Favourite free software and where to get it.

Tony Fisher · **Joined:** Sun Mar 27, 2005 7:37 pm

I thought it would be handy if we posted links to free ( legally obtainable + safe ) software that we liked.

Screen recorder (to video)
http://camstudio.org . Scroll down to- "CamStudio: CamStudio20.exe" for download. I checked it on McAfee Site Advisor and read some reviews so I am pretty sure it's safe. It's highly rated.

Web page reloader
Ok so this is a Firefox plugin but I had no idea it existed- https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/115 . You can set pages so they reload automatically. I will certainly be using this at the end of the Petaminx auction. I believe there are equivalents for other browsers.

Shua · **Posted:** Thu Mar 12, 2009 9:35 pm

Thank you.

Caphits · **Posted:** Thu Mar 12, 2009 10:56 pm

Google Chrome It has changed the way I browse the internet. I simply love it.

EDIT: I also use Daemon tools light. It's a disk image mounter. So, if you have the disk image, it creates a virtual drive, and lets you use the program without the disk. Very handy after downloading some "free source" content on torrents.

TomZ · **Posted:** Fri Mar 13, 2009 1:52 am

Caphits wrote:

Google Chrome It has changed the way I browse the internet. I simply love it.

Ahh I also like it very much. It's great!

the.drizzle · **Joined:** Thu Apr 05, 2007 8:05 pm **Location:** Seed-nee

I don't think a week goes by that I don't use Scilab and/or Maxima. And I don't even know how I'd function anymore without TeX...

Jared · **Posted:** Fri Mar 13, 2009 11:50 am

Well, they're not useful programs, but I do enjoy a game of Domino Solitaire or Shamrock Solitaire every so often.

TBTTyler · **Posted:** Fri Mar 13, 2009 5:15 pm

I'm a huge fan of open source software, but you've probably heard of some of these:

I know you've all heard of Firefox(.com) and if you haven't, that's gotta be a mighty big rock you're living under.
Almost all of my computer desktop backgrounds are made with Apophysis, the fractal generator. Just tweak 'till it looks cool! http://www.apophysis.org
Then I run the result through the GIMP (Photoshop alternative) to get the exact coloration I want. http://www.gimp.org
For 3d polygonal modeling, my favorite free program is Wings3D. http://www.wings3d.com
I'm not much of a fan of blender, but it has it's purpose. http://www.blender.org
For some fun, you can try David Laser scanner. It makes decent shape representations of whatever you scan, but you have to pay for any extra features. http://www.david-laserscanner.com/
Of course, I have to say Ubuntu. Gotta love Linux OS! http://www.ubuntu.com
My favorite text editor is GVIM. You definitely have to spend time to actually learn it, but once you do it's freakin' awesome! http://www.vim.org
Pidgin is my choice for all my instant messaging needs. http://www.pidgin.im
Playing mp3's is a job for foobar2000: an extensible media player with a very small memory footprint. http://www.foobar2000.org
Playing videos is done by VLC: Plays everything but real media, and who uses that anymore? http://www.videolan.org/vlc
For some fun, stepmania is a great free Dance Dance Revolution simulator (songs found elsewhere) http://www.stepmania.com

I use a LOT more, but most are pretty insignificant.

Jin H Kim · **Posted:** Fri Mar 13, 2009 10:49 pm

Hmmm. I think I'll counterbalance the exotic sauciness of this topic and include a few bland but useful tools, tools that I actually use on an almost daily basis or when troubleshooting someone else's computer.

Belarc Advisor - Comprehensive diagnosis of what exactly is installed on your computer, both hardware and software. And nag free.

Syncback Freeware - An easy to use yet very comprehensive backup tool that's nag free. (After having used the freeware version for the past two years or so, I did finally purchase the SE version in the past week for $30 due to the freeware version's inability to back up files containing foreign characters, specifically Japanese. There is almost no meaningful functionality difference otherwise unless you're a real nut.)

ImgBurn - Great utility for making copies of your CDs and DVDs. Small, easy to use, and also nag free.

Space Monger - What's taking up all that drive space, anyway? Behold the power of a single executable tool that doesn't require installation! And also, yes, NAG FREE! One of my favorites.

Well that's just a taste of some of my favorite small, light, and (nag) free software.

Cubicle · **Posted:** Fri Mar 13, 2009 10:50 pm

A bit simpler Photoshop alternative I use is Paint.net.

Danny Devitt · **Posted:** Fri Mar 13, 2009 11:05 pm

Seashore- a paint-like program for macs

Growl- a highly customizable program that gives you notifications from many applications

DLitwin · **Posted:** Fri Mar 13, 2009 11:16 pm

InkScape, for 2D vector graphics. I used this tool for the Elemental:Neon, Chromium and the Kilominx, as well as stickers for numerous projects. It is awesome.

BRL-CAD for 3D modeling. Not very friendly, but great for basic shape geometry. I used this to model the pieces for my Pillowed and Inverted 2x2x2 cubes.

CyberDuck for ftp.

