Well, the old list had fallen into a state of extreme disrepair, so I thought I'd take over and maintain the topic. I'll be gradually updating the list over the next couple of days.

-HZ

This topic exists to provide a list of useful freeware or open-source software that GW members use. The software will be broken into categories, and listed by name, with a brief description of what the software does.  Whenever someone posts a new program, I'll add it to the list.

Internet Browsers[/b]

• Mozilla Firefox - http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ - Open source extremely customizable internet browser with features such as tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking, and an endless supply of useful extensions.
  
• Portable Firefox - http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable - A firefox distribution that does not need to be installed. Works great from a thumb drive.
  
• Opera - http://www.opera.com/ - Now completely freeware. Though in debate, some tests have shown Opera is faster than Firefox. Smooth scrolling and tab memory are some of its nicer features, though its library of extensions and addons are shamed by Firefox. The best PC users will keep both browsers on their machines as each one handles different things better and/or worse.
  
  
  Media Players/Audio/Multimedia
  
• Audacity - http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ - Open source audio editor and recorder.
  
• foobar2000 - http://www.foobar2000.org/ - The best audio player. If you're not technically minded it's good if you just want something that looks simple. If you are, it's hugely customisable. Supports all well known formats out of the box.
  
• Video Lan - http://www.videolan.org/ - Open source media player with many supported video files.
  
• Zoom Player - http://www.inmatrix.com/zplayer/ - Excellent video/audio/DVD media player.
  
• Winamp - http://www.winamp.com/ - All purpose media player. Highly recommended.
  
• Gabest Open Source AVI Splitter - http://www.inmatrix.com/zplayer/formats/avi.shtml - Ability to play and seek incomplete AVI files as long as the first few megabytes have downloaded correctly. Better handles incomplete or semi-corrupted files.
  
• The GIMP - http://www.gimp.org/ - Great open source image editing software.
  
• IrfanView - http://www.irfanview.com/ - IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative graphic viewer for Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003.
  
• GraphicsGale - http://www.humanbalance.net/gale/us/download.html - Image making program.

Office Applications

• OpenOffice.org - http://www.openoffice.org/ - Open source Office Suite program including 'Text Documents', 'Spreadsheets', 'Presentations', and 'Drawings'.
  
• AbiWord - http://www.abisource.com/ - Open Source word processing program.
  
  
  Coding/Text Editors
  
• HTML-Kit - http://www.chami.com/html-kit/ - Decent little code editor that I use from time to time. Registration isn't required for personal use but it gets you some extras if you want them.
  
• Notepad++ - http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm - Notepad++ is a free source code editor which supports several programming languages running under the MS Windows environment.
  
• SciTE - http://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html - Scintilla-based Text Editor. Great syntax highlighting, tabbed files, output catching. You can configure it for a lot of languages. Highly recommended to programmers.
  
• WinMerge - http://winmerge.sourceforge.net/ - Visual text diff tool. Compares 2 text files and visually highlights all differences between the two. Very useful for PHP application upgrades and whatnot.
  
  
  Anti-virus/Spyware
  
• Spyboy S&D - http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/ - Application to scan for spyware, adware, hijackers and other malicious software.
  
• Ad-Aware - http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/ - Scans for adware, spyware, trojans, and protects your computer from many other harmful things.
  
• Avast Antivirus - http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html - A decent anti-virus program.
  
• AntiVir - http://www.free-av.com/ - Excellent Anti-Virus program.

Computer/Internet Tools

• Mozilla Sunbird - http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird.html - Open source calender/task managing program.
  
• Mozilla Thunderbird - http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/ - Email and newsgroup client. Similar to Outlook Express, but with extensions and other features that Mozilla is known for.
  
• mIRC - http://www.mirc.com/ - An IRC client for Windows.
  
• HydraIRC - http://www.hydrairc.com/ - Awesome IRC client for Windows. Will take a bit of work to get it perfectly configured for not very technical-oriented people, but is certainly worth it. Written directly in the WTL, so it's incredibly fast, and looks nice too.
  
• SmartFTP - http://www.smartftp.com/ - An FTP client.
  
• FileZilla - http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/ - A great open source FTP Client. One of my most frequently used pieces of software.
  
• Desktop Sidebar - http://www.desktopsidebar.com/ - A sidebar program that can you can add panels and configure to your needs.
  
• Sphere XP - http://www.hamar.sk/sphere/ - Creates a 3d desktop which allows you to angle, shrink, and enlarge windows.
  
