Principia Discordia

Principia Discordia => Techmology and Scientism => Topic started by: Cain on December 03, 2006, 04:13:04 AM

Title: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: Cain on December 03, 2006, 04:13:04 AM
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2006/12/01/30-essential-pieces-of-free-and-open-software-for-windows/

Get them.  Now.
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: AFK on December 03, 2006, 08:24:43 PM
Wow!!!
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: LHX on December 05, 2006, 04:47:23 PM
good lookin
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: East Coast Hustle on December 05, 2006, 10:37:55 PM
swote. thanks dude.
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: B_M_W on December 07, 2006, 11:41:42 PM
Theres no firewal on the list. Can anyone suggest me a good free firewall?
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: Starship, take me on December 08, 2006, 01:05:23 AM
Quote from: Buddhist_Monk_Wannabe on December 07, 2006, 11:41:42 PM
Theres no firewal on the list. Can anyone suggest me a good free firewall?

http://www.techsupportalert.com/best_46_free_utilities.htm#5

Take a look at that list.  I can't find a Free (Open Source) firewall that stands out, though.
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: B_M_W on December 08, 2006, 01:25:47 AM
Thanks! This should certainly work better than the zone alarm crap program I'm running.
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: l0c0dantes on December 08, 2006, 04:56:03 AM
Ive stopped running a firewall / AV on my windows, I figgure, as long as Im behind a router, and I dont surf all that much, I really aint got much to worry about

< 30 processes FTW
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: Shibboleet The Annihilator on December 08, 2006, 06:44:07 AM
:mittens:

Nice Cain!
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: Cain on December 08, 2006, 08:42:43 AM
BMW, I use the Comodo Firewall, which is free and not bad.  I think Zone Labs are widely considered to be the best firewall but I haven't got around to installing that yet.
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on December 08, 2006, 09:52:36 AM
if you have a spare old pc lying around smoothwall turns it into a shit hot H/Ware firewall. I used to be bulletproof behind mine.
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: Shibboleet The Annihilator on December 08, 2006, 10:11:57 AM
Really? Is it hard to set up?
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: B_M_W on December 08, 2006, 10:48:42 AM
Quote from: Cain on December 08, 2006, 08:42:43 AM
BMW, I use the Comodo Firewall, which is free and not bad.  I think Zone Labs are widely considered to be the best firewall but I haven't got around to installing that yet.

That article that S,TM put up suggests that that is no longer the case, at least for the freeware. And I've heard from multiple people that Zone Alarm is crap. Im running Kerio now, seems to be working quite well.

And that Keynote program sounds interesting...wonder if it would be good for student notes as well.
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: Cain on December 08, 2006, 10:58:26 AM
Hmm.  I used Kiero, but didn't like it.  I found Comodo much better than that.
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: P3nT4gR4m on December 08, 2006, 11:10:20 AM
Quote from: Machine Grind Dream on December 08, 2006, 10:11:57 AM
Really? Is it hard to set up?

My mate did it for me but it looked fairly straightforward. Easy as hell to administer through http

http://www.smoothwall.org/ My spare box exploded or i'd still be running it.

Word of advice make sure your NICs are on the approved list - winmodems didn't used to work with linux - prolly still the same nowadays.
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: Starship, take me on December 10, 2006, 01:09:37 AM
http://www.listible.com/list/open-source-applications-for-windows

This page has 72 apps for Windows which are Free Software.
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: Thurnez Isa on December 11, 2006, 01:56:49 AM
ive been looking for some free dvd burning software
something that just reliable
nothing fancy
for some reason the software that came with my burner doesnt like working all the time
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: l0c0dantes on December 11, 2006, 07:45:13 AM
http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilities/dvdcdburning.shtml

They arent open, I dont think.

