Free Software Megathread

[Evilmaniac]

Hey all. I thought it would be nice to have a thread dedicated to useful programs that function like many of the popular programs that cost a lot of money for personal use. This isn't a thread to post links of a cracked photoshop, but rather links of programs that replace them free of charge. If you have any programs to add feel free. Plz include a link to the official site in your post.

Antivirus
Avast
Malwarebytes
Microsoft Security Essentials
Spybot

Monitoring
CoreTemp
CPU-Z
Real Temp
MSI Afterburner
Speccy
SpeedFan

Benchmarking/Stressing
Memtest86
Prime 95
Futuremark

Cleaning/Optimizing Computer
Gamebooster
CCleaner
Defraggler
MyDefrag
Temp File Cleaner

Media Player
VLC
GOM Player
iTunes
Media Player Classic
XBMC

Photo Editor
Gimp
PhotoFiltre
Paint.NET

Video Tools
H.264Video Encoder
AvidemuxVideo Editor
HandBrake Video Conversion
VirtualDub Video Processing

ISO/CD/DVD
DeepBurner
Burn4Free
Magic Disc

Game/World Developer
Unity3d
Unreal Development Kit
VUE PLE

Modeler
Blender
Google SketchUp
Sculptris

Downloader
Jdownloader
NiNite

Codecs
MPC + K-Lite Codec Pack
FLAC

Youtube Downloader
YouTube Downloader
Easy Youtube Video Downloader (Firefox) Firefox Addon

Misc
CloneZilla used for cloning hard drives to another hard drive or to a disk. caution when cloning to an SSD, cloning from an SSD is fine
Audacity Sound Editor
OpenOffice mimics microsoft office
7-zip Rar files
IrfanView Graphic viewer
Rainmeter Customizes desktop
X-Chat 2 IRC
CamStudio Video recording
TorProject Masks internet activity
Foxit Reader PDF reader
Skype Chat and VoIP
FilleZilla FTP
Notepad ++ Advanced Notepad
Hiren's BootCD Repair/Diagnose computers
WinSCP SCP, SFTP, FTP client with mock Norton Commander interface for windows.
PuTTYfree Telnet and SSH client.
Eclipse IDESDK mostly for Java
Netbeans Alternative to Eclipse
BelarcSecurity Advisor - Advanced PC information
ThunderBird Outlook replacement
Gpart Partition Copier
Oracle Virtualbox Virtual machines
Google Earth 3D Model of Earth
TeamViewer Remote Control of PCs
NeoSmart Manages Boot Loaders
RockBox MP3 Firmware
TeraCopy File Copier
EverThing Search function for windows
F.lux Adjusts brightness based on time of day
Unified Remote Turns your Android phone into a remote for your PC
Videora Ipod Converter Convertes files for iPod/MP4 players
Recuva for recovering lost / corrupted files on good or 'not too bad' hard drives

< Big thanks to georgevonfranken for compiling / formatting / sorting this whole list! >

[Gaspode]

Free anti-virus, well known and very good. http://www.avast.com/index

Free graphics viewing proggy. http://www.irfanview.com/

[kailtas]

http://www.cpuid.com/ - Also known as CPU-Z. Monitors CPU and RAM on your system.

http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/ - Monitors the heat of your CPU.

[Viradiance]

Some very nice selections in here!

[georgevonfranken]

Gamebooster Frees up ram memory

[firestarter451]

Malwarebytes - Incredibly useful spyware scanner and removal tool.

[Fuzzykins]

Rainmeter - Free Desktop customization software.
RealTemp - Highly accurate, professional level temperature monitoring software.
MemTest86 - Free RAM diagnostics software.
Microsoft Security Essentials - Free, low memory, reliable anti-virus software.
Prime 95 - Free CPU stress tool.

[llDemonll]

DeepBurner for .ISO's and CD's in general

[shaw0050]

http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner - frees up hard drive space as well as some other useful utility functions
http://handbrake.fr/ - open source video conversion!
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/ - sound editor
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ - media player.. plays like.. everything
http://downloads.guru3d.com/Afterbur...load-2562.html - OCs and monitors your graphics cards

[Deleted]

Maybe it's a lil much to ask but is it possible to gather all the info and software in the first post (maybe even under catagories). Could be worth a sticky if a Mod or deticated member did a litle work on it.

[Deleted]

Speccy a very usefull tool, when you need to see all the specs an all the hardware parts of your computer, including how hot they are, and what the maximum heat they can take, before they die.

[Advent]

Great thread. Can a moderator please sticky this? I'm serious.

[Pitchkart]

Unreal Development Kit- Or UDK for short. UDK is a free leased game engine for non commercial use that anyone who wants to game design or learn some things that's involved in game design can do. Many people have created popular indie games from this product. This is the very game engine that created Borderlands, Bulletstorm, Sanctum, and other present day popular games.

UDK is supposed to be pretty good. I personally use Unity ( http://www.unity3d.com ), though I've never used UDK. It's free for standard PC use, and I believe you're even allowed to sell with the free license (where with the UDK, you need to buy a license or pay loyalties for commercial use [though it is free to use otherwise]), with the drawback that the free license requires you to have a Unity splash screen, and you don't have access to certain neat features.

Either way, both development bases are free in their basic form, and are very good for indie developers.

[Fuzzykins]

Fraps isn't free, for the record. It's near useless without the paid version. That said, I support the idea of collectivizing and categorizing all of this information into a single post.

[Deleted]

I wrote something not contributing to the thread, and I refered to illigal stuff.

< sweeeeeeet; considering I don't see any software listed so far that isn't available for free, you are wrong in your statement. >

[Fuzzykins]

<mod snip of quoted piracy discussion>

Talking about pirated software is against server policy. And morals. It's stealing, plain and simple. No more talk of cracked software, mmmkay?

[Iamsylar]

photofiltre - It's easy, smooth and enjoyable to use. It's similar to paint, and gimp.

speedfan - SpeedFan is a program that monitors voltages, fan speeds and temperatures in computers with hardware monitor chips. SpeedFan can even access S.M.A.R.T. info and show hard disk temperatures.

GOM Player - Easy and smooth media player program. It supports 64-bit operationsystems, which i believe VLC doesn't.

[Asera]

Defraggler, drive defragmenter that's a bit more robust than the standard Windows defragmenter.
http://www.piriform.com/defraggler

MyDefrag, same idea as defraggler, but more robust. (I use this over defraggler personally)
http://www.mydefrag.com/

WinSCP, free SCP, SFTP, FTP client with mock Norton Commander interface for windows.
http://winscp.net/eng/index.php

PuTTY, free Telnet and SSH client.
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/

PSTools Suite, extra command line tools for the CMD shell and Windows Powershell, useful for server admins.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/s...rnals/bb896649

Blender, free open source 3D modelling and animation suite, similar to Autodesk Maya, 3DS Max, Lightwave, Cinema 4D and the like. It is however NOT similar to ZBrush.
http://www.blender.org/

---------- Post added 2011-05-24 at 07:34 PM ----------

Couple more...

Eclipse IDE, SDK mostly for Java, but I believe you can use other languages in it as well.
http://www.eclipse.org/

XChat 2, free, easy to use IRC client.
http://www.silverex.org/news/

[Djinni]

BelarcSecurity Advisor - Builds a detailed profile of your installed software and hardware, missing Microsoft hotfixes, anti-virus status, security benchmarks, and displays the results in your Web browser. All of your PC profile information is kept private on your PC and is not sent to any web server. Also lists product key's of pretty much all installed software (that needs one)

[Zeriphal]

<3 http://ninite.com/