Ninite isn't really software, as such but it's good and useful at downloading and updating multiple apps that would otherwise take a while - and you don't have to worry about crapware/advert stuff.

Virtualbox is a pretty good and easy VM application for those wanting one to play with those.

Teamviewer is great for remotely controlling a pc.



Can you tell I work in IT Support?

I'm sure most people have heard of/used all these but they are some of the programs i tend to immediately install on a fresh OS.

keepass : password manager
7zip : file archiver
notepad++ : basic text editor
VLC : media player
libreOffice : Office suite
Gimp : Photo Editor
Audacity : audio editor

Sigh I'm going to be predictable and suggest that LibreOffice and VLC are both worth a look.

And Vim (for Windows) is pretty decent if you need to edit - especially if you're also lumbered (grin) with Linux/Unix boxes.

Of course, speaking of “software solutions” - how about Linux itself, especially as gateway to all those lovely free-but-still-good applications?

Libre Office. It's supported on most pertinent platforms - including Google docs. Germany has adopted it officially. I'm not willing to subscribe to Microsoft Office. There are compatibility issues between Libre and MS Office, but if everyone used LibreOffice it wouldn't matter, and the whole world would save money every month.

Video : Davinci Resolve
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/uk/products/davinciresolve

SpeedFan is nice to reduce fan noises and check temps. The Sysinternals Suite is also extremely useful sometimes. Offers an enhanced task manager for example.

+1 for LibreOffice and Notepad++

Also, Classic Shell - still not a fan of the Windows 10 start menu.
Irfanview, for viewing and cropping images etc
And LastPass, so I don't have to keep remembering all my internet passwords…

Pot Player: a powerful, highly configurable media player.
Everything: miles better than Windows search function
DVDfab Passkey Lite: removes DRM on DVDs and Blu-rays in real time so you can play them with your prefered media player rather than have to use PowerDVD or some other clunky rip-off program.

DavyJ
Libre Office. It's supported on most pertinent platforms - including Google docs. Germany has adopted it officially.

Munich adopted it, not Germany.

Foxit. Bloody hate Adobe acrobat reader

Notepad++, 7zip, CCleaner, and Malwarebytes are all a must one of my computers.

Some more optional choices would be CoreTemp and Gimp.

Pathsync - portable folder sync utility for ad-hoc use, ideal for your USB stick

Cobian Backup - The Swiss Army Knife of scheduled data backups

Speccy - find out what hardware is inside a computer without opening it

TeamViewer - Best free (for non-commercial use) ad-hoc support software

CCleaner - clear temp files, manage start-up items in a nice big window and even secure erase the empty areas of your hard drive

Hardwipe - Secure erase files and folder via the context menu in Windows File Explorer

Multipar - its parity files have saved my bacon more than a couple of times

Desktop Restore - simple context menu to save/restore icon positions

Media info is quite nice

Foxit instead of acrobat reader.
CCleaner- excellent system cleaner

CPU-Z
GPU-Z
Hardware Monitor
Realtemp/Core Temp - all to keep a eye on things

Open office - it's free and does all I need

Asus Realbench - stability testing

Flux

Chrome
CCleaner
Onenote
CPU-Z
Steam
Spotify
Skype
Nitro Reader
Oracle VM
inSSIDer
BBC iplayer
Kodi

Oracle VM as it can run XP and 98SE etc which is great if you are into your retro stuff as a lot of utilities are old DOS based or XP 32 Bit, as an example if you have the UltraSatan for the Atari ST Vista and above will only see 1 partition on an SD card, however you can hack a driver on XP 32 Bit which makes the machine think it is a partitioned external hard drive making transfer of files to the ST much easier.

F.Lux is another great little program, I got it after a recommendation from either another forum user or news story here. Basically it tones white balance down on your screen after sunset which in turn causes less eyestrain

7Zip is a great utility which has high compression and decompression and supports all zip formats (rar etc)

Picasa from Google is great for tidying up & manipulating photos and sending them off to your Google storage.

Linux

Forget Notepad++. Sublime Text 3 is where it's at.

VLC Media player
WinRAR
Avast free antivirus
uTorrent

How did you guys forget these ?