• CygWin - http://www.cygwin.com/ - A Linux like shell environment for Windows.
  
• Bart's PE - http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ - Use this along with a copy of windows xp to create a bootable windows environment. With the addition of plugins you can create an incredibly useful troubleshooting tool. It's helped me out at work many many times.
  
• Skype - http://www.skype.com/ - Internet telephone.
  
• VNC - http://www.realvnc.com/download.html - Use your computer remotely.
  
• Gaim - http://gaim.sourceforge.net/ - Multi-protocol instant messenger. Uses GTK so is a bit buggy on Windows, but isn't filled with advertisements like all of the commercial messengers are.
  
• DeepBurner Free Edition - http://www.deepburner.com/ - Works well and it's free to download and use (there's a Pro version, but the free version works pretty well).
  
• SequoiaView - http://www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview/ - Handy utility which graphically represents the files and folders on your computer so you can see exactly what is taking up space.
  
  Now post away and share what you've found!

Paint.NET is a moderately powerful freeware graphics application with an interface that is probably easier to figure out than GIMP's.

http://www.getpaint.net

Visual Studio Express is a free download for those interested in C++, J#, Or Visual Basic...

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/

AVG Free is an antivirus program, though not as powerful as Avast (which has free registration for its home edition)

http://www.download.com/AVG-Anti-Virus-Free-Edition/3000-2239_4-10596553.html?tag=lst-0-1


Jetico Personal Firewall is a powerful, easy to use, configurable firewall program for your PC. It interrupts incomming and outgoing connections and asks to accept, deny, or handle as a trusted application zone. Configurations can be saved for individual users.

http://www.download.com/Jetico-Personal-Firewall/3000-10435_4-10634841.html?tag=lst-0-4

Just an FYI - I'll update the master list this week. I've been going through the old topic and updating things and removing dead links, and adding the new apps from this topic.

So yeah, look for an update soon.

Avant Browser - http://www.avantbrowser.com
An explorer based upon the IE shell with several improvements. Runs faster than IE, has better pop up blocker, and many other features. Works on sites that FF just won't work on, espically foreign sites.

You might also want to include

Jedit, an incredibly awesome programmer's text editor.

I've been using it for Java (although many other languages are supported), it's really, really convenient.

http://www.dvdflick.net/

Converts your videos to DVD compatible files to be burned with any DVD burning software. Fucking awesome program. Get it or die.

btw im stealing this layout for the direct downloads thread 

You might also want to include

Jedit, an incredibly awesome programmer's text editor.

I've been using it for Java (although many other languages are supported), it's really, really convenient.

jedit is pretty krazy

speaking of code editors, if anyone wants my scite that I use: http://www.leafo.net/scite/
It has got a lot of functionality (snippets, chained hotkeys, etc made by some dude), I just changed the colors very slightly, added more keywords and some more languages to his scripts setup. It is kind of like a make your own text editor type deal.

http://www.hydrogen-music.org/

Terrific, free drum machine

I don't want to start a war here, but you should probably specify that even though Opera has almost no extensions, a lot of firefox's extensions are supported natively.

Also...

uTorrent --  http://www.utorrent.com/ -- Freeware (orly) torrent software that weight 250kb and requires no installation.

Mp3tag -- http://www.mp3tag.de/en/  -- Awesome program for tagging music, allows for Tag to filename, filename to tag, text file to tag and more conversions.

CDex -- http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/ -- Lightweight program for conversion and ripping of audio. Open source, supports most commonly-used formats and lots of in_* plugins for winamp.

Subtitle Workshop -- http://www.urusoft.net/home.php?lang=1 -- Freeware subtitle editor and adjuster, supports just about every subtitle format out there and has a great interface.

I use it all the time. It's not so good for FLAC and those gay formats but it works fine with most regular formats(APE, OGG, MP3, WAV, etc) and it can rip CDs very nicely.

If you just dump the CD into WAV files you can compress them into FLAC or whatever you like. Although it would entail using an external program for the conversion process.

If you just dump the CD into WAV files you can compress them into FLAC or whatever you like. Although it would entail using an external program for the conversion process.

Yeah, anyhow I don't know. I hate FLAC anyway so maybe I'm doing something wrong but I think there IS a flac encoder for CDex. (In fact I think it comes with it)

Ultimate Boot CD -- http://www.ubcd4win.com/index.htm -- its based on Bart PE but it has a lot of plugins already set up, which is useful if you are having trouble with BartPE (or can't be bothered).