What's Some of Your Favorite Software?

[2046]

What do you use that you can't live without?

Me, I've been shopping around lately for freeware and open-source goodies, and replacing a whole big list of software that I used to use all the time. A lot of the freeware and open-source stuff has really matured in the past couple of years, making it a good time to strike.

My basic list of preferences is that it be an all-in-one application that doesn't suck and is not a total memory whore. I am perfectly willing to use light-footprint applications that do one thing and do it very well, but I also loathe the idea of having sixteen of them to do different one-things in the same group of things.

So, if at all possible, I'd prefer to have one big'un that does it all.

There are some caveats, of course.

1. I'd rather avoid Java, Adobe Air, or any other similar mess. These toolkits might allow some nice applications to be made, but whenever I have to run some virtual machine for something I'm eating valuable memory. Java I can live with *barely*, but I'll be damned if I'm installing Adobe Air.

(Adobe are the folks who took a lightweight and awesome sound utility called Cool Edit from the 90's and, after buying the company and code, released Adobe Audition, which was the same program under a different name. However, the thing had ballooned from like 10 megabytes to 400. Bloatware alert!)

I know my memory concern might seem silly in an age where a gig of memory is kinda on the low side, but I'm an old-fashioned boy. I remember the good ole days when you could have a kick-butt TSR running that wouldn't eat up more than a few kB of RAM, and you could run that ST:TNG Technical Manual CD-ROM on a computer with 8MB of RAM.

Can you imagine if they programmed that exact same thing now? It would probably take up 200MB, minimum. Why is that? It annoys me greatly.

2. I hate crippleware and similar fake freeware. There are free versions of some applications that are really just shareware-lite emasculated versions serving as advertisements for the full commercial version, and that ticks me off. Either be free or go home. (Cool Edit was released in that manner, come to think of it.)

3. While I hate myself for saying it, I don't like command-line apps. I want to like them. I really do. But ever since the olden days of StupenDOS (a badass DOS shell . . . ghetto-Windows-Explorer, for you youngsters), I've felt like the command line is a last-recourse sort of thing, for someone who may or may not have gotten something to work and is generally too lazy to even try to pretend to make something pretty.

(Even my lazy ass spends time with The GiMP to make pretty pictures so my site looks sorta-kinda-maybe good. It ain't just raw text, anyway.)

While I like my programs pretty, I don't want them too pretty. I don't mind nice, clean, and obvious icons, but there's still a lot of software that uses funky, too-small, or generally-meaningless icons. There's some software now that uses all pictures and little-to-no text, no menu (e.g. File, Edit, View, etc.), and funky icons besides. That's just wrong. Iconography and graphical user interfaces are meant to enhance working with machines, not make it a translation game with pictograms. If I want vague, I'll listen to Dennis Miller.

4. While not critical, it helps if the program author has a decent website, or at least has in some way put out good information about the software. What are the capabilities? What does it do? If I can't find out, I'm not going to waste time exploring.

5. I love Linux in principle. But dammit, I hate the 48000 distros with 15000 different ways to install stuff that may or may not work on your distro.

Windows . . . out of the box, I slap in an install disc or click on some setup.exe somewhere and seconds later I have the software running like gangbusters.

Linux . . . I have to find the right package for my distribution (if it even exists) and then I might eventually get it installed. If not, I have to build the program from the source code. Ugh.

Call me lazy or whatever, but until Linux reaches that user-level-ease that Windows has, it will remain a niche product. Sure, I could run Linux and use Wine for various stuff . . . but what I'd love to see is some sort of UberLinux that can ingest whatever package you get, and to my knowledge it just isn't there yet.

MEDIA STUFF:

One recent acquisition is The KMPlayer audio/video player. I stumbled upon mention of this a few weeks back and nearly shat myself upon installing it because it was so profoundly good. It is a media player that will play anything you can throw at it with its internal codecs. I've removed RealPlayer, QuickTime, and all the other myriad codecs and codec packs from my system altogether.

I'd tried VLC and a few others, and even with VLC's word-of-mouth support it just doesn't hold a candle to The KMPlayer. The user interface is a mess and the whole thing is laid out as sloppily as that old ICQ crap from the late 90's. The KMPlayer, meanwhile, is slick-looking and powerful, to the point that I almost don't need VirtualDub anymore.

I've also been trying out MediaCoder here and there. It, too, is powerful, but I have yet to put it through its paces.

For plain old pictures, I have XNView for browsing folder thumbnails and light-duty image tasks. For heavy-duty image creation or manipulation I have the GiMP (with GiMPshop and De-weirdifier to make it more Photoshop-esque, and to not open up a new, unique window for every little menu).

But, for simply clicking on a pic to look at it, I presently have FastStone Maxview installed. This I did because XNView's load time was foul . . . I'd click on a pic to open it and then wait.

I'm fond of Maxview, but for some reason it seems to take too long on that initial load. If I look at pics in succession it is plenty quick, but it's like I catch it unawares that first time, so it takes almost as long if not longer than XNView. So, I'm weighing whether or not to hang on to it.

