Free software

[red_ned]

OpenSource & Freeware
This is about legitimate free software, not hacked/cracked or pirate.

Here is some of the stuff i use.

Notepad ++
http://notepad-plus-plus.org/download
A great advanced text editor which recognises different types of code and highlights the language terms for you. Great for opening multiple docs at once and searching through them all for the same thing and even replacing stuff within the code (used to change a term throughout an entire website at once).
Opensource. No junk in package.

VLC movie player
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-windows.html
Great movie player which can play pretty much anything without having to find massive amount of crappy codecs.
Opensource. No junk in package.

WinSCP + Putty
http://winscp.net/eng/download.php
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgta ... nload.html
Great Ftp client and can integrate Putty so you can do all your file transfers and restart processes. 2 major tools i use to run Wireplay CSS servers.
Both freeware. No junk in package.

Super
http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html
A bit tricky to download! So i am hosting the latest version on CiC webspace for direct download.
http://cic-clan.com/SUPERsetup.zip
Great program to convert any video/audio format to any other format. I use it mainly to encode videos for my mobile as it even does 3G formats.
Freeware. A bar in the package which can be skipped.

Gimp2
http://www.gimp.org/downloads/
A very good and stable advanced paint shop program. I use this at work as we cant afford £100's for licensing adobe products.
Opensource. No junk in package.

Mypaint
http://mypaint.intilinux.com/?page_id=6
This is a painting program as it allows you to use different types of brush/paint/charcol etc. Its not a photo or image editor but an art package for people with much more talent than me.
Opensource. No junk in package.

Fotosizer
http://www.fotosizer.com/
A really useful batch resizing program for photos. Set what you want the output dimensions to be, select source folder, select destination folder and go. Great for creating a whole photo collection which are the same size or even doing thumbnails.
Freeware. Might be skippable toolbar in package.

Audacity
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
A multi track sound editor, not only can you edit stereo audio but also overlay other tracks along side to allow you make almost anything.
There are also loads of plugins available to run VST plugins and loads of bits n bobs.
Opensource. No junk in package.

7 Zip
http://www.7-zip.org/download.html
Much better than either winrar or winzip and totally free. This program can handle zip formats from both windows and linux and you can batch run on files or folders. Really worthwhile downloading.
Opensource. No junk in package.


There are loads of other freeware/opensource software packages so please recommend only those you actually use and i have ignored the major software like Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Winamp, OpenOffice etc as i pressume people know about them and use them.
Post yours and we can even review some of them later.
ned

[frags]

isn't all sofware free

[Kop]

free and legal i think he meant :p

[zaH]

If you've ever wanted to change how your Windows 7 looks, there's a free way to do it, it's on this page at the top

Some more styles
More

Unfortunately it's fairly complicated to do, but you only have to do it once so when you find something you like you can just do it once then you have pretty computer screen forevz. Oh and you could easily fuck up your PC so be careful

First, you install the uxStyle thing on the top of the page. Then restart PC to be safe.

Then, you download a style in a zip file

In the zip there could be one or many things to replace. If there is:

1 - *.theme
Double click (or put in C:\Windows\Resources\Themes folder idk)

2 - *.msstyles
Double click (or put in above folder maybe dunno)

3 - explorer.exe
This is a complex son of a bastard. You have to 'take control' of explorer.exe somehow, I guess try this thing. Then rename it to something like explorer.exe.bak as a backup and replace it with the one in the zip

4 - Fonts
Right click > Install

Again, the explorer.exe thing is really REALLY complicated and dodgy, even if you do it right the exe might be dodgy and could fuck you over

Also to make things less safe I haven't done this so it might not even work. Have fun! ^_^

[Direkneed]

Something you may want to replace for that "Super" program is the all in one software http://www.dvdvideosoft.com/ provides.

50MB extracted to something like 200mb and you can do A whole lot of things. Really worth it. Use it all the time I need something.

[Weissberv]

Rakario - Bandwidth monitor

This is what I use for seeing how much bandwidth my pc is using. It can't see what exactly is using your bandwidth or anything but it's a cool thing to have "always on top" so you can see if something's trying to be sneaky and downloading stuff w/o your permission.

http://www.rokario.com/products/bandmon/2-0/


Paint.net

It's a free program that replaces the use of MSpaint and is done by Microsoft and it's pretty much like a free Photoshop barring out some of the extra special things Photoshop can do. I was suprised how amazing it was when I first downloaded it since it was free and all that.

http://www.paint.net/

[red_ned]

found this site which allows you to search through different types of freeware and opensource stuff:
http://www.techsupportalert.com/