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 setup 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 which annoys me the most is downloading the software you use. In most cases you forget about the one thing you use every now and then 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-2-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 And since outdated software is a huge security issue, I wondered how to overcome that problem.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 everysqlite 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 (that website only supports http!)
  • 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

  • Avast - Free Antivirus Software - alternatively use Windows Defender
  • 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.

I will soon add another list similar to this one for the most important browser plugins. Stay tuned!

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