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Not the Quicktime API, the Hardware Plugin API, I believe... this had to do with circumventing the iTunes Sharing restrictions... a guy made a plugin that simply forwarded out past the local network and allowed sharing directly through iTunes again... here's the link:

http://icommune.sourceforge.net/history/

Yeah, got for it! Vigor is your friend;

I looked at Xine's xine-plugin.h and it's under GPL. Hence anything that includes xine-plugin.h will be automatically gpl'ed. Check out: xine-plugin.h
Did Microsoft even look at what Turbolinux was doing with their family jewels?

Okay. I was hoping the GM would post info than that, so I'll pry.

I went here , and browsed around on the page for a bit. It will definitely be interesting to see, but why all the proprietary codecs? FFmpeg looks a lot more like what is needed for Linux at this point. We've got media players out the wazoo already, its the codecs that are the big problem. The server/producer stuff looks very interesting though.

Linux has a lot of good stuff, but Red Hat leaves out some goodies that I like to use (some of these are available in the main third-party repositories):

I used to install yafc (best CLI FTP client out there, with good colorization and, unlike lftp, the ability to interact with local files and pipe things to shell commands), but apparently the maintainer has just decided to stop maintaining it. Ack!

I like to install atool. This is basically an intelligent (text-based) frontend to all the archive-handling tools out there. You just type aunpack <archive-name> and it checks the type and decompresses the archive. If there are multiple files in the root of the archive, it creates a new directory and puts them all in it.

WINE. WINE may not be perfect, but when you want to use a Windows program, you'll be glad that you have it set up.

mplayer. It's the most capable video player out there for Linux, even if some of the more advanced capabilities might be a bit intimidating at first.

Two tools -- one a small C program that I wrote that runs the program and arguments passed it "as a daemon" -- detached from a terminal. This is useful for running something that you want to keep
running in the background without the ability to output crud to the screen. The second is a pair of scripts that provide a version of xargs' functionality, but escape spaces and the like, so that one can use xargs on files with spaces in their names.

Valgrind. Valgrind is a very good memory debugger. Red Hat does not include it in the base distribution because of patent issues (/me hates software patents and the damage they do to the software development area). Exclusion of valgrind is a significant factor in increasing software bugginess. God, I wish the US had EU-style patent law.

Instead of Trillian, I install GAIM for win32 (GPL).

Instead of WinRAR, I install 7-Zip (LGPL).

Instead of WinAMP, I install foobar2000 (BSD).

Instead of SmartFTP, I install FileZilla (GPL).

Instead of PowerDVD, I install VLC Media Player (GPL).

I really need to switch to GNU/Linux.

Instead of Trillian, I install GAIM for win32 (GPL).

Instead of WinRAR, I install 7-Zip (LGPL).

Instead of WinAMP, I install foobar2000 (BSD).

Instead of SmartFTP, I install FileZilla (GPL).

Instead of PowerDVD, I install VLC Media Player (GPL).

I really need to switch to GNU/Linux.

Instead of Trillian, I install GAIM for win32 (GPL).

Instead of WinRAR, I install 7-Zip (LGPL).

Instead of WinAMP, I install foobar2000 (BSD).

Instead of SmartFTP, I install FileZilla (GPL).

Instead of PowerDVD, I install VLC Media Player (GPL).

I really need to switch to GNU/Linux.

If you find yourself forced to use Outlook (Look out!) for whatever reason, you might want to try using SpamBayes for Bayesian spam filtering. I actually like it better than Thunderbird's filtering. It dumps mail into three buckets: spam, ham, and not sure. I've been using it for one of my accounts for a number of months now, and I haven't seen spam in my ham bucket since about a week after I started using it. The "not sure" bucket is innovative; it allows a third option for e-mails that the filter isn't sure about. I get about 5 e-mails a week in the "not sure" bucket; they're about half ham, half spam.

I use Thunderbird at home. Its built-in Bayesian filter is pretty good (though not as good as SpamBayes, in my experience), and because you can view e-mail in Text or Simple HTML mode (as well as full HTML when necessary), you can avoid falling victim to web bugs.

xpy, firefox/thunderbird, 7-zip, nettime, winamp, mpc, gaim, mp3ext, textpad, nsis hope that were ten ;)

With this, I can do all Quicktime trailers, Windows Media streams, you name it. Heck, you get the RealPlayer codecs and you can do that too.

Also of note is that I install Windows Media Player 9 because there is no way to uninstall WMP 8, but there is an undocumented way to uninstall WMP 9.