Dave

Shua · **Posted:** Fri Mar 13, 2009 11:28 pm

I use Google Sketch-up for getting new ideas.

kastellorizo · **Posted:** Fri Mar 13, 2009 11:44 pm

If you want to re-live your older days, when arcade games were simpler (and in my opinion more fun!) than today,
then MAME is what you need:

http://www.mameworld.info/

Please do not ask me any further questions, just read the site's FAQ on the left.

Pantazis

PS. To get an idea, you may view MAME Jump, one of my popular flash movies (i.e. flovies) I did few years back.

Danny Devitt · **Posted:** Sat Mar 14, 2009 12:34 am

Awesome flovie, Grand Master Peter!

Bounb · **Joined:** Fri Oct 05, 2007 1:45 pm

Launchy - been using this keystroke launcher for years and I LOVE it
PuTTY - Telnet/SSH client
WinSCP - SCP and FTP Client
Filezilla - another FTP Client
irssi - console IRC client
7-Zip - best archive tool
Audacity - excellent open source audio suite
Glary Utilities - lightweight system fix up utility suite
Firefox - still using Internet Explorer? Come off it.
Disk Investigator - reads raw data off your hard disk, very powerful
Wireshark - fantastic network analyser
Cain & Abel - powerful password and network tools
Tor - anonymity online
AdBlock Plus (firefox add-on) - a must have add on
JKdefrag - best defrag utility around, totally free
Spybot S&D - keep your system free of malware
AVG Free - best free antivirus software
Comodo internet security - decent free firewall software
Picasa - great photo album/management software
µTorrent - good torrent client (for moving around your favourite open source software, right?)
Notepad++ - great notepad replacement
FFmpeg - the wonderful ffmpeg libraries/tools
Ultimate Boot CD - use imgburn as suggested by Jin to burn a copy of this and keep it handy - it'll be a lifesaver one day.
+ all the stuff at Windows Sysinternals

A taste of my favourite free software. I hope you find something you like.

Bigandrewgold · **Posted:** Sat Mar 14, 2009 4:58 pm

Bounb wrote:

Tor - anonymity online
AdBlock Plus (firefox add-on) - a must have add on

I love these 2

Shua · **Posted:** Sat Mar 14, 2009 5:15 pm

wrong button. :oops:

Fractangle · **Joined:** Wed Oct 08, 2008 11:41 am **Location:** Earth

kastellorizo wrote:

PS. To get an idea, you may view MAME Jump, one of my popular flash movies (i.e. flovies) I did few years back.

EPIC WIN (or is it epic wit? I'll say both. :mrgreen:

)

Anyway, some of the free programs I use are:

POV-RAY - A very powerful raytracer
Ultimate Magic Cube - A twisty puzzle simulator
Frets On Fire - A Guitar Hero clone that uses the keyboard
Eclipse - A wonderful Java IDE

fusion · **Posted:** Sat Mar 14, 2009 10:51 pm

NetBeans - Java IDE

VisualBoyAdvance - An excellent Gameboy Advance Emulator

TomZ · **Posted:** Sun Mar 15, 2009 4:23 am

WinSCP is great for doing (S)FTP stuff. I also love Crimson Editor for developing websites as it is a great PHP editor with built in FTP so you can review your changes quickly.

JasperJ · **Posted:** Sun Mar 15, 2009 6:04 am

Jin H Kim wrote:

Belarc Advisor - Comprehensive diagnosis of what exactly is installed on your computer, both hardware and software. And nag free.

Just don't put the HTML it generates on a public website -- it (used to?) includes full publicly visible things like your windows and office product keys and the like. Great way to google for legal XP keys.

flambore · **Posted:** Sun Mar 15, 2009 11:36 am

Howie's Quickware Screen Capture Tool - great for doing a lot of screencaps, has an option to just capture the active window (great for when you have multiple monitors)

Edit Pad Lite - great text editor, has multiple tabs to quickly jump between text files

examdiff - Compares two text files and highlights the differences. Great for HTML, Perl, PHP, etc., if you are trying to troubleshoot stuff. Also great for comparing Cisco router configs.

theVDude · **Posted:** Mon Mar 16, 2009 8:25 am

flambore wrote:

Howie's Quickware Screen Capture Tool - great for doing a lot of screencaps, has an option to just capture the active window (great for when you have multiple monitors)

On windows, that's alt+PrtScn.

I've never had a problem just taking screenshots -WITHOUT- a program. I think it's ridiculous, unless you're using a different OS.

fusion · **Posted:** Mon Mar 16, 2009 12:07 pm

theVDude wrote:

On windows, that's alt+PrtScn.

Or just PrtScn. :wink:

flambore · **Posted:** Mon Mar 16, 2009 12:38 pm

theVDude wrote:

flambore wrote:

Howie's Quickware Screen Capture Tool - great for doing a lot of screencaps, has an option to just capture the active window (great for when you have multiple monitors)

On windows, that's alt+PrtScn.

I've never had a problem just taking screenshots -WITHOUT- a program. I think it's ridiculous, unless you're using a different OS.

