Useful free software

This is to help me keep track of my most essential Windoze software, plus a few other programs which may be useful in future projects. Some is multi-platform or is known to work with Wine. A larger (uncritical) freeware list can be found at www.freeware-guide.com, while a number of freewares packaged with a launcher for portable use can be found at portableapps.com.

Software Version Home page  
7-zip 4.32 (2005) www.7-zip.org 1
ActivePerl 5.8.4 (2004-06-01) www.activestate.com 2
Antinat 0.90 (2005-01-09) antinat.sourceforge.net 3
Anvil Studio 2007.09.03 (2007-09-03) anvilstudio.com 91
APTDecoder 2.0.5.79 (2008-02-14) [tbi] www.poes-weather.com 4
Aspell 0.50.3 (2002-12-22) aspell.net 5
Asymptote 1.40 (2007-06-29) asymptote.sourceforge.net 109
Audacity 1.2.4b (2005-11-28) audacity.sourceforge.net 6
Auslogics disk defrag 1.4 www.auslogics.com 104
AutoIt 3.1 www.autoscript.com 94
Blender 2.44 (2007) www.blender.org 7
Canon EOS capture 1.5.0 (2005-10-06) software.canon-europe.com 8
Canon DPP 2.1.1 (2006-03-20) software.canon-europe.com 9
Cartes du ciel 3 www.ap-i.net/skychart/index.php 10
Celestia 1.4.1 (2005) www.shatters.net/celestia 11
ChromaSound 0.19 (1999) www.barberdsp.com 92
Clock 2.3 (2007) www.gljakal.com 103
cmd2wav 1.01 (2003) www.bartdart.com 12
CombineZ (2008-01-05) www.hadleyweb.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk 101
CSVed 1.4.4 (2007-10-27) csved.sjfrancke.nl 13
Data Master 2003 11.7.0.240 (2006-03-03) www.datamaster2003.com 14
Dimension 4 5.0.35.0 (2004) www.thinkman.com 15
Disk Investigator 1.4 www.theabsolute.net 107
DS clock 2.0 (2007-09-10) www.dualitysoft.com 102
DXLab PropView 1.3.0 (2005-10-08) www.dxlabsuite.com 16
DXLab WinWarbler 5.5.0 (2007-12-16) www.dxlabsuite.com 17
e-Sword 7.7.7 (2005-08-25) www.e-sword.net 18
ESS 5.3.7 (2008-04-10) stat.ethz.ch/ESS/ 116
Ext2 IFS 1.10c (2006-11-20) www.fs-driver.org 100
FileMenu tools 5.3.1 (2007-12-22) www.lopesoft.com 105
FileZilla 3.0.3 filezilla.sourceforge.net 19
Firefox 2.0.0.7 www.mozilla.com 20
Flashblock 1.5.5 (2007-12-05) flashblock.mozdev.org 115
Foxit Reader 2.0 build 1414 (2007-02-14) www.foxitsoftware.com 21
FreeBASIC 0.18.2b (2007-10-12) www.freebasic.net 99
FreeMat 3.2 (2007-??-??) freemat.sourceforge.net 22
FreePCB 1.338 (2007-08-14) www.freepcb.com 89
Getfax 4.4.16 (2006-10-25) www.siriuscyber.net 108
GhostWall 1.150 (2005) www.ghostsecurity.com 114
Gnuplot 4.2 (2007-03-03) www.gnuplot.info 23
GPS TrackMaker 13.0.163 (2006-04-23) www.gpstm.com 24
GraphDark 2.04 (2004-01-11) www.rfleet.clara.net 25
Ham Radio Deluxe 3.5 build 1807 (2008-0?-??) www.ham-radio.ch 26
HamScope 1.55 www.qsl.net/hamscope 27
Heavensat 1.99 (2007-03-04) www.heavensat.ru 28
HNSKY 2.30i www.hnsky.org 29
Hssvss 7.06 (2007-03-27) www.hssvss.com 30
HxD 1.7.0 (2007-04-04) mh-nexus.de 31
Image Analyzer 1.28 (2007-11-12) meesoft.logicnet.dk/Analyzer/ 32
ImageMagick 6.2.7 www.imagemagick.org 33
Inkscape 0.43 www.inkscape.org/download.php 34
IrfanView 4.10 (2007-10-15) www.irfanview.com 35
