Slashdot Mirror

Omitting the ones that have been well-referenced by other posters:

• ConText
• Media Player Classic
• VideoLAN
• Gordian Knot (note: included DivX 5.x codec can be installed in ad-free mode, but encoding is restricted)
• Foobar2000

More to come as I think of them.

I recently switched to context. I like it a lot more. Here is a link

Considering the frequency with which I reinstall, here's my list for Windows (post-driver updates):

Mozilla Firefox - a must. even if it's not a necessity straight off as a browser, popup blocking makes it worth having immediately.
Trillian - what friends don't enjoy the logging on and off every 2 minutes as you have to reboot your comp for new settings to take place
SmartFTP - as a web developer this is a must, can't pretend to work without an FTP client.
Winamp (5) - I use it for everything media now. I'm an addict.
WinRAR - I know it's shareware but I still like it's ease of use and modifications to the Windows context menus.
Nero - my burning software of choice
ConTEXT - my editor of choice; see SmartFTP
Google Toolbar - unfortunately, I end up doing a lot of testing in IE and without this, I might as well kiss my peaceful browsing goodbye.
Spybot Search & Destroy - not so much of a necessity immediately, but the immunization qualities are great to set up from the get-go
Ad Aware - see Spybot

Context is pretty nice, and I believe it free software:

http://fixedsys.com/context/features.html

AVG is total rubbish compared to Avast!, which is also free for personal use. Highly recommended.

I also recommend the image viewer IrfanView, the Filezilla ftp client and server, Audacity, The GIMP for Windows, the ConText text editor, the KiXtart scripting tool, GAIM for Windows, and that's just for starters.

That does appear to be a nice freeware text editor. Another freeware text editor for windows that I like to use is Context - Programmer's Editor.

I prefer ContTEXT.

It's a great editor for my needs. I do php, perl, html, c/c++, and Java in it. It has a modular syntax hilighter so you can create your own hilighting schemes and/or download existing ones. I also has syntax hilighting for my apache conf files.

It also has auto indenting, soft/hard tabs, programmable buttons/shorcuts based on file type. I set up one button for compiling, one for running, one for formatting, etc..

It supports CRLF, LF, and CR based text files so it works with every platform, and you can switch modes whenever you want.

I also enjoy the tabbed MDI setup, it works really well for me.

At least give this one a try, the worst that could happen is you don't like it ;-)

It does syntax highlighting, macros, and LOTS MORE! You can use it in conjunction with Borland C++ compiler and it shows errors and line numbers with errors. It is quite an amazing program and I highly recommend it!!!!

ConTEXT is also a very good editor for Windoze. Has support for most of the popular languages (C++, Java, Perl, Python, Fortran) has macros, and other nice options. And its FREE! Check their web site