=^.^=

Windows Software

• karma 
Free Software to be Installed on Every Fresh Windows Box & Virtual Machine



Last Updated: December 7, 2023

About This List

This page serves as a living shortlist of software I use. I maintain it so I can rapidly furnish a new Windows installation with the tools and I need and expect to be available on every machine so that...

  • I can quickly line up the latest installers direct from their sources, up to date - every time and never waste time coming back because I forgot something.
  • My "creative process" is not interrupted by as-needed retrievals and installations, doubly disruptive to my chi after leaving the "configuration mindset" :)
  • Virtual machines and system images can be configured with as much prerequisite software as possible before I start cloning or forking them, reducing duplicate operations later.
  • I can provide clients and colleagues with a post-installation environment that contains quality software that provides a more enjoyable and "usable" experience out of the box than a cold, clean fresh installation.

Obviously it only makes sense to install those packages you expect or think there is a good chance you will be using in a particular installation given your initial assumptions about its use-case. There is no point bloating an image with office software if it is going to be an FTP server.

I have broken the list up into profiles that more appropriately group software which is only useful or likely to be installed in certain use-cases. That doesn't mean you will never find something you will like or find useful in profiles that don't read like they are addressed to your professional/personal role(s) and my idea of what a certain role entails is not necessarily congruent with your philosophy so you will probably benefit from periodically checking out the profiles that don't sound like they apply to you now and then.

Profiles are meant to cascade logically; on a machine where I expect to be doing a lot of ARM SoC work I will run through the following profiles:

  1. Base
  2. Hardware
  3. Terminal
  4. Virtual Machine, if it is one
  5. Multi-Platform
  6. General Administration and Development
  7. Electronics

If you would like to suggest any killer apps that I should know about please do (comments currently under development, come back soon!).

I have posted an AutoUnattend.xml template that you can drop into the root directory of your Windows 10 or Windows 11 installation medium that, by default, only asks you which edition of Windows you'd like to install then does all the rest for you silently. In my experience this cuts installation time down by more than half!

Assurances

To increase the chance this list is useful on a long-term basis to you as well, I pledge these these non-binding assurances:
* on best-effort basis while making no guarantees whatsoever nor submitting to any retribution or acknowledgement of anything less than engaging in laudable, selfless altruism should I fall short on these or any other suggested intentions (real or imagined) or otherwise disappoint you...

  • This is a list of free or functional-without-payment software. Software may contain ads but I wouldn't use it if it wasn't worth it. You must apply your own due diligence to ensure you don't install bloat bundled with the installers. No pirated software shall be included.
  • This is Windows we're talking about, free is not a philosophical struggle for our purposes.
  • Links are, to the best of my ability, made directly to the downloads page of a given project where the download URL appears to be stable (e.g. does not contain version numbers) or to the project's primary website or page.
  • List items are in no particular order. New entries will often not be posted to the bottoms.
  • Where a project has been taken over by another party I will reassess the safety and benefit of that project and may remove it if any changes in its direction pose a risk, diminish its usability or otherwise bring new versions below my subjective, personal standards.
  • When software is removed, except where it has become a security or privacy risk, a link will be preserved along with a short explanation however the item may be moved to a different section.
  • When a new project supplants an existing entry as my favourite implementation of a given functionality a link to the old project will be retained next to the new item in perpetuity for those whom have become dependent upon or simply prefer the old version.
  • I will update this list in as close to real-time as possible when I discover new software that is appropriate for inclusion or supplants an existing solution.
  • If a project becomes defunct and official or appropriately benevolent and competent sources are no longer available I may, at my discretion, mirror the last good installer here.

Other Platforms

If you find this list useful or just like finding out about new software you might be interested in some of my other software shortlists:

Base: For All Systems

Base: Pleasure

I used to be a meat and potatoes torrents-and-streaming sites kind of guy but I've recently been turned on to applications like Stremio and the O.G. Popcorn Time. I'm reluctant to include these in the main Base profile despite having, for now, such a short list of personal favourites. But due to their... dubious nature I wouldn't want to mistakenly install them on a refurb shipping out to a stranger with my professional reputation attached - or maybe it's exactly what I think that customer would apppreciate. Either way, here we go... yo ho ho... a bottle of rum and a 2 gig download... >.>

  • Stremio
  • Popcorn Time
  • ripped.guide I'm just gonna leave this laying out on the table here... since they're... well some of them are furry pirates and... lots of links here to good stuff... and idk about you but memleaking the crap out of firefox tabs whilst gobbling up new goodies is a definite sort of pleasure for me, so let's take a break mid-install here and get lost together...