Jetico had a pretty good firewall to. from what I rember. Light
AVG and clamAV, I have heard nothing bad about thoes 2 free anti virus's
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: Jasper on December 30, 2006, 12:06:05 AM
Oh shi-

Awesome Cain.  I'm dl-ing this now now now, putting it to disc for when I get home.  +683 Thankyous.
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: LHX on February 21, 2007, 09:46:32 PM
bump because this resource is FTW
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: rygD on February 22, 2007, 12:27:28 PM
You heathen microsoft worshipping windows slaves.
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: Jasper on February 23, 2007, 09:08:11 AM
im browsin ur thred

runnin ubuntu
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: rygD on February 24, 2007, 07:08:15 PM
running ubuntu (with both gnome and kde...tried beryl and compiz but was having issues.  I do suggest them for people into eye candy who want to trump the pompous vista users.  Then tell those vista bitches that the flippy window thing is stolen from project looking glass) on my personal computer as I got pissed at gentoo.  Trying to figure out how to get sabayon, and haiku on my hd and be able to get grub to see them all, but rarely have time to fuck with it. always working.

I am also trying to figure out the best solution to playing windows based games without installing windows
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: Jasper on February 24, 2007, 07:13:12 PM
I'm about to try Wine, which is some sort of windows layer compatibility thing, I'll tell you how it goes.

Also, how did beryl work out?
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: rygD on February 24, 2007, 07:40:41 PM
I have used Wine on other distro's, but not enough to get a good feel for it, plus it has changed, so good luck with that.

Beryl is the shit, but I kept having issues while trying to install it.  That is how I ended up finding sabayon: "You mean it is a live cd that is based on gentoo and has Beryl" so I got it.

Give that a shot to see if the eye candy suits you.  The window effects are great, the cube is fun, never got water stuff working.  If you are going to try it on Ubuntu you either need to be better skilled than I am, or seek assistance who knows it well.  I had to get help on irc.

Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: Jasper on February 24, 2007, 08:23:02 PM
Innnnteresting.

Sounds like a delightful puzzle game.
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: Triple Zero on February 25, 2007, 11:41:32 AM
some free softwares i use personally:

The Font Thing (http://members.ozemail.com.au/~scef/tft.html) - for the people on this board who like messing around with type. font manager, multi font preview thingy. small and nice.

Free Download Manager (http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/) - for downloading multiple files from webpages. i use it mostly in combination with HFS below

HTTP File Server (http://www.rejetto.com/hfs/) - very simple file transfer tool. basically i starts a webserver on your computar, which anybody can surf to at http://12.34.56.78 (your IP (http://www.whatismyip.com)), you can drag and drop any files or directories you want to share in that you like, showing them like a sort of "open directory", and as you do so it will copy the URL to your clipboard so you can immediately paste them over MSN or whatever. of course it also supports passwording the links (which i would recommend :) ). might have some issues with port forwarding if you're behind a router. best thing about this tool is that it runs right out of the box.

uTorrent (http://www.utorrent.com/) - very lightweight bitTorrent client. small, low memory usage, starts up quickly, etc. (esp if you're using the java-based Azureus, might be worth considering this one instead)

Filezilla (http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/) - FTP, SFTP, SSH, SCP file transfer tool. for uploading things to webpages etc.

Exact Audio Copy (http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/) - for recording audio CDs to .wav with very good error correction/quality. can also automatically convert to MP3 or OGG, if you provide the tools for it.

LAME (http://lame.sourceforge.net/download.php) mp3 encoder and OggdropXD (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jfe1205/OggVorbis/oggdropXPdV1.8.9-generic.zip) ogg encoder - Oggdrop has a rotating fish as icon while encoding your .wav files. this is awesome. [also be sure to set the quality for oggdrop to something like 6 or 7]

CDisplay Comic Reader (http://www.geocities.com/davidayton/CDisplay) - for reading scanned comics, usually distributed in .CBZ (ZIP) format. can read sequences of JPG files, for reading sequentially, does auto contrast and page-yellowing adjustment, background colour, sharpening etc. [still doesn't beat real paper, but hey]

Irfanview (http://www.irfanview.com/) - for viewing images in all formats and doing basic conversion and/or adjustment. i use it mostly because it loads very quickly.

