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First Ten Programs on New Install?
reddigitaldragon asks: "Some people re-install once a year, but if you're anything like me your machine is formatted at least once a month. After the OS is in, then come the favorite/must have/most used programs to install. My first installations for Windows (I use it; get over it): Trillian, Winrar, Firefox, Winamp, SmartFTP, Azureus, NMap, GKrellM, PowerDVD. What are your First 10 installed programs?" What are the first 10 programs you would install on a Windows machine? How about for a Unix machine?
I use 7-zip, it is free (speech and beer) and reads and writes most archive formats, including zip, rar, tar, tgz, etc.
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
Thats about it, everything I install after a reimage of my machines!! Other things get tagged on, but those are the core!
If anyone has suggestions for alternatives, im open. But they have to be good! Im currently looking for a new .net IDE as sharpdevelop has a few bugs, and since its written in c#, i cant help fix em :(
As for UNIX, I use OpenBSD so its got a pretty sane base install. I usually drag in a few custom admin scripts ive developed over the years, and my .profile for ksh, but thats about it. The box then gets configured for its custom job.
Well, I use my PC as a game box with some browsing only (with SSH if I need to access one of the unixish machines) so here's my stuff:
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
Trolling is a art,
Do yourself a favor: next clean install, apply XP-SP1, then Clean=(Delete LocalSettings\Temp, Windows\Temp, Defrag) & boot Knoppix and backup your partition with Partimage (to a network location mounted with NFS), if needed.
.reg file or something. Imaging with 3 or 4 gigs of apps to back up takes a long time and gets to be a pain in the ass.
Then apply all Windows Updates, and image again. Then install your drivers, and "core apps" (be very conservative), and tweak your profile a little, and image again.
Then restore one of these three images as needed, and update as needed. Install your games on a separate partition.
It gets tricky if you actually use your XP partition for real work (MSOffice, VStudio) instead of just for video editing and games and use the much superior Debian Sid for web browsing, email, and programming. Unlike games, its hard to put apps on a separate partition and simply "install" them with a
So now I just do my mini-backup, revert to ghost image, apply pending windows/app fixes and upgrades (with a text file on my desktop to keep track as I do them the first time), install any new "needed" software, clean up stuff etc, and then make me a fresh image of that for next time.
I install Mozzie first, then I download and run Spybot Search and Destroy and run the cleanup/immunize functions, and then I install AVG. Nothing else is an "absolute" but I usually install them. (I don't install Visual Studio on other people's boxes, of course!)
John
Fink
Sendmail
Bring Perl Current
SpamAssassin and SpamAssassin Milter
Microsoft Office (Yuck! Please get us an Aqua Native Open Office!)
Mozilla Firefox
RealMediaBurner (as close to Nero as you're going to get)
BitTorrent
MultiDesktop
CarbonCopyCloner
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
I don't like 7-Zip, there are some compatibility issues I've found with encrypted Zip files, and the user interface is really clunky.
Instead, use the other free alternative, IZArc. It handles everything, plus 7-Zip, actually. The user interface is very clean and contains at least as many features as WinZip. Gets a full recommendation from me!
...
Myself, I prefer to roll those into my install CD via slipstreaming. (Google for "XP slipstream hotfix" for more) That way, I get as much protection as possible OOTB.
Slip-streaming isn't possible though with those confounded restore CDs from OEMs though. Grrrr....
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
I user partimage from the Linux Rescue CD, you can get it here. Works like a charm and it's free.
Cheap storage VM.
I just finished creating an automatic install DVD of Windows XP Pro. On this DVD it installs Windows XP Pro, installs my programs silently, and automatically installs all patches and hotfixes. This saves me a bunch of times from doing this the manual way. Right before I wipe Windows and reinstall, I move all my important data to my second hard drive.
.NET Framework
;)
For more information please visit the MSFN Unattended XP CD at http://unattended.msfn.org/index.htm.
