These are the best tools for the job. I don't necessarily recommend all of them. I simply find them better than their alternatives.
Includes both FOSS and Proprietary applications. The former are usually preferred.
With LTSC, customers can delay receiving feature updates and instead only receive monthly quality updates. Features from Windows 10, like Cortana, Edge, and all in-box Universal Windows apps, are also not included.
OS. Disable animations.
These are installed on my PC before everything else. They make Windows usable from the get-go.
Command-line tool for managing Windows applications with no registration, centralized audits, automatic package creation, offline support, disk space optimization, and synchronization.
Package manager. Use it to install other programs.
Listary is a revolutionary search utility for Windows that makes finding your files and launching applications blazing fast, for casual and power users alike!.
Start Menu replacement (for me). Abandonware, unfortunately.
An open-source Windows scripting language enabling task automation through hotkeys, macros, and keystrokes, useful for creating custom forms and automating data entry.
Keyboard shortcuts, but that would be an understatement.
A small but powerful portable tool that works through the Windows API. WPD is the most convenient way to configure various privacy settings in Windows.
Windows debloating, without dumb registry hacks.
Your typical stuff. Browser, image viewer, etc. These are the best of their category, and they're all pretty good.
Open-source browser project forming the codebase for other browsers, with strong security, stability, frequent updates, and wide platform compatibility.
Browser. Not Ungoogled.
Efficient file archiver offering superior compression and encryption. Supports multiple formats such as TAR, ZIP, with a unique self-extracting feature.
File archiver.
OpenHashTab is a shell extension for conveniently calculating and checking file hashes from file properties.
File hashes and VirusTotal scans.
Lightweight Simple Image Viewer with Slide show feature, Resize and Lossless-cut, Color correction, Rename, Multi-language and more...
Image viewer.
ImageMagick is a software suite to create, edit, and compose bitmap images. It can read, convert and write images in a variety of formats (about 100) including GIF, JPEG, JPEG-2000, PNG, PDF, PhotoCD, TIFF, and DPX.
Quick image edits, conversions, and more.
Efficient screenshot tool providing OCR, exports to Office apps, supports image editing and sharing, occupying minimal space with 32 languages.
Image screenshotter & uploader. Way better editor than ShareX.
Versatile media player supporting multiple video formats, wide codec range, subtitles, hardware acceleration, OpenGL output, and intuitive CLI controls.
Media player.
Icaros is a collection of lightweight, high quality, Windows Shell Extensions that provide Windows Explorer thumbnails for many media filetypes.
Fix for missing thumbnails.
Widely-used word processor offering extensive document editing tools, SmartArt, PDF support, and integrated search features on multiple platforms.
Word processor.
Microsoft Excel, part of the 
Microsoft 365 Copilot, is Microsoft's spreadsheet application. With the Microsoft Office Fluent user interface, rich data visualization, pivot table views, and professional-looking charts are easier to create...
Spreadsheet.
Create dynamic presentations with advanced graphics and seamless workflow integration, part of the renowned Microsoft Office Suite.
Presentation program.
An efficient PDF viewer and editor with advanced features like direct content editing, OCR by ABBYY, form filling, annotation, and offline access.
PDF Viewer & Editor. My replacement for both Sumatra and Acrobat.
Free, extensible code editor with Git integration, AI-driven IntelliCode, and 30,000+ extensions, supporting various languages like Python, Java.
Code editor. Almost an IDE. Electron-based, yet surprisingly good.
SSH, FTP, etc. All in one.
Comprehensive software providing screen recording and live streaming on Mac, Windows, and Linux with powerful encoding support and unlimited scenes.
Screen recorder & Virtual Webcam.
Open-source, ad-free torrent client offering a polished user interface, integrated multi-site search, RSS support, remote web control, and cross-platform availability.
Torrent client.
Cross-platform multimedia framework performing decoding, encoding, transcoding, muxing, demuxing, streaming, filtering, and playback for nearly all media formats.
Quick video edits, and more.
QuickSetDNS is a simple tool that allows you to easily change the DNS servers that are used for your Internet connection. You can set the desired DNS servers from the user interface, by choosing from a list of DNS servers that you defined, or from command-line, without...
Change DNS.
WindowGrid is a modern window management program that allows the user to quickly and easily layout their windows on a dynamic grid.
Window tiling. Abandonware.
These are better than their alternatives. They just aren't that good.
Free image editor for Windows, offering layer support, plugins, special effects, and portable use without installation. Lightweight and ad-free.
Image editor. Wish it had more features. This is closer to MS Paint than it is to Photoshop. Greenshot's editor often replaces it. Haven't looked into Affinity yet.
Nonlinear video editor with customizable timeline, multi-format import, and accelerated rendering for fast editing performance.
Video editor. Has its quirks. Haven't looked into Resolve yet.
Qalculate! is a multi-purpose cross-platform desktop calculator. It is simple to use but provides power and versatility normally reserved for complicated math packages, as well as useful tools for everyday needs (such as currency conversion and percent calculation).
Calculator. Slow to open. History and User-defined variables are worse than SpeedCrunch.
Virtual Desktop indicator & hotkeys. You can probably replace it with an AH script.
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