Slashdot Mirror
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?
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
Real men don't install programs, they write them.
-1 : TACO! WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?
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?
Might I suggest adding a calculator to round out that list?
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Bonzi Buddy's pretty high on my list; not only that, I don't even have to ask to install it! Friendly lil thing ends up there on its own.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
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.
Emacs. Hell, that is ten programs. And it is as big as one hundred.
Laboratree - Scientific collaboration based on OpenSocial.
Linux!
Maybe if AVG/Mcafee/FProt/Norton Antivirus was among those 10, you wouldn't need to reinstall every month?
Updated drivers followed by Antivirus and Mozilla is what goes on my Windoze boxen first.
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,
In the long honored tradition of slashbots, we must all mark him as foe and shame him for using an OS different from our own. For shame! For shame! How darest thou useth Windows, and how darest the Editors post a story that proclaims that windows is a good OS!!! Mark him as foe, mark him as foe I say!
For those who are wondering, I use Linux, but have many friends who use windows because, quite frankly, they have no business using Linux. All they do is play games. Windows is great for certain uses, just not any of my uses... uh, I mean, FOR SHAME!
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
What a waste, you can install *all* of those things at once just by installing Kazaa Media Desktop.
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).
the Cygwin installer.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
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!
...
This is proof that Windows is easier to install than Linux-- obviously, Linux users are too scared to reinstall their OS every month, whereas for Windows, it's a joy!
A.
Black Ice is a ridiculous product with many security issues of its own. Do your own Googling.
The best of the worst in software firewalls IMHO is Norton Internet Security. Good support, and if it hoses your TCP/IP stack (like most any software-based firewall has a tendency to do over time...), there's at least well documented support.
If they're a dialup user, security patch the hell out of the box and be done with it. If they're broadband, figure out a way to put a hardware solution in there. Don't compromise the stability of the TCP/IP stack with software filtering. I don't know how many machines I've had to rebuild the stacks on because of shitty software-based firewalls for Windows.
And, as always, YMMV.
Can you ping me now? Gooood! | Manhappenin.Net - Things to do
Heres an Os X user's list
That was actually hard. So much comes with Os X, that it REALLY is a great Os right out of the box. Anything else at the end of the list is just little apps that really aren't important. Also, i just don't format as much as i used to when i was on Windows, which was a little more conservative than the poster at about every 3 months.
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!
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.
I keep a 250MB USB flash drive loaded with these installers for when I go to my friends and families' houses and have to fix their computers. This, plus a Bart's PE WinXP boot disk and a SP1-slipstreamed XP install disk pretty much can get me to the point of pulling down anything else I need from the Internet. Which ten are most important depends on the computer and the person I'm helping.
If I can get a bigger thumb drive, I would add PowerDVD, the XP SP1, all the hotfixes, Audiograbber, Mozilla Thunderbird, a VNC client and server, Retrospect Desktop and one game. I'd like to add Partition Magic and Ghost but can't figure out how to use it and stay legal under the licensing. I will also add an OpenOffice disk when I get a moment.
If I encounter Win9x I make them upgrade before I will help them (I'll perform the upgrade if they ask.) I make them pay for the licenses for anything I use though. I also make sure they have a backup protocol and run at least one backup so I don't have to repeat my work.
-- Gary Goldberg KA3ZYW 301/249-6501 AIM:OgGreeb Digital Marketing Inc., Bowie, MD