Essential Apps
I'm a proponent of open source. These are the simplest and most elegant software selections I could find to do tasks on computers without all the bloatware.
| Category | For... | Selection | Description | Platform | License |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Security | Encryption | Gpg4win (GNU Privacy Guard for Windows) | Encryption software for files and emails. |  |
GNU GPL |
| Radio | SDR | CubicSDR | A cross-platform Software-Defined Radio application which allows you to navigate the radio spectrum and demodulate any signals you might discover. |   |
GNU GPL |
| Productivity | Document/image scanning | Simple Scan | Designed to let users connect their scanner and quickly have the image/document in an appropriate format. | |
GNU GPL |
| Productivity | Document imaging | Paperless | Digital document management. | |
Commercial (need to find an open source alt) |
| Productivity | A great DOS menu | DirectAccess 5.1 | |||
| Productivity | Organizing collections of things | OYC Organize Your Collection | |||
| Productivity | Split and merged PDF documents | PDFSAM | Split and merge PDF documents with PDFsam, an easy-to-use desktop tool with graphical, command line and web interface. | |
GNU Affero GPL |
| Network | Network protocol analyzation | Wireshark | Lets you capture and interactively browse the traffic running on a computer network. | |
GNU GPL |
| Network | Network discovery and security auditing | Nmap | Uses raw IP packets in novel ways to determine what hosts are available on the network, what services those hosts are offering, what operating systems they are running, what type of packet filters/firewalls are in use, and dozens of other characteristics. | |
GNU GPL |
| Network | Querying DNS servers | dig | A network administration command-line tool for querying Domain Name System (DNS) name servers. Part of BIND-Utils. | |
ISC License |
| Network | FTP, et al. file transfer | FileZilla | A fast and reliable cross-platform FTP, FTPS and SFTP client with lots of useful features and an intuitive graphical user interface. | |
GNU GPL |
| Network | IRC chat | XChat | Allows you to join multiple IRC channels (chat rooms) at the same time, talk publicly, private one-on-one conversations etc. Even file transfers are possible. | |
GNU GPL |
| Network | VNC client, server | TightVNC | Free, Lightweight, Fast and Reliable Multiplatform Remote Control / Remote Desktop Software | |
GNU GPL |
| Network | SSH client | Bitvise SSH Client | State-of-the-art terminal emulation, graphical as well as command-line SFTP support, an FTP-to-SFTP bridge, and powerful tunneling features. | |
Commercial; Free for individual use |
| Network | Downloading Torrents | Deluge | A lightweight, free software, cross-platform BitTorrent client. | |
GNU GPL |
| Network | VPN client | Shrew Soft VPN Client Standard | Provides secure communications between mobile Windows hosts and open source VPN gateways that utilize standards compliant software such as ipsec-tools, OpenSWAN, StrongSWAN, Libreswan, isakmpd. | |
Commercial, Free for personal and commercial use |
| Network | Port Scanner | LanSpy | A fast port scanner for gathering information about open ports on remote computers. Audit your network for security reason issues. | |
Freeware |
| Network | TFTP Server | Tftpd64 | A free, open source, IPv6-ready application which includes DHCP, TFTP, DNS, SNTP and Syslog servers as well as a TFTP client. | |
EUPL |
| Network | Bandwidth testing | speedtest-cli | Command line interface for testing internet bandwidth using speedtest.net |  |
Apache License, Version 2.0 |
| Multimedia | Audio editing | Audacity | A free, easy-to-use and multilingual audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. | |
GNU GPL |
| Multimedia | Media playing | VLC Media Player | A free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVD, Audio CD, VCD, and various streaming protocols. | |
GNU GPL |
| Multimedia | Photo editing | GIMP | A freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. | |
GNU GPL |
| Multimedia | Converting video | HandBrake | A tool for converting video from nearly any format to a selection of modern, widely supported codecs. | |
GNU GPL |
| Multimedia | Archiving YouTube vids | youtube-dl | Command-line program to download videos from YouTube.com and other video sites | |
The Unlicense |
| Multimedia | Ripping Audio CDs | Exact Audio Copy | A so called audio grabber for audio CDs using standard CD and DVD-ROM drives. It is free. It works with a technology which reads audio CDs almost perfectly. If there are any errors that can’t be corrected, it will tell you on which time position the (possible) distortion occurred, so you could easily control it with e.g. the media player. | |
Freeware (non-commercial only) |
| File System | Mounting/creating disk images | ImgBurn | Read a disc to an image file (ISO, BIN, IMG, etc.), create an image file from files on your computer, write an image to a disc, and more. | |
Freeware |
| File System | Visualizing file space | SpaceSniffer | Find lost disk space by using Treemap visualization to gain an immediate perception of where big folders and files are places on your disks. | |
Freeware |
| File System | Recovering M$ product keys | Produkey | Displays the Product ID and the CD Key of Microsoft Office (Microsoft Office 2003, Microsoft Office 2007), Windows (Including Windows 7 and Windows Vista), Exchange Server, and SQL Server installed on your computer. | |
Freeware |
| File System | Recovering M$ product keys | Magical Jelly Bean Key Finder | Retrieves your Product Key (cd key) used to install windows from your registry. Also retrieves product keys for many other applications. | |
Freeware |
| File System | Reading and writing USB disk images | Win32 Disk Imager | Designed to write a raw disk image to a removable device or backup a removable device to a raw image file. | |
GNU GPL |
| File System | File compression | 7-Zip | File archiver with a high compression ratio. | |
GNU LGPL |
| File System | Hard Disk Information (S.M.A.R.T.) | CrystalDiskInfo | A HDD/SSD utility software which supports a part of USB connection and Intel RAID. | |
Modified BSD |
| File System | Duplicate file finder | dupeGuru | |||
| File System | Create Bootable USB Drive | Rufus | Rufus is a utility that helps format and create bootable USB flash drives, such as USB keys/pendrives, memory sticks, etc. | |
|
| File System | Text Editing | gVim | A highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing. | |
charityware (GPL-based) |
| File System | Visualizing file space | Disk Inventory X | Disk Inventory X is a disk usage utility for Mac OS X 10.3 (and later). It shows the sizes of files and folders in a special graphical way called "treemaps". | |
GNU GPL |
| File System | Disk Partition Management | Active@ Partition Manager | Create, delete, format and name partitions on your computer without shutting down the system. | |
Freeware |
| File System | Securely Wiping Disks | Active@ KillDisk | Portable software that allows you to destroy all data on Hard Disks, Solid State Disks (SSD), USB disks, and Memory Cards. | |
Commercial |
| File System | Editing text files | Notepad++ | Notepad++ is a free (as in "free speech" and also as in "free beer") source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Running in the MS Windows environment, its use is governed by GPL License. | |
GNU GPL |
| Emulation | OS virtualization | Oracle VM VirtualBox | A cross-platform, general-purpose full virtualizer for x86 hardware, targeted at server, desktop and embedded use. | |
GNU GPL |
| Electronics | PCB designing | EAGLE PCB Design | A powerful and flexible PCB design software offering the high level functionality of expensive commercial circuit board design software at a fraction of the cost for over 20 years. | |
Freeware (non-commercial only) |
| Electronics | PCB designing | Fritzing | Allows users to document their prototypes, share them with others, teach electronics in a classroom, and layout and manufacture professional PCB's. | |
GNU GPL |
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