The RPGHQ list of software that doesn't suck too hard. All OSes welcome.

[Lutte]

Legend: [t] Terminal [l] Linux [m] Multiplatform [w] Windows [a] Android

Web Browsers: Brave. Period. The true RPGHQ stamp of not-sucking.

File compression:
[t][l] atool
[l] Xarchiver
[w] 7zip

File management:
[l] Thunar
[w] Explorer++ -- dev builds are highly recommended on windows 11

Password management:
[t] gopass
[m] KeepassXC
[w] Keepass
[a] Password Store (gopass compatible) | KeepassDX
[m] Bitwarden

Checksums:
[t][l] hashdeep
[w] HashCheck

File synchronization:
[t][l] rsync
[t][w] robocopy -- OS built-in
[t][m] rclone -- cloud drive equivalent to rsync/robocopy

Bitrot detection:
[t][l] cshatag
[w] whirlpool file checker


Audio player:
[t][l] cmus
[l] quodlibet
[w] foobar2000
[m] Qmmp
[m] Strawberry

Video player:
[l] mpv
[w] MPC-HC

Basic, mouse driven text editors:
[t][m] micro
[l] mousepad
[w] notepad3
[w] notepad++

Programmer editors:
[t][m] Neovim
[t][m] Helix
[t][l] mg
[m] Emacs

IDE:
[m] VSCode

Screenshot:
[l] xfce4-screenshooter
[m] Flameshot
[w] ShareX

Image management:
[m] geeqie
[m] XnView MP
[w] XnView Classic

Books:
[l] Zathura
[w] SumatraPDF
[m] Calibre
[m] Thorium Reader-- for those rare epubs that require a full browser to properly render

Search:
[t][m] ripgrep | fd
[w] Wizfile

Disk space analyzer:
[t][m] dust
alternatively : ncdu
[l] baobab
[w] Wiztree

Calculator/unit conversion:
[t][m] bc
[t][m] GNU Units
[m] Qalculate
[w] glasscalc
[a] Mi Calculator

Print:
[m] LibreOffice
It's not good, but it is what it is. About the least worst. If your job requires Excel for
anything complex, you will still be using MS Office.
LO Draw is surprisingly competent and decent for basic vector stuff and quick diagrams.
[m] Scribus
[m] LaTeX -- of course!
[m] LyX -- LaTeX Wysiwyg

Notetaking:
[w] TreeSheets
[m] TiddlyWiki
[m] Obsidian

IRC:
[t][l] weechat | irssi
[l] HexChat
[w] AdiIRC - don't bother with Hexchat, old gtk doesn't do proper DPI scaling on Windows, font rendering is a mess.
[a] Revolution IRC

Torrent clients:
[t][l] rTorrent
[l] Transmission
[w] Picotorrent
[m] qbittorrent -- still the best for very large torrents, but I don't much of that anymore so I'll leave that bloat behind.

Other P2P/file download:
[m] Nicotine+
[m] jdownloader2

Screen recording/streaming:
[m] OBS Studio

Video Editing:
[m] Shotcut
[m] kdenlive
[m] DaVinci Resolve

Audio software:
[m] Audacity

Basic image editing:
[l] Pinta
[w] PhotoDemon
[w] Paint.net

Advanced image editing:
[m] Gimp + G'MIC
[m] Krita

Pixel art:
[m] Aseprite
[m] Libresprite
[m] GrafX2

Vector image editors :
[m] Inkscape

The swiss knife of art - 3d modelling, render, 2d animation, video editing :
[m] Blender!

Hardware utilities :
[l] lscpu, lspci, lsusb, lsblk, blkid, nvme-cli, smartctl, lm_sensors, nvtop, dmidecode
[l] stress-ng -- system stress testing
[l] unigine benchmark -- gpu stress testing, not as good as furmark but the only one that has a linux build
[m] OpenRGB -- universal, brand independent control of RGB leds
[w] HWMonitor -- Temperature, clock speed, voltage etc monitoring
[w] CPU-Z -- detailed CPU, ram and motherboard information
[w] GPU-Z -- detailed GPU info
[w] CrystalDiskInfo -- view hard drive/ssd S.M.A.R.T data
[w] Furmark -- GPU stress testing
[m] Memtest86+ -- test ram integrity
[m] Prime95 -- cpu stress testing

Gaming
[l] gamescope -- frame limiting, image upscaling and fullscreenizer for linux
[l] ProtonUp-Qt -- manage proton installations
[l] Hawck -- keyboard rebinding and macros on linux
[w] RTSS -- frame limiting, gsync alternative (scanline sync)
[w] DgVoodoo2, WineD3D, DXVK, winevdm -- run games that have compatibility issues on windows with alternative API runtimes.
[w] Integer Scaling -- as the name says. Pixel perfect upscaling for older games
[w] Magpie -- All purpose upscaler
[w] AutoHotKey -- remap even the keyboard in games that don't have any key rebinding config, write macros
[m] AntiMicroX -- universal gamepad rebinding

Misc
[w] Rufus -- create bootable drives
[m] Ventoy -- create bootable drives with multiple OS isos
[w] Nirsoft and Sysinternals -- suite of utilities to diagnose and deal with any issue on Windows


[ W I N D O W S - S P E C I F I C - S E C T I O N ]


A nice thing for unix heads out there:

► Show Spoiler

Busyboxw32 to get a full unix environment without the overhead of WSL or cygwin.