Inkscape and Blender.

Yet another one for Notepad++, but also Netbeans (yes, I still use Java, no it isn't malware). Microchip's MPLAB is pretty handy too.

peterb
Linux

Absolutely this.

CCleaner
Foxit
Faststone Resizer
MKVToolNix
MusicBee

AviDemux - useful video editor (and not just for avi!)
Notepad++ - essential
paint.net - good free image editor
FreeFileSync - I use this to backup and sync my documents, favourites etc on multiple devices
KeePass - keep your passwords safe
Filezilla
PuTTY
Oracle VirtualBOX
Bulk Rename Utility
Peazip
MKVToolNix - a godsend if you do a lot of video editing and need to merge video/soundtracks etc
plex/kodi/vlc

Notepad++
Chrome
7zip
Teamviewer

humoos
Forget Notepad++. Sublime Text 3 is where it's at.

It's also very much not free.

Foobar2000 - An incredibly capable and flexible audio player.

SoftEther VPN Server - Multi-platform and multi-protocol VPN server with much GUI goodness, most importantly for me it's fairly noob friendly.

Foxit. Got the Enterprise version deployed on ~1000 PCs at work.
7-Zip
WinSCP
VirtualBox
Winamp (still rocks for managing old iPods)
GIMP
Inkscape
VLC

Plus hundreds of great apps at work like NTFSFix and Wisesoft Account Management.

Hard to list them all really, but ones that come to mind initially:

openhardwaremonitor - if you have dual monitors, open the show gadget option and drag it to your second monitor, you can then easily monitor what your hardware is doing when doing other things :)
CPU-Z
GPU-Z
Notepad++
Irfanview
dup-detector If you're disorganised with image downloads or camera downloads, this is a great way to remove duplicate files…
VLC - The default win10 video player is probably the best microsoft have ever managed and often can work better hardware-acceleration-wise. But VLC has the compatibility record win hands down, if any program struggles playing a video file, try VLC…

I'll add to this post if i remember others :)

Let's not start listing all the free software on our computers, lesser known suggestions is the QOTW.

I tried a lot of archivers lately after I couldn't get IZArc without a dubious installer. While 7-zip is brilliant for creating files I felt it's generally interface left something to be desired. I found the best setup was to use the fast and neat Bandizip for general extracting duties but to leave the Add to archive… context menu option from 7-zip for when I needed to create an archive.

Many mentioned already are totally excellent. I am an avid user of Notepad++, CCleaner, 7Zip, VLC and Everything.

One's not mentioned but equally excellent are
SumatraPDF A pdf viewer.
Launchy An application Launcher for Windows
WizMouse WizMouse Adds Scrolling to Out of Focus Windows. This becomes so natural you will wonder why it's not already within MS windows.
Audio Switcher Allows you to switch from headphones to speakers with an icon in the notification area.
Dexpot Virtual Desktops.
Rainmeter Customised System Information
Rocketdock Another application launcher.



I use all the above daily. There are many more great free apps but they would be more niche eg MediaRenamer, Belvedere, Wireshark, Root Certificate Checker, WinFF, GIMP, Calibre.

Lesser known freebies I always install are:
Video Cache View, useful 222k way to save cached videos. Doesn't need installing.

Scrapbook by Eric Nitzsche. Homepage doesn't work anymore but program can be got from Softpedia

Other than those - more votes for Sumatra PDF, 7Zip, VLC Player, Handbrake, Irfanview, Firefox, and Thunderbird.
Also I've cut as much use of Adobe software as possible, replacing with similar apps from Serif, or using the very old versions (like Photoshop 6) that I own and that still work with Windows 8.1 and 10.

Malwarebytes, CC cleaner, WinZip, Hanbrake, VirtualDub, Flawless Widescreen, Magic disc, Notepad++, Rainlendar and Teamspeak for gaming are the main ones used.

I won't repeat what others have said about other apps, but I will say that I used to swear by Foobar but switched to MusicBee. And I have never been a big fan of VLC, preferring MPC-HC in conjunction of KCP (which I switched from CCCP).

