Good programs to have and services to use:
Over the years, the core stuff I'd install on every fresh start has changed widely. I have been a pirate all my life, so having full MS Office, Macromedia and Adobe packages weren't ever a problem. Over time I started favoring Open-Source initiatives, though.
LibreWolf is very privacy and security-oriented, light web browser based on Firefox, fairly new but with a very active community and regular updates, but if you are looking for anonymity for some online activity, then you better go with Tor. I like that you can keep convenient accounts logged on LibreWolf and it comes with uBlock Origin. Tor has its own system that is not as good, and although you can use uBlock Origin with it, the third party is a vulnerability if you are aiming at anonymity. Also, remember that Tor is not for streaming and stuff, for its layered encryption severly impacts the bandwidth.
ps: If you are using a Chromium-based web browser, the view of this page probably sucks, with a very ugly scroll bar.
🡆 7-Zip
Essential for compressing and opening compressed files. WinRAR still has a special place in my heart for being a cool company with a fun PR, but although it's still the most popular program, 7-Zip is superior in every way
🡆 LibreOffice
The best Open-Source alternative to the heavily bloated MS Office. Although I admit, since I don't have essential files I need to store and manage nowadays, just a few lists and documents I share, I use Google Docs out of convenience.
Moving away from the bloated crap that became Photoshop was quite hard. GIMP is still the best Open-Source option for heavy image editing, but quite hard to get into. Gladly, the PhotoGimp mod exists. For art, Krita is the way to go, but for some light work, Photopea it is.
Some may call it a convenience Photopea being an online tool, but I'd really like an official offline version.
Email services
Google is very convenient for logons on major services, sites, and quick checks through your web browser since all your activity is tracked and used for serving ads anyway. The easiest available free alternative focused on your privacy is Proton Mail, although their e2ee encryption is oversold, since metadata is not encrypted. My personal pick is pairing the Open-Source desktop service Mozilla Thunderbird with a RiseUp.net email. RiseUp.net is a non-commercial independent organization with strong ethics focused on privacy, that actively resists governmental control, and purges logs daily. However, you need ideological affinity to join it.
Search Engines
DuckDuckGo is the most popular search engine if you want to avoid getting profiled, your history tracked, targeted ads, biased results and filter bubbles. However, DuckDuckGo is mostly based on Bing and Yahoo, while Google is still the behemot, with the amount of crawled and indexed content towering everything else, so what I really recommend is using Startpage, who uses Google's index but removes all their tracking and data collection. Or use both, why not.
Blogging and Web Hosting
In the late 2000s, there was a lively blogging community using Blogspot, but nowadays it's a dead platform, lacking support from its own provider, probably the worst option out there, and Google might pull the plug on it any day. I use it solely out of stubbornness. WordPress is a highly customizable Open-Source blogging platform and probably the best option for blogging. If you want to focus on privacy, and your project is suitable, you should check the WordPress-based Noblogs and read their manifesto. Like RiseUp.net, they also encrypt your activity, purge your data, and protect your privacy and anonymity. They also offer free web hosting, but as a noncommercial organization maintained by donations and volunteer work, your project needs to share their ideological inclinations.
Finally, a great free web hosting service, reminiscing a time before social media killed internet creativity, is this very one you're surfing right now, Neocities :)
VPN
VPN services are paid, and I have no experience with them, for I don't live in a country where corporations force ISPs to rat you out. But for light internet usage, i.e. no streaming or torrenting, consider using the free Proton VPN.
Social Media
I've grown to loathe social media. I'm outdated and mostly uninterested at the moment, even though I still use Facebook and Reddit regularly. I'm going to dive into the Fediverse eventually, though, for their proposition is quite interesting.
Yes, I'm a Windows user, although I get madder at their increasing control and our decreasing customization options at every new release. I tried Ubuntu somewhen in the late '00s, but the low compatibility at the time, especially for gaming, drove me away - I'm sure it's way better now.
I'm not one to spend on hardware. I can count one hand the amount of desktop and laptops I have owned. When I tried to move my last laptop from Win10 to Win7, in a time Win7 was still supported, I discovered its hardware simply had no plugins for it, and I couldn't even use the keyboard or USB ports... discovering this industry practice was quite shocking for me, and my new machine is also a laptop for I need its portability, and I never checked its compatibility with other systems, but if possible, I shall try Linux again in the future, and then I will know more about which build to recommend. Also, I'm keeping my eyes on Tails.
