Part 3. My own permanent (and partially non-kosher!) :) list of the programs for MS Windows - direct and trustworthy links
Part 2. My own permanent list of the free (as a Freedom!) and powerful Droid’s appsPart 1. My own permanent list of the packages for GNOME (ru-ru)I am happy GNU/Linux user at least last 12 years and always try to have not any deals with Windows.But I have a lot of damned friends, girls, colleagues and I am forced to have and completely update the big collection of Windows software - twice a year! - and very, very often to install this bloody system to different computers.
In a brave and beautiful World of GNU/Linux we have not any problem to install - quick and at a heat! - any numbers of programm from reliable sources, for example:
dnf install package_1 package_2 package_3...
dnf groupinstall "Development Tools" ... but when you using Windows you must make a lot of crazy steps:
a) save user's data or profile;
b) remove the old program;
с) clean an oddments after old installation (hundreds of files);
d) clean system registry;
e) search official site;
f) choose the correct architecture (32/64);
g) manually download the right file (.exe or .msi);
h) install a new program manually;
i) import all old data;
j) sometimes - install additional software (.NET, Java, Visual C++ redistrib., etc.)
An I really hate this long process and OS too. My
extended contrarguments against Windows are here (ru-ru) ... (please translate this text if you want).
Aside from that I know well - more than 99% of windows fans are the blithering idiots. Why? Because they always try to download of the necessary software from any doubtful places except for official sites! ... Any proof? Ok, here is a
fresh and sad story about the fake "Russian TORBrowser".
... So, below is my own list of Windows software (partially free, partially proprietary) - with direct links to download it from official sites. Please remember: this is not an advertising of nonfree programs but my own attempt to put all links together - firstly, for myself only!
NOTA BENE!A. I have not any recommendations for users to install any proprietary software without urgent necessity. Don't forget - it will be your own choice, not my!
B. Please, be very careful and always choose "Advanced installation", etc., because a lot of "Freemium" or "Free (but proprietary)" software want to do something else, for example "to install new powerfull system cleaner", "to improve your search / to change homepage / to install additional bar" in your browser or another shit.
(I have not any ideas to advise efficient download manager for Windows because all of them are adware)P.S. And don't forget:
FILE UTILITIES, BACKUP AND SYNC
7-Zip is a free and open-source file archiver. 7-Zip uses its own 7z archive format, but can read and write several other archive formats. The program can be used from a command-line interface or through a graphical user interface that also features shell integration.
Advanced Renamer is a batch renamer program with GUI that can rename multiple files and folders at once.
FreeCommander is an easy-to-use alternative to the standard windows file manager.
Macrium Reflect is a backup utility. It creates disk images and file backup archives using Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service to ensure 'point in time' data accuracy. Macrium Reflect can back up whole partitions or individual files and folders into a single compressed, mountable archive file, which can be used to restore exact images of the partitions on the same hard disk for disaster recovery, or a new hard disk for data migration.
Recuva is an undeletion program. It is able to undelete files that have been marked as deleted; the operating system marks the areas of the disk in which they were stored as free space. Recuva can recover files deleted from hard disk drives, USB flash drives, memory cards, portable media players or all random-access storage mediums with a supported file system.
Syncthing is a peer-to-peer file synchronization application. It can sync files between devices on a local network, or between remote devices over the Internet. Data security and data safety are built into the design of the software.
FreeFileSync is a program used for file synchronization. FreeFileSync works by comparing one or multiple folders on their content, date or file size and subsequently synchronizing the content according to user-defined settings. In addition to supporting local file systems and network shares, FreeFileSync is able to sync to FTP, FTPS, SFTP and MTP devices.
OFFICE
LibreOffice is a office suite, a project of The Document Foundation. The LibreOffice suite comprises programs for word processing, the creation and editing of spreadsheets, slideshows, diagrams and drawings, working with databases, and composing mathematical formulae. LibreOffice uses the international ISO/IEC standard OpenDocument file format (ODF) as its native format to save documents for all of its applications. LibreOffice also supports the file formats of most other major office suites, including Microsoft Office, through a variety of import/export filters.
