on windows (like a bunch of legacy apps on a server), it's just confusing.

Since the machine has Mandrake installed for the dual boot, it makes sense that users savvy enough to want the extensibility and control of a UN*X like system are going to reboot anyway. That gross green CYGWIN icon can only confuse the people you don't want confused.

Re:He's right!

[instanto]

Free AV does not mean it sucks..

Relying in AV software for your false sense of security is not recomended either, atleast not by me :-) - If you notice most virus updates appear AFTER the virus is out in the wild, which is kinda pointless if you already have the virus on your computer.

Maintaining your computer and operating 'safely on the .net' is more important than AV. But atleast - Get it for free - No need to pay money to the useless AV cartells.

Digital Photo Organizer

[avi4now]

Digital Photos are certainly now one of the top ten uses for family PCs.

I highly recommend using some Digiphoto Organization software, it's just leaps and bounds over storing photos as files in folders.

These packages help organize, view, and browse your digiphoto collection, then actually do something with the photos: format them for email, printing, web galleries, calendars, greeting cards, etc.

There are plenty of choices in Windows, but I don't know of any usable packages for Linux. Of course, for OSX there's iPhoto [apple.com] (free!)

I've been using Photoshop Album [adobe.com] since it was released [com.com] in February, and I've been very happy with it. Version 2 [adobe.com] was released [dpreview.com] on Monday, and there's now a free Starter Edition [adobe.com] - so there's no excuse not to try it!

Some other digital photo management software:

• ACD Systems ACDSee [acdsee.com]
• Jasc Photo Album [jasc.com]
• Lifescape Picasa [lifescapeinc.com]
• Ulead Photo Explorer [ulead.com]

Re:Opera!

[MrHanky]

Until Firebird gets faster and uses less memory, why not use Opera? Really - the version of MozillaFirebird in Debian Sid uses more memory than Opera, even when Moz is just started, only has one window showing about:blanc and Opera has two windows and is used for this posting. The difference isn't staggering, though. Use what you like best.

Re:Quicken or equivalent

[ek_adam]

Don't go for the proprietary Quicken. I used it for 7 years and lost significant amounts of data twice due to file corruption issues.

GnuCash works much better, for my needs at least.