Hugh's Favorite Freeware List

As much as I dislike so many things about Windows, the bottom line is that I still must use Windows 10/11 a large portion of the time. The best thing about the platform must be the many excellent applications developed for Windows, many of which are completely free to use. Here is a list of my favorites.
  1. Mozilla Firefox - The most flexible, truly open web browser out there keeps getting better. It runs on Linux, Max OS X, and even on Windows XP/Vista/7/10/11. I used to prefer Chrome when it first came out, but it has become too unwieldy to use. Other nice browsers include Vivaldi, Brave , Sidekick and Pale Moon.

  2. Filezilla - My favorite FTP/SFTP client. It is now multi-platform (Linux, Mac, Win32/64) and works well on all platforms.

  3. VLC Media Player - Another cross platform gem that plays just about any music or video file you can throw at it, and also uses little resources. It's simple but it does the job wonderfully. It even has Android and iOS versions to use on smartphones.

  4. AVAST! Home Edition - I've tried several free anti-virus packages and Avast! remains my favorite. It is light on resources, yet provides good protection including some trojans and spyware.

  5. WinDirStat - Where are df and du for Windows when you need them? Instead, to track disk usage on Windows systems I love to use WinDirStat. Find just a few giant files and blow them away with a few keystrokes. Plus its display is just so cool looking!

  6. Audacity - If you like to record, edit and modify music files, you have to use Audacity. My son even used it years ago for a Science Fair project, and he won a blue ribbon! Make sure to install LAME so you can write MP3 files.

  7. CCleaner - If there is one thing that Windows excels at doing, it would be leaving temporary files all over your hard drive. That is why you need CCleaner to get rid of all that extra junk. It also has a very nice software uninstaller, a tool for removing unneeded or rogue startup programs, and a registry cleaner as well.

  8. MobaXterm - The Linux and Mac worlds both have a real shell terminal where you can SSH to other machines. Now Windows has a great client that makes a nice SSH terminal and also launches an X server and acts as an SFTP client too. MobaXterm does it all! You can SSH from Powershell now, but MobaXterm does so much more.

  9. AnyDesk TeamViewer was the original but they decided to start gouging repeat free users, so we have switched over to AnyDesk. Free, unlimited remote access to a Windows, Mac or Linux workstation from afar that works fine through a router or gateway. Another necessity during the pandemic to connect to and use on-campus systems from home.

  10. 4K Video Downloader I think we all know what this does. It is great for grabbing both audio and video into files you can use offline. It's an easy way to turn a YouTube video into a portable MP3 audio or MP4 video file, whichever you need.

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