Personal note: I am not very knowledgeable on computers.
I have a new solid state drive after my old hard drive's Windows key apparently 'expired.'
The ssd is preloaded with Windows 10 because of familiarity and 'muh gaymes', but I do want to start getting away from Microsoft stuff (including the OS) on principle.
I know internet browser options are currently a bit "pick your poison." I've been satisfied with Brave and Waterfox, and previously Pale Moon (dropped for some website or add-in functionality I can't remember from years ago).
Besides that, I was thinking this might be a good opportunity to learn about current software/projects doing things properly.
So, I'll just share what programs I see among my hard drive files... 7zip, SumatraPDF, VLC, Audacity (which I recall seeing got bought), Steam, Dropbox, MusicBee (music player and manager), OpenOffice, and some game emulators for a Nintendo fanboomer.
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I'll give my list of "must haves" applications that I always install, developed over 20 plus years of use:
VLC - because it plays every video format I've ever heard of, is free, and is still under active development
Irfanview - for resizing photo files, and general photo manipulation
7zip - because even though handing zip files is built into windows now, Microsoft hasn't seen fit to put an "extract here" option into the right click menu. 7zip adds that.
Brackets - expanded text editor that I first used in my web design class in college, works like notepad++ but isn't notepad++.
Waterfox - because fuck Firefox and most especially fuck Chrome, and because PaleMoon can't run the browser extensions I need anymore. I used to use PaleMoon, ran it for years, but a revision several years ago broke all Firefox add on compatibility, and it was no longer an option. I can't use Brave, because the way it handles bookmarks is shit.
eM client - email client that I have a paid license for, because Thunderbird is from Mozilla, and fuck Mozilla for forcing out Brendan Eich.
Deluge - bittorrent client, for when I feel the need to sail the high seas.
NordVPN - VPN I use when I fire up Deluge, because DMCA emails suck and it works with bittorrent.
Putty - SSH shell app that I use to shell into my various linux boxen, and the Rasberry Pi that I run Pi-Hole on.
Foxit PDF reader - because everyone had to have a PDF reader nowadays
libreOffice - because I have many, many spreadsheets, including my financial budget.
Discord - some of the games and/or mods I play have active discord servers. Yes, I know Dicord is evil, but you don't have much choice today if you want to talk with other fans of the game/mod you are playing.
This short list is for software development, so if you don't do that, feel free to ignore it:
Gitkraken - for pulling from, and pushing to, my github account.
Eclipse IDE - for Java development. My university was pretty much standardized on it, and I've used it for years, at this point. Yes, I know about jetbrains, no I don't like it, I won't switch.
Visual Studio Community edition - I currently use 2019, but there is a later one out. For development in c#, which I also do along with Java.
For games:
I have Steam, Uplay, and Battlenet installed. And the standalone Path of Exile client, because I play that, too. Path of Building community edition for use with Path of Exile.
Mullvad is better as a VPN, and for torrenting you're best off either getting a realdebrid account or seedbox. You can integrate either into a full setup with sonarr, radarr, and the rest.
I find it hard to trust them with how many spammy sponserships there are on youtube
I only use their VPN end points from my HTPC, and only while downloading, so they get minimal traffic from me. If it gets to the point where I have to use a VPN for general browsing, it is time to get off the internet and take my rifle off the wall, if you get the general idea...
They're just a big player. I have yet to hear anybody suggest a better alternative that's easy.
I don't know about Waterfox specifically, but other web browsers have their own PDF reader functionality now, so this might be unnecessary.
I never allow PDFs to open in the browser as a security measure.
Pretty sure all the browsers use JavaScript to display the PDFs so it should be secure except from million-dollar exploits (which nobody is wasting on you).
Your native client on the other hand is probably secure only because it's too small a target.
inkscape for vector drawing if you need that
irfanview for image viewing and conversion/manipulation
notepadd++ for text or code editing, the dev is a gay commie but I haven't found a better pure text editor
if you like minecraft but want a more "realism" experience I really like Vintage Story
A bit dated, but a solid source for some freeware tools and software:
https://www.majorgeeks.com/
On second thought, that site's software listings might be a little overwhelming for a new user. Still handy, and it manages to retain some user reviews and feedback.
Also, avoid the hell out of self-advertised optimizers, speed/performance boosters, automatic cleaning tools, etc. A good majority of the time they do jack all for improving modern systems and sometimes cause more headaches.
What trump is trying to say here is: Windows 10 LTSC with a KMS activation script and disabled telemetry (something you can only truly do with the LTSC version). No MS will not sell you this version, yarr Matey!
Edit: These are my presumptuous interpretations of trump's comment, not an endorsement of anything that might be uncouth or cost MS money.
Office 2007 Enterprise Edition.
If we can be honest for a moment, no one would voluntarily install OpenOffice on their computer if Office didn't cost $$$$. Yes OpenOffice can export to PDF and Office for a long time couldn't. But now "Print to PDF" is built into Windows, so...
