astarion!!!!
- she/her
- suitetarts.neocities.org/
gamer & weeb (derogatory) | 🔞 | 29
currently hyperfixated on ?
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i hate being so lovesick for pixels. someone needs to beat me to death
i love software i love tools i love utilities. show me your favourite free and/or open-source software that people might not have heard of that you love
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Chris Titus Tech's Windows Utility | Tweak Windows settings, install/update a wide range of useful software from a single screen (including some software featured on this list), run O&O Shutup directly, and has a feature to create super-small Win11 ISOs (which didn't work last time I tried it lol). Runs directly from a single command in PowerShell. |
| Condution | Task management software with all the standard features you expect from a modern To-Do list application. |
| Deblur | Very fun tool to deblur a blurred image. Not particularly useful as it cannot do so accurately, but fun! |
| Everything | Very fast filesearch for Windows. |
| JERN | Command-line journaling tool, intended to be used on a USB drive. Encrypted using AES-128 encryption. |
| JetUML | Fast, simple, free UML diagram designer. |
| jPDFtweak | "Swiss Army Knife" for PDF files. Has a lot of incredibly useful PDF utilities. |
| JRNL | A cute daily journaling tool with fun themes and options for daily notifications. |
| KDE Connect | Connect your PC to your phone - share files, links, clipboard data, notifications, remote control input, run commands, and more. |
| magic-wormhole | Command-line tool to send files from one machine to another by providing human-pronouncable keywords. |
| Ninite | Install and update all your programs at once. Chris Titus' Winutils has a similar feature & includes more software, but this is far more beginner-friendly. No command lines here! Also not that useful if you know how to install software using Winget/Scoop/Chocolatey, but again - beginner-friendly and idiot-proof! |
| O&O Shutup10++ | Windows tweaks - primarily disabling telemetry and unwanted bloat from Microsoft. Lets you switch off all the AI bullshit in Win11! This tool can also be opened from within Chris Titus' Winutils. |
| Playnite | Games library for your games libraries - consolidate GOG, Steam, Itch, and just about everything into one application where you can search & filter your library. |
| QOwnNotes | Markdown note-taking software. Simple and lightweight without the overload of bloat and features competitors like Obsidian or Notion have. |
| QTodoTxt | To-do manager - a GUI frontend for the todo.txt plaintext format. |
| RetroShare | Peer-to-peer chat, file sharing, mail, forums, channels, boards, and more - almost like a self-contained peer-to-peer social network. |
| Stacher | GUI frontend for yt-dlp - a downloader for YouTube videos and also many many other websites. (I use it to get Twitter videos!) |
| tldr pages | Command-line tool for simple manual pages - has basic usage and examples for many popular CLI applications. |
| Winaero Tweaker | Allows you to make various miscellaneous changed to Windows |
| Zim - A Desktop Wiki | Personal Wiki software with ability to publish files to HTML. Can be minimalist or feature-rich depending on how many plugins you enable. |
i have more installed on my home desktop PC that i'm surely forgetting but it was 33°C yesterday so i was NOTTTT turning that computer on
edit: 2024-08-13 @539 - added Winaero Tweaker, O&O Shutup, CTT Winutils, Ninite and Stacher
| Name | Description |
| WinDirStat | A program that visualizes all the space being taken up on a hard drive to make quick and easy work of disk cleanup. File types are organized by color and larger files/groups of files take up physically more space in the diagram. The ultimate in maintaining hard drive space. |
| JDownloader | A download manager which makes downloading a simple "set and forget" endeavor. It automatically detects all downloads on a webpage and gives you the choice of which to download and where they should be downloaded. Easily pause and resume downloading large file collections or those from websites with slow connection speeds without needing a browser tab active. My typical use cases include browsing the Internet Archive or bypassing arbitrary paywalls. |
| Foobar | The best music library software. Have complete control over the organization, presentation, and playback preferences of your music collection. Unparalleled in the customization of your music listening experience. Also has Discord integration! |
| Dark Audacity | A community-managed open source branch of the best freeware audio recording/editing software. I personally switched to this when the main branch was under suspicion of security risks and disagreeable management. I don't remember exactly what came of that, because I never felt the need to return to it since this community-maintained branch is much easier on the eyes and free of any possible corporate meddling. Simply a better Audacity. |
| Jellyfin | Similar to Playnite mentioned in OP, this is a user interface for your general media library. Video files (TV shows, movies, etc.), audio files (music, podcasts, etc.) and PDFs (ebooks, manga, etc.) can all be accessed and shared across multiple devices (including being shared with friends!) through this intuitively streamlined interface. Needs to be set up with a server (I recommend Tailscale; here's a guide for this exact setup (If I can do it, you can too!)), but I reckon the average Cohost user won't be too scared off by that. |
| Libreoffice | A complete and fully functional replacement for Microsoft Office and the Google Drive suite. For documents, spreadsheets, and slide presentations, there's really no reason to use anything else anymore. Linux users will know her well. |
otvdm / winevdm - third-party add-on for modern Windows (10 or 11) based on WINE that enables 64-bit Windows to run 16-bit Windows programs again, near seamlessly. Great for those old games that still use 16-bit InstallShield installers, or even deep dives into Win3.x shareware.