Favorite (Windows) software?

[Madhias]

Netscape It exists?

[Icarium]

I completely failed with installing Gentoo at the very beginning: the bootloader.

Just use Ubuntu. The general feeling is like Win98 or thereabouts. Meaning it has it's problems and can get messy but you generally get a lot done with very little effort. I have used Gentoo for years but switched to Ubuntu when I stopped enjoying spending ours setting everything up.

[Muirium]

Didn't Ubuntu fall out of fashion a couple of years ago, once it became <SCARE QUOTES> The "Apple" of Linux? <OMG LIKE TOTALLY SCARE QUOTES>

I thought everyone was on the cool offshoot distros now, whose names I haven't a chance remembering!

[ne0phyte]

It depends on what you want I guess. I hate that a stock Ubuntu installation comes with tons of services and several thousand packages. Because... you may plug in a Bluetooth dongle at some point, so let's run the BT services from day one, all the time, just in case

My Arch installation has a total of ~900 packages and I have all the drivers and software I need. I can also reinstall in no time using a package list and a git repo with my dotfiles and some scripts. It definitely takes a lot more time until you have a working setup that is exactly the way you want it, but it's worth if you ask me.

I'd recommend X/K/Ubuntu or Mint to anyone who doesn't want to spend much time configuring stuff, but for me it isn't an option. Also: Unity

[Julle]

I'm a pretty huge fan of ManicTime, AHK (for neo) and the snipping tool.

Snipping Tool i forgot! It's great.

If you want something more versatile for screenshots, Lightscreen is your choice. Customization for keyboard shortcuts, support for multiple image formats etc. http://lightscreen.com.ar/

lightscreen.png (12.57 KiB) Viewed 5489 times

[wheybags]

I'm not generally a big user of ides, but the vs debugger is excellent.

So are you using vim or emacs?

vim fo life

EDIT: I wonder what oses people here use generally. It seems to me like there's a pretty strong FOSS ethos.

[Julle]

I had to bid farewell to Mozilla Thunderbird. For years it has had the bug where it doesn't notify you about new emails when it's running in the background. In 2014, they still haven't fixed it.

For me, this is 50 % of what an email client is supposed to do. Honestly, it feels sad to give up something you've used for years. With Thunderbird you'd have to paranoidly alt-tab to the window every five minutes just to see if you've received new messages. Now I have finally had enough of that.

I switched to eM client which seems to do the job nicely.

[Hypersphere]

It depends on what you want I guess. I hate that a stock Ubuntu installation comes with tons of services and several thousand packages. Because... you may plug in a Bluetooth dongle at some point, so let's run the BT services from day one, all the time, just in case

My Arch installation has a total of ~900 packages and I have all the drivers and software I need. I can also reinstall in no time using a package list and a git repo with my dotfiles and some scripts. It definitely takes a lot more time until you have a working setup that is exactly the way you want it, but it's worth if you ask me.

I'd recommend X/K/Ubuntu or Mint to anyone who doesn't want to spend much time configuring stuff, but for me it isn't an option. Also: Unity

I have an IBM server that came loaded with RHEL, but I found it difficult to manage. I switched to Ubuntu Server, and everything "just worked". However, I still have the option to configure and tweak as much as I like.

Similarly, with my desktops, I started with CentOS, which became frustrating, tried several other distros and finally settled on Mint, which gives me the dual advantage of working out of the box while still allowing me to configure things to my heart's content.

[wheybags]

debain is best distro no matter u saying

[scottc]

I'm not generally a big user of ides, but the vs debugger is excellent.

So are you using vim or emacs?

vim fo life

EDIT: I wonder what oses people here use generally. It seems to me like there's a pretty strong FOSS ethos.

so proud of us

[Muirium]

A bit of all three desktop platforms, I think. I'm certainly not the only Mac user around.

The ones that are missing are all the mobile-first kids. "Keyboard" just means a touch interface on a screen to them. And there's a lot more of them nowadays, while there's slowly less of us.

[wheybags]

Ah the mouse and keyboard will never actually die, sure it's losing ground in the entertainment area but for getting actual work done there's no competition. Noone writes their thesis on an ipad.

[Muirium]

Agreed. Traditional computing was around before the web, and it'll survive once we're a slim minority online in the future. The 90's-2000's were the anomaly when there was no other practical way to check IMDB and celebrity gossip sites while watching TV.

[Hypersphere]

Ah, yes; it will be like the famous exchange between the plant manger and Scotty in ST IV: The Voyage Home:

Just use the keyboard.

A keyboard; how quaint!

[IvanIvanovich]

Firefox x64 + ghostery, self-destruting cookies, adblock edge, https-everywhere, classic theme restorer
7zip - still my favorite for dealing with compressed archive file types.
musicbee - my favorite music player.
mpc be + lav filters - favorite movie player.
utorrent - I don't really like it anymore, but haven't found anything much better.
rainmeter - I love my desktop infos!
avidemux - So I can repack mkv files to mp4... I like adding movie poster as cover art and metadata.
mp3tag - to add cover art and metadata.
desura - for games.
steam - for more games.
sagethumbs+ghostscript - for additional image filetype thumbnail handlers.
I also use a few 'apps' quite regularly now like OneNote, News, Reader and Pirc.