I also tune the services on the computer to only what is needed... This includes disabling the System Restore service. The only time I've found that the restore service would have been useful is when the computer fails to boot into windows. Unfortunately MS didn't have the foresight to allow restore points to be used from the install cd so the feature is useless.

Also of note is that I install Windows Media Player 9 because there is no way to uninstall WMP 8, but there is an undocumented way to uninstall WMP 9.

I also tune the services on the computer to only what is needed... This includes disabling the System Restore service. The only time I've found that the restore service would have been useful is when the computer fails to boot into windows. Unfortunately MS didn't have the foresight to allow restore points to be used from the install cd so the feature is useless.

1. Work desktop, WinXPPro
2. Windows Updates
3. PuTTY 0.54
4. Mozilla 1.7a
5. WinCVS
6. GVim6.2
7. GNU Utils
8. MySQL 4.0.18
9. Java 1.4.2_03 (for team consistency)
10. JBoss 3.2.3
11. Frozen Bubble (need the Bubble)

1. Home Internet Computer, Linspire 4.5
2. My Products from Click 'N Run (their central server remembers what I've downloaded and allows me to set these up on my new computer with one click. A true improvement to apt-get, IMHO.

1. Home Game Machine, Windows 98SE
2. Windows Update (to IE6sp1, DirectX9, then I unplug it forever from the Internet)
3. Learning Company Kindergarten
4. Thomas the Tank Engine
5. Tonka Fire & Rescue
6. Tonka...
7. Reader Rabbit
8. Clifford the Big Red Dog
9. Put-Put
10. Blues Clues
11. Quake (kidding)
12. (Yes, this is for my kids, all under 5 years of age now)

1. Dev Laptop, iBook G4
2. 9 Updates to stock 10.3.3
3. Mozilla
4. X11 for Apple (from CD)
5. MySQL
6. XCode
7. FINK!!!
8. too many things to name, 'cause eventually, at the end of the day, I don't like UNIX, I like GNU versions of UNIX tools.

Why would I pay someone 100K if there's always someone willing to do it for free, or for a $25 donation to the project?

WinRAR
AVG Virus Scanner
Drivers
DAMN NFO Viewer
FireFox
Adaware/Spybot
Media Player Classic
XviD/DivX/AC3Filter/Realtime(Drivers Only)/Quicktime(Drivers Only)
Macromedia Studio
Adobe CS

btw, for those who dont know, Media Player Classic is not related to Microsoft Windows. Get it HERE
I dont know if deleting all the crap that Windows comes with is a 'install' as such, but I cant live without doing that aswell.

I use 7-zip, it is free (speech and beer) and reads and writes most archive formats, including zip, rar, tar, tgz, etc.

It might seem strange but I use command-line zip from the Unix Utilities package, which contains Win32 ports of common Unix utilities such as grep, zip, and... unrar, although I don't recall ever seeing unrar in Linux.

I'm not a heavy Linux user, but some of those utilities are incredibly useful to have on Windows.

• GNU emacs for win32
• Perl for Win32
• Core GNU unix utils for Win32 (sorry, cygwin is just too much hard work to keep it all working)
• Visual Studio v.whatever for VB, C++ etc. (whatever "the job" is)
• WinZip to unpack stuff above, and then to regularly curse how crap it is in so many ways
• All the SysInternals stuff, RegMon, FileMon, etc.
• Personal copy of Perforce to keep track of stuff I write from day one.

Some of it comes with the base debian install:

GCC,G++
<flamewar>vim/emacs</flamewar>
links-ssl/curl-ssl-wget
ssh
Perl

Then a whole lotta debs for Gnome/KDE...

Then the actual desktop GUI:
GDM
IceWM
Idesk
Endeavour 2


Then the base apps
Anjuta (C++ IDE)
Gedit Notepad
Mplayer + plugins
XMMS + plugins
ALSA framework
Frozen Bubble!
the GIMP
Open Office
Thunderbird+Firefox
GAIM
Gnome-meeting

And the latest 2.6.x kernel

I've created a CD which will give you all the above in one disk. Automatic installations. Just create a linux/swap partition, and it will install to the largest available 'nix partition, also adding any windows partitions to the lilo.conf

ALSA Sound support is ready (though you must edit /etc/modules with whatever soundcard module you have)

X GUI starts in SVGA mode (best to xf86config and choose your GUI)
USB mouse support through /dev/input/mice

I'm considering putting it up online, but at about 620MB for the ISO I'd need some decent hosting space for that. So far we're using it at work to convert windows desktops to dual-boot... it's XP themes so the windows lusers can figure it out rather easily.

It's also configured to build the base menu structure when a user logs in... and idesk will mount a CD+browse with endeavour on doubleclick, or unmount+eject on a right-click.