Notepad++ is a text editor and source code editor. It supports tabbed editing, which allows working with multiple open files in a single window. It features syntax highlighting, code folding and limited autocompletion for programming, scripting, and markup languages, but not intelligent code completion or syntax checking. As such it may properly highlight code written in a supported schema but whether the syntax is internally sound or compilable cannot be verified.
Sumatra PDF is a document viewer that supports many document formats including: Portable Document Format (PDF), Microsoft Compiled HTML Help (CHM), DjVu, EPUB, FictionBook (FB2), MOBI, PRC, Open XML Paper Specification (OpenXPS, OXPS, XPS), and Comic Book Archive file (CB7, CBR, CBT, CBZ). If Ghostscript is installed, it supports PostScript files.
A hierarchical note taking application, featuring rich text and syntax highlighting, storing data in a single xml or sqlite file.
GoldenDict is a dictionary program that gives translations of words and phrases for different languages. It allows the use of several popular dictionary file formats simultaneously and without conversion.
GRAPHIC AND DESIGN
Darktable is a photography workflow application and raw developer. Rather than being a raster graphics editor like Adobe Photoshop or GIMP, it comprises a subset of image editing operations specifically aimed at non-destructive raw photo post-production. It is primarily focused on improving a photographer's workflow by facilitating the handling of large numbers of images.
GIM is a free and open-source raster graphics editor used for image retouching and editing, free-form drawing, converting between different image formats, and more specialized tasks.
FastStone Image Viewer is an image viewer and organizer. The program also includes basic image editing tools.
NET, IM, VOIP SAFETY; SECURE COMMUNICATIONS AND ANONIMITY
Comodo IceDragon is a Firefox-based open source web browser from the Comodo Group for Microsoft Windows. It is intended to be faster and more secure than Firefox. Comodo's SiteInspector's link scanning feature allows one to check whether a web page is malicious before they visit that page. IceDragon offers Comodo's Secure DNS Service to users as an alternative to using their Internet Service Provider. This is intended to produce faster page loads and safer browsing because SecureDNS references a real-time block list (RBL) of malicious websites.
Firefox ESR (Extended Support Release) is a version of Firefox for organizations and other groups that need extended support for mass deployments. Each ESR release, based on the regular version released at the same time, is supported for approximately one year.
Thunderbird is an email, newsgroup, news feed, and chat (XMPP, IRC, Twitter) client. Thunderbird can manage multiple email, newsgroup, and news feed accounts and supports multiple identities within accounts. Features such as quick search, saved search folders ("virtual folders"), advanced message filtering, message grouping, and labels help manage and find messages. Thunderbird incorporates a Bayesian spam filter, a whitelist based on the included address book, and can also understand classifications by server-based filters such as SpamAssassin.
Pidgin is a multi-platform instant messaging client, based on a library named libpurple that has support for many instant messaging protocols, allowing the user to simultaneously log into various services from one application. Pidgin is widely used for its Off-the-Record Messaging (OTR) plugin, which offers end-to-end encryption.
Simple DNSCrypt is a simple management tool (GUI) to configure dnscrypt-proxy on windows based systems.
Tutanota mail client is a free and open-source end-to-end encrypted email software and freemium hosted secure email service. Tutanota offers end-to-end encryption for emails sent from one Tutanota user to another. Tutanota also encrypts all emails and contacts. Tutanota uses a standardized, hybrid method consisting of a symmetrical and an asymmetrical algorithm - AES with a length of 128 bit and RSA with 2048 bit. To external recipients who do not use Tutanota a notification is sent with a link to a temporary Tutanota account.
Youtube-dl is a command-line program to download videos from YouTube.com and a few more sites.
Shadowsocks is an encrypted proxy project, widely used in mainland China to circumvent Internet censorship. Typically, the client software will open a socks5 proxy on the machine it is running, which internet traffic can then be directed towards, similarly to an SSH tunnel. Unlike an SSH tunnel, shadowsocks can also proxy UDP traffic.
Tox is a peer-to-peer instant-messaging and video-calling protocol that offers end-to-end encryption.
Jami (formerly GNU Ring, SFLphone) is a SIP-compatible softphone and SIP-based instant messenger. Two account types are currently available, and many of each type can be configured concurrently. Both types offer similar features including messaging, video and audio. The account types are SIP and Ring. A SIP account enables the Jami softphone to connect to a standard SIP server and a Ring account can register (or use an account set up) on the decentralised Jami network which requires no central server. By adopting distributed hash table technology (as used, for instance, within the BitTorrent network), Jami creates its own network over which it can distribute directory functions, authentication and encryption across all systems connected to it.