And then what do you do? You have to paste it into something, then save the image, and switch back and forth between windows. This program allows you to keep hitting the F12 key, and every time you do, a snapshot of your screen, or the active window is saved to the directory of your choice. Still think it's ridiculous?

theVDude · **Posted:** Wed Mar 18, 2009 2:20 pm

fusion wrote:

theVDude wrote:

On windows, that's alt+PrtScn.

Or just PrtScn. :wink:

Hold alt to get just the active window.

flambore wrote:

theVDude wrote:

flambore wrote:

Howie's Quickware Screen Capture Tool - great for doing a lot of screencaps, has an option to just capture the active window (great for when you have multiple monitors)

On windows, that's alt+PrtScn.

I've never had a problem just taking screenshots -WITHOUT- a program. I think it's ridiculous, unless you're using a different OS.

And then what do you do? You have to paste it into something, then save the image, and switch back and forth between windows. This program allows you to keep hitting the F12 key, and every time you do, a snapshot of your screen, or the active window is saved to the directory of your choice. Still think it's ridiculous?

I almost always have photoshop open, but it is a little less silly now.

There's an extension for firefox that saves a whole webpage as a screenshot (Instead of taking a bunch and putting them together) called Abduction!.

There's also Clipomatic, which allows you to save different things you've copied to paste later!

TBTTyler · **Posted:** Wed Mar 18, 2009 5:14 pm

Bounb wrote:

Wireshark - fantastic network analyser[/url]

I just found the wonder of Wireshark. Actually tshark, because I loves me the command line.
You can do some *ahem* fun things by finding out exactly what http requests your browser calls when looking at web video.

Politely Owned · **Joined:** Sat Feb 16, 2008 8:55 pm

So, I'm looking for a good free audio editing software, also a video editing software for pc{foremost an audio editor}...
I can easily find something on my own, but of all the softwares out there, I'd love to get a recommended program.

Help me out please?

TBTTyler · **Posted:** Fri Apr 17, 2009 5:37 pm

Might I suggest Audacity
As for a video editor, did you know that you can set up Blender as a really nice compositing/editing program? Just do a bit of Googling to find out how.

fusion · **Posted:** Fri Apr 17, 2009 6:33 pm

Does anyone know of a free gif creator? I've searched multiple places and not found one that lets me just drag, drop, set delay, and exit program. That's all I'm looking for, not something like photoshop or gimp. Does anyone have any suggestions?

TomZ · **Posted:** Sat Apr 18, 2009 1:12 am

I found this for ya: http://www.bauer-power.net/2007/10/crea ... -free.html (I searched for 'animated gif open source')

Jeffery Mewtamer · **Joined:** Sun Nov 23, 2008 2:18 am

CaRMetal(http://db-maths.nuxit.net/CaRMetal/index_en.html) is a pretty good application for geometric constructions.

fusion · **Posted:** Mon Apr 20, 2009 8:50 pm

TomZ wrote:

I found this for ya: http://www.bauer-power.net/2007/10/crea ... -free.html (I searched for 'animated gif open source')

Thanks TomZ! That is exactly what I was looking for. I never thought of searching for the word 'animated'. I've already begun using it.

Cubicle · **Posted:** Tue May 05, 2009 10:14 pm

http://www.jingproject.com/

Just got this. Its a vid/pic capture program. Works well, atleast for what I have been using it for. Saves straight to desktop, also has custom sizable vid/pic capture.

chris_joe · **Posted:** Sun May 17, 2009 3:12 pm

InfranView http://www.irfanview.com/

Quote:

Some IrfanView features:

* Many supported file formats (click here the list of formats)
* Multi language support
* Thumbnail/preview option
* Paint option - to draw lines, circles, arrows, straighten image etc.
* Toolbar skins option
* Slideshow (save slideshow as EXE/SCR or burn it to CD)
* Show EXIF/IPTC/Comment text in Slideshow/Fullscreen etc.
* Support for Adobe Photoshop Filters
* Fast directory view (moving through directory)
* Batch conversion (with image processing)
* Multipage TIF editing
* File search
* Email option
* Multimedia player
* Print option
* Support for embedded color profiles in JPG/TIF
* Change color depth
* Scan (batch scan) support
* Cut/crop
* IPTC editing
* Effects (Sharpen, Blur, Adobe 8BF, Filter Factory, Filters Unlimited, etc.)
* Capturing
* Extract icons from EXE/DLL/ICLs
* Lossless JPG rotation
* Unicode support
* Many hotkeys
* Many command line options
* Many PlugIns
* Only one EXE-File, no DLLs, no Shareware messages like "I Agree" or "Evaluation expired"
* No registry changes without user action/permission!
* and much much more

Projekt · **Posted:** Sun May 17, 2009 9:40 pm

V Downloader. Copy videos/audio from YouTube and similar sites. Only non-copyrighted material, of course. :wink:

V-Downloader

all2bar · **Joined:** Mon Jan 19, 2009 10:34 pm **Location:** Boston

VirtualDubMod - Allow you to cut, add, edit video streams, demux audio streams ,add new change order ...

Favourite free software and where to get it.

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