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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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.
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/
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).
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.