Iris 5.52a (2008-01-14) www.astrosurf.com 36
JkDefrag 3.34 (2008-02-01) www.kessels.com 110
Just Learn Morse Code 1.23 (2006-01-04) justlearnmorsecode.com 37
LightningViewer 1.17 (2008-03-14) riedwetter.myvnc.com 93
LilyPond 2.11.44 (2008-04-14) www.lilypond.org 38
LTspice 2.21r (2007-09-27) www.linear.com 90
Maxima 5.12.0 (2007-05-02) maxima.sourceforge.net 39
Media Player Classic 6.4.9.0 (2006-03-20) sourceforge.net 40
MMSSTV 1.11G (2005-03-17) mmhamsoft.ham-radio.ca 41
MMTTY 1.65 mmhamsoft.ham-radio.ca 42
Multipsk 4.3.1 (2007-05-19) f6cte.free.fr 43
MVPS HOSTS file 2008-02-09 mvps.org 112
MySQL 5.0.37 www.mysql.com 44
MySQL GUI tools 5.0.11 www.mysql.com 45
NAVTEX decoder 2.1.5 (2007-12-27) www.frisnit.com 97
NightCal 0.7.2c (2006-11-04) www.nightcal.co.uk 46
nnCron LITE 1.17 (2005-06-09) www.nncron.ru 47
Notepad++ 4.8.2 (2008-03-07) notepad-plus.sourceforge.net 48
OpenOffice 2.3 www.openoffice.org 49
Orbiter 2006 (2006-05-04) orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/orbit.html 50
Orbitron 3.71 (2005) www.stoff.pl 51
PageDefrag 2.32 (2006-11-01) technet.microsoft.com 111
PDFCreator 0.9.1 (2006-04-24) [tbi] sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/ 52
pdftk 1.12 (2004-10-09) www.accesspdf.com 53
Pidgin 2.3.1 (2004-10-09) www.pidgin.im 113
Polyglot3000 2.3 (2007-03-03) www.polyglot3000.com 54
Process Explorer 9.25 www.sysinternals.com 55
pstoedit 3.44 (200?-??-??) www.pstoedit.net 56
PuTTY 0.60 (2007-04-29) www.chiark.greenend.org.uk 96
R 2.7.0 (2008-04-22) www.r-project.org 57
Radio SkyPipe 1.3.1 (2006-??-??) www.radiosky.com 58
RawShooter essentials 2006 www.pixmantec.com 59
Realterm 2.0.0.57 (2008-02-28) realterm.sourceforge.net 95
Registax 4.0.1.1 (2006-11-20) www.astronomie.be/registax/ 60
Sandboxie 2.82 (2007-03-25) www.sandboxie.com 61
Scilab 4.1 www.scilab.org 62
SpecLab 2.71 b5 (2008-02-05) people.freenet.de/dl4yhf 63
Spectran 2 build 213 www.weaksignals.com 64
SpeQ 3.2 (2007-12-31) www.speqmath.com 98
SR5 2.5.2.1 (2006) www.ar5.com 65
StarCalc 5.73 (2006-?-?) www.relex.ru 66
Stellarium 0.9.1 (2008-01-17) www.stellarium.org 67
TaskSwitchXP 2.08 (2005-08-25) www.ntwind.com/taskswitchxp/ 68
Teach2000 8.17 (2007-03) teach2000.memtrain.com 69
TestDisk 6.8 (2007-08-13) www.cgsecurity.org 106
Tor 0.1.1.26 (2006-12-24) tor.eff.org 70
TrueCrypt 4.3 (2007-03-19) www.truecrypt.org 71
Tubetrack 0.8.2 (2005-12-12) web.mac.com 72
VirtuaWin 4.0.1 (2008-04-24) virtuawin.sourceforge.net 73
Visual Analyser 7.0.6, 8.0 beta 3 and 10.0.5 NE (2007-11-22) www.sillanumsoft.org 74
VueScan 8.3.09 (2006-??-??) www.hamrick.com 75
Wavosaur 1.0.0.8000 (2007-05-01) www.wavosaur.com 76
WebMon 1.0.11 (2006-11-29) www.markwell.btinternet.co.uk/webmon/ 77
wget 1.10.2 (2004-04-07) users.ugent.be/~bpuype/wget/ 78
WinOrsa 0.7.0 (2005-10-??) orsa.sourceforge.net 79
Winroll 2.0 (2005-12-02) www.palma.com.au/winroll/ 80
Wireshark 0.99.0 (2006-04-24) www.wireshark.com 81
WxSat 2.59 See notes. 82
WxTide 4.3 www.wxtide32.com 83
