My essential programs

When I get a new computer, what programs I need to put on it:

Standard apps (browser, e-mail, office, etc.)

• Firefox
• Thunderbird
• OpenOffice
• Trillian
• BlitzIn

Development tools (programming languages, text editors, version control)

• Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP
• EditPlus (Crimson Editor, ConTEXT, and PSPad are also good alternatives)
• jEdit (and a bunch of its plugins)
• metapad (and replaced notepad with it)
• Subversion and TortoiseSVN
• MySQL plus the administrator and query browser
• KDiff3
• Proggy Fonts (Proggy Tiny)
• The Regex Coach
• Cygwin
• Improved Windows Console (still early in development, but promising)
• WitchEd

Network tools (protocols)

• Ethereal
• Putty
• FileZilla
• WinSCP
• VNC

Viewers

• Irfanview and all plugins (XnView and The Gimp can also be handy)
• 7-Zip (I also have to try ICEOWS)
• Acrobat Reader
• µTorrent OpenOffice downloaded in < 3:45 (!) with it.
• iTunes, then uninstall the associated QuickTime, and install the Mega Codec Pack to replace it.
• The K-Lite Mega Codec Pack, which includes Real Alternative, QuickTime Alternative, and The Divx codec.
• The Ghostscript tools for viewing PostScript on Windows, particularly Ghostscript and GSView. See Obtaining Ghostscript, click through and you'll be able to download both Ghostscript and GSView.

Operating system enhancements/utilities

• CLCL
• TaskSwitchXP
• XP Powertoys, particularly "Open Command Window Here" and "Tweak UI".
• Free Launch Bar.
• Some of the Sysinternals tools when I have a need for them.
• Spacemonger when I later need to figure out what's eating up my space
• Spybot and AdAware, eventually.
• SlickRun is an excellent command-line style program launcher
• Here are some automation utilities that may come in handy.

Other things I need to do on a new computer

• Newest version of all drivers (currently, Synaptic touchpad, Broadcom wireless)
• Turn off as much of the Windows features that try to protect me (show hidden and system files, show file extensions, and so on)
• Get rid of as much of the Windows crap as possible (Windows Messenger, Outlook Express).
• Turn off the annoying Windows sounds at startup, shutdown, logon, and logoff.
• Run Windows update first thing and get all the security updates.
• Turn on the address bar and the status bar in Explorer windows.
• Make sure to turn autorecovery on in OpenOffice the very first thing after you install it. For some inexplicable reason it ships with the setting off, and if you don't do it right away you likely you won't remember until you've lost something. And OpenOffice 2.0 is very unstable.
• Set the console screen buffer to the max

Page last edited: April 12, 2006 (utc)