This is a great idea for a thread. I'm assuming this is after I've downloaded the eight jillion patches for Windows I need, but in no particular order:

• A virus scanner (This definitely comes first!)
• WinRAR (I should look into 7-Zip, though.)
• Firefox (and a few choice extensions)
• Thunderbird (I love sharing one mailbox between two operating systems.)
• Filezilla
• Trillian
• iTunes
• Various programs for web development
• OpenOffice.org
• Real Alternative (Screw you, Real! I don't need to take your crap any more!)

I agree about 7-Zip, except that it doesn't do multivolume archives - it'll extract RAR multivolume, but cannot create them.

As long as I'm posting, here goes my top 10

Windows (after all the patches, of course)

1. Firefox (or whatever it's name is during the week of the install) (also MyIE is sort of neat)
2. Latest version of Outlook (usually as part of Office - gotta have email, but GOTTA take the plunge and transition to a better email client...)
3. Putty
4. WinAmp
5. PowerDVD
6. Yahoo Messenger (it's sad, but I still like it better than GAIM et al...)
7. WinSCP
8. Windows Privacy Tools
9. Adobe Acrobat Reader
10. BNR2
11. EverQuest!

Linux

Nothing! RedHat (Fedora) comes with all I need. Though the programs I update right away (and use most often) are:

1. NMAP
2. Mozilla
3. Apache
4. SSH
5. SSL
6. PHP
7. TinyProxy (Essential for bypassing my employer's content filter)

Ok, so TinyProxy isn't part of the base install. Whatever.

That's about it. I don't really use Linux as a primary machine, and I rarely use the graphical interface on it. On the Windows box I will also usually install a better editor, though it changes about every install. WinVIM is my current choice. And of course, the latest codecs for QuickTime Alternative and XViD.

I agree about 7-Zip, except that it doesn't do multivolume archives - it'll extract RAR multivolume, but cannot create them.

As long as I'm posting, here goes my top 10

Windows (after all the patches, of course)

1. Firefox (or whatever it's name is during the week of the install) (also MyIE is sort of neat)
2. Latest version of Outlook (usually as part of Office - gotta have email, but GOTTA take the plunge and transition to a better email client...)
3. Putty
4. WinAmp
5. PowerDVD
6. Yahoo Messenger (it's sad, but I still like it better than GAIM et al...)
7. WinSCP
8. Windows Privacy Tools
9. Adobe Acrobat Reader
10. BNR2
11. EverQuest!

Linux

Nothing! RedHat (Fedora) comes with all I need. Though the programs I update right away (and use most often) are:

1. NMAP
2. Mozilla
3. Apache
4. SSH
5. SSL
6. PHP
7. TinyProxy (Essential for bypassing my employer's content filter)

Ok, so TinyProxy isn't part of the base install. Whatever.

That's about it. I don't really use Linux as a primary machine, and I rarely use the graphical interface on it. On the Windows box I will also usually install a better editor, though it changes about every install. WinVIM is my current choice. And of course, the latest codecs for QuickTime Alternative and XViD.

VirtuaWin - Virtual desktop manager

PuTTY - SSH client

WinSCP - GUI-based SSH file copier

Mozilla - The Web browser

CygWin - UNIX-like command line tools and environment

FuhQuake - QuakeWorld client with advanced rendering.

Vim - text editor extraordinaire

VoodooLights - screen saver (alas, no longer supported or available)

TweakUI - Allows tweaking of various Windows UI details

DeliPlayer 2 - music player, including support for "MOD" formats

Schwab

VirtuaWin - Virtual desktop manager

PuTTY - SSH client

WinSCP - GUI-based SSH file copier

Mozilla - The Web browser

CygWin - UNIX-like command line tools and environment

FuhQuake - QuakeWorld client with advanced rendering.

Vim - text editor extraordinaire

VoodooLights - screen saver (alas, no longer supported or available)