FileZilla is a FTP application, consisting of FileZilla Client and FileZilla Server. Both server and client support FTP and FTPS (FTP over SSL/TLS), while the client can in addition connect to SFTP servers.
DownThemAll is a powerful yet easy-to-use extension that adds new advanced download capabilities to your browser. DTA lets you download all the links or images on a website and much more: you can refine your downloads by fully customizable filters to get only what you really want. DownThemAll is all you can desire from a download manager: it allows you to queue, pause and resume downloads at any time and is fully integrated in your browser.
Tribler is a decentralized BitTorrent client which allows anonymous peer-to-peer by default. Tribler is based on the BitTorrent protocol and uses an overlay network for content searching, which makes the program operate independently of external websites and renders it immune to limiting external action such as government restraint. Due to this overlay network, Tribler does not require an external website or indexing service to discover content.
The Onion Router directs Internet traffic through a free, worldwide, volunteer overlay network consisting of more than seven thousand relays to conceal a user's location and usage from anyone conducting network surveillance or traffic analysis. Using Tor makes it more difficult to trace Internet activity to the user: this includes "visits to Web sites, online posts, instant messages, and other communication forms". Tor's intended use is to protect the personal privacy of its users, as well as their freedom and ability to conduct confidential communication by keeping their Internet activities unmonitored. Tor does not prevent an online service from determining when it is being accessed through Tor. Tor protects a user's privacy, but does not hide the fact that someone is using Tor. Some websites restrict allowances through Tor. The Tor Browser consists of a modified Mozilla Firefox ESR web browser, the TorButton, TorLauncher, NoScript, and HTTPS Everywhere Firefox extensions and the Tor proxy. The Tor Browser automatically starts Tor background processes and routes traffic through the Tor network. Upon termination of a session the browser deletes privacy-sensitive data such as HTTP cookies and the browsing history.
RetroShare is a peer-to-peer communication and file sharing app based on a friend-to-friend network built on GNU Privacy Guard (GPG). Optionally, peers may communicate certificates and IP addresses from and to their friends.
Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant communication. It uses a decentralized distributed data store to keep and deliver information, and has a suite of free software for publishing and communicating on the Web without fear of censorship. The distributed data store of Freenet is used by many third-party programs and plugins to provide microblogging and media sharing, anonymous and decentralised version tracking, blogging, a generic web of trust for decentralized spam resistance and many more.
- The Invisible Internet Project - #I2P
License: Free/Open Source (different licenses for different parts) - Public domain, Berkeley Software Distribution, GNU General Public Licens, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Licens
https://geti2p.net/en/download
The Invisible Internet Project is an anonymous network layer (implemented as a Mix Network) that allows for censorship-resistant, peer to peer communication. Anonymous connections are achieved by encrypting the user's traffic (by using end-to-end encryption), and sending it through a volunteer-run network. Given the high number of possible paths the traffic can transit, a third party watching a full connection is unlikely. The software that implements this layer is called an "I2P router", and a computer running I2P is called an "I2P node".
PuTTY is a terminal emulator, serial console and network file transfer application. It supports several network protocols, including SCP, SSH, Telnet, rlogin, and raw socket connection. It can also connect to a serial port. PuTTY supports many variations on the secure remote terminal, and provides user control over the SSH encryption key and protocol version, alternate ciphers such as AES, 3DES, Arcfour, Blowfish, DES, and Public-key authentication. PuTTY supports SSO through GSSAPI, including user provided GSSAPI DLLs. It also can emulate control sequences from xterm, VT220, VT102 or ECMA-48 terminal emulation, and allows local, remote, or dynamic port forwarding with SSH (including X11 forwarding). The network communication layer supports IPv6, and the SSH protocol.
UltraVNC is a remote-administration/remote-desktop-software utility, uses the VNC protocol to control/access another computer remotely over a network connection.
ANTIVIRUS AND FIREWALL
A freemium internet security suite that includes an antivirus program, personal firewall, sandbox and a host-based intrusion prevention system (HIPS).
