The SHH! Guide to Free Powerful Software! New And Improved!

[Sam Fisher]

To Malice's request, I have created this new thread. Here is the complete list of free programsthat was posted in the other thread{Note: I did not include programs that were free trials}. If anyone has anything to add I will add to this post. Also, I think this should be a sticky so people won't have to go digging for it



AntiVirus Programs
NOTE From Malice: I plead with you, if you do not have antivirus software on your computer, please, immediately download one of the following FREE AntiVirus software applications for your computer. Help make the net safer. Remember, these free antivirus applications tend NOT to be as good as commercial applications, so you might want to spend the money and get a new antivirus application once every 2 years.
AVG AntiVirus
AntiVir Personal Edition
avast! 4 Home Download
Ad-Aware
McAfee
CCleaner
Panicware Pop-up Stopper
Cornodo.com
ClaimWin
ClamXav for Mac
ClamAV

Web Browsers/Add-Ons​

Google Chrome
FireFox
A Guide To FireFox Extensions ADBlock ADBlock Filterset.G FasterFox IE Tab Trashmail.net
Opera
Sandboxie

Email Clients​

Thunderbird

Text Editors​

Crimson Editor
OpenOffice
Notepad++

FTP Clients​

FileZilla

Graphics Viewer​

IrfanView

Comic Book Readers
Comical
CDisplay

Graphics Editor​

GIMP
GIMP for Mac
Pixia
Unfreez
Art Rage
Picasa
PhotoPlus 8
3D Plus 2
DrawPlus 4
Paint.net
Blender
Inkscape

CD/DVD Burners/Extractors
CDex
AVS Disc Creator
AoA DVD Ripper

Video/Audio Converters
Any Video Converter

Music Players​

WinAMP
Itunes
MediaMonkey
Foobar2000

Video Player Alternatives and Codecs​

K-Lite Codec Pack
Media Player Classic
QuickTime Alternative
Real Alternative
VLC Media Player
AVS DVD Player

Video/Music Editors​

VirtualDub
Audacity
MP3 Gain
MP3 Direct Cut
Tagscanner
AoA Audio Extractor
Windows Media Encoder
Ipod Converter

SpyWare
AdAware
Spybot Search and Destroy

Instant Messager​

Trillian
GAIM
Agile Messenger
Pidgin

Personal Firewalls​

ZoneAlarm
Outpost Firewall
Sygate Personal Firewall
Kerio Personal Firewall

Telnet/SSH Clients​

PuTTY

PDF Maker​

OpenOffice
CutePDF
Sumatra

Tax Filer
TaxAct

Windows Icon Graphics Creator
Icon Sushi

PowerPoint
PowerPoint Viewer

Web Authoring Programs
NVU
WebPlus SE
KompoZer

Widgets
Dashboard Widgets
Dashboard Exposed

Video Downloaders
FireFox Video Downloader
SUPER
VIXY Online Video Converter
Any Video Downloader

Download Managers
FlashGet

Zip Programs
7-Zip
PeaZip

Operating Systems
Linux
Ubuntu Linix
OpenSuSE
Mandriva

Other
Skype
DVD Profiler
Juice Podcast Reciever
Cinergy Script Editor
Utorrent

File Sharing Sites
Pando
SendThisFile
Podmailing

Free Software Sites
30 Essential Pieces Of Free Software
IZArc
Giveaway Of The day
Major Geeks

 

[Malice]

Great, thanks!

 

[Sam Fisher]

No Problem

 

[Philly Phanboy]

Another one for under "Operating Systems":

Ubuntu linux

If anybody has an old PC running one of the Windows OSes that are no longer being supported, I'd recommend trying Ubuntu as an alternative.

P.S. Once your Ubuntu is up and running you'll likely need the "Wine" download to run Windows based programs/games.

 

[Malice]

Plus ubuntu will ship you INSTALL CDs for free!

 

[AxlsAppetite]

So do you we ask here for other free programs that people haven't asked about yet?

I need a free one that rips DVDs into avi format. It's not movies or copyrighted material.

 

[Sam Fisher]

Yes, ask away!

 

[wiegeabo]

I highly recommend avast anti-virus. It's always getting new updates, so it's well maintained. Takes up less space and memory than McAfee and Norton. I think it even runs faster.

 

[Yerzrinot]

I highly recommend avast anti-virus. It's always getting new updates, so it's well maintained. Takes up less space and memory than McAfee and Norton. I think it even runs faster.

AVG has a horrible detection rate. Avast is far superior.

I'd like to recommend NoScript. It's a great firefox extension that makes surfing the web much more secure. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722

Notepad++ is a great text editor.

http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm

Operating Systems
Linux
Ubuntu Linix

You can't use "pure linux" since you already recommended Ubuntu I'd also like to suggest OpenSuSE and Mandriva.

It's sad that no one's mentioned foobar2000. Way less bloated then iTunes or Winamp. http://www.foobar2000.org/

 

[Sam Fisher]

You can't use "pure linux" since you already recommended Ubuntu

I put both on there so people could choose what they want to use

 

[Yerzrinot]

After looking at some of the old threads in the forum I think we're in desperate need of mentioning a bittorrent client. I've noticed multiple threads about people fighting with Limewire or the gnutella network in general.

µTorrent is in my opinion the best client available for windows (they're hard at work on an OS X version as well) it's memory footprint is tiny compared to that of other clients *cough* Vuze *cough*.

http://www.utorrent.com/download.php

 

[Sam Fisher]

^Should I even list those? Those may be legal, but they are used alot for "ilegal" purposes.

 

[Yerzrinot]

^Should I even list those? Those may be legal, but they are used alot for "ilegal" purposes.

Bittorrent is used a lot for Linux distros and large apps like OpenOffice. So yeah it does have it's legitimate purposes. You can download pirated material though any browser's download manager as well. As long as we're not helping anyone with what they've downloaded I don't see the problem.

 

[Sam Fisher]

No problem. Just my personal opinion that's all.

 

[Malice]

I have used NUMEROUS torrent systems and uTorrent is the best IMO.
Plus it definately can be used LEGALLY.

 

[AxlsAppetite]

Just make sure you gt the newest version,1.8, they found a big flaw in 1.7.7. Can't remember what it was but it wasnt good.

 

[wiegeabo]

Using uTorrent 1.8 as well. Probably my favorite of the programs I've used.

 

[AxlsAppetite]

Anybody got a free program to rip dvds to avi?

 

[Sam Fisher]

AoA DVD Ripper. But on the free version you can only rip about 10 min at a time.

 

[Yerzrinot]

I highly recommend Sandboxie for web browsing and opening programs you're just not sure about.

 

[Franklin Richards]

What's a good .cbr file reader?

 

[Yerzrinot]

What's a good .cbr file reader?

Comical

 

[wiegeabo]

And CDisplay

 

[Ion Kenshin]

Can anyone suggest a good program for converting media files into various different formats (i.e avi mp4 etc...) Thanks in advance

 

[AxlsAppetite]

http://www.any-video-converter.com/products/for_video_free/

it gets the job done