TweakUI - Allows tweaking of various Windows UI details

DeliPlayer 2 - music player, including support for "MOD" formats

Schwab

• Aida32, hardware display and diagnotics
• CoolTaskBar to sort out the mess (particularly in Windows 2000)
• FreshUI, tweaking utility
• TweakUI, same as FreshUi, but different options, these two combined give you a lot of different options.
• PowerToys, tweaking utilities. In particular the [Send file name to clipboard] and other options which I cannot work on Windows without.
• Get everything from SysInternals, a ton of wonderful stuff here, too much to mention, but will let you track every file access, every registry write, every debugging message. Tons of great command line tools too. For instance, ever wanted to delete a file only to get a "There has been a sharing violation. The source or destination file may be in use" message ? Where Windows doesn't even know for sure if the file is in use or not. Get Process Explorer from SysInternals.com and type the file name in its [Find][Find Handle] menu. Close or kill the appropriate process if necessary.
• Desktop Manager or FlashDesktops, gives you 4 desktops just like on Linux.
• Alt-Tab Replacement, Gives a screenshot of window Alt-Tabbing, useful when you have multiple unsaved docs open, etc...
• OpenCommandWindowHere, right-click on folder option to open command prompt window at that folder, useful for deep or complicated folder names
• Memstat XP, lets you monitor memory usage in tray, small and simple but not that useful.
• NetMeter, lets you monitor network usage in the tray, small and simple but does not seem to work on all types of network interfaces. Online Eye Pro works better and has lots more options, it's based on WinPCap just like Ethereal (see below).
• TrayMeter, lets you monitor cpu usage in the tray, small and simple.
• WinRAR, unzip anything you want, supports tar.gz, zip, rar, arc, and much more.

Network Utilities

• Xmanager, excellent X-windows manager.
• FreshDownload, Download Manager
• ssh, scp, wget, rsync... comes on CYGWIN
• Putty (and friends), ssh client and other utils (but ssh is part of cygwin and works just as well)
• WinSCP, a wonderful SCP/SFTP client for windows (scp is part of Cygwin but this is easier to use)
• NetScanTools a GUI interface for most command line tools also found in cygwin
• WebDrive, mount various types of network protocols (ftp, http, ssh) as local drives, buggy but useful (RiverFront)
• POPfile the best spam remover I've found so far (works with outlook express and any app)

• Aida32, hardware display and diagnotics
• CoolTaskBar to sort out the mess (particularly in Windows 2000)
• FreshUI, tweaking utility
• TweakUI, same as FreshUi, but different options, these two combined give you a lot of different options.
• PowerToys, tweaking utilities. In particular the [Send file name to clipboard] and other options which I cannot work on Windows without.
• Get everything from SysInternals, a ton of wonderful stuff here, too much to mention, but will let you track every file access, every registry write, every debugging message. Tons of great command line tools too. For instance, ever wanted to delete a file only to get a "There has been a sharing violation. The source or destination file may be in use" message ? Where Windows doesn't even know for sure if the file is in use or not. Get Process Explorer from SysInternals.com and type the file name in its [Find][Find Handle] menu. Close or kill the appropriate process if necessary.
• Desktop Manager or FlashDesktops, gives you 4 desktops just like on Linux.
• Alt-Tab Replacement, Gives a screenshot of window Alt-Tabbing, useful when you have multiple unsaved docs open, etc...
• OpenCommandWindowHere, right-click on folder option to open command prompt window at that folder, useful for deep or complicated folder names
• Memstat XP, lets you monitor memory usage in tray, small and simple but not that useful.
• NetMeter, lets you monitor network usage in the tray, small and simple but does not seem to work on all types of network interfaces. Online Eye Pro works better and has lots more options, it's based on WinPCap just like Ethereal (see below).
• TrayMeter, lets you monitor cpu usage in the tray, small and simple.
• WinRAR, unzip anything you want, supports tar.gz, zip, rar, arc, and much more.

Network Utilities

• Xmanager, excellent X-windows manager.
• FreshDownload, Download Manager
• ssh, scp, wget, rsync... comes on CYGWIN
• Putty (and friends), ssh client and other utils (but ssh is part of cygwin and works just as well)
• WinSCP, a wonderful SCP/SFTP client for windows (scp is part of Cygwin but this is easier to use)
• NetScanTools a GUI interface for most command line tools also found in cygwin
• WebDrive, mount various types of network protocols (ftp, http, ssh) as local drives, buggy but useful (RiverFront)
• POPfile the best spam remover I've found so far (works with outlook express and any app)

• Aida32, hardware display and diagnotics
• CoolTaskBar to sort out the mess (particularly in Windows 2000)
• FreshUI, tweaking utility
• TweakUI, same as FreshUi, but different options, these two combined give you a lot of different options.
• PowerToys, tweaking utilities. In particular the [Send file name to clipboard] and other options which I cannot work on Windows without.
• Get everything from SysInternals, a ton of wonderful stuff here, too much to mention, but will let you track every file access, every registry write, every debugging message. Tons of great command line tools too. For instance, ever wanted to delete a file only to get a "There has been a sharing violation. The source or destination file may be in use" message ? Where Windows doesn't even know for sure if the file is in use or not. Get Process Explorer from SysInternals.com and type the file name in its [Find][Find Handle] menu. Close or kill the appropriate process if necessary.
• Desktop Manager or FlashDesktops, gives you 4 desktops just like on Linux.
• Alt-Tab Replacement, Gives a screenshot of window Alt-Tabbing, useful when you have multiple unsaved docs open, etc...
• OpenCommandWindowHere, right-click on folder option to open command prompt window at that folder, useful for deep or complicated folder names
• Memstat XP, lets you monitor memory usage in tray, small and simple but not that useful.
• NetMeter, lets you monitor network usage in the tray, small and simple but does not seem to work on all types of network interfaces. Online Eye Pro works better and has lots more options, it's based on WinPCap just like Ethereal (see below).
• TrayMeter, lets you monitor cpu usage in the tray, small and simple.
• WinRAR, unzip anything you want, supports tar.gz, zip, rar, arc, and much more.