Runs posix shell scripts fine, won't work with GNU bloat.
In a single 607kb portable executable you get all the goodies: a shell,
sed, grep, awk, find, cut, bc, cat and so on.
It also has the Vi editor, though it's quite limited compared to vim or neovim
it does the job of doing quick text edits fine.
It's a real treasure of Q-U-A-L-I-T-Y.

And then a registry tweak to unfuck windows 11 :

► Show Spoiler

fixwindows11.reg

A registry file to edit a few keys to disable some Windows 11 garbage
and restore the context menu to its sane form. It doesn't forcefully uninstall anything (future-proof, won't break updates), just neuters it.
A must for survival as I find all that crap obnoxious after having to make a dual boot with win
again for some games.

[GhostCow]

Qmmp deserves to be listed with the other audio players

[Nemesis]

Torrent clients:

rtorrent

[J1M]

Winamp still works.

Should list a preferred windows version (10).

[Lutte]

Qmmp deserves to be listed with the other audio players

Torrent clients:

rtorrent

also added stuff people recommended to me on IRC.

Winamp still works.

Should list a preferred windows version (10).

Except for the .reg tweak, any software listed will work on the [insert currently supported] versions of OS. 10 is not end of life and I can't even imagine anyone dropping support for it right now.
I will not, however, list software that runs on 7 but not on 10/11 since 7 is dead.
I will also not list unmaintained software if that software either : connects to the internet, or reads very commonly downloaded file formats (mp3, pdf, whatever). For example, if by Winamp, you mean the last good version it had (2), it probably is affected by a trillion CVEs.
As for the latest version..

Err. no.

[Atlantico]

Video player:
[l] mpv
[w] MPC-HC

I've used VLC for 15 years, nothing wrong with VLC

[Oyster Sauce]

You've got 2 password management sections. Also, thoughts on Dashlane?

[WhiteShark]

You've got 2 password management sections.

I made the same mistake. The second one is under the heading for 'criteria breaking software', aka software that is not lean but which people like anyway.

[Lutte]

You've got 2 password management sections. Also, thoughts on Dashlane?

Here's the reason. Bitwarden is an electron app, which is really sinful for something that does so little - password managers aren't particularly complex apps (outside of getting the crypto right) or need to render some crazy UI.

Video player:
[l] mpv
[w] MPC-HC

I've used VLC for 15 years, nothing wrong with VLC

There's nothing particularly wrong with VLC, but nothing particularly right either. Quite a few UI messes, like the dumb decision to allow sound volume to go past 0dBFS and clip. Its main reason of existence in the past was to not fuss with external codecs if you were a Windows user, but nowadays, Windows supports the main codecs in use out of the box and MPC is the perfect replica of the UI of the classic WMP, plus supports the use of the still superior video renderer madVR (if anything, the era of HDR content has reinforced madVR's superiority) as it makes use of windows's native media facilities which has a nice plugin architecture.

Even mpv is sorta a "we use this on linux because there isn't anything as good as MPC" rather than "we use it because it's so good" thing.

As for the "le 15 years thing" MPC and mpv aren't any younger, if you thought they were some new fad.

[rusty_shackleford]

I've used keepass(now keepassxc) for managing my passwords for something like 15 years now without issue

[aweigh]

i use jdownloader2 to pirate all my games. good program.

[GhostCow]

Some other things I use:

OpenRGB, for avoiding gay RGB software and also turning off lights permanently or lights that can't be turned off otherwise
https://openrgb.org/

Open Hardware Monitor, for checking CPU temps and such
https://openhardwaremonitor.org/

Rufus, for creating bootable flash drives
https://rufus.ie/en/

Notepad++
https://notepad-plus-plus.org/

[agentorange]

Calibre is a really good software for reading ebooks on your desktop. Can also easily and quickly convert ebook formats and transfer them to different devices.

https://calibre-ebook.com/download

[Atlantico]

Quite a few UI messes, like the dumb decision to allow sound volume to go past 0dBFS and clip.

With great power comes great responsibility

MPC is the perfect replica of the UI of the classic WMP

That's true and that's why I don't use it. It is disgusting looking

[Lutte]

Some other things I use:

Oh, you reminded me I forgot to add a hardware and gaming utility section even though it's certainly one of the most important for us on this forum, fixed.

[rusty_shackleford]

Screenshot:

I use Shutter, switched from XFCE4-screenshooter because it's more full-featured. Make sure to set the default compression to jpeg or it will take a while to take screenshots.

I guess I'll do a writeup on all the common software I use and see if anyone finds it useful.

[rusty_shackleford]

Stuff Rusty uses:

OS:
Arch linux. Started using it years ago mainly because the package manager wasn't dogshit slow like apt or yum. Works fine.

Document reader:
qpdfview, a simple tabbed pdf reader with no frills.

