The Awesome Freeware Thread

icenine0

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Post your favorite freeware and OSS programs.

Photo and Image Editing
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http://www.getpaint.net/download.htmlpaint.NET</A> - a freeware .NET-based image manipulation and paint program
http://gimpshop.blogspot.com/GIMPshop</A> - hack of GIMP to look and feel more like Photoshop

Sound and Audio
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http://audacity.sourceforge.net/Audacity</A> - free open source sound editor with loads of features
http://www.foobar2000.org/foobar2000</A> - no frills, low memory footprint audio player for common formats

Downloading
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http://www.utorrent.com/uTorrent</A> - lightweight, easy to use torrent client.
http://www.orbitdownloader.com/Orbit Downloader</A> - free, slick and easy to use download manager / multithreader


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Image
IrfanView

Shell Enhacement
Windows Powerpro - Most bizarre shell enhacement (configuration is kind of messy/daunting), yet one of the most powerful I have seen.

Filer browsing
xplorer^2
Filesync

Media
rulesPlayer

Editors
Crimson Editor

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> Post your favorite freeware and OSS programs.

Not sure if it is freeware but I use EditPad Lite as a Notebook replacement.

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Operating System
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Ubuntu

Office/publication
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openoffice.org
abiWord
scribus

file archiver
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7zip

media player
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totem
banshee
rthymbox

photo
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gimpshop
F-spot
inkscape

Instant messenger
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kopete
pidgin

that about covers it... for now. all the other categories are a hard choice or not good enough
<P ID="signature">"The other day i was at the park and was wondering why frisbees look bigger and bigger as they get closer to you...."
"...and then it hit me."</P>
 
you guys have pretty much covered everything, so I've only got a couple to add that I use extensively.

PDF reader: Foxit reader. Fast, lightweight, and free. This is what Acrobat reader SHOULD be.

Music: iTunes. I swear by iTunes. It's the best music player/music library management program I have ever used, bar none. The only other thing I think comes close is amaroK, which actually comes pretty damn close.

Video: VLC Media player. This no-nonsense player has played back everything I've thrown at it, which seems to be pretty much everything under the fucking sun, with no problems. Lightweight, fast, maybe not as nice looking or user friendly as some of the others, but still one of the best.
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> GIMPshop - hack of GIMP to look and feel more like Photoshop
> Orbit Downloader - free, slick and easy to use download
> manager / multithreader

Thanks for those two !

ImgBurn Burned every images I've told him.
Burrrn To create audio CDs. Simple, lightweight, and replay gain included.
Mp3Gain Put all your mp3s at the same volume (Normalize)
Miranda IM Multi-protocol IM. Small, fast, doesn't eat a lot of ressources.


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GAIM....I mean.... - Personal favorite audio player, especially with [url="http://yuo.be/columns.php"]http://yuo.be/columns.phpColumns UI[/url]. Supports ReplayGain natively on many formats.
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/volumouse.htmlVolumouse</a> - A handy util that turns your mouse's scrollwheel into a volume knob!
http://www.kceasy.com/KCEasy</a>- Excellent multi-P2P client. Supports Gnutella, Ares, and OpenFT.
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=82303&package_id=84358Media Player Classic</a> - Awesome no-frills video player. Especially with codecs for SWF, FLV, and other video formats!
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Wow, loads of great picks. I forgot to mention Media Player Classic and VLC.

Here's some more:

PC Utilities
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http://www.almico.com/speedfan.phpSpeedFan</A> - adjust fan speed on the fly. also read various sensors.
http://www.cpuid.com/pcwizard.phpPC Wizard 2007</A> - diagnostic and benchmarking suite
http://www.mlin.net/SMPSeesaw.shtmlSMP Seesaw</A> - load balancing tool for multiple cores/CPUs.
http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtmlStartup Control Panel & Startup Monitor</A> - first, change and remove which programs start with your computer. second, monitor which programs are trying to register themselves to startup.
http://www.ccleaner.com/CCleaner</A> - free system & registry scrubber

Audio File Tools
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http://www.xdlab.ru/en/index.htmTagScanner</A> - MP3/OGG renamer/retagger/organizer with loads of features.
http://www.germanixsoft.de/GermaniX Transcoder & GX::Transcoder</A> - free tools for mass music recompression.