OFFICE/INFORMATION

There's also the Foxit PDF reader, which beats the fire out of Adobe's own bloatware.

I refuse to live without OpenOffice.

CD/DVD STUFF

My computer came with Nero, and I've tried later versions elsewhere. It has always been crap. Powerful crap, mind you, but big bloated frequently-hanging crap. As a result, I had several alternatives that I was using.

Burn-At-Once was one of those . . . an awesome and tiny ISO burning tool. And I had a few others besides, but none noteworthy enough for mention.

A negative mention was PowerISO, which was a necessary download at some point for its .daa format support. I recently learned that the .daa format (an .iso wannabe) was their own invention, and I can only assume that they're the ones pushing .daa files on the internet, because for all other purposes it sucks.

Recently, however, I happened upon CDBurnerXP. It is free, and though it retains a few of the quirks of most burning apps (e.g. that weird crap where the program has like six different interface windows that come and go as you do things, instead of a static window), it is extremely good. I've been putting it through its paces lately trying to clear off a big hard drive that I've filled up, and it hasn't done me wrong once.

I have, however, downloaded InfraRecorder, which appears to be similar to CDBurnerXP but with less silliness. However, I need to check and make sure that it can do everything CDBurnerXP can.

COMM/FTP/ETC

Browser-wise, I'm still in limbo. I've used just about every one there is, but while I'm drawn to Firefox and Opera on principle, the simple fact is that they are both memory whores. There is no good reason I can think of why both need to take up over a hundred megs of memory just sitting there doing nothing. Add Thunderbird along with Firefox and you can easily end up with 300 megs of memory tied up. The hell? I realize there's a lot to do these days, but jeez.

For torrents, I'm μTorrent all the way. I hear there's another torrenting client that actually takes up less memory, but given how lightweight μTorrent is I hardly care.

For FTP, I was using FileZilla. But now, I'm liking an integration of my explorer with FTP. See below:

UTILITIES

I've been using FreeCommander lately, a Windows Explorer replacement with FTP capability. It's pretty nice, but the user interface is a bit more "unique" than I'd prefer. However, I have yet to seek an alternative.

RocketDock is awesome. I don't want to get so far away from the regular Windows GUI that I can't work on other machines, but I do enjoy having a pop-up customizable dock for superquick access to my most favored programs, folders, and so on, without having to get back to the desktop.

****

I'm also working on building up a portable apps collection for myself . . . the sort of thing you might find on a thumbdrive. But I haven't gotten very far on this one.

[Flectarn]

A few programs i'm rather fond of. in not particular order or relevance

CDburnerXP, is a great freeware burner suite

which I now notice you had in your list.

I use a few year old version Objectdock (which i think is shareware) for my docking needs, tucked in auto-hide at the top of my screen, it's very nice.

I used to use Litestep for my shell, but have gotten away from it since building my desktop last year, didn't seem to agree with my display for some reason... but man was it ever pretty. http://flectarn.deviantart.com/art/New- ... t-54716739

I find VLC handles everything i throw at it video wise, but I also have a pretty extensive collection of codecs installed. I used the windows version of MPlayer a while ago, but the gui was lacking... and a command line video player just boggles me. might have to give KMplayer a try, though in using it in various linux distros, i've never been terribly impressed.

Xplorer^2 shareware makes a good file browser. at least untill Kde for win comes out of alpha and Konquere and dolphin are stable and feature complete (like for instance being able to access partions other than "root" (C:)

I recommend power defragmenter http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Har ... nter.shtml

Super is the best media encoder/transcoder. period. http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

Handbrake is the best DVD ripping software i've found (at least until i found it, and stopped looking) http://handbrake.fr/ though occasional i find something it can't handle. if i'm feeling determined Gordian knot can handle anything.

I hope someday to be able to use ReactOS as an everyday OS. untilll that day i'll continue bouncing between Windows, Linux and whatever other OS strikes my fancy.

[2046]

For file compression, I've gotta go 7-Zip. Call me silly, but while PeaZip has more file types that it can deal with, installing it makes all the compressed file icons the same ugly cardboard box, and I don't wanna waste time changing them. 7-Zip at least makes them look better, and doesn't clutter up my right-click context menu besides. I can put 7-Zip's stuff in a menu if I choose, whereas PeaZip just makes this looong list of crap. I'm sure if I really wanted to there would be a way of organizing that, but I shouldn't have to go to all the trouble.

might have to give KMplayer a try, though in using it in various linux distros, i've never been terribly impressed.

Oh yeah, a bit of confusion here. "KMPlayer" is a separate Linux thing . . . "The KMPlayer" (which is an abbrevation for something else entirely) is the Windows buttkicking media player.

I know it's a bit confusing, but it's seriously the only misstep I've found. Either way, The KMPlayer is the first thing to appear in Google.

I hope someday to be able to use ReactOS as an everyday OS. untilll that day i'll continue bouncing between Windows, Linux and whatever other OS strikes my fancy.

Ooooh . . . I'd never come across that before. I like. Can't wait for 0.5 or so.