X-Chat 2 2.6.8-1 (2006-11-21) www.silverex.org 84
Xcorder 2.0 www.xcorder.com 85
XEmacs 21.4.18 (2005-12-17) www.xemacs.org 86
Xenu 1.2i (2006-10-01) home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html 87
XYplorer Trackerv3 www.xyplorer.com 88

Notes

  1. Zipfile (and other archive) manager.
  2. Industry standard Perl interpreter for Windoze, with excellent documentation.
  3. Proxy server.
  4. Sophisticated APT weather satellite image decoder capable of working as a fully-automated receiving and processing system. (Untried as a real-time decoder; hardware VHF receiver required.)
  5. Spellchecker for Xemacs etc, with many languages available. On the first PC I installed this it not only worked "out of the box" but it was the fastest spellchecker by far I'd used; on the second PC I have yet to make it work at all despite installing it in the same way. YMMV.
  6. Extensible audio file editor. Unstable beta version 1.3.0b was released simultaneously.
  7. 3d rendering. I've only taken a very cursory look at this, but it seems very impressive.
  8. Remote control of Canon DSLRs.
  9. Canon digital image processing.
  10. Sky charts. Very slow (except for the calendar function) on my oldish PC.
  11. Powerful (scriptable) planetarium and space simulator. Doesn't work on my oldish PC.
  12. Tiny, efficient, CLI WAV recorder.
  13. CSV file editor.
  14. Data plotting. This claims to be able to interface directly with, for example, RS232-enabled scientific instruments, but the programming interface is complex and the documentation poor. For pure plotting Gnuplot is better, and for plotting and data processing R or Scilab.
  15. Synchronise PC clock with internet time servers (SNTP). It works perfectly for me.
  16. HF propagation predictor.
  17. Send and receive PSK31 (amateur radio). This takes ages to start on my PC, when it starts it suffers from too much latency, and I've yet to get it to work in RTTY mode.
  18. Electronic bible with numerous translations available. Wot no Quran?
  19. Robust graphical FTP client. Server version also available. Version 3.0.3 consistently timed-out mid-transfer on dialup until the timeout value was increased from the default 15s to 60s.
  20. Superior web browser.
  21. Smaller, faster alternative to Craprobat (despite its irritatingly inefficient display refreshing).
  22. Matrix-oriented environment for engineering and scientific data processing. (Like Scilab. The graphics appear nicer than Scilab, but on my XP box the program as a whole ran much, much slower.)
  23. Flexible data plotting. Under slow but steady development. Version 4.3 (not yet available as Windoze binaries) promises 4D plotting.
  24. GPS data plotting, I can't remember exactly how it works.
  25. Plot visibility calendars for planets, asteroids and comets.
  26. Amateur radio rig control, contact logging, satellite tracking, PSK31 send and receive. (Suitable transceiver required. The latest DM780 digimode function requires a fast PC.)
