Software that makes Windows bearable

bareable_windows_software.md

List of Software that replaces existing Windows Software or other functionality or extends Windows services

One-Time Payment

StartAllBack

• https://www.startallback.com/
  • First Machine is $5.
  • Removes awful UI implementations in W11 and W10.
  • Restores useful form and functionality of Windows 7 era environment.
  • Removes terrible web search features.
  • THE GOAT.

Affinity Suite

• https://store.serif.com/en-us/checkout/?basket=801640258e87462721880dee033a2668c48799c80bd3f4cc
  • Entire suite for $165.
  • Free Trial of all software.
  • Good photoshop alternative.
  • Indesign and Illustrator replacements.

General

7-Zip

• https://www.7-zip.org/
  • Windows handles zip files awfully.
  • Archive files are treated like archives and not as folders.
  • Impressive compression and supports a wide variety of formats.
  • Free and Open Source with no pop-ups.

Everything

• https://www.voidtools.com/
  • Search Everything, everywhere all at once.
  • FAST, SO FAST!

Warp

• https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/warp/-/jobs/3511012/artifacts/download?file_type=archive
  • Peer to Peer file transfer software.
  • Makes sharing files easy.

KDE Connect

• https://kdeconnect.kde.org/
  • Free and Open Source Software from KDE Linux team!
  • Share files and links across any machine on any OS.

Firefox

• https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/
  • Free and Open Source Software!
  • HUGE addons marketplace
  • Google-free.
  • Try DuckDuckGo or StartPage.com for a comparable private search engine

Microsoft PowerToys

• https://aka.ms/installpowertoys
  • Adds a lot of extra functionality.
  • PowerToys Run is a similar application to Spotlight Search found on MacOS.
  • File Explorer add-ons adds .svg and .md support to explorer.

WizTree

• https://diskanalyzer.com/download
  • Incredibly helpful in finding large files when you need to clean out your drives.
  • Provides visual representations of storage capacity.

CrystalDiskInfo

• https://crystalmark.info/en/software/crystaldiskinfo/
  • Quickly assess the health of your drives.

OnlyOffice

• https://www.onlyoffice.com/
  • Complete compatibility with Word, Excel and Powerpoint.
  • Free and Open Source baby!

Notepad++

• https://notepad-plus-plus.org/downloads/
  • Not just useful for developers.
  • Supports styling of varied text files.
  • Indents work.

Media

File Converter

• https://file-converter.io/
  • Adds a right-click context menu that allows you to convert video and audio files.
  • Infrequent updates.

ShareX

• https://getsharex.com/
  • Easily capture screen recordings as gifs or video files.

Kdenlive

• https://kdenlive.org/en/download/
  • Free and Open Source and crossplatform.
  • Color grading tools.

Vividl

• https://sourceforge.net/projects/vividl/
  • Simple graphical interface for youtube-dl.
  • Easily download videos from YouTube and various sites.
  • Choose the file type, can be audio or video i.e. .mp3 or .mp4.

qBittorrent

• https://www.qbittorrent.org/
  • Free and Open Source!!!!

MakeMKV

• https://www.makemkv.com/
  • Rip DVD's and Blu-Rays to .mkv files containing all subtitle data.

Alcohol 120%

• https://www.betaarchive.com/files/A120FE_9902_PE.zip
  • Thorough .iso burning software.
  • Able to open .mds and .mdf files.

VLC Media Player

• https://www.videolan.org/
  • Free and Open Source!!!!
  • Play pretty much any media files type.

Audacity

• https://www.audacityteam.org/download/
  • Open Source and Free as in beer.
  • Easy and simple audio recording and editing software.

OBS Studio

• https://obsproject.com/download
  • Free and Open Source!!
  • Well supported and has lots of plugins.

HandBrake

• https://handbrake.fr/
  • Video Transcoder.

Gaming

Radmin VPN

• https://www.radmin-vpn.com/
  • LogMeInHamachi with no strings.
  • No sign in required.
  • Lan Party over the Net!
  • Not guaranteed to work with every game.

XLink Kai

• https://www.teamxlink.co.uk/
  • Lan Party over the Net for vintage console.

Drawpile

• https://drawpile.net/download/#Windows
  • Free and Open Source.
  • Fun peer to peer drawing game.

Borderless Gaming

• https://github.com/Codeusa/Borderless-Gaming/releases
  • Adding Borderless Windowed mode to games and apps that don't otherwise support it.
  • Games like Minecraft Java and MW2 (2009) in Windowed mode become borderless.

Developer Apps

VSCodium

• https://vscodium.com/#install
  • VSCode without the telemetry.
  • There's an alternative for every plug-in.
  • Most extension devs are responsive to reposting extensions to OpenVSX.
  • Manual extension installation compatible.

Ghidra

• https://github.com/NationalSecurityAgency/ghidra/releases
  • Created by the N-S-Freaking-A.
  • Free and Open Source.
  • Great for finding function symbols for Source Engine developers.
  • Great for reverse engineering.

Windows Terminal

• https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9N0DX20HK701?hl=en-US&gl=US
  • Command prompt is not versatile enough.
  • All your terminals in one place with WSL2 support.

grepWin

• https://github.com/stefankueng/grepWin/releases/latest
  • Grep for windows!
  • Quickly search files containing queried text or information.

GitHub Desktop

• https://desktop.github.com/
  • Free and Open Source!
  • Easy to use visualization of Git.

RustDesk

• https://github.com/rustdesk/rustdesk/releases/tag/1.2.3
  • Open Source Remote desktop software.
  • Perfect TeamViewer replacement.

Raspberry Pi Imager

• https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/
  • Surprisingly good for burning USBs of any Operating System .iso.
  • Great for common Raspberry Pi Operating Systems.

VirtualBox

• https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
  • Free and Open Source.

WinSCP

• https://winscp.net/eng/download.php
  • FOSS.
  • FTP, SCP and SSH.