Network Utilities

• Xmanager, excellent X-windows manager.
• FreshDownload, Download Manager
• ssh, scp, wget, rsync... comes on CYGWIN
• Putty (and friends), ssh client and other utils (but ssh is part of cygwin and works just as well)
• WinSCP, a wonderful SCP/SFTP client for windows (scp is part of Cygwin but this is easier to use)
• NetScanTools a GUI interface for most command line tools also found in cygwin
• WebDrive, mount various types of network protocols (ftp, http, ssh) as local drives, buggy but useful (RiverFront)
• POPfile the best spam remover I've found so far (works with outlook express and any app)

I SysAdmin a significantly sized heterogeneous network and to my dismay, I often have to set up new Windows machines and/or reinstall Windows machines.

As an aside, in sysadmin-land, the general rule is to reinstall a machine after someone leaves and/or every two-three years max. Any longer than that and the machine's OS & registry gets too clogged up with crap (among other things) that the machine goes so slow and a complete & clean reinstall is the only way to really regain that lost productivity.

Anyhow, the first 10 or so programs I install on these (primarily w2k) machines are as follows:

• Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 (if you don't install this from a cd before you put the machine on the network, you will get a virus).
• Windows Critical & OS Updates
• Netscape
• Adobe Acrobat Reader
• Sophos AV (served over the network via EMLibrary)
• Office 2002/XP including all service packs
• PuTTY
• WinSCP
• Winzip or PowerArchiver
• Shockwave (since I don't allow user admin rights on most clients)
• Google Toolbar (just a convenience)
• Real Player
• ABC Image Browser

WinSCP3 is also a nice utility for secure ftp. It works in conjunction with putty.

1. FireFox, how else am I going to find and download the rest?
2. AVG AV, so that the next 8 actually are what I want.
3. Net Transport, to get the next 7 faster.
4. WinRAR, some of the rest require extraction, and whatever one might say about WinRAR, I prefer it.
   
5. WinAmp, so that I can listen to RadioStorm while I wait for the rest to download.
   
6. Trillian Pro, so I can tell everyone I am reinstalling.
7. NoteTab Pro, I paid for it for a reason after all.
8. OpenOffice.org, so that I don't have to wait an hour for it to download when I need to use it later.
9. Scorched Earth 3D, for a little fun.
10. Synergy , check it out if you wanna know.

1. FireFox, how else am I going to find and download the rest?
2. AVG AV, so that the next 8 actually are what I want.
3. Net Transport, to get the next 7 faster.
4. WinRAR, some of the rest require extraction, and whatever one might say about WinRAR, I prefer it.
   
5. WinAmp, so that I can listen to RadioStorm while I wait for the rest to download.
   
6. Trillian Pro, so I can tell everyone I am reinstalling.
7. NoteTab Pro, I paid for it for a reason after all.
8. OpenOffice.org, so that I don't have to wait an hour for it to download when I need to use it later.
9. Scorched Earth 3D, for a little fun.
10. Synergy , check it out if you wanna know.

1] PuTTY

2] WinSCP

3] McAffee VirusScan Enterprise

4] Moz Firefox

5] WinAMP

6] WinZIP

7] SciTE

8] MS Office

(I'm familiar with OO.o and StarOffice, but from what I've seen, MSOffice is the hands-down winner for me and is primarily what keeps me on Windows).

9] Adobe Acrobat 6.0 PRO

10] DBDesigner 4

And that about rounds out the list. After that, I reboot and hot-patch the box with locally stored patches, reboot, THEN connect for new patches.

