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Recommended Software

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jdrch edited this page Apr 27, 2020 · 60 revisions

Foreword

  • The following are either software I've used personally or know to work best in the noted capacity/context.
  • The list of supported OSes for particular applications is not necessarily exhaustive. Ports for a particular OS may exist; check Repology or Packages Search
  • FuryBSD KDE is FreeBSD with a bundled live image desktop and KDE installation, and so anything that is listed as working with FuryBSD can be assumed to work with FreeBSD also unless otherwise stated

Antimalware

Archive Managers

7-zip (Windows)

Backup

Backup Targets

Veeam Backup & Replication Community Edition (Windows)

Clients

NOTE: These do not necessarily have equivalent features.

Servers

Veeam Backup & Replication Community Edition (Windows, supports all Veeam client host OSes as sources)

There are many people who swear by rsync, but I find it obtuse to use, so it's not listed here.

BitTorrent Clients

qBittorrent (BSD, Haiku, Linux, macOS, OS/2, Windows)

Calculators

Calendars

Google Calendar

Comic Book Readers

  • Challenger Comics Viewer (Android)
  • ComicRack (Android, Windows)
    • ComicRack hasn't been updated in aeons, but it's still pretty far ahead of the competition in features, spit, and polish

Community Chat Clients

  • Discord (Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, web, Windows)
  • Telegram (Android, FreeBSD, iOS, Linux, macOS, web, Windows)

Computational Fluid Dynamics Solvers

Diagramming Clients

Download Managers

Duplicate File Finder

DupeGuru (macOS, Linux, Windows)

Email Clients

Desktop

Microsoft Outlook (Windows)

Web

Gmail (web)

File Managers

File Manager Utilities

(s)FTP Clients

Image Organizers

digiKam (FreeBSD, Linux, OpenBSD, Windows)

Image Viewers

IrfanView (Windows)

Instant Messengers

Media Players

VLC (Android, FreeBSD, Linux, macOS, Windows)

Music Players

Music Streaming Clients

  • Soundcloud (Android, iOS, web)
  • Spotify (Android, iOS, Linux, web, Windows)

Music Taggers

MP3Tag (Windows)

Notekeepers

Free

Paid

  • Evernote (Android, iOS, macOS, web, Windows)

Notification Mirrors

Pushbullet (Android, web, Windows)

Operating Systems

By Family

BSD

FreeBSD

Desktop

FuryBSD KDE

Firewall

pfSense

NAS

FreeNAS (Soon to become TrueNAS Core)

Server

FreeBSD

Linux Distributions

Internet of Things (IoT)

Raspbian

Desktop

Debian Stable (KDE installation)

Server

Debian Stable + Cockpit

Virtualization

Proxmox

Android

Microsoft Windows Semi-Annual Channel

Pro and Home work well enough for both consumer desktop and server applications, but the following SKUs have better feature parity with the other non-mobile OSes listed here.

Desktop

  • Enterprise
  • Pro for Workstations

Server

Server (Since 2019, Microsoft has dropped the "Server" part of the name, calling it just Windows 2019. Presumably subsequent releases will follow this trend)

UNIX

Desktop & Server

Oracle Solaris

Unix

Desktop & Server

OpenIndiana Hipster GUI

By Application

Desktop

BSD

FreeBSD

FuryBSD KDE

Linux Distributions

Debian Stable

Microsoft Windows Semi-Annual Channel

  • Enterprise
  • Pro for Workstations

UNIX

Oracle Solaris

Unix

OpenIndiana Hipster GUI

Firewall

pfSense

Internet of Things

Raspbian Stable

NAS

FreeNAS

Server

BSD

FreeBSD
  • FreeBSD
  • FuryBSD KDE

Linux Distributions

Debian Stable + Cockpit

Microsoft Windows Semi-Annual Channel

Server

UNIX

Oracle Solaris

Unix

OpenIndiana Hipster GUI

Partition Managers

Password Managers

PDF Clients

Productivity Suites

Microsoft Office 365 (Android, macOS, Windows)

Reddit Clients

Desktop

Mobile

Due to real-time notifications and chat being 1st party app exclusive features, I'd recommend running the latter along with a 3rd party app.

  • Reddit Official (Android, iOS)
  • Boost for Reddit - WARNING: Boost appears to use a deprecated Reddit Markdown version, which results in list and code formatting issues

Remote Desktop

TeamViewer

  • WARNING: TeamViewer is a major security attack target whose default settings are inadequate for that fact. Enable TOTP 2FA for your account and unique, strong, per device remote access passwords

Simulation Environments

ANSYS Workbench (Linux, Windows)

SSH Clients

Recommended, with reservations

Structural Solvers

ANSYS Mechanical (Linux, Windows)

Don't use anything other than Mechanical unless you absolutely have to. Everything else is an absolute pain to deal with, relatively speaking.

Task Managers

Todoist

Text Editors

Twitter Clients

Two Factor Authentication App

Authy (Android, iOS, Linux (snap), macOS, Windows) - A Chrome extension exists, but is no longer maintained or supported

Unit Converters

Converber (Windows)

Volume Spanners

StableBit DrivePool

Web Browsers

Organized Alphabetically:

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