ClamWin Free Antivirus is a free and open-source antivirus tool for Windows. It provides a graphical user interface to the Clam AntiVirus engine.
MULTIMEDIA, CODECS, VIDEO/AUDIO EDITING
VLC is a media player software and streaming media server. VLC supports many audio and video compression methods and file formats, including DVD-Video, video CD and streaming protocols. It is able to stream media over computer networks and to transcode multimedia files.
SMPlayer is a cross-platform graphical front-end for MPlayer and forks of Mplayer using GUI widgets offered by Qt.
The K-Lite Codec Pack is a collection of audio and video codecs that enables an operating system and its software to play various audio and video formats generally not supported by the operating system itself. The K-Lite Codec Pack also includes several related tools, including Media Player Classic Home Cinema (MPC-HC), Media Info Lite, and Codec Tweak Tool.
Audacity is a digital audio editor and recording application software. In addition to recording audio from multiple sources, Audacity can be used for post-processing of all types of audio, including podcasts by adding effects such as normalization, trimming, and fading in and out.
Avidemux is a video editing program designed for video editing and video processing. Avidemux is capable of non-linear video editing, applying visual effects to video, and transcoding video into various formats. Avidemux can also insert audio streams into a video file or extract audio streams from video files. Avidemux supports many formats, such as AVI, MP4, Matroska, MPEG-2, H.264 and H.265. Avidemux has built-in subtitle processing, both for optical character recognition of DVD subtitles and for rendering hard subtitles.
AIMP is an audio player and can play many file types, including MP3, Advanced Audio Coding (AAC), Dolby AC-3, Ogg Vorbis, Opus, Speex, Windows Media Audio, Apple Lossless, FLAC, WAV and Audio CDs. AIMP can also play many other audio formats like Monkey's Audio (APE), Tom's lossless Audio Kompressor (TAK) and True Audio; DTS audio, MP1, MP2, Musepack, OptimFROG, WavPack, MIDI, Impulse Tracker, MO3, MOD, MultiTracker Module, S3M, and Fasttracker 2 Extended Module. AIMP supports the DirectSound, ASIO and WASAPI audio interfaces, and it uses 32-bit audio processing for its 18-band equalizer and built-in sound effects (Reverb, Flanger, Chorus, Pitch, Tempo, Echo, Speed, Bass, Enhancer, Voice Remover).
EasyTag is a graphical tag editor. Supported formats: MP3, MP2, FLAC, Opus, Speex, Ogg Vorbis, MP4, MPC and APE. Available tag fields (depending on format): Title, Artist, Album, Disc Album, Year, Track Number, Genre, Comment, Composer, Original Artist, Copyright, URL, Encoder and Picture. The main features are: automated tagging using presets and custom masks, rename files using tag information or external text files, etc.
WinLAME is an easy to use encoder for many audio formats, including MP3, Opus, Ogg Vorbis and more. winLAME lets you read in audio tracks from CDs or encode audio files from your hard drive. The intuitive wizard-style user interface makes it easy to set up encoding settings. Multicore CPUs are used to parallelize encoding tasks.
SECURITY AND CRYPTO
GPG4usb is a very easy to use portable-application, which combines a simple text-editor with a GnuPG-frontend to write, encrypt and decrypt your text-messages and files.
Eraser is a secure file erasure tool. It supports both file and volume wiping. Eraser securely erases data by overwriting it such that the data is irrecoverable. It supports a variety of data destruction standards, including British HMG IS5 (Infosec Standard 5), American DoD 5220.22-M, and the Gutmann method which features a 35-pass overwrite.
KeePass Password Safe is a password manager. KeePass stores usernames, passwords, and other fields, including free-form notes and file attachments, in an encrypted file. This file can be protected by any combination of a master password, a key file, and the current Windows account details. KeePass supports a number of plugins. It has a password generator and synchronization function, supports two-factor authentication, and has a Secure Desktop mode. It can use a two-channel auto-type obfuscation feature to offer additional protection against keyloggers. KeePass can import from over 30 other most commonly used password managers.
VeraCrypt is a source-available freeware utility used for on-the-fly encryption (OTFE). It can create a virtual encrypted disk within a file or encrypt a partition or (in Windows) the entire storage device with pre-boot authentication.
