Not just for gaming, but for life in general--what free programs rock your socks?
My big one is likely WinAmp. After MusicMatch JB & I went our separate ways, it turned out to be my favorite media player. Great stuff, lotta good content, too.
Anyone an OpenOffice user? Use another program we don't know about, but couldn't live without?
Heromachine--1.0 is great and freely usable, 2.0 requires a modest fee.
Fantastic utility. (Sure City of Heroes is better, but you do have to pay for the game to get the "legitimate" character creator.)
I regularly use GraphicConverter (http://www.lemkesoft.com/) for the Mac. Works well both on my old Mac and under OS X.
I also like Picasa on Windows.
Quote from: Zachary The FirstNot just for gaming, but for life in general--what free programs rock your socks?
emacs (seriously)
PCGen
VLC
iTunes
Stellarium
MagicEngine (Demo is free, License is cheap)
Quote from: SilverlionHeromachine--1.0 is great and freely usable, 2.0 requires a modest fee.
Fantastic utility. (Sure City of Heroes is better, but you do have to pay for the game to get the "legitimate" character creator.)
I agree. Even though I have a small amount of sketching ability, it's a great utility for quick sketches that everyone can do. I can sit and play with it for hours along with rolling random characters for Marvel.
Behold the glory that is Terragen (http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/).
!i!
Quote from: Ian AbsentiaBehold the glory that is Terragen (http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/).
!i!
Terragen is fun. I spent quite a while playing with that one.
The great breakthrough for me was when I found out that you could load digital elevation models (DEM) into it and generate simulations of real-world landscapes and rotate through them.
!i!
linux, g++, mysql, ssh, apache, firefox (with X and gnome implied) and vim.
Gimme that and get out of my way.
Open Office too, if I have too.
Edit: add gimp and Inkscape. Tried using AutoRealm on winders... didn't much care for it.
Thinking of using scribus for page layout.
Sure - phpBB for the forums for d20 Haven. And I just downloaded phpWiki and now zachary has given me a great idea for it's use on the site...
I used ImageMagick to do some conversiona for work. That worked nicely.
Used to use Trillian for IM, but I 've had nothing but problem with the Yahoo connection and stopped IMing for a while now.
WinRAR for compression stuff.
All I can think of off the pointy top of my head...
My absolute must-have is OpenOffice. One of the easiest ways to create PDFs for free on a Windows machine, and it gives a lot of more freedom while writing documents (especially useful if you write RPGs yourself).
Furthermore continually in use:
ZoneAlarm firewall
Avira AntiVir
Mozilla Firefox (there are diseases I'd rather catch than IE)
FoxIt (quicker PDF reader than Adobe Acrobat)
WinAmp
WinRAR
There are also some emulators (DosBox and so on) and of course NetHack, but you seem more to ask for applications than for other kinds of programs.
Stuff from this thread I also use and can vouch for:
FoxIt - Wicked faster than Reader
Open Office - Works well and PDFs great
VLC - Wicked flexible, plays pretty much everything now, but I admit I only really use it for the weird formats.
iTunes - Easy to use and it handles my podcast subscriptions well enough.
Stuff I use myself:
IZarc - Handles all of the archive formats I'm aware of and a bunch I'm not.
Opera - I like how the browser stays small and simple and yet has tabs and gestures. Not to mention it's even less a target for virus writers than FireFox.
AVG Free Anti-Virus: It's a little weird with Vista though, I'm thinking about switching to something friendlier.
Why have I not heard of OpenOffice until now? I've been dying to - um - borrow a, um, thing - from a friend - that would let me have Word. But this - THIS will be much better! One of my last excuses for not writing down the tube!
(Wordpad just ain't cuttin' it)
Yeah...I just bought a laptop for the wife, and I'm truly thinking of removing the microsoft stuff and just going with openoffice, etc.
Hell, I'm thinking about changing my personal server over....
Doing this forum thing on a shared server sure has opened my eyes a bit.
Everything I do, in work, in life, and in gaming-- that is on the computer at all: I use http://zoho.com.
I highly recommend it.
I am REALLY glad I started this thread! :)
Keep it comin', guys!
A good deal of the practical programs mentioned here can be found at http://www.filehippo.com/ (http://www.filehippo.com/).
If you're not afraid to get an awesome game, grab Battle for Wesnoth. It's fantasy strategy gaming at it's finest, it's free, and it has a scenario editor to make your own maps and games.