In keeping with the direction of the first post, here is my list of my first 10 installed programs...
1. Hotfixes and security updates galore!
2.
3. Windows Media Player 9
4. DirectX 9.0b
5. Office XP with Service Pack 3
6. TweakUI
7. Winamp 5.0.3a (no video codecs)
8. K-Lite Mega Codec Pack
9. WinRAR 3.30
10. ETrust Antivirus 6.0
I have a bunch of other installed programs on the DVD, but I thought I would share only a couple.
Cheers!
How about the first 10 things you UNinstall from a fresh WinXP install?
1) Drive Indexing Service
2) System Restore Service
3) MSN Explorer
4) MSN Messenger
5) Games
6) ISP Services (who uses prodigy anymore anyway?)
7) Outlook Express
8) Internet Explorer
9) QoS Packet Scheduler Service (I never figured out what this even does...)
10) Extra services (like WMP auto DRM retrieval, MP3 player auto detector, etc)
The Stone Age did not end for lack of stones, and when the oil age ends it will not be for lack of oil. --Bjorn Lomberg
I use a thing I found over at Neowin.net that some of the guys have put together.
Autopatcher contains all of the current hotfixes and lets you change some other settings. It's great! Check it out if you have to reinstall Windows in the near future... One of the best parts for people who set up multiple puters is the ability to set all of your options as the Default settings before you burn the CD so that you don't have to check and uncheck all of your options on each computer.
So that's number 1 in my list of the first 10 things I install.
Then:
Firefox
Winamp
Miranda
UltraVNC
StrokeIt (because Mouse Gestures are too cool to be limited to Internet Browsing.)
Filezilla
OpenOffice.org
Media Player Classic
Slowview
I reinstalled my sons Win2k box, (dual boot Linux) applied all patches, defragged, and shut down.
Booted into Knoppix, made a bz2 compressed image of both his installs in ~5 minutes. Burned to 2 CDs.
Wrote it back to disk, worked fine. Took ~3 min to overwrite.
two things here. One: the bzipped image is a file, just as 'easy to work with' as a .gho file, and Two: Ghost doesn't make disk images, it only copies files into that monolithic .gho. That's actually one of the primary differences between ghost and dd -- you don't get anything but allocated files with ghost, and for this reason ghost only supports certain filesystem types (though indeed they get most of the big ones, ntfs, fat, fat32, and ext2) but dd doesn't care what it's copying -- filesystem or not -- "Them's all just bits" God forbid that you would try to use a ghost image for forensic analysis, but dd, that's the good stuff for that. If you just want a backup of your working hard drive, ghost or a like alternative 'file' imaging program is probably what you're looking for. If you want the story that the unused portion of a hard drive can tell you, then dd it. Also, to my knowledge, bzip2 doesn't only 'not know enough about ntfs' it simply compresses an input data stream to an output datastream, so it's not supposed to 'know enough about' any filesystem at all, it doesn't know about ext2 or 3 or ReiserFS either...
Speak for yourself.
cp? *shrug* dd? Meh.
/dev/hda | bzip2 > Image.bz2
cat's my tool of choice.
cat
Image-based Backup and compression, without the hefty expense. Add in gpg to that chain, and it's encrypted, too.
__
Okay, back on-topic.
1: OpenOffice.org
http://www.openoffice.org
2: Winamp
http://www.winamp.com
3: Mozilla
http://www.mozilla.org
4: SpywareBlaster and SpywareGuard
http://www.javacoolsoftware.com
5: Spybot Search & Destroy
http://www.safer-networking.org
6: Trillian
http://www.trillian.cc
7: 7-Zip
http://www.7-zip.org
8: Really Slick Screensavers
http://www.reallyslick.com
9: X-Setup
http://www.xteq.com
10: BigFix
http://www.bigfix.com
I know number 4 is two proggies, but I figure that they're closely related enough to be considered one solution.
The Penguin Producer