Windows 10 Essentials
Things I like to install on all of my Windows 10 setups.
Windows 10 is a personal computer operating system released by Microsoft as part of the Windows NT family of operating systems
To encourage its adoption, Microsoft announced that during its first year of availability, Windows 10 would be made available free of charge to users of genuine copies of eligible editions of Windows 7 or Windows 8.1.
Windows 10 introduces what Microsoft described as a "universal" application architecture; expanding on Metro-style apps, these apps can be designed to run across multiple Microsoft product families with nearly identical code—including PCs, tablets, smartphones, embedded systems, Xbox One, Surface Hub and HoloLens.
Windows 10's user interface was revised to handle transitions between a mouse-oriented interface and a touchscreen-optimized interface based on available input devices—particularly on laplets; both interfaces include an updated Start menu that comprises a design similar to Windows 7 with 8's tiles.
Windows 10 also introduces Task View, a virtual desktop system, the Microsoft Edge web browser and other new or updated applications.
Integrated support for fingerprint and face recognition login, new security features for enterprise environments, DirectX 12 and WDDM 2.0 to improve the operating system's graphics capabilities for games.
Communication
Discord is a communication platform used by various communities. It provides a space for regular interaction and allows private discussions. Discord servers are organized into topic-focused channels for easy collaboration and conversation. It offers voice channels for effortless communication and uses low latency voice and video technology.
Discord supports text, voice, and video communication. Users can video greet, live-stream games, host group screen shares, and create custom emojis from images. Users can share a range of content and pin preferred items for easy access.
Discord suits small groups and large fandoms. It offers customizable moderation tools and permission levels for user-specific group organization. Users can assign moderator roles, grant special members access to private channels, and manage their community effectively.
Combining voice calls, video calls and Instant Messaging in a simple interface, CounterPath's X-Lite helps you seamlessly transition from a traditional phone environment into the world of Voice over IP.
The latest release of X-Lite provides a completely redesigned interface that allows for a contact-centric or dialpad-centric user experience, or a combination of the two. It also provides you with some of the most popular features of our fully loaded Bria and eyeBeam softphones so you can take them for a test drive before you make your purchase.
Whether you’re having a simple voice conversation, saying hello to loved ones over video or chatting with friends over IM, you’ll soon see why having a softphone on your desktop or laptop is the ultimate communications experience.
Content Reading
VLC is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.
Features:
Simple, fast and powerful media player. Plays everything: Files, Discs, Webcams, Devices and Streams.
Plays most codecs with no codec packs needed: MPEG-2, DivX, H.264, MKV, WebM, WMV, MP3...
Content Creation
Atom is an open-source, Electron based text editor with a massive ecosystem of plugins and themes that are easily accessible through a built-in package manager. Being built with Electron, it uses web technology (HTML, CSS, JavaScript and Node.js) and offers the same editing experience across Mac, Windows and Linux desktops. Different from most editors, it uses that same technology for themes so the UI is highly configurable through HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
FEATURES
- Same familiar workflow across platforms.
- Built-in package manager.
- File system browser.
- Advanced find-and-replace that works across multiple files and folders.
- Smart autocompletion.
ShareX is a free and open source program that lets you capture or record any area of your screen and share it with a single press of a key. It also allows uploading images, text or other types of files to many supported destinations you can choose from.
OBS Studio (also known as Open Broadcaster Software, or OBS) is a screen-casting and live-streaming software available across multiple platforms including macOS, Windows and Linux. Boasting features typically only found in commercial screen recording apps, OBS also provides one of the simplest workflows with an intuitive and easy-to-learn interface that makes recording and streaming a breeze. It's also totally free and open-source.
With its long standing history of continued updates and considering its ease of use and free cost, it's no wonder OBS is one of the most popular and highest recommended apps for screen-casting and live streaming.
NOTABLE FEATURES:
Cross-platform (available for Mac, Windows and Linux). Encoding using H264 (x264) and AAC. Support for Intel Quick Sync Video (QSV), AMF and NVENC. Unlimited number of scenes and sources. Live RTMP streaming to Twitch, YouTube, Mixer, DailyMotion, Smashcast and more. File output to MP4, MKV or FLV. GPU-based game capture for high performance game streaming. DirectShow capture device support (webcams, capture cards, etc). Windows 8 high speed monitor capture support. Bilinear or lanczos3 resampling. Light and dark themes to support various working conditions and preferences.
Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas and John Knoll.
Since then, the software has become the industry standard not only in raster graphics editing, but in digital art as a whole. The software's name is often colloquially used as a verb (e.g. "to photoshop an image", "photoshopping", and "photoshop contest") although Adobe discourages such use. Photoshop can edit and compose raster images in multiple layers and supports masks, alpha compositing and several color models including RGB, CMYK, CIELAB, spot color, and duotone. Photoshop uses its own PSD and PSB file formats to support these features. In addition to raster graphics, Photoshop has limited abilities to edit or render text and vector graphics (especially through clipping path for the latter), as well as 3D graphics and video. Its feature set can be expanded by plug-ins; programs developed and distributed independently of Photoshop that run inside it and offer new or enhanced features.