[Muirium]

7zip's getting mentioned a lot. I used it a bit, way back in the early days, it was nicer than WinZIP and WinRAR (blech!) and less naggy, too, but still awkward. Hopefully they redid the interface in the intervening decade!

On the Mac, there's Apple's built in Archive Utility which does a reasonable job, and for the oddball formats there is The Unarchiver. That one handles every weird and forgotten thing.

http://wakaba.c3.cx/s/apps/unarchiver.html

[SL89]

debain is best distro no matter u saying

Debian is even better when it is CrunchBang!

[matt3o]

I would feel completely naked without my terminal window

[Muirium]

I can sympathise. I feel just as horribly exposed when I'm forced to the terminal…

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I had to bid farewell to Mozilla Thunderbird. For years it has had the bug where it doesn't notify you about new emails when it's running in the background. In 2014, they still haven't fixed it.

I use a combination of the OS mail notification sound, and the tray icon. The toast windows had to go as they disrespected full-screen applications, so in DOSBox in 256-colour mode I'd get this huge, miscoloured heap of flickery bits of toast appearing in the corner. I don't have any problems with the program being in the background — must be one of the few bugs in Thunderbird that I haven't found yet.

Windows 7 upwards allows a program to put its notification icon directly over its taskbar button, and Thunderbird still doesn't support that.

Thunderbird is terrible, but pickings are pretty slim — the widespread adoption of web-based mail may be responsible for the slow demise of the mail client and the fact that IMAP is still a stagnant mess. When will IMAP get message move, native Trash support (none of this copy and strikeout rubbish), unified transmission (write to Outbox and have IMAP relay to the SMTP server and relocate the message to Sent for you), and some way for programs to figure out whether explicitly writing "INBOX." as the root folder is required or not (Outlook 2013 needs this otherwise it won't work at all).

Outlook Express 5 for Mac. Now that was a proper graphical mail client. RIP.

[Grendel]

I had to bid farewell to Mozilla Thunderbird. For years it has had the bug where it doesn't notify you about new emails when it's running in the background. In 2014, they still haven't fixed it.

For me, this is 50 % of what an email client is supposed to do. Honestly, it feels sad to give up something you've used for years. With Thunderbird you'd have to paranoidly alt-tab to the window every five minutes just to see if you've received new messages. Now I have finally had enough of that.

I use the "MinimizeToTray revived" add-on, never had a problem w/ missing notifications ?

[webwit]

Last month, all traffic:

Windows 7 43.4%
Windows 8 17.9%
Mac OS 10.5%
Android 8.2%
Linux 6.6%
iOS 5.7%
Windows XP 3.1%
Ubuntu 2.5%
Rest 2%

[Muirium]

I'd like to see the breakdown by users, and especially by posts. I'm 50-50 in the Mac and iOS camps, which ought to give them a push!

[matt3o]

wondering why Linux and Ubuntu are split :/

[webwit]

I'm not sure why Piwik splits them.

[matt3o]

anway. it's impressive the penetration of windows 8. I've seen the global figures and they are way lower than that. Probably DT users are more tech savvy.

[IvanIvanovich]

I don't think 7zip has made any gui changes ever. But I use it through the context menu 99% of the time in which case it unpacks/packs in the background so I don't really see it anyway.
I use rainmeter for my email notifications, but it only works with certain email providers. Windows 8.x also has it's own notification if you set up the mail app. I just pin tab my webmail in firefox. I haven't seen any point in having an email client in like forever. The only use they have is if you want local copy of email... which really isn't needed now that most email providers give you quite a lot of storage space.

[Julle]

I had to bid farewell to Mozilla Thunderbird. For years it has had the bug where it doesn't notify you about new emails when it's running in the background. In 2014, they still haven't fixed it.

I use the "MinimizeToTray revived" add-on, never had a problem w/ missing notifications ?

Normally, I'd probably try that. Here's why I won't

1. This should have been fixed in the program itself a long time ago. It's been known for at least the past 5 years https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=531002
EDIT:

Assigned To: Nobody; OK to take it and work on it

Five years, and nobody has taken this on!

Spoiler:

2. I've fallen to the addons trap before. Here's what I mean:

• A program is missing a feature crucial to me
• Someone makes a third-party addon to serve that purpose in that program
• Addon becomes popular
• Addon developer suddenly stops developing the addon for x number of reasons
• I'm now fucked because I can't do anything about it

This has happened to me too many times.

[Julle]

anway. it's impressive the penetration of windows 8. I've seen the global figures and they are way lower than that. Probably DT users are more tech savvy.

I hate to say this but underneath the Metro/RT nonsense Windows 8(.1) is a stable, reliable OS.

[rindorbrot]

My favourite Windows tool is RoyalTS.
Really nice to keep many RDP sessions organized.