Base: VPN Clients

I had to separate this out since I kept installing paid VPN clients on outgoing customer machines for whom there was no account to configure, resulting in wasted time un-installing. This list is by no means intented to be comprehensive, it's just the generic client packages I use personally/deploy professionally and some of the paid VPN services I have or have been gifted accounts on (before you judge me by the selection read my bit on PIA: There's Something You Should Know about Private Internet Access (PIA) VPN)

Base: Cloud Storage

Likewise, I'm finding my shared cloud storage repostories indespensible on most fresh installations these days and the spread of my accounts is growing as my abuse of their free offerings grows out of proportion. Rather than download every remote drive abstractor and command line interface it made sense to break them off oo

Base: For "Power Users" (Windows Tools, Tweaks & Hacks)

I'll be the first to agree the term "Power User" is obnoxious, but it does have its moments. I woulnd't set up a system for myself that didn't include at least PowerToys and SysInternals but I'm separating these out for those instances where I'm building a machine for your mom (hi mom!).

  • Microsoft PowerToys
  • Windows Sysinternals Suite
  • Process Hacker has a few (not many) features over SysInternals Process Explorer (recommended in Base) mostly aimed at developers, while Explorer has tight Virus Total integration and is probably better for a typical user.
  • LockHunter has a reputation for being able to break file locks when other tools can't (functionality provided in Win10 native Resource Monitor under CPU > Associated Handles also provided by Process Hacker, SysInernals Process Explorer and the CLI utility handle.exe/handle64.exe from same.
  • Major Geeks Tweaks
  • Win Toolkit - for building advanced installation and PE images
  • WSCC: Windows System Control Center - install, update, execute and organize the utilities from various system utility suites

System Inventory, Burn-In Test, Benchmarking & Tuning

Hardware: Frequently Used or Endangered Drivers and Utilities

I realize it will seem odd to some that I'm including a profile that is inherently case-by-case and it is likely this will be the least worthwhile category for virtually everyone else, but since getting into hardware and embedded I need to constantly provision the same drivers over and over. I have also always used Logitech Unifying peripherals extensively in my lab (offices, shop, car, livingroom, bedroom...) to reduce the otherwise impenetrable jungle of HID wires and a Harmony system has formed the Infra-Red end of my Home Automation system for six years. YMMV but I need quick access to these tools on virtually every bare-metal Windows installation so I can quickly manage what devices are paired where, get low battery notifications, reprogram obnoxious media keys and so on; you may have noticed Logitech's product support site is slow, cumbersome to navigate and often missing their own products.

Which almost segues into the secondary purpose of this list: It's getting harder to find drivers and software for legacy devices and there is no shortage of scarcely supported and esoteric kit out there made even in modern times. Accordingly, when I deem it appropriate I am going to start uploading and directly hosting select binaries that are endangered to the point that I fear no umbridge from the original distributor.

Logitech

  • Downloads Menu
    • Logitech Unifying Software
    • Logitech Options (Newer devices)
    • SetPoint* (Legacy devices)
      • * PAY ATTENTION: the download form defaults to 32bit and the installer will refuse to run on at least Windows 10 64-bit. Select either the 64bit or smartinstaller packages; don't let the title and marginally attentive capitalization fool you: Full Installer 64-Bit will make the form disappear (I suppose that means there is no version of that particular installer for Windows 10, even though the form is knows you are using and claims to be presenting the Windows 10 context-optimized download options...) and break the page so thoroughly that it will be necessary to re-navigate back. Bug has persisted at least two years.
    • Firmware Update Tool
    • MyHarmony
  • K750 Downloads > Logitech Solar

Server: Network Facilities

Terminal: Administration Console

Terminal: Media Streaming

Terminal: End User Machines

  • Chrome Remote Desktop
  • Malwarebytes
  • Spybot: - Search & Destroy Free Edition
  • VirusTotalUploader adds a Send To: VirusTotal context menu to the Windows File Explorer shell. You want the original, "unsupported" version, not the third party one they encourage you to download instead. That one doesn't add anything to your context menus it just creates an annoying window for you to drag and drop files into and also requires the creation of a profile and API key to work.

Virtual Machine

Do not forget to install your virtualization platform's latest VM extensions package, i.e:

  • Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack
  • Citrix VM Tools/XCP-ng VM Tools
  • VMware Tools
  • Qubes Guest-Additions

Multi-Platform

For a Mixed Environment where the host will interact with Linux and other UNIX-Like Operating Systems (*BSD, Solaris, etc.)