Office 2007 Enterprise (and only Enterprise) is the last version of Office to not require online activation and the first version to support the "modern" Office file formats (docx, xlsx, pptx). And it still works just fine on Win10 and doesn't cost $$$$ because it's no longer sold or supported by Microsoft.
Search for "KGFVY".
There are a lot of keys online, but a lot of them aren't Enterprise keys and will still ask you to activate. Of course it does this after you've installed everything.
That one is an Enterprise key, and it won't even let you try to activate Office.
For the ISO search for "c377a8ee2daf8eb6d8307801e9dc4888e281d50d". That's the hash for the official ISO that you would have downloaded from Microsoft back in the day. A lot of the ISOs you find have been modified in some way or another.
OneNote is an extremely under-rated piece of software. I received a free copy of the first version they released back in 2003 for attending some sort of Microsoft tech talk at my university. Been hooked ever since.
https://www.privacytools.io/
. Windows 11 ( I know guys, but muh video games and user friendliness, otherwise I'd switch to Linux in a hearbeat, I've ranted about this all before )
. LibreOffice ( If you need it for work )
. Brave Browser
. 7Zip
. Foobar2000
. Protonmail ( I use web clients only for email for the most part, keeps life simple )
Honestly people may hate me pointing this out and rightly so but by default and by today's standards Windows 11 offers almost everything you need and there's a reason why a lot of people won't make the switch to Linux.
Going to the absolute basic of computer desktop features, running programs is a simply one or double click affair, everything works and it's usually the software developers' fault if something goes wrong with a third party app. It's never been easier to get into PCs which is all the more depressing to find out how many young zoomers are as tech illiterate as boomers thanks to mobile phones.
As much shit as Windows/MS gets for a lot of things (and rightly so), it did lay down a fantastic groundwork for software developers and users.
Like just imagining an alternate timeline without Windows existing fills me with a certain level of dread and horror, simply because of how stagnant the alternatives are when it comes to growth and innovation.
It makes me so angry how lazy Valve is -- anyone who has used SteamOS on a Steam Deck will know how easy it is to navigate and how much better it is than Windows on almost every front. Updating drivers and services is so much more intuitive and user-friendly than anything Windows has done. And being able to just click on the search bar and type in the program/driver you need and it can download straight from the search bar is awesome.
However... SteamOS isn't compatible with a lot of other device drivers for desktop PCs (especially Nvidia) and Valve still hasn't done anything to remedy that problem, so it's just non-viable as a desktop OS for now.
It's a real shame, because from a UX perspective, it's a lot faster, smoother, easier to use, and more flexible than Windows. But if or when Valve will ever get around to making SteamOS a viable OS for desktop PCs is anyone's guess.
Steam's emulator for Windows on Linux called Proton makes basically every game you would have played on Windows work perfectly with absolutely no fiddling under the hood or trying to use search engines for tech support (which we all know is 100% impossible now).
I'll be curious to give it a try because a steam deck is on my purchase list, however I do actually test things and if I find it's too much of a pain in the arse to get things working on steam then I'll probably just wipe it and install Windows 11 on it and use that as a second mini-gaming desktop in the living room. It would be nice to have a second PC while I do any chuggy rendering in Blender for my short films etc.
If steam deck was closed source bullshit and they forced you to keep SteamOS installed I wouldn't even be interested but that's my upgrade plan at the moment. That and I want to switch to pure SSD finally for my main desktop. The problem is I like playing old games mainly and very often the support on Linux for them is garbage.
You can check the compatibility of any game on Steam with www.protondb.com, you can use it to run non-Steam games too and that + DOSBox means you're pretty much covered on any old games.
Win10 still works for all gaming afaik including VR. It may be nearing end of support, but still works.
Agreed, however I put myself through the pain of learning it early on so that way when they inevitably force the upgrade on everyone I won't even notice. Very often when I do this, I'm pretty glad I did because you can hear the screeching on the internet through the monitor when that sort of thing happens.
Only other thing I'd add to your existing list that other people haven't mentioned is Gimp if there's a chance you'll ever do anything with images
I use Fedora Linux w/ KDE desktop. I prefer the KDE desktop. Although if I were to suggest a beginner user I'd probably steer them towards a Ubuntu Linux just for ease of learning. Browser I still just use Brave because I like it the best.. otherwise the same stuff. I don't game on Linux yet though.
A new person to linux should get VirtualBox for Windows first and try out linux in a virtual machine. Full screen it and see if it's for you.
I programmed for linux/solaris/bsd for a decade and I ran Windows as the host because it's better at desktop. Since he's not stuck with Windows 11 there's really no benefit from hosting linux.
or a liveusb
Why VirtualBox when you can just use WSL2?
I've never used WSL2 so maybe it's great, but I'd still say virtualbox just because it's more separate so you know what's going on.