  27. Send and receive CW and RTTY (suitable transceiver required, and MMTTY plugin for RTTY).
  28. Predict visibility of artificial satellites with sky charts, visualisations, including transits.
  29. Sky charts. Works very well on my old PC, easily customised, nice printed starcharts.
  30. Motion detection and time lapse with USB webcams.
  31. Hex editor.
  32. Geeky image analysis tools.
  33. Scriptable image creation and transformation. Not easy to learn use, but very powerful.
  34. Vector drawing, understands SVG format.
  35. Justly famous small-footprint image processing.
  36. Astronomical image processing by Christian Bull. It can also remote-control some DSLRs.
  37. Morse code generator.
  38. Professional quality music typesetting. The output is comparable with Wiener Urtext and Bäaut;renreiter editions.
  39. Computer algebra system.
  40. Less resource-hungry version of Windoze media player.
  41. Slow scan TV receive and transmit (amateur radio).
  42. Send and receive RTTY (amateur radio, suitable transceiver required).
  43. Idiosyncratic multimode digital mode decoder (primarily for amateur radio).
  44. Draw monthly astronomical calendars (moon and naked-eye planets).
  45. Industry-standard database.
  46. Tools for administering MySQL.
  47. Excellent cron-compatible scheduler. (Not for the GUI-dependent.) There's also a payware version with extra functions.
  48. Text editor with syntax highlighting.
  49. Office suite better in all important respects than the equivalent M$ bloatware. Understands open document formats.
  50. Outstanding extensible spaceflight simulator. Many free add-ons. Tolerable performance with slowish PCs.
  51. Cardware satellite tracking using standard TLE data. No longer being actively developed by author Sebastian Stoff, but still the best of its type, with a very cool screensaver mode.
  52. Write PDFs.
  53. Command-line PDF tools.
  54. Language identifier. Not thoroughly tested.
  55. Super-duper replacement for Windoze task manager. The authors recently (mid-2006) sold themselves into Micro$not serfdom, so it may be only a matter of time before their products are either payware or as crappy as the rest of their new owners products.
  56. Convert PDF graphics to editable formats. Untried.
  57. Mathematical and statistical environment, well-documented, nice data import functions, capable of top-quality plots in a variety of formats.
  58. Semi-automated data capture, plotting and publishing. This version won't run on my current PC, and neither I nor the author have been able to work out why.
  59. RAW image processing. Untried as I've so far found Canon DPP adequate.
  60. Stack digital images (primarily for astronomy).
  61. Sandbox.
  62. Matrix calculator and plotter, poorly documented but very powerful with more built-in maths and input processing functions than R. Only EMF of the offered Windoze graphics formats renders correctly: to use other formats, save as EMF then convert with something like IrfanView.
  63. Wolfgang Buscher's experimental, sophisticated audio analysis and processing, primarily for amateur radio. Version 2.71b5 has a small bug in the setting of frequency display minimum, maximum and offset which makes it unusable for my current project, so I currently use 2.71b4. Highly recommended for audio and radio experimenters.
  64. Straightforward, small-footprint audio spectrum analysis.
  65. Audio DSP (primarily for radio).
  66. Star maps. Not as good as HNSKY.
  67. Sky charts and visualisation. Needs powerful graphics hardware.
  68. Flashy task switcher. I rarely use it, but it works as described.
  69. Compose language flash cards.
  70. Includes Vidalia 0.0.4 and Privoxy 3.0.6.
  71. Powerful encryption software.
  72. Desktop train tracking (UK and Eire mainland, London Underground).
  73. Virtual desktops. Works with everything on this list I've tried.
  74. Soundcard audio signal analysis (oscilloscope-like) by Arcadio Accattatis.
  75. Image scanning software. Payware, but so outstandingly good at its task that I bought it.
  76. Interesting-looking beta freeware WAV editor. Nice GUI, small binary, seems very heavy on CPUsage.
  77. Schedule check web pages for updates.
  78. Command line tool for fetching internet files.
  79. Sophisticated orbit visualisation.
  80. Makes application windows roll up into titlebars.
  81. Network data capture and analysis. (Formerly known as Ethereal.)
  82. No longer maintained by author Christian Bock but still very effective for decoding WEFAX and APT signals (via soundcard), and still available from archive sites.
  83. Tide calculator. Seems to cover most of the world, and it gets the (potentially lethal) Severn Estuary near enough for my purposes.