  • KLog Win32 networked syslog daemon,>
  • Dos2Unix/Unix2Dos
  • Deploy Network File System
  • Xming (On Windows 10+ you are now much better off installing Windows Subsystem for Linux)
  • Windows Subsystem for Linux
  • Cygwin
    NOTE 1: On Windows 10+ you are now much better off installing Windows Subsystem for Linux instead.
    NOTE 2: Cygwin can consume huge amounts of space. From Stack Overflow: What is the current full install size of Cygwin? by user Warren Young:

    ℹ If your browser supports the resize CSS property you can enlarge this element by dragging the handle on the bottom-right corner downward.
    A full Cygwin installation can range from 23 to 112 GiB, depending on how you define "full"...

    I've come up with a simple set of package exclusion rules that results in a much smaller installation:

    1. Skip all of the -debuginfo packages. Few people need these, and they take up a lot of space.

      It's easy to apply this rule. After selecting all packages for installation with the sneaky trick above but before you move on to the next screen, click the "Install" text next to the "Debug" category header until it switches back to "Default."

      If you've already installed the debug packages, click that text until it says "Uninstall" instead.

    2. Do not explicitly install any of the lib* packages. Let Cygwin's setup-*.exe automatically install libraries to satisfy package dependencies. Savings: about 5 GiB ⁵

      To apply this rule, switch the "Libs" category to "Default" or "Uninstall" as you did with the "Debug" category. The installer will figure out which libraries you actually need in a later step.

    3. Skip the cross-compilers and associated packages. Again, few people need these.⁶ Savings: About 4 GiB

      There are two major sets of cross-development tools in Cygwin: the set for creating Cygwin executables of the other word size (i.e. 64-bit tools and libraries for 32-bit Cygwin, or vice versa) and the set for building MinGW executables of the same word size as your Cygwin installation.

      To apply this rule for a 64-bit Cygwin installation, while still on the "Select Packages" screen, type cygwin32- in the package name search box at the top of that screen, then click the Default text next to each top-level category until it cycles to Default or Uninstall, as above.

      Repeat that for mingw64-.

      The idea is the same for 32-bit Cygwin, except that you search for and exclude packages with cygwin64- and mingw32- in their names instead.

    By following this rule set, I was able to install nearly everything, taking only about 23 GiB.

    ...

    We can get the installation to be even smaller by excluding several other notorious disk hogs:

    • X11, the desktop environments, and the GUI apps together require about 11 GiB.⁷
    • A Cygwin Base + Devel installation comes to about 10 GiB.
    • A Cygwin Base + TeX category installation takes about 5 GiB. If you install only your native language's support package, it comes to about 3.7 GiB instead.
    • All of the -doc packages combined chew up about 5 GiB of disk space.

    You really should read the original post if you intend to install Cygwin, it's extraordinarily detailed. Hats off to Mr. Young for the hands-down best answer I have ever seen posted to Stack Overflow.

General Development Tools

This profile would generally be installed with another one of the more specific development/admin/infosec profiles below:

Electronic Engineering: Prototyping and Development (Embedded/Microcontrollers/PLC/etc.)

  • Saturn PCB Design Toolkit
  • PulseView (sigrok frontend)
  • Zadig:

    Zadig is a Windows application that installs generic USB drivers, such as WinUSB, libusb-win32/libusb0.sys or libusbK, to help you access USB devices.

  • Visual Studio Code
    • Pay attention to the installation steps; tick the checkboxes for adding "Open with Code" to context menus.
    • Install PlatformIO IDE:
      1. Open VSCode Package Manager [Gear Icon > Extensions]
      2. Search for the official platformio ide extension
      3. Install PlatformIO IDE.

      There is no need to install PlatformIO Core (CLI) separately; it is included with the IDE.

  • dfu-util (Windows binaries (among others) in -binaries.tar.xz archive; ensure 7zip is installed)

Electronic Engineering: BIOS Hacking (SPI Programming, UEFI Tools)

I split this out from Electronic Engineering: Development since sometimes I just want to me_clean the BIOS and UEFI-related tools don't exactly fit, but for general electronics you will still likely want to install many of the things under this heading as I include general-purpose tools like SPI programmers.

Windows Development & Debugging

Unlike most of the software on this list I only recommend installing these apps when you run into the specific forms of trouble they were devised to diagnose and/or repair. You will hopefully never need them and their presence if left available on your filesystem may have security implications if they are misused by an attacker that has compromised your host:

Additional Links

Removals

Software will only completely removed from the list if it becomes defunct, dangerous by neglect or malicious at the hands of its creator/malicious parties/new owner. Packages that have been replaced by better solutions will remain linked next to them for the benefit of readers who can not or do not want to switch. Happily, at present no packages have been removed from the list.

ISOs

These installation media are provided by Microsoft. Their accessibility may however be facilitated by clever third parties :)

Comments

There are no comments for this item.