Animated GIFs
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http://software.benetonfilms.com/Beneton_Movie_GIF.phpBeneton Movie GIF</A> - free animated GIF timeline editor with support for transitions.
http://www.freeware-guide.com/rareware/gr44Animator.htmlgr44 Animator</A> - animation layerer and optimizer.
http://chemware.co.nz/tgo.htmGIF Optimizer</A> - crushes GIFs.

Video Compression Related
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http://www.free-codecs.com/download/FFDShow.htmffdshow</A> - awesome merged codec system.
http://www.virtualdub.org/VirtualDub</A> - video trimmer / filterer / recompressor
http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/Main_PageAviSynth</A> - powerful video editing scripter

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throw a shout out to the obvious - many fine emulators. :)

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my music player of choice is http://www.xmplay.com/XMplay</a> (using iTunes skin). it handles most winamp plugins and streaming audio - all in a tiny exe (although obvious plugins are required for non-standard proprietary formats such as native game music rips).
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C:Serverxampphtdocszopharoldwwwthreadsattachmentsxmplay.gif
 
> my music player of choice is XMplay

Yeah but is it a ressources eater ? I haven't found an audio player as light as Foobar2000.
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> No K-Lite Mega Codec pack ?

I haven't checked out K-Lite in a while. I prefer ffdshow because it wraps everything together in a really cool configuration tool and has (seemingly) the best MPEG4 decoder I've tried.

> For ID3 Tagging needs, I use Tags Revisited

That looks really good. Does that support WMAs?

> For converting audio I use WinLAME

Didn't know about that. I'll have to check it out. I've been using foobar's converter tool as a LAME frontend.

> Another "Ccleaner"-like EasyCleaner

That's another awesome tool. I used it all the time with 98, but once I borked my computer with it in XP.
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> > For ID3 Tagging needs, I use Tags Revisited
>
> That looks really good. Does that support WMAs?

Nope, sorry. I don't have any WMAs so it's enough for my needs.
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> > my music player of choice is XMplay
>
> Yeah but is it a ressources eater ? I haven't found an audio
> player as light as Foobar2000.

4,620k mem in use
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Awesome Audio/Video converter

MediaCoder


From the site:

MediaCoder is a free universal audio/video batch transcoder distributed under GPL license, which nicely integrates lots of excellent audio/video codecs and tools from the open source community into an all-in-one solution, capable of transcoding among different audio/video formats. With many extra features and a expandable architecture, MediaCoder is more than a GUI of a bunch of command line tools.

Supported Fomats

MP3, Vorbis, AAC, AAC+, AAC+v2, MusePack, Speex, AMR, WMA, RealAudio, mp3PRO*
FLAC, WavPack, Monkey's Audio, OptimFrog, AAC Lossless, WMA Lossless, WAV/PCM
H.264, Xvid, MPEG 1/2/4, Theora, Flash Video, Dirac, 3ivx*, RealVideo*, Windows Media Video
AVI, MPEG/VOB, Matroska, MP4, RealMedia*, ASF, Quicktime*, OGM*
CD, VCD, DVD, CUE Sheet*

* supported as input only



Highly recommended
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Free M4a to MP3 Converter http://maniactools.com/soft/m4a-to-mp3-converter/index.shtml

Main features of Free M4a to MP3 Converter:

* AAC to MP3 converter.
* Convert M4a to MP3.
* Audio books M4b to MP3 converter.
* MP4 audio converter.
* 3GP audio converter.
* AAC, M4a, M4b player.
* MP3 quality settings up to 320 Kbit/s, 48 KHz.
* Drag&Drop.
* Batch processing of multiple M4a, AAC, M4b, MP4 etc. files.
* User-friendly multilingual interface.
* Meta information (ID3 tags) is copied from source files. Converted files contain all necessary data: title, artist, album (if the data was present in the source files).
* AAC to WAV converter.
* M4a to WAV converter.
 
I start to wonder how these people stumble upon such old threads.

They don't 'stumble' on them. They look for them. Just to make you realize that not everyone gets it, nor do they intend on getting it. They could just be bored.

Or then again, it could be a plot to drive you insane...
 
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