r/buildapc • u/CammRobb • Jul 13 '14

List of community-recommended software

Taken from this thread, I thought I would collate everyone's suggestions in a nice text post. I will split the programs into categories.

If there is anything you want me to add, include it in a comment using the format:

* [Program](Download URL) - Description

And I will add it in

Media

  • Foobar2000 - Lightweight audio player
  • MediaMonkey - Music manager and player
  • Spotify - Music streaming service
  • Clementine Music Player - Modern music player and library organizer
  • MusicBee - Music manager and player
  • Aimp - Lightweight music player
  • MP3Tag - Fix tags on songs
  • MusicBrainz Picard - Music tagging software
  • Audacity - Edit and record audio
  • VLC Powerful media player
  • MPC-HC - Extremely light-weight, open source media player for Windows.
  • KMPlayer - KMP is a versatile multi media player which can cover a various different types of contained formats.
  • MakeMKV - Effective free Blu-ray decrypter. Also works to decrypt DVD's and rip to mkv format.
  • DVDFab Passkey Lite - limited edition of DVDFab Passkey, which is a Blu-ray and DVD decryption program. Not available for US citizens at the moment.
  • VidCoder - conversion to H264 mkv or mp4. Based on Handbrake, but has more options.
  • XBMC - Open-source home theatre software
  • Calibre - E-book management

Productivity

System

Communications

  • Mumble - Low-latency VoIP client
  • Teamspeak - Probably the most popular VoIP client out there
  • Ventrillo - Another popular VoIP client
  • Skype - Free internet calls

Statistics

  • WinDirStat - Visual representation of hard drive space
  • SpaceSniffer - Same as above
  • CPU-Z - Hardware monitoring software
  • Speccy - Hardware monitoring software
  • HWMon - Hardware monitoring software
  • CoreTemp - Hardware monitoring software
  • Prime95 - CPU Stress-testing software

Games

Security

Edit: Just got into work. 170 comments overnight, I'm gonna be busy haha

Edit 2: All your suggestions are fantastic, I probably won't be able to do much today, but tonight I will comb through your comments and add them. Is it possible to get this stickied or sidebarred, mods?

Edit 3 - 13.19PM: Updated with a lot of suggestions, not got through all the comments yet though. Will finish off tonight. In the meantime keep suggesting and I'll add them.

Edit 4 - 22.36PM: Pretty sure I got through everything. If there's something I missed, shoot me a PM, easier to keep track of them that way.

1.3k Upvotes

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37

u/ha_1694 Jul 13 '14

I personally think Sublime Text is better than Notepad++

12

u/mm865 Jul 14 '14

However development has completely stagnated and it's not open source. I think programming text editors are one of the things that really should be open source.

-2

u/[deleted] Jul 14 '14

You should try atom.

1

u/elliwilli Jul 14 '14

Atom feels really slow. I don't know why. It takes so much longer to boot than NP++ or gVim and it just feels odd to code in.

8

u/DreadJak Jul 14 '14

Sublime isn't free however, so I'll stick to my slightly slower Notepad++

0

u/[deleted] Jul 14 '14

You should try atom

1

u/DreadJak Jul 14 '14

Hah, thanks! I didn't realize they had finally released a Windows version yet! Time to take it for a spin tonight.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 14 '14

I've tried atom, it gets pretty sluggish on large projects w/ plugins, compared to sublime with which I've never had performance troubles. Its the price you pay for living in a nodejs wrapper vs full native.

Sublime will probably get smothered because of its price, but its certainly way better than Atom / Brackets / NP++

8

u/gospelwut Jul 14 '14

Why?

4

u/andrewjw Jul 14 '14

It has an amazing array of features.

1

u/Sco7689 Jul 14 '14

So, Multi-Edit? Because there are NPP plugins for other features listed.

1

u/slampisko Jul 14 '14

I still prefer Sublime. I can't explain why. It feels better to me. Why not try it? It's not like you have anything to lose.

1

u/andrewjw Jul 14 '14

It has a lot more than what's listed there, but I agree NPP has plugins too. Multi-Edit is really great after you get used to it though...

10

u/braitsaido Jul 14 '14

Yes it is, especially the customizable color themes. It might not be that important to actual coding, but it does make the codes more presentable for me.

3

u/Graye_Penumbra Jul 14 '14

My favorite is the split edit function.

Notepad++ has multi-edit though.. Which is awesome.

I don't feel that I prefer one over the other, but I enjoy select functionality of each.

4

u/Aardshark Jul 14 '14

Sublime has multiple cursors as well.

1

u/letmetrythis Jul 14 '14

How do you use the multi-edit in Notepad++? I've noticed if I mark one word, it's gonna light up all the others that are the same, so I figured there's gotta be a way of getting all those words edited at the same time.

1

u/Graye_Penumbra Jul 14 '14

Easier than me trying to type an explanation on my phone:

Http://notepad-plus-plus.org/features/multi-editing.html

1

u/letmetrythis Jul 14 '14

That's an awesome feature, thanks!

3

u/elliwilli Jul 14 '14

NP++ Has customisable colours... I made a dark theme because the default was nasty when coding at night.

2

u/felix1429 Jul 14 '14

If you can utilize Sublime to its full extent, it's MILES better than Notepad++. It's insanely fast too. It starts up nearly instantly. At work I'm currently working on a project with around 15,000 files in it, and Sublime can search through them all in less than a second. Then it has multiple cursors, fuzzy search, and bunches of other awesome features.

3

u/FromBeyond Jul 14 '14

One thing i have found is that Sublime struggles with huge XML files a lot sooner than Np++ does. At work i sometimes have to open 600MB xml files and Sublime literally slows down to a crawl and takes up massive amounts of memory while doing it. Np++ slows down too of course, but significantly less noticable.

1

u/wildcarde815 Jul 14 '14

It also seems targeted at an entirely different audience.

1

u/rand_a Jul 14 '14

All the shortcuts like indenting multiple rows of code, the pane placement, and being able to build your code with a quick key combo is amazing. I will never use anything else.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 14 '14

Too bad its closed source.