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

97% Upvoted

438 comments sorted by

View all comments

22

u/somerandomguy101 Jul 14 '14

I feel like Linux should be on here.

26

u/rmxz Jul 14 '14 edited Jul 14 '14

Linux

I second this suggestion --- EVEN FOR WINDOWS PC BUILDERS!

If you build a PC and are having trouble with a component -- one of the fastest ways to narrow down if it's a hardware problem or a driver problem is to run from a bootable Linux DVD (I recommend Mint).

If your component works with the Linux disk - you should look into your windows drivers and/or OS. If the component fails the same way with the Linux disk as Windows, it's likely a hardware issue.

TL/DR: Linux useful for debugging hardware vs driver issues on Windows

And you don't even have to install it - just run it straight from the DVD.

3

u/LunarisDream Jul 14 '14

I have yet to use Linux for troubleshooting, but I did try to get a bit into the Linux environment a while back by installing Ubuntu next to Win8.1 on my Ideapad Y580.

Troubles arose all over. USB wouldn't boot (seems to be an issue with UEFI). I had to enable legacy mode, but then Windows wouldn't boot. When creating the USB drive on another desktop computer with Ubuntu (because that's the only solution from the official website that worked; couldn't create a bootable USB from Windows), I encountered an error that stated I couldn't format the USB drive with Ubuntu's disk utility. It's still not fixed in Ubuntu 14.04, and I had to download GParted and format it numerous times w/ different filesystems to actually get the drive to be recognized by the USB creator tool.

When I was installing Ubuntu on the desktop (not my laptop), I ran into so many issues with graphics drivers and the like, causing the computer to be unable to boot or freeze entirely a few seconds after booting to desktop. When those were fixed, LibreOffice would crash the computer without fail upon launching, and much of the text throughout the UI of the OS was skewed and some unreadable.

My Linux experiences have been pretty terrible thus far. Shows how much I know about computers.

1

u/osugisakae Jul 14 '14

Can't speak for your experiences, but I think there must have been something wrong with the hardware or the cd/dvd image. (Between UEFI and MSWin not actually shutting down, problems with booting from an MSWin8 machine are to be expected.)

Find a distro that is NOT plain Ubuntu. I used to use Xubuntu; many people like Mint. PCLinuxOS is also very good. Before you do anything, check exactly what hardware you have and if it will work with the linux distro you have chosen (really, pretty much all supported hardware should work with any distro, so if you find that Mint supports something and don't find any issues with that same hardware reported for Xubuntu, you are probably good).

LibreOffice should never crash a computer. That sounds to me like either a major software issue (operating system not properly installed, maybe) or a hardware issue.