PWGen is a professional password generator capable of generating large amounts of cryptographically-secure passwords - "classical" passwords, pronounceable passwords, pattern-based passwords, and passphrases consisting of words from word lists. It uses a "random pool" technique based on strong cryptography to generate random data from indeterministic user inputs (keystrokes, mouse handling) and volatile system parameters. PWGen provides lots of options to customize passwords to the users’ various needs. Additionally, it offers strong text encryption and the creation of random data files (which can be used as key files for encryption utilities, for example).
Enigmail is a seamlessly integrated security add-on for Mozilla Thunderbird and Postbox. It allows you to use OpenPGP to encrypt and digitally sign your emails and to decrypt and verify messages you receive.
CD/DVD BURNING
CDBurnerXP is an optical disc authoring utility. The program supports burning data on CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW, Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD as well as burning audio files (WAV, MP3, MP2, FLAC, Windows Media Audio, AIFF, BWF (Broadcast WAV), Opus, and Ogg Vorbis in the Red Book format. ISO images can also be burnt and created via the program, along with UDF and/or ISO-9660 formats. Bootable data discs are also supported.
InfraRecorder is a free CD/DVD burning solution for Microsoft Windows (2000/XP/Vista/7 only). It offers a wide range of powerful features; all through an easy to use application interface and Windows Explorer integration.
SYSTEM UTILITIES
BleachBit is a disk space cleaner, privacy manager, and computer system optimizer. Features: identifying and removing Web cache, HTTP cookies, URL history, temporary files log files and flash cookies for browsers; removing unused localizations; shredding files and wiping unallocated disk space to minimize data remanence; wiping unallocated disk space to improve data compression ratio for disk image backups.
CCleaner is a utility used to clean potentially unwanted files and invalid Windows Registry entries from a computer. CCleaner can delete potentially unwanted files left by certain programs, along with browsing history, cookies, recycle bin, memory dumps, file fragments, log files, system caches, application data, autocomplete form history, and various other data. The program includes a registry cleaner to locate and correct problems in the Windows registry, such as missing references to shared DLLs, unused registration entries for file extensions, and missing references to application paths. CCleaner can wipe the MFT free space of a drive, or the entire drive.
Defraggler can defragment individual files, groups of files (in a folder) or an entire disk partition, either by the user's command or automatically on a schedule. It supports FAT32, NTFS, and exFAT. Defragmentation of RAID disks is also supported, although no details are supplied.
It uninstalls programs and additionally removes any files and Windows registry entries left behind by the program's uninstaller or by the Windows uninstall function. Revo Uninstaller first runs the selected program's built-in uninstaller, then searches and removes associated files and registry entries that the uninstaller may not have removed from the user's drive. Revo Uninstaller also cleans out: files in the temporary folder, entries in the Windows start-up applications folder, browser history and cache, the recently opened file list in Microsoft Office applications. Revo Uninstaller can also irrecoverably delete files.
Speccy a utility software, which shows the user information about hardware and software of the computer. The information displayed by Speccy includes processor brand and model, hard drive size and speed, amount of memory (RAM), information about graphics card and operating system. Speccy is for seeing what kind of hardware is present in a system and how it is being used.
A HDD/SSD utility software which supports a part of USB, Intel/AMD RAID and NVMe.
LANGUAGES, IDE, FRAMEWORKS
.NET Framework is a software framework. It includes a large class library named as Framework Class Library (FCL) and provides language interoperability (each language can use code written in other languages) across several programming languages. Programs written for .NET Framework execute in a software environment named the Common Language Runtime (CLR). The CLR is an application virtual machine that provides services such as security, memory management, and exception handling. As such, computer code written using .NET Framework is called "managed code". FCL and CLR together constitute the .NET Framework.
Java is a general-purpose programming language that is class-based, object-oriented, and designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible. It is intended to let application developers write once, run anywhere, meaning that compiled Java code can run on all platforms that support Java without the need for recompilation. Java applications are typically compiled to bytecode that can run on any Java virtual machine (JVM) regardless of the underlying computer architecture.
Microsoft Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE). It is used to develop computer programs, as well as websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development platforms such as Windows API, Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Store and Microsoft Silverlight. It can produce both native code and managed code.
Photo: My ownAll descriptions: Wikipedia and official sites.#
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