  84. Free Windoze version of the excellent X-based IRC client. Unfortunately this version didn't work on my Windoze box, so I installed IceChat version 7.10 (2006-12-28) instead, which is sluggish but works.
  85. Signal-activated sound recorder. At 2005-12-29 the author's website was empty. At 2006-09-22 it didn't exist at all. The binary is still available from some independent download sites.
  86. Ubergeeks text editor. It even syntax-highlights Lilypond scripts. I've only scraped the surface of what it can do, but I like it a lot.
  87. Very fast HTML link tester.
  88. Windoze explorer replacement. (I haven't tried this version, but an earlier version was good.)
  89. PCB design with text-based data format, a large and extensible footprint library, and industry standard output.
  90. Electronic circuit schematic design (fairly inelegant) and circuit simulation (with data export).
  91. MIDI editor. Includes all the essentials and more.
  92. Simple DSP for amateur radio audio.
  93. Downloads and plots data on recent lightning strikes in Europe. By Edmund Korffmann.
  94. Sophisticated BASIC-like scripting language for windoze GUI. This was incompatible with SpecLab when I tried it.
  95. Terminal/ telnet software with comprehensive command line functions and hackers' tools but a significantly higher CPU footprint than HyperTerminal or PuTTY.
  96. Very well-behaved, low-CPUsage SSH, Telnet and Rlogin client which also handles serial connections. It has no file transfer functions (zmodem etc): use HyperTerminal for these.
  97. Decodes NAVTEX maritime weather and navigation warnings (transmitted on MF radio). None of the versions I've tried will run on my PC, but it's highly regarded by others.
  98. Excellent advanced (scientific/ statistical) graphing (export to EMF and BMP formats) calculator by Jos de Jong. Highly recommended.
  99. Compiled QBasic-compatible language with numerous enhancements to make it more usable with modern PCs. I suspect its serial port input to be faulty, but the other aspects which I used worked as they should.
  100. Kernel mode driver which enables windoze to (more-or-less) transparently access ext2 and ext3 partitions. Remember to "unmount" partitions (via windoze control panel) before disconnecting removable media! On my PC this software did not recognise USB media connected via a hub, only those connected to the mainboard or USB card.
  101. Stacking macro and micro photographs. To be tried!
  102. Customisable digital desktop clock. Includes an SNTP client, chimes and stopwatches.
  103. Customisable analog desktop clock with alarms, a calendar, and fairly high CPUsage.
  104. Simple but very fast defragmenter.
  105. Context menu extensions.
  106. Data/ partition table/ MFT recovery for FAT, NTFS and ext volumes. Includes PhotoRec file recovery software. By Christophe Grenier.
  107. Hard disc (FAT and NTFS) data inspection and recovery by Kevin Solway.
  108. Fax, Sitor-B, RTTY and CW decoder for Sailmail members and radio amateurs with PTC-II TNCs. The author has stated that KAM+ and PK-232 drivers may be added in the future.
  109. High-level vector graphics language. Sample outputs are spectacular but it's by no means easy to use under Windoze: there are many potentially fragile dependencies (ImageMagick, Ghostscript, and LaTex).
  110. Schedulable, configurable GPL defragmenter by Jeroen Kessels. It doesn't need lots of space to work.
  111. Defragmenter for the system files which XP's defragger can't process. By Mark Russinovich. (My XP page file was in 651 fragments after a couple of years.)
  112. Hosts file which blocks known sources of spyware etc.
  113. Multi-protocol messaging, very clunky.
  114. Lightweight but effective firewall, needs configuring for SNTP etc. Comodo firewall is probably the best alternative.
  115. Stops Adobe's bandwidth-wasting, CPU-wasting, energy-wasting garbage from polluting Firefox.
  116. "Emacs speaks statistics" mode for using [X]Emacs with R and other statistics software. I've only scraped the surface of its claimed usefulness wirh R, so far the syntax highlighting has proved useful useful, but the interface with R is noticeably slower than simply running scripts from the R GUI.

2008-05-10