PSPad (http://www.pspad.com) - text editor with syntax highlighting, FTP-remote editing and lots of handy programming options and tools, fully customizable. i actually prefer it to the commercial tool-of-choice, UltraEdit.

metapad (http://www.liquidninja.com/metapad/) - another text editor. smaller simpler and more lightweight, i use it as a replacement for notepad. it has solid useful basic text editing functions (as opposed to notepad which has basically none), and, my favourite feature is that it uses a very pretty purple variant of the notepad icon, which just looks good in my quicklaunch toolbar.

Password Reveal (http://camtech2000.net/Pages/Password_Reveal.html) - one of those lifesaver programs. you have these programs (like FTP utilities or whatever) that have password fields in which the password is only shown as *****, but are still saved in the program somewhere. now of course after a while you forgot what ***** exactly was, and at a certain moment you need the password again (say, you're gonna upgrade to another version of your utility). this is where you use Password Reveal, as it can reveal for you what is behind the *****.

Windirstat (http://windirstat.info/) - if you wonder where your harddisk space went, this is how you find it, whether it's in a few big files or in billions of small ones. it uses a "treemap" to very intuitively represent the diskspace usage on your harddisk(s). musthave cleanup tool, for me.

i got a lot of other free tools, but they're mostly power user web development/analysis stuff, that i'm afraid most of you wouldn't know what to do with anyway. they are:
privoxy, ethereal, intellitamper, x-win32, tightVNC, Tor, Proxomitron, Icecast2 (with oddcast winamp plugin), kX project audiodriver, Edxor, Cygwin, DOSbox, burpproxy. they're all good in what they do :) just google them.
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: Cain on February 25, 2007, 11:46:33 AM
Intellitamper is pretty swote, I agree.
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: rygD on February 27, 2007, 01:05:14 PM
slaves
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: l0c0dantes on March 24, 2007, 07:47:38 PM
yay for linux!

1) Ubuntu forums are some of the best I have ever used, same goes with the IRC
2)gentoo is a bitch, and I couldnt figgure out
3) running wine is very easy
4)for windows games without using windows, get cedega. Id suggest bootlegging, but you only really need to buy one 3 month subscription
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: Triple Zero on March 24, 2007, 07:50:19 PM
just switched to ubuntu a few days ago.

wine is for another day, at the moment it's time to figure out how to play a DVD (with sound) .. but the forums explain everything very clearly, plus you get the advantage of actually having some idea of how the system works.. i used to have that with win98 and DOS, but ever since i got win2000 i kinda lost track of that.
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: Jasper on March 25, 2007, 02:38:48 AM
On the subject of OS'es, is there a good way to put a windows partition onto a Linux machine?  I know it works the other way around usually, but I just don't want to do another nuke and pave on Igor.
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: Triple Zero on March 25, 2007, 10:43:18 AM
yes there is software/packages/drivers/whatnot that does this.

i'm probably going to find this out somewhere in the next few weeks, in the process of getting all the shit back together (no better reason to make such a switch than when your old HD refuses to boot win2k)

but in other words, i think if you spend a few minutes googling around for stuff like "ntfs for linux" or "windows partition under linux" or something similar, you're bound to find the things you need.
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: l0c0dantes on March 26, 2007, 04:29:55 AM
Yea, its not to hard at all.
1 partition your harddrive as you want it.
2 install windows on a seperate partition (it doesnt take the whole HD, you can choose what you want)
3 Windows does kill your bootloader tho, so you need to reinstall that (just use a live CD or a system recovery disk)

