Rico

Rico

Interested in infosec, malware research and all computer related stuff

The most important software - a collection

4 minute read

Have you ever gotten questions about what’s the best software for a certain purpose? Well, I get these questions all the time, and that’s the main reason why I thought I should set up a list with my all-time favorite software, which I use a lot.

Apart from getting asked a lot, there is also another reason why I wrote this post: setting up a new computer or reinstalling the OS on your current computer for whatever reason is quite annoying. The part that annoys me the most is downloading the software I use. In most cases, you forget about the one thing you use occasionally, and when you need it a few days or weeks later, it’s not there.

That list is, of course, not only valid for fresh installations but also for older installations - maybe you find some useful software within this list.

Software Updates

It’s quite annoying to keep your software up-to-date. Often, you need to open the vendor’s site, download an .exe or .zip-archive, run an installer, copy files from here to there, and so on. And since outdated software is a huge security issue, I wondered how to overcome that problem.

  • UCheck - A free software updater with a nice GUI
  • SUMo - Software Update Monitor, another free software update
  • Ninite.com - Best website to download most of the relevant software after a fresh installation

Software development

  • JetBrains Toolbox - When you own a lot of JB products, you can download/update all IDEs in one single tool
  • PyCharm - The best Python IDE out there
  • VScode - A very lightweight IDE by Microsoft, huge extensibility through plugins
  • GitHub Desktop - A beautiful git client made with the Electron framework
  • GitKraken - Very beautiful git client
  • DB Browser for SQLite - Powerful tool for managing sqlite databases
  • Insomnia - Open Source REST client
  • Postman - Closed Source REST client

File transfer and servers

  • Putty - SSH client to connect to your server
  • WinSCP - Filetransfer software (supports sftp, scp, ftp, webdav, Amazon S3)
  • FileZilla - Very popular ftp software
  • JDownloader - Downloader software which enables you to download tons of files automatically
  • 7-Zip - Open Source archive manager
  • WinRAR - Closed Source archive manager
  • HJSplit - Tool for splitting files up into several smaller files

Text editors

  • Notepad++ - Should be your default editor for the common stuff
  • Sublime 3 - Awesome text editor with a lot of features
  • Atom - Extensible text editor created by GitHub

Internet and mails

I love privacy, so I rather stick to companies such as Mozilla. Performance-wise, Chrome still often wins, but instead of using Chrome, you might want to try out Brave.

  • Thunderbird - Lightweight Mailclient with familiar design (firefox), extensible via add-ons
  • Firefox - Very popular Webbrowser
  • Chrome - Probably the most popular Webbrowser by Google
  • Brave - Based on Google Chrome with inbuilt TOR, Script-, Ad- and Tracking-blockers
  • TOR-Browser - The browser to access the Dark Web
  • Netspeedmonitor - Displays the current up/download speed in the taskbar (That software won’t be developed any further - download link leads to the latest version on heise.de, a German IT news site)

Communications

  • Skype - Popular VoIP software for calls around the world
  • TeamSpeak - Server/Client based VoIP software
  • Discord - The better alternative for Skype and Teamspeak - easy to use, huge feature base
  • Telegram - The best messaging app out there - seemless cloud sync of all of your chats on all devices

Gaming

Miscellaneous

  • PatchCleaner - Cleans up your windows patch & uninstaller files which do not get deleted automatically
  • Etcher - Modern tool for creating bootable USB sticks
  • Win32DiskImager - Classic and reliable tool for creating bootable USB sticks
  • UNetbootin - Classic and reliable tool for creating bootable USB sticks
  • Rufus - Classic and reliable tool for creating bootable USB sticks
  • HxD - The best free Hex editor
  • WinDirStat - Software for visualization of disk space usage
  • TreeSizeFree - More reliable and visually appealing tool for visualization of disk space usage
  • Revo Uninstaller - Lovely uninstaller software which also scans for left over files after the installation
  • TeamViewer - Well known remote control software for remote support
  • Everything - The BEST search for your Windows computer
  • ReNamer - Automatic renamer tool
  • Wireshark - Tool to capture your network traffic
  • ProcessExplorer - The better task manager

Media & Screenshots

  • ShareX - Best screenshot software out there (also open source)
  • VLC - Probably known by almost everyone. The most capable video player
  • K-Lite Codecs - A codec pack for Windows. Helpful for playing flac files in the default Windows 7 player
  • Spotify - In case you listen to music on your computer and got a spotify account

Security & Safety

  • Authy - 2FA OTP generator - cloud synced and heavily encrypted
  • Autoruns - Check what’s running at startup of your computer
  • Gmer - Rootkit detector
  • AdwCleaner - Adware Cleaner
  • KeePass 2 - Everybody should use some kind of passwort Safe
  • VMware Player - Popular freeware for running VMware VMs
  • VirtualBox - Open Source virtualization software
  • VeraCrypt - Successor of TrueCrypt, a tool to encrypt harddrives and create encrypted containers

Feel free to ping me or create a pull request when you have suggestions for this list.

Updated: