Notepad++ - This piece of software is a very advanced form of Notepad. Fuck that basic Notepad shit that Windows or any other OS gives you. This one is all you’ll ever need for basic note-taking needs. But it does a hell of a lot more. One thing I love about it is that, if for any reason I put my PC to sleep, it crashes, power outage, I can run this again and everything I’ve ever written and no matter how many tabs - it’s all retained.

AIMP - The definitive media player that you’ll ever need for just playing stuff (music only, sorry if I mislead those thinking it can do video). Winamp and all the other software are just around for nostalgia (though Winamp has it’s uses where you need it to play specific formats like video game music such as SNES with .SPC). One feature that attracted me to it was, it used to infuriate me when I am playing something and something crashes in any other media player. And you boot up that media player and you have to play your playlist all over again or that song from the beginning.

Not AIMP, if I accidentally close it, crash or whatever, I can bring it back up and it’ll have the song or whatever on Pause so I can resume. Why isn’t shit like this more implemented in software?

  • BilboBargains@lemmy.world
    0·
    19 days ago

    Notepad++ is also great for searching text strings in many documents and collating the results in a single window.

  • tias@discuss.tchncs.de
    0·
    20 days ago

    “Everything” - find any file on your machine instantly. No need to update an index, it uses the NTFS master file table directly.

    • shrodes@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      19 days ago

      Wizfile as an alternative to this which I prefer

      Also Wiztree from the same devs as a WinDirStat alternative

    • FelixMortane@lemmy.caEnglish
      0·
      20 days ago

      I find it almost criminal the amount of people who do not know about this. Absolute life saver for work.

    • Joe Dyrt@lemmy.ml
      0·
      20 days ago

      This my top-used non-windows-component bestest utility for finding info on my pc. It’s da bomb!

    • GreenAppleTree@lemmy.world
      0·
      20 days ago

      It is my pet peeve that instead of using the MFT, they gave us the bloody abomination they call windows search.

      I mean, make it a hidden tool like regedit, for all I care. It’s really not that hard.

      • rtxn@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        20 days ago

        Microsoft made NTFS, but not even Windows uses it properly. For example, the : character is perfectly valid in NTFS file names, but not in Windows. If you mount an NTFS volume in Linux without specifying the windows_names option, you can very easily make it unusable in Windows. It’s a sick joke, but nobody’s laughing.

        • Sonotsugipaa@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          0·
          20 days ago

          Hey, to be fair, ‘/’ and the null character are the only illegal character for file names on Linux (which is a blessing AND a curse)

    • coaxil@lemm.ee
      0·
      20 days ago

      If vlc fails , ffplay via way of ffmpeg should, if THAT fails, you are going to have a tough time

        • coaxil@lemm.ee
          0·
          19 days ago

          Kinda, vlc uses libavcodec, which ffmpeg also exposes via CMD line, ffplay is a very very stripped down player, and handles a much wider scope of video than vlc does, for a multitude of reasons.

        • sga@lemmy.world
          0·
          20 days ago

          yes, both vlc and mpv use libffmpeg, but they sometimes have different support because of different version, or while compiling, they may enable/disable some optional bits

      • ovalofsand@lemmy.world
        0·
        19 days ago

        Is a part of me that wants to go back to Linux just for Mplayer. That blows VLC and mpv out of the water. You could watch movies on a potato with that

  • rtxn@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    20 days ago

    KeePassXC, or any kind of KeePass-compatible client. It uses strong encryption to store passwords, passkeys, and arbitrary data. Also does TOTP. Not using a password manager in current year is stupid.

    QOwnNotes - a note-taking app that uses plain markdown files. None of that stupid metadata-inside-markdown-inside-database bullshit.

    • kurcatovium@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      19 days ago

      I can confirm both these. Although Qownnotes is a bit of mess in UI, it does its job well. I wanted something simple that will just load bunch of locally saved md files and this is the best I could find so far.

      • rtxn@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        19 days ago

        If you want a similar markdown editor, Obsidian does much the same, but with a much nicer single-panel UI. The client is free (as in no-cost), but closed-source.

        • kurcatovium@lemm.eeEnglish
          0·
          19 days ago

          I’m kind of hesitant with it since it’s not FOSS. To be honest I never really understood why anyone makes free (no $$) software but not open source it. I might give it a try though.

          • rtxn@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            19 days ago

            Obsidian also operates a paid cloud storage and public hosting service. Releasing the client for free is a way to gain good publicity and hook new customers, but making it open-source (or even nonfree source-available) would make adapting it to a different storage service trivial, which would hurt Obsidian’s business.