Sharing is caring - and never trust corporate streaming!
My older brother came from Napster. When I joined the internet I was on Kazaa. I remember trying eMule and LimeWire later and finding them awnful, but in hindsight, Kazaa was also pretty crappy. It was only when I joined SoulSeek that I discovered what a great P2P community looked like.
🡆 Nicotine+
The best music community there is, Nicotine+ is a SoulSeek client that has better performance and way more customization tools.
🡆 qBittorrent
And the best tool for very large files, like movies, series and softwares. Forget every other Torrent client that will bombard you with ads, try to sell you cryptocrap and even use your hardware to mine. qBittorrent is the superior and free Open-Source alternative.
Where to start? Well, I use it mostly for movies and series. 1337x has a lot trackers, EXT has more options. Nyaa is especialized in anime and manga. For old stuff I'm not finding, I still go to The Pirate Bay. There are tons of other options out there, though, and if you are not finding something, it never hurts to just enter the name followed by "watch/read online" in a search engine.
Store locally or let corporations destroy everything
There are a lot of online tools available to download content from most streaming platforms, but they are mostly very crappy. For most popular video hosting webistes I really like to use 4K Download, fairly generic name but also light and with very good options. Devs also seem fast to update protocols when needed. As for most popular music streaming platforms, I've been using Sidify, which is competent but I'm not that happy with the program. Both are paid services, but of course you can look for cracked versions at your own risk - both aren't very trustworthy to begin with.
I accept recommendations, though, because I'm not that knowledgeable on this and there might be better options out there.
I have been happily married to Winamp for almost 25 years now. Yeah, I may have accidently used Windows Media Player sometimes, and maybe I had gotten naughty with foobar2000 as well to experimence new things, but I always come back to you, my love.
The last version of Winamp is 5.666 from 2013, after that Nullsoft was terminated and Radionomy launched buggy versions focused on wallets and NFT crap, really laughable.
🡆 WACUP
WinAmp Community Update Project, as the name suggests, is a community-driven project. It's working up from Winamp 5.666 and has a nice and active community. The best Winamp experience nowadays is through WACUP.
One thing I love about Winamp is the community it had behind it. Creating skins and visualizations was so easy everyone would do it and you had tons available, although several had very questionable quality. Winamp Skin Museum has an awesome collection of skins for the default form, but there were also freeform skins that completely changed the UI. I couldn't find a good library focused on freeform skins, but you can find a good amount at Winamp Heritage, which also has a plenty visualizations.
One of my favorite skins is PIPBoy 2000 by Gerk2077, based on the Fallout UI (by the way, the background here is my recreation of the original Fallout screensaver, and this font you are reading is the Fallout font. If you plan to use PIPBoy 2000 skin, you better use with the proper font!), but I also like a lot WACUPified color-theme.
obs: The song at the top of this page is Whip the Llama's Ass by Wesley Willis, the inspiration for Winamp's slogan "It really whips the llama's ass!".
🡆 foobar2000
Yeah I love Winamp, but when it comes to customization and library management, foobar2000 outclasses everything else. As I'm not very much into "exploring the library", having the music player occupying my whole screen, displaying information I don't really need while I listen to the music (of course, the customization includes removing all of that, and you can make a compact mode), and I prefer to play custom playlists, foobar2000 tools are way beyond my needs. Winamp may have more of a nostalgic value to me and WACUP is a great music player, but for a more "professional" experience, foobar2000 it is.
Audio Editing
These are not professional tools. They are light tools for quick use. I've picked them long ago, at the time they seemed the best or most suitable around. Although those projects are very much alive and active, I did not update myself, so if you think they are outclassed now, let me know.
Also, FLAC libraries are excellent and I fully support them, however audiophiles telling you they can tell the difference between 320kbps MP3 and FLAC audio are either lying or delusional, for even with expensive hardware people fail blind tests. If you are not a professional or an archiver, MP3 is more than enough for you.
🡆 Audacity
Great for editing the audio.
🡆 Mp3Tag
Great for editing the meta tags.
🡆 MP3Gain
Identify and change dB meta tags to standardize your files' audio volume.
