forWindows
What I use on Windows. Mostly FOSS.
Spent good money on this. Hope my college'd actually pay these for us one day.
Essentials
Important stuff.
The new Internet Explorer. Use Chromium if you prefer FOSS, or Firefox maybe. Free.
Probably the best compression software around. Use this, or a more user-unfriendly 7zip, and stop clicking on that "your winrar license has expired" message box you urod. FOSS.
Beautiful and easy-to-use image viewer. I use this instead of the Windows 10 built-in app because I do not want to wait 5 seconds every time I try to open the tiniest picture. Matches the Windows 10 overall theme quite well, or so I think. FOSS.
Gom and Potplayer are nice, yes, but good ol' VLC comes with no bundleware. FOSS.
Internet and communication
What, you have no access to the internet? Lucky you!
My family uses Wechat and my friends use LINE so that's basically what I use, but had I got a choice, I'd say Telegram. Free.
When I was a grade school kid I wrote in my diary that I hope one day I'd be able to go to school without riding for half an hour on the bus. What a grand-ass dream-come-true. Freemium.
I use it to mount my linux laptop home dir as disk, so I don't need to sftp every time I'm looking for that book report I wrote like 5 years ago. There's also a super user-friendly GUI frontend called SSHFS-Win Manager. Check it out. FOSS.
Tools and Utilities
Hopefully these will make your overall Windows experience a lil more hospitable.
Rejoice, CJK language speakers. Forget about the sh*tty font rendering in Windows; you won't be seeing it from today on. FOSS.
I mapped my keys mac-like with this osftware so that I don't need another 1000 hours to get used to Windows shortcuts (again), but it can do so much more. FOSS.
Simple screenshot tool with every function I need. Also available on mac. Freemium.
When I was an innocent child I used to install that stupid Qihu 360 antivirus for this one uninstaller function. Now you know the right software to use. Freemium.
Because clicking on that small power-off button in the new start menu is an absolute penance. FOSS.
Atom as the default editor because I have RAM to burn. FOSS.
A brand new startup experience for that used netbook you bought in 2010. Freemium.
Preview almost any file in like half a sec. Were you a Mac user, you'd feel right at home. Freemium.
Unchecks all those bundleware during the installation wizard for you automatically so that your homepage will never be set to hao123 ever again. Not completely useful if you use a package manager, though. Free, discontinued.
For those who need a terminal emulator, this is, uh, probably the cutest one out there, and it has a more active development than hyper. FOSS.
The package manager for Windows, like brew on Mac. *nix users will like this. I perfer this over chocolatey, because reasons. FOSS.
Multimedia and Entertainment
I payed 100% for the computer, I'm gonna use 100% of that computer grump
Why not? My college literally pays for it, and I'm paying for college. Commercial.
I use it to edit the recordings that old Russian-teacher lady asks us to do, but it's far more capable than that. FOSS.
THE music notation software. It's so good I'd pay for it, and yet it's free. FOSS.
Unless you have a crave for that built-in Paint software, then go ahead. Freemium.
Photoshop for both the rich and the not-so-rich. FOSS.
Where you buy and manage games. Haha, gaming is for everyone unless you are poor.