Terminal:
kitty, fast and just werks with lots of features. I use my own scripts to manage toggling it(think like, a game console you can toggle with `) with F12.

Text editor:
neovim - difference between vim/neovim might be lesser now, I switched a while back when vim development was stagnated.

IDE:
Jetbrains products. Nothing comes close, especially if you don't have access to Visual Studio, but they're better than it now anyways. Ideavim extension.

Office suite:
LibreOffice. If you still use OpenOffice, the time to switch was a decade ago, that shit is dead because apache is a software graveyard.

Desktop environment:
XFCE, 'nuff said. Has been nearly the same for years now. Many other DEs suffer from feature bloat or constantly changing. This alone covers many of my most commonly used programs.

In-depth disk usage:
qdirstat, a dependency-lite version of kdirstat. Window equivalent is windirstat

Backups:
I use restic but it's not suitable for non-power users

Diff:
meld, gud

File system:
BTRFS. Compression, copy-on-write, snapshots. Maybe not the best filesystem for production databases or something, but it's probably the best for everything else. Also used by HQ which enables our extremely fast backup system.

CLI:

fish shell. I use bash for scripting, fish for regular shell usage.
fd instead of find: https://github.com/sharkdp/fd
rg instead of grep: https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep
dust instead of du: https://github.com/bootandy/dust aliased to du
qalculate, capable of basic math and symbolic math, can solve equations, etc.,
la aliased to `ls -ltcrah`
$PAGER is nvimpager

Just useful stuff:

Zim, personal 'wiki' application. I use it anytime I need to take notes. Would prefer a vim interface tho.

[Nemesis]

Bitwarden is an electron app, which is really sinful for something that does so little

One could just use the browser extension if he is that adament about not using an Electron app. Bitwarden also offers a command-line interface.

I made the same mistake.

@Lutte, you should add some styling to break up the criteria-conforming and criteria-breaking sections

fish shell. I use bash for scripting, fish for regular shell usage.

I'll assume you didn't like zsh?

Would prefer a vim interface tho.

Vim wiki?

[Lutte]

Since there's not that many suggestions that go against the rule.. I decided to drop the rule altogether and merge the sections, the hq's average taste for software is good enough that there's no need to be anal about it, the few fatter apps can coexist with the other suggestions.

[SpellSword]

Xed hasn't been a bad text editor to work with. It can be good when you want an equivalent to Window's preloaded Notepad but with a few more programming related features.

[wndrbr]

Are there any good PDF reader/editor combos that aren't bloated like Adobe Acrobat DC?

[Lutte]

Are there any good PDF reader/editor combos that aren't bloated like Adobe Acrobat DC?

You want a full editor or just something that can fill regular PDF forms (ie fields intended as editable forms in a PDF, and not just something that "looks" like a field)? if it's the latter, the PDF reader integrated in chromium browsers (Chrome, Brave, Edge) can do it.

I don't know of a fully capable editor that's also a good one outside of the real Acrobat if you want something that can do anything to a PDF (and I really wish people would stop using PDFs as anything but a final product to be read or printed). LibreOffice Draw can edit PDFs but it will cause subtle changes to the PDF (like how fonts are rendered, presentation..) as it is not capable of supporting all the retarded things the format can do.
For that matter, while competing PDF readers tend to support enough to be usable for most PDFs (thank god for that), even reading PDFs is something that only Acrobat can really do if you need to support the whole standard and not just the subset used for displaying text.
Did you know PDFs can contain 3d objects for example?
https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/d ... -pdfs.html
Did you know they can contain video?
https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/p ... ts_in_pdfs
Did you know there's electronic signing?
https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/signing-pdfs.html
If you work with retarded people who use the full unfortunate capabilities of Acrobat you will always need Acrobat.

[rusty_shackleford]

Are there any good PDF reader/editor combos that aren't bloated like Adobe Acrobat DC?

Okular is the only feature-rich program that supports Windows I can think of
https://okular.kde.org/

[wndrbr]

I mostly need it to manage scanned documents, i.e. the main things are flipping/removing/adding/rearranging pages, and OCR.

[Lutte]

LibreOffice Draw can manipulate -resize, rotate, flip, move etc- elements like images (which is what scanned documents are) in a PDF, along with arranging page order or deleting them. It doesn't, however, have any OCR capability built-in.

[Lutte]

https://www.docdroid.net/BEg7tHU/rpghq-cookbook-pdf

Example edit where I took the front page of a pdf book with LO Draw and messed with it.

[rusty_shackleford]

nice interactive firewall for lunix
https://github.com/evilsocket/opensnitch

I find it to be a pita to allow some connections but block others from a single application, greatly simplifies it

[Nammu Archag]

This thread is a blessing. For the guys who have used the music softwares, how do you typically get the music to put on them? I still use Spotify out of habit.

[Gastrick]

For archiving software, WinRAR could be included. It's the only one I've ever needed for files on Windows.

[Dead]

This thread is a blessing. For the guys who have used the music softwares, how do you typically get the music to put on them? I still use Spotify out of habit.

If you're asking where to get music, soulseek or nicotine+.