• OpenSSL - support program
• OpenSSH - connections in and out
• Mutt - email
• nmap - scanning tool
• libpcap - support library
• Ethereal - network sniffer
• mtr (Matt's TraceRoute) - trace problems
• whois (ARIN compatible) - find where the problems are
• tf (tinyfugue) - BBS client
• mangband - multiplayer ascii game

• Putty - A free (GPL) SSH terminal emulator
• Winzip - Yeah, you know what this is
• VLC - Free media player
• OpenOffice.org - I should stop doing these descriptions, its not as if youve heard of these things before!
• GIMP for windows - Yup, the infernal/eternal image editor
• Sharpdevelop - Free (GPL) .net IDE, requires the .net framework and SDK
• Bloodshed Dev-C++ - Excellent free (GPL) C and C++ IDE, using the Windows GCC port
• Thunderbird - Mail client
• Firefox - Web browser
• Adobe Acrobat Reader - PDF Reader
• PDFcreator - GPL PDF print driver for windows
• MessengerPro (Clickatell) - Non free SMS sender for windows, company does good bulk buy sms rates, i buy 500 at a time for less than $5
• Lavasoft Adaware and Spybot SS - For the essentials in life
• Topstyle - Free version of the excellent CSS editor for webdevelopment, if anyone knows a good free alternative, im open to suggestions :)
• SmartFTP - Great free for personal use FTP client, not found a better one yet! (I have, Filezilla it is excellent AND fully GPL, none of this non free shit, bub. :-) )
• MySQL-Front - Old version of the MySQL windows front end, much much better than the new one you pay for. Source isnt open and the old developer discontinued development, possibly one of the best advertisements for why OSS is good :(
• Editplus - Possibly the best editor ive found, not free im afraid, costs around $25

VLC -, like you mentioned, Free media player is a great media player, it blew me away. Better then Window's media player, and I know that my porno viewing habits are not going straight to Bill Gates.

One you didn't mention is Filezilla which is a good GPL ftp program instead of SmartFTP if you want to try another one out. (I must confess I use LeechFTP since I haven't gotten use to Filezilla just yet, although if you are into hosting files Filezilla is even better).

• Putty - A free (GPL) SSH terminal emulator
• Winzip - Yeah, you know what this is
• VLC - Free media player
• OpenOffice.org - I should stop doing these descriptions, its not as if youve heard of these things before!
• GIMP for windows - Yup, the infernal/eternal image editor
• Sharpdevelop - Free (GPL) .net IDE, requires the .net framework and SDK
• Bloodshed Dev-C++ - Excellent free (GPL) C and C++ IDE, using the Windows GCC port
• Thunderbird - Mail client
• Firefox - Web browser
• Adobe Acrobat Reader - PDF Reader
• PDFcreator - GPL PDF print driver for windows
• MessengerPro (Clickatell) - Non free SMS sender for windows, company does good bulk buy sms rates, i buy 500 at a time for less than $5
• Lavasoft Adaware and Spybot SS - For the essentials in life
• Topstyle - Free version of the excellent CSS editor for webdevelopment, if anyone knows a good free alternative, im open to suggestions :)
• SmartFTP - Great free for personal use FTP client, not found a better one yet! (I have, Filezilla it is excellent AND fully GPL, none of this non free shit, bub. :-) )
• MySQL-Front - Old version of the MySQL windows front end, much much better than the new one you pay for. Source isnt open and the old developer discontinued development, possibly one of the best advertisements for why OSS is good :(
• Editplus - Possibly the best editor ive found, not free im afraid, costs around $25

VLC -, like you mentioned, Free media player is a great media player, it blew me away. Better then Window's media player, and I know that my porno viewing habits are not going straight to Bill Gates.

One you didn't mention is Filezilla which is a good GPL ftp program instead of SmartFTP if you want to try another one out. (I must confess I use LeechFTP since I haven't gotten use to Filezilla just yet, although if you are into hosting files Filezilla is even better).

• Putty - A free (GPL) SSH terminal emulator
• Winzip - Yeah, you know what this is
• VLC - Free media player
• OpenOffice.org - I should stop doing these descriptions, its not as if youve heard of these things before!
• GIMP for windows - Yup, the infernal/eternal image editor
• Sharpdevelop - Free (GPL) .net IDE, requires the .net framework and SDK
• Bloodshed Dev-C++ - Excellent free (GPL) C and C++ IDE, using the Windows GCC port
• Thunderbird - Mail client
• Firefox - Web browser
• Adobe Acrobat Reader - PDF Reader
• PDFcreator - GPL PDF print driver for windows
• MessengerPro (Clickatell) - Non free SMS sender for windows, company does good bulk buy sms rates, i buy 500 at a time for less than $5
• Lavasoft Adaware and Spybot SS - For the essentials in life
• Topstyle - Free version of the excellent CSS editor for webdevelopment, if anyone knows a good free alternative, im open to suggestions :)
• SmartFTP - Great free for personal use FTP client, not found a better one yet! (I have, Filezilla it is excellent AND fully GPL, none of this non free shit, bub. :-) )
• MySQL-Front - Old version of the MySQL windows front end, much much better than the new one you pay for. Source isnt open and the old developer discontinued development, possibly one of the best advertisements for why OSS is good :(
• Editplus - Possibly the best editor ive found, not free im afraid, costs around $25

VLC -, like you mentioned, Free media player is a great media player, it blew me away. Better then Window's media player, and I know that my porno viewing habits are not going straight to Bill Gates.