Consider yourself luck if you haven't lived through the time you had to download and update codec libraries manually to watch videos.
🡆 VLC
VideoLAN Client is another proof that quality content, prioritizing user's experience and privacy, will never come from corporate overlords. A free Open-Source initiative that humiliates every player the billionarie tech giants have created. Light, fast, feature-rich, the only media player you need.
It also works as an audio player, so if its limited UI customization isn't a problem for you, then yeah, you don't really need other programs.
Useful tools
🡆 VidCutter
Super light and fast, generates files very quickly, no shenanigans. Use SmartCut for better results.
🡆 OpenShot
For more in-depth edits and more tools, another pretty good and light Open-Source option, although I had problems before trying to edit very large files. The community is pretty active and updates are frequent, so perhaps by time you read this I'd have no complains at all about it.
🡆 Shotcut
Sturdier and with more advanced tools and features. My pick when OpenShot lags, but this is a professional-grade software.
🡆 OBS Studio
Another powerful, yet very light, Open-Source program. I know it's very popular for streaming, but I don't stream so I can't comment on it. It is, however, excellent for video capture, and only if you suffered through Fraps and Bandicam you'd know how great it is.
Other powerful Open-Source tools are Kdenlive, and Blender, but I haven't used them much.
I used to game a lot when I was a kid. I had a Sega Genesis and a Nes-clone called Dynavision, a neighbor had a Master System, a friend from school had a Genesis and a Saturn, another had a SNES and a Nintendo 64, another had a PC, a cousin that I would see often had a SNES and a PC, another had a SNES and a N64, another cousin had fucking everything: Genesis, SNES, N64, Playstation, GameBoy, Game Gear and PC. But when I visited my brother while he was in college, and he showed me his emulator collection with thousands of games, plus Napster, I realized PC was the way to go!
🡆 GOG
Before talking about emulation, let's talk about being a good boy. I mentioned before being a pirate all my life, but nowadays I have a GOG account and even bought quite a few games. The difference from GOG and other platforms is its DRM-Free policy, and despite the name originally meaning Good Old Games, every modern game that doesn't rely on extremelly shitty anti-consumer practices are available there as well. While you don't own shit on other platforms, and they force you to use their launcher to download, install and play the games, which they can cut your access to anytime, on GOG you have the option to just download the .exe and do whatever you want with it. After buying the game you don't depend on GOG for anything else anymore - they also have a launcher you can use if you want your gaming stats and the social features. GOG has been doing a great work for software preservation and restoration. ALWAYS BUY ON GOG.
🡆 MAME
The Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator is a wonderful Open-Source project developed by the most beautiful people. With almost 30 years in the making now, its objective is to emulate systems with perfection. Their library is insane, and they have done so much for software preservation!
As MAME want games to run 100% correctly, instead of just being playable, their system compatibility updates are very slow, but over the years I abandoned many other emulators, like FinalBurn Alpha and NeoRageX, because their whole libraries became fully compatible.
As of now, It's been more than ten years that I've last updated my MAME, and I just saw they incorporated MESS (Multi Emulator Super System, a related project doing the same thing for consoles). At the time MESS wasn't the best option for gaming, but I'm sure, especially after fusing with MAME, it developed greatly in those more than ten years.
As I don't know which systems are running perfect on MAME now, I will give here the list of emulators I'm using in my Arcade machine, which were the best and more active in the early 2010s, but they might be oudclassed now:
Nestopia for Nintendo.
ZSnesw for Super Nintendo.
Project64 for Nintendo 64.
Dolphin for Gamecube and Wii.
VisualBoyAdvance-M for Gameboy, Gameboy Color and Gameboy Advance.
No$GBA for Nintendo DS.
Fusion for Master System, Sega Genesis, Sega 32x, Sega CD and Game Gear.
SSF for Sega Saturn.
nullDC for Dreamcast.
PSXFin for Playstation. (official site dead)
PCSX2 for Playstation 2.
Sega Model 2 Emulator for Sega Model 2. (official site dead)
Supermodel for Sega Model 3.
Demul for Sega Naomi and Sammy Atomiswave.
my arcade picture
HyperSpin, LaunchBox, RetroArch
🡆 EmuMovies
[place holder]
Other resources
Outdated Emuparadise, rom hustler, The Iso Zone.