And, windows WILL not recognize linux (You can probally do it, but I never bothered because I didn't want to screw things up), and linux can't write to NFTS (safely, from my understanding), so it might be a good idea to set aside a few gigs as a buffer zone of FAT32, which you can use to swap files from partition A to partition B
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: Triple Zero on March 26, 2007, 10:19:31 AM
these are things i've heard (but not looked at or tested myself)

- you can in fact mount linux filesystem under windows, there are tools for this. probably read-only, but i'm not sure.
- you can in fact mount NTFS for linux also for writing
- FAT32 is indeed no problem

the thing is these tools/libs/packages are still under development, so new things get added all the time and some things may or may not work.

i really think your best bet is just to fuckingoogleit, because linookspeople on forums constantly write about their gripes and solutions with whatever opensource software is out there and this will give you a clear idea on what the current state of the art is.

also, felix, once you find something, please report back here? cause i think there's one or two people who might also be interested in your findings :-D
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: rygD on March 31, 2007, 09:26:07 PM
Wow...kinda surprised that my anti-microsoft comments kept this thread alive.

The Ubuntu forums are a bit slow for responses.

My wife sometimes has issues with the computer at the house, so can I put her in contact with one of you who is decent at troubleshooting and familiar with ubuntu?

Stuff I want her to be able to use is VMware or something (she is having microsoft withdrawal issues, plus she may like a different os better.)

Also she is having web browsing issues, and said she can't watch pron she downloads.
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: Triple Zero on April 01, 2007, 08:16:04 PM
no i'm an ubuntu n00b

anything i know about it, i know via google
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: saint aini on April 01, 2007, 08:26:51 PM
Quote from: rygD on March 31, 2007, 09:26:07 PM
Wow...kinda surprised that my anti-microsoft comments kept this thread alive.

The Ubuntu forums are a bit slow for responses.

My wife sometimes has issues with the computer at the house, so can I put her in contact with one of you who is decent at troubleshooting and familiar with ubuntu?

Stuff I want her to be able to use is VMware or something (she is having microsoft withdrawal issues, plus she may like a different os better.)

Also she is having web browsing issues, and said she can't watch pron she downloads.

Using automatrix or EasyUbuntu or the Synaptix package manager, you will want to install the codecs for mpeg.  Be sure to edit the repository list to allow you to get the nonfree packages.

I do not recall where it is in the other package managers, but Synaptix has a function that allows you edit the repositories it checks.  Basically you want to check all the repositories because the native ubuntu settings do not include the non-free codecs.

Install the VLC media player and any required codecs.  I think it was some flavor of gstreamer for me that worked.

I do not use VMWare on my ubuntu box because I like having two computers: one for work and one for music.  That way I'm only half as pissed if one crashes, I have a clean version of each environment so I can test in each.  Also, I run the server edition of Ubuntu with the Ubuntu-Desktop so that I can do some development work locally if I have to.  However, I have a friend who loves VMWare.  He will tell you to go to http://www.justfuckinggoogleit.com/search.pl?query=VMWare+ubuntu
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: rygD on May 27, 2007, 04:20:11 AM
She bought a new laptop and threw feisty on there and is not having nearly as many issues, as now for the most part it finds and installs everything for her.
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: Bogus Magus on June 05, 2007, 01:10:49 AM
Hey thanks for that selection, Cain.

I have to work with Microsoft whether I like it or not - so a few cool extras cheered me up...
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: Cain on June 05, 2007, 01:29:51 PM
NP.

If you like this sort of thing, and have Firefox on your personal PC, download StumbleUpon.  http://www.stumbleupon.com/

Thats where I find the majority of interesting stuff on the web, and if you have to be stuck in front of a PC for whatever reason, its a good way to pass the time.
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: rygD on December 02, 2007, 08:20:07 PM
This thread makes me sad.  I am sure you can figure out why.  Will be seriously massing with BSD in the near future.  Any suggestions?
Title: Re: 30 Essential free programs
Post by: LMNO on December 06, 2007, 04:52:17 PM
Nuke it and give it to the Jews.