Web Browsing

Mozilla Firefox
The premier free, open-source browser. Tabs, pop-up blocking, themes, and extensions.
Considered by many to be the world's best browser.
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Video Player / Video Podcasting

Miro
Beautiful interface. Plays any video type (much more than windows media player). Subscribe to
video RSS, download, and watch all in one. Torrent support. Search and download from YouTube
and others.
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IM - Instant Messaging

Pidgin
Connect to multiple IM accounts simultaneously in a single app, including: AOL IM, MSN, and
Jabber.
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E-mail

Mozilla Thunderbird
Powerful spam filtering, solid interface, and all the features you need.
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RSS

RSSOwl
Solid cross-platform RSS client.
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Peer-to-Peer Filesharing

Cabos
A simple, easy to use filesharing program. Gnutella network.
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Gnucleus
A very good Gnutella search and download filesharing program.
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Azureus
A powerful, but complicated BitTorrent client. So many features you'll lose your mind.
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Video Playback

VLC
Plays more video files than most players: Quicktime, AVI, DIVX, OGG, and more. Pretty good
interface.
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MPlayer
Similar to VLC-- plays loads of video formats.
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Media Player Classic
Compact, but powerful media player. Plays anything under the sun. No install necessary.
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DVD Ripping / Video Conversion

Media Coder
Great tool for ripping CDs, DVDs, etc and converting between tons of video formats.
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Word Processing / Office Suites

OpenOffice.org
Big, full featured suite of tools for word processing and spreadsheets. Compatible with and a free
replacement for Microsoft Word documents. Also supports OpenDocument Format.
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AbiWord
A word processor. Leaner and quicker than OpenOffice. Compatible with Microsoft Word
documents and OpenDocument Format.
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Podcasting

Juice
Solid podcasting client.
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DVD Ripping

Handbrake
DVD to MPEG-4 ripper/converter.
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Sound Recording

Audacity
Simple sound recording tool.
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Graphics / Photo Editing

GIMP
Photo editing application that rivals Photoshop in features.
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Paint.NET
Graphics editor with a very nice interface.
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Inkscape
Vector graphics application.
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FTP / SFTP

Filezilla
Excellent FTP program.
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IRC
X-Chat 2
IRC client.
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Archiving

PeaZip
Fantastic archiving utility to extract and pack archives of an extensive amount of formats. PeaZip
also features password protecting archives, keyfile support, system integration, a lovely
interface, and much more.
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Some more specialized free and open-source Microsoft Windows apps.

Note Taking

Freemind
An innovative application for note taking and outlining. Takes time to get used to, but some
people swear by it.
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Jarnal
Open Source note taking application written in Java
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Keynote
Open Source note taking application, very good. I use this myself extensively
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Personal Finance
TurboCASH
Simple, easy to use application for managing personal finances.
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Quasar
Easy to use Accounting package
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Chat Clients

aMSN
MSN Messenger client written in TCL/TK aMSN Messenger

X-Chat
IRC Client X-Chat

More Web Browsing

K-Meleon
Fast, nice web browser.
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Amaya Browser for Windows

W3C developed web browser and editor for multiple platforms
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Screensaver
Electric Sheep
Immersive, trippy screensaver.
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More Filesharing
Frostwire
GNUTella client based on the Limewire codebase.
Download Page
Also see: Poisoned - Azureus

3D Graphics and Modeling

Blender
Powerful 3D Modeling software.
Download Page
Also see: Kerkythea (illumination engine) - Persistence of Vision Raytracer - Quesa

Stars and Outer Space

Celestia
Open-source 3D planetarium software. Akin to traveling through space (outer space).
Download Page

Stellarium
"Renders realistic skys in realtime." See what you would see if your city wasn't so light-polluted.
Used in real planetariums.
Download Page
Also see: macORSA - Orbit Reconstruction, Simulation, and Analysis

Games

Marathon: Aleph One

Engine for Bungie's free FPS series Marathon. Play online, solo play with rich original story,
many total conversions and thousands of maps.
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Zombies
3D zombie strategy game.
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Armagetron Advanced
3D Tron game.
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BZFlag
First-person tank game.
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Battle for Wesnoth

Fantasy / Strategy Game
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Also see: Snes9X (SNES emulator), Frozen Bubble

Free File Hosting

CC Publisher
Host Creative Commons video or audio files for free on archive.org with this easy uploader.
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Security Tools
NMap
Easy to use port scanner for Windows
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Wireshark
Network Protocol Analyzer, formerly called Ethereal
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TrueCrypt
Creates encrypted virtual hard drives for extra security
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ClamWin
Open Source Anti-Virus. Very good at detecting viruses. Can be plugged into hMailServer for e-
mail protection LIMITATION: Real Time scanning not implemented yet
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Eraser
Delete files securely off your hard drive utilizing DoD standards
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MP3 and Audio Tools

MP3 Gain
Easy to use MP3 manipulation tool for Windows. adjusts sound levels on MP3's so they are all
the same
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MP3 Book Helper

This program provides rapid Mp3 (ID3v1, ID3v2) and Ogg/Speex/Flac Vorbis tags editing and file
renaming functions. Mass Tag editing is done using special variables and Regular Expressions.
Download Page

musikCube
Open Source MP3 Player, ripper and organizer written using the .NET Framework
Download Page
Utilities
Cobian Backup
Backup software.
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7-Zip
File archiver.
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Developer tools

XEmacs
The classic, super customizable editor, for Windows.
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KompoZer
Easy to use, open source WYSIWYG html editor
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SharpDevelop
Open Source IDE for the .NET Framework. Utilizes the multiple programming languages and
Windows forms
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Notepad ++
Open Source programmers notepad for Windows
Download Page
SciTE
Source code Editor for Windows and X
Download Page
Web Developer Server Suite
Very good WAMP Stack (Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP) Very thouroughly tested on Windows
Server 2003 and Windows 2000 Server (preliminary testing on Longhorn Server underway).
Highly Recommended.
Download Page

Mapping Tools

Nasa World Wind

Mapping tool similar to Google Earth for Windows. Must have the .NET Framework installed.
Download Page

Other
Graph (graph plotting software)

Startup Manager (pick what you want to launch on startup)

freeotfe "on-the-fly" transparent disk encryption program for PCs and PDAs.