Recommended Software

Desktop Applications

  • Blender Does everything related to 3D imaging. Steep learning curve but pleasant to use after practice
  • Lyx A scientifically focussed word processor with a What You See Is What You Mean interface
  • Amarok Music manager focussed on fetching interesting meta data such as guitar tabs, tour schedules, etcetera
  • Yakuake A terminal emulator that appears and disappears at the press of a button
  • Vimperator Technically this is a Firefox plugin but it completely changes the UI to behave like Vim
  • Vim / GVim The powerful mouse-free interface of the vi text editor plus support for plugins, macros, a graphical interface (GVim), multiple buffers, syntax highlighting and more

Windows specific

  • 7 Zip, The most comprehensive and least annoying archiving program I have found for Windows. Not actually Windows specific but not as needed on other platforms
  • VLC Easiest way to play DVDs on Windows. Like 7-Zip this is mostly needed on Windows.
  • Notepad++ A light weight programmers editor for Windows. I prefer GVim but this is still pretty good
  • MinGW Minimal GNU for Windows. Provides common GNU commands like Bash, GCC, etcetera
  • Putty An SSH client for Windows. Another thing to make Windows bearable

Command line

  • RVM Used for managing multiple versions of ruby. Hit and miss but still worth while
  • PonySay Command output is so much better when a pony gives it to you

Pre made web sites

  • WordPress Used in the creation of this site
  • Owncloud Own your own cloud service
  • Diaspora Like Twitter without the character limit and evil corporation

Games

  • 0 A.D. An open source RTS. This genre isn’t my thing but it’s widely regarded as very good
  • The battle for Wesnoth Turn based strategy with emphasis on story. Has a very strong modding community
  • Dead Cyborg Post-Apocalyptic sci-fi adventure game
  • Armeagetron Inspired by the Light Cycle scene from Tron. Enough Said.

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