            • kurcatovium@lemm.eeEnglish
              0·
              19 days ago

              I’ve tried both and did not like either. Logseq would be probably ok if it didn’t sort every note as a bullet list.

              Zettlr was veeery slow for me.

    • dormedas@lemmy.dormedas.com
      0·
      20 days ago

      Paint.NET has filled a “I need an image editor with some packed in features that isn’t as complicated as Photoshop for some quick work” niche for me for years. From simple crops and edits to some layer-and-effects work.

      I did not know Aseprite was free if you compile it but they deserve the money anyway.

      • .Donuts@lemmy.world
        0·
        20 days ago

        Oh, I forgot one. If you actually need something a bit more like Photoshop, I can recommend Photopea as well. It’s online but it runs locally and it has some ads on the side, but it beats getting an Adobe Cloud license.

      • Joe Dyrt@lemmy.ml
        0·
        20 days ago

        Paint dot net has layers, rotation, magic wand, and layers. The Editable Text plugin completes my amateur photo editing requirements. And no bloatware! No spyware!

    • Zagorath@aussie.zone
      0·
      20 days ago

      Note that there’s a severe vulnerability that was only patched very recently in 7zip. I’ve seen recommendations to fully uninstall it and then reinstall the latest version.

  • MashedHobbits@lemy.lol
    0·
    20 days ago

    Davinci Resolve - Video Editing

    Blender - 3D Modelling

    Darktable - Photo Editing

    Keira - Digital Art

    Are some I use frequently.

    • chunkystyles@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      0·
      19 days ago

      Not only is Resolve’s free version amazing, the paid version is even better. And it has a reasonable, one time, upfront cost that gives you lifetime access.

  • I_Miss_Daniel@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    20 days ago

    Ddrescue

    Hard to beat for working with dying drives, although it’s a bit tricky to get it to just do used data areas instead of the whole drive.

  • AMoralNihilist@feddit.uk
    0·
    20 days ago

    Lots of great software already posted, but with some complaints about windows inefficiencies I can’t believe no one has posted:

    Microsoft PowerToys https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/

    Basically, it’s a suite of tools that windows devs have made to make their lives easier while working in windows. Some features have made it into actual windows releases over the years, but most not.

    It has an always on top, batch rename, customisable window snapping, better search, keyboard key remapper, mouse across multiple devices, colour eyedropper, and many many more.

    Absolute must have for anyone that uses windows regularly.

    • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      20 days ago

      keyboard key remapper

      Specific example: the caps lock key is useless and only ever activated on accident when I fat-fingered the A key. Remapped it to F-13 which exists as a kind of place holder with no function since keyboards stop at F-12; then set F-13 as my push-to-talk key in Discord, so now I’ve got a super conveniently located PTT that won’t disrupt anything (like switching to aLL CAPS WHEN I INEVITABLY MISS THE A KEY).

      Small change, absolutely love it. 10/10

  • middlemanSI@lemmy.world
    0·
    20 days ago

    X-Inkscape for vector graphics. It has a ton of functionality out of the box and it can be enhanced by coding your own plugins. I love it

  • geoma@lemmy.ml
    0·
    20 days ago

    If you want something efficient and free of bullshit you probably first need to change your OS to a GNU/Linux distro

    • everett@lemmy.ml
      0·
      20 days ago

      “Free, efficient, no bullshit” is kind of the default for Linux software.

      • vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de
        0·
        20 days ago

        not unless you count UX as partof the “efficiency”. A lot of oss software has top-notch functionality, but horrible ux

        • kellenoffdagrid❓️@lemmy.sdf.org
          0·
          20 days ago

          Yeah that front still needs improvement, but I will say things have gotten a lot better, especially in the past 5 years. Regardless of personal opinion on their approaches, projects like GNOME, Inkscape, GIMP, KDE (sort of, the settings app is still confusing as hell), even Blender’s recent UI updates have been pretty solid. There’s still a lot of room to improve though, and plenty of older software still hasn’t seen much of its UX addressed.

        • verdigris@lemmy.ml
          0·
          19 days ago

          I don’t think this is generally true at a higher rate than for any other software. Multi-billion dollar companies will have more polished UX, but step outside of the major flagship apps and things quickly degrade. Even the best in the business have plenty of problems, you can’t design a perfect UX that will please all users.

      • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
        0·
        19 days ago

        I did consider posting a screenshot of just all the applications on my PC… 🙃

        But yeah, not much OP can do with hundreds of recommendations that don’t work on their OS.