Photoshop's naming scheme was initially based on version numbers. However, in October 2002 (following the introduction of Creative Suite branding), each new version of Photoshop was designated with "CS" plus a number; e.g., the eighth major version of Photoshop was Photoshop CS and the ninth was Photoshop CS2. Photoshop CS3 through CS6 were also distributed in two different editions: Standard and Extended. With the introduction of the Creative Cloud branding in June 2013 (and in turn, the change of the "CS" suffix to "CC"), Photoshop's licensing scheme was changed to that of software as a service subscription model. Historically, Photoshop was bundled with additional software such as Adobe ImageReady, Adobe Fireworks, Adobe Bridge, Adobe Device Central and Adobe Camera RAW.
Edit and organize your photos with the app that’s optimized for desktop. Lightroom Classic CC gives you powerful one-click tools and advanced controls to make your photos look amazing. Easily organize all your photos on your desktop, and share in a variety of ways.
Adobe Lightroom Classic is available as part of the Photography plan, which costs $9.99 per month. The highest subscription tier refers to the All Apps + Adobe Stock plan for the Adobe Creative Cloud, which costs $82.98 per month (Source: Adobe, 3 July 2019).
Edit, mix, record, and restore audio. Audition is a comprehensive toolset that includes multitrack, waveform, and spectral display for creating, mixing, editing, and restoring audio content. This powerful audio workstation is designed to accelerate video production workflows and audio finishing — and deliver a polished mix with pristine sound.
File Management
Before launching Drive for desktop, we had two sync solutions available: Backup and Sync, which was built primarily for consumer users, and Drive File Stream, which was built for business users. Now, we're unifying these sync clients into the new Drive for desktop, bringing people the best and most used features from both Backup and Sync and Drive File Stream, including the ability to:
Upload and sync photos and videos to Google Photos and/or Google Drive
Sync external storage devices to the cloud, including flash drives and external hard drives
Mirror Drive files on your desktop, which stores your files on your local device and enables quicker access to your content
JDownloader is a free, open source download manager. It simplifies and improves the process of downloading files from Websites, Cloud-Storage Providers, Social Media Networks and File Hosting Sites.
JDownloader offers downloading in multiple parallel streams, throttling, resuming, CAPTCHA recognition, and automatic file extraction. It supports Click'n'Load and container files like DLC, RSDF and CCF. A large developer community ensures that current individual page-specific download scripts are kept up to date and valuable time is saved on the basis of the expandable basic framework.
It can also be used as a service on a server or Network Attached Storage (NAS) and controlled via My.JDownloader.Org from a web browser or smartphone.
The qBittorrent project aims to provide a Free Software alternative to µTorrent. Additionally, qBittorrent runs and provides the same features on all major platforms (Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, OS/2, FreeBSD).
qBittorrent is based on the Qt toolkit and libtorrent-rasterbar library.
Features:
• Polished µTorrent-like User Interface
• Well-integrated and extensible Search Engine Simultaneous search in most famous BitTorrent search sites Per-category-specific search requests (e.g. Books, Music, Movies)
• All Bittorrent extensions DHT, Peer Exchange, Full encryption, Magnet/BitComet URIs, ...
• Remote control through a Web user interface Nearly identical to the regular UI, all in Ajax
• Advanced control over trackers, peers and torrents Torrents queueing and prioritizing Torrent content selection and prioritizing
• Natively integrated: When Downloads Completes Options (no need for additional script or plug-in) Exit, Suspend, Hibernate, Shutdown
• UPnP / NAT-PMP port forwarding support
• Available in ~41 languages (Unicode support)
• Torrent creation tool
• Advanced RSS support with download filters (inc. regex)
• Bandwidth scheduler
• IP Filtering (eMule and PeerGuardian compatible)
• IPv6 compliant
• Sequential downloading (aka "Download in order")
• Available on most platforms: Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, OS/2, FreeBSD
Free community support by volunteers:
• https://forum.qbittorrent.org • https://wiki.qbittorrent.org • https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/issues
Utility
A free web browser developed by Google from the open source Chromium project with a focus on speed and minimalism. Chrome offers fast start-up and web page loading, supports a minimalist user interface, automatically updates in the background, and offers syncing of browser bookmarks, extensions, passwords, and history between multiple computers by your Google account.
Additionally, Chrome has PDF support built into the browser for better speed and security.
Chrome Web Apps and Extensions are available on Chrome Web Store .
Available in more than 50 languages.
XMeters taskbar system monitoring for Windows.
Displays customizable stats:
- Available RAM
- Disk usage
- CPU usage
- Network usage
Free version refreshes the stats every 3 seconds, paid version can be set to be faster.
Hyper™ is a beautiful and extensible, cross-platform terminal built on open web standards. It provides an elegant command-line experience that is consistent across all supported platforms which includes macOS, Windows and various Linux distributions like Fedora and Debian.
For developers, extensions are universal Node.js modules loaded by both Electron and the renderer process.
Web and desktop password manager compatible with KeePass. Works online in any modern browser or as a desktop app for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
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