One you didn't mention is Filezilla which is a good GPL ftp program instead of SmartFTP if you want to try another one out. (I must confess I use LeechFTP since I haven't gotten use to Filezilla just yet, although if you are into hosting files Filezilla is even better).

I use 7-zip instead of Winzip. It compresses into more formats and doesn't ask you to buy it every time you use it. It's free (as in beer) and small enough to fit on a floppy.

I use SciTE (Scintilla Text Editor) for CSS (as well as HTML, SVG, etc). Not only does it color-code your syntax, but it knows valid HTML and CSS and will alert you when you use a nonstandard element or attribute. It's really handy. I wish it knew SVG as well. It knows a bunch of other languages, but I'm not a programmer so I never use it for more than web development. It is available for Win32 and Linux (but not as a native cocoa app in OS X, unfortunately) and is distributed under a license similar to the Python license.

Someone already mentioned Filezilla, so I won't bother. Except to say that it rocks.

I learned about all of these applications from the GNUWin CD. I usually look there first when I'm looking for Free software to do something on Windows. Have a look around their software lists and you'll probably find a few interesting things to try.

I use 7-zip instead of Winzip. It compresses into more formats and doesn't ask you to buy it every time you use it. It's free (as in beer) and small enough to fit on a floppy.

I use SciTE (Scintilla Text Editor) for CSS (as well as HTML, SVG, etc). Not only does it color-code your syntax, but it knows valid HTML and CSS and will alert you when you use a nonstandard element or attribute. It's really handy. I wish it knew SVG as well. It knows a bunch of other languages, but I'm not a programmer so I never use it for more than web development. It is available for Win32 and Linux (but not as a native cocoa app in OS X, unfortunately) and is distributed under a license similar to the Python license.

Someone already mentioned Filezilla, so I won't bother. Except to say that it rocks.

I learned about all of these applications from the GNUWin CD. I usually look there first when I'm looking for Free software to do something on Windows. Have a look around their software lists and you'll probably find a few interesting things to try.

1. pico for quick editing before I've got X up and running.
   
2. NEdit the best programmers' text editor ever!
   
3. fvwm2 a good, fast, customizable window manager (I suffer through twm until this is in place)
   
4. ddd a simply wonderful front-end to gdb.
   
5. mozilla my browser of choice, warts and all (though konquerer is giving me second thoughts)
   
6. xscreensaver nothing makes me happier than xmatrix.
   
7. xpdf simple PDF viewer, no frills.
   
8. ROX-filer a fast and simple file system browser (though I've been leaning towards konquerer for about a year)
   
9. unclutter makes the mouse cursor disappear after several second of inactivity.
   
10. xv in case I need to fiddle with image files.
    
11. xine in case I need to watch a movie.
    

On top of this I have a set of configuration files archived for several of the above programs (i.e. fvwm2 and NEdit) and general system setup (fstab, XFree86, and bash/sh profile).

1. Firefox
2. The Adblock extension for Mozilla/Firefox
3. mplayer
4. Flash and Java plugins for the browers

Windows:

1. Putty
2. Firefox
3. Mozilla
4. The Adblock extension for Mozilla/Firefox
5. Spybot S&D
6. Flash/Java/Acroread plugins for the browsers
7. WinSCP
8. Cygwin (including XFree86 and Windowmaker)
9. OpenOffice

The only Windows I use is Windows XP Professional as a unix admin in a corporation, so some items may be notably absent. My entire Windows list is software that can be used royalty-free for commercial use )with an obvious emphasis on Free Software).

For example, I use XFree86 shipped with Cygwin for my X server, WinSCP for secure file transfer, Spybot S&D (and not AdAware, which is another excellent product, but would require a licensing fee be paid).

I don't use Winzip at all, since that functionality is built into the explorer interface in Windows XP Professional (don't know about the others), and is also available through Cygwin.

On the occasion I'm visiting a friend who runs Windows on a personal desktop, I also recommend Zinf, the audio player, since it's free software and just plays the music without any corporate spyware tie-ins, eg., contacting a server based on mp3 header fields as WMP and Winamp have started doing.

1. Mozilla Firefox
2. Microsoft Office
3. PuTTy SSH Client
4. WinRAR (will check out Izarc too)
5. WinAMP
6. POPFile, an Email Filter
7. SmartFTP, gonna FileZilla a try though..
8. IrfanView, a free picture viewer
9. NetTransport download manager, also downloads media streams
10. Windows Media Player 9-- its actually pretty good!

Since /. decided to post this story, I guess they really badly want to know what software I use. So here goes.

I only use operating systems that will run the bulk of software developed for Linux and/or *BSD. I'm assuming that compiler toolchain (cc, make, ld, etc.), net utils (ping, ftp, etc.), ssh are installed.

screen (terminal multiplexer)
netcat (tcp and udp from the command line)
elvis (lightweight vi clone*)
Some X11 implementation (usually XFree86)
WindowMaker (window manager with efficiency)
Mozilla Firefox (great web browser)
mutt (fast and versatile mail client)
Gaim (multi-protocol instant messenger)
wget (download over http or ftp)

* I personally think vi is a prime example of horrible interface design, but it proved hard to find a text editor that is similarly efficient and powerful as elvis. I only with they would get rid of the HTML (and Latex?) view mode and just show me the source so I can edit it.

Since /. decided to post this story, I guess they really badly want to know what software I use. So here goes.

I only use operating systems that will run the bulk of software developed for Linux and/or *BSD. I'm assuming that compiler toolchain (cc, make, ld, etc.), net utils (ping, ftp, etc.), ssh are installed.

screen (terminal multiplexer)
netcat (tcp and udp from the command line)
elvis (lightweight vi clone*)
Some X11 implementation (usually XFree86)
WindowMaker (window manager with efficiency)
Mozilla Firefox (great web browser)
mutt (fast and versatile mail client)
Gaim (multi-protocol instant messenger)
wget (download over http or ftp)

* I personally think vi is a prime example of horrible interface design, but it proved hard to find a text editor that is similarly efficient and powerful as elvis. I only with they would get rid of the HTML (and Latex?) view mode and just show me the source so I can edit it.

• Developer Tools
• fink, and then:
  • $ fink install nmap;
  • $ fink install osxutils
• Next is Carbon Copy Cloner,
• Transmit or some other ftp file browser.
• Finally, to make it "home", I'll install Windowshade X and Xounds.
• Also will edit my .bash_profile, naturally, and have been known to put a fnorder in the login script.

1. PuTTY (secure client)
2. Cygwin (Linux emulation layer)
3. Gaim (instant messaging)
4. Scite (editor)
5. Firefox (browser)
6. TortoiseCVS (version control)
7. Spybot S&D (malware detector)
   
8. Privoxy (filtering web proxy)
9. Gimp (graphics)
   
10. CacheSentry (to fix IE's cache, in case I use it)

Kerio Personal Firewall - great software firewall, a must on any Windows box
F-Prot AntiVirus - another must have, antivirus software
Tray Wizard - extentions to 2K system tray
DAEMON Tools - mount ISO images off your harddrive to virtual CD drives
FlashFXP - FTP Client with loads of nice features
UltraEdit - must have text editor, nice features such as syntax highlighting
IrfranView - multi-format image viewer
Media Player Classic - replacement for WMP that blows it out of the water
WinRAR - multi-format archive app
PuTTY

Other than hotfixes...

Firefox
Thunderbird
SSH
Java 1.5.1 beta SDK
Jedit (the the text editor for coding I've ever used ... not to mention it's free
Ruby
Trillian
GNU Utilities for Win32 (about 120 handy command line tools for Win, like ls, tar, diff, wget, less, you know, all the stuff you try typing at the cmd prompt in windows realizing, after you hit enter, that it doesn't work)

Okay, so thats not ten... but those are the first. I should also mention that one of the VERY first things that gets done is the _uninstallation_ of MSN Messenger.

1. Fink - get the GNU POSIX environment on!
2. OSXVNC - get somewhere else
3. OO.o
4. Mozilla / Firefox / etc. - and the plugins:
   • Flash
   • Acrobat Reader
   • StumbleUpon toolbar - it's like having your own personalized fark (not that I read fark, but this is probably why)
5. MPlayer - it handles just about all the codecs
6. WS Manager - Multiple desktop manager. I'm too cheap to pay to upgrade from OS 10.2 to 10.3 for Exposé, even with my wife's educational discount.

FileZilla ( http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/) is fantastic from my point of view. I once was a hige fan of SmartFTP like the reader and the majority of posters, but once I've started using this I haven't gone back. And, as opposed to being Shareware, it's free (beer & speech!)