1) blender guru 3d software
2) libre open office
3) virtual box
4) bit torrent
5) vlc media player
6) any video converter
7) foxit reader
8) mobo genie
9) advanced system care
10) java net beans
11) avast anti virus
12) light works video editor
13) express burn dvd utility
14) gimp image editor
15) notepad ++

…Google chrome.

OpenOffice all the way, And I haven't seen it mentioned, but Paint.net is pretty good too.

Apart from windows and games, just about everything on my PCs is legally free software.
And I have a laptop with Linux mint.
Sabnzbd - hasn't been mentioned yet.
Plex - is great if you have multiple devices (you don't need the sub, though I do have it)
Windirstat - is brilliant for tracking down space usage on a drive.
Crashplan - is something I have started to use recently, its free to backup to many locations, in particular other PCs even if not on same network. Handy if a friend has a nas aswell.

Also, as already stated, kodi, ninite (use it every time i do an install) and vlc.

Sumatra PDF is less bloated than the already mention Foxit (IMHO)
SyncFolders is one of many similar programs but probably lesser known.
Windows Repair has helped me out many times with Windows related problems, although care needs to be taken WRT what repairs are done.
WhoCrashed is a quick way to view crash dump files.

Firefox
Blender
VirtualBox
VLC
Foobar 2000
7Zip
Bulk Rename Utility
Context (useful for both text editing, as well as programming through it's syntax highlighters)
CutePDF (a nice PDF printer, though it's less useful now with Print to PDF built in to Win 10)
Keepass
SyncBack Free

CCCP
http://www.cccp-project.net/
Especially if one watches anime. I find MPC-HC lighter on CPU than VLC too - Relevant for older PC's.

Most suggested by Jacxel.

don't think it's been suggested yet but WinDirStat is a program I find very useful if you're constantly filling up hard drives and need to know which folders/files are taking up the most space.

Winstep Nexus is a good dock for windows, used to use RocketDock but it hasn't been updated in years.

Most of the ones I use/recommend have already been mentioned but a few more would be…

Thunderbird - email
XMedia Recode - video conversion
XYplorerFree - file manager

These are all portable too, which is always a plus in my book!

WinRAR - Better than 7Zip for sure.
TreeSize Free - Find what is filling up your SSD so quickly.
Media Player Classic - Far better and more customizable than VLC.
Bulk Rename Utility - Really useful for changing the name or extensions of files in one big go. also good for TV series collections.
GIMP - Best free image editor, Paint.NET if you want something a little simpler than GIMP but more complex than Paint.
CCleaner - A bunch of useful tools to clean up disk, registry etc.
Auslogics Disk Defrag - The best defragger available, has an optimize option available which does a much better job at improving performance, although takes all day for 2TB.

CaptainAmerica
OpenOffice all the way, And I haven't seen it mentioned, but Paint.net is pretty good too.

Libre Office is the now superior fork of Open Office, which is why most have moved over to that.

krita - free ‘painter’ program
notepad++
serviio - media server because the built in one in windows is useless with my mkv's…
media player classic be - prefer this to vlc although to be honest I usually just end up using wmp…
filebot - media renamer which accesses thetvdb
mkvmerge
handbrake
freemake - alternative to handbrake for encoding media
ashampoo burning studio - use it for burning my blu ray backups
dupeguru - find duplicates
bulk renamer - as the name says
ccleaner
malwarebytes
leawo blu ray player - the only media player I've found that plays ALL my blu rays, also covers dvd's now windows 10 doesn't have it built in.
sage thumbs - so I can get my psd, hdri thumbnails etc. I normally disable 90% of what it supports though.
shark codecs

For watching videos, I recommend people install Media Player Classic + madVR + SVP (Smooth Video Project) for the greatest experience. Installing K-Lite Codec Pack (Stamdard) gets you MPC and madVR together for convenience.

And if any of you read digital comics or mangas, you should try ComicRack.

Ccleaner and Baidu Cleaner for getting rid of junk files.

Paint.net and Gimp for a free photo editor, its pretty good replacements for photoshop.

Visipics for finding duplicate pictures, one of the best out there and really easy and fast to use.

Handbrake for making big HQ video files into smaller files with a good video quality.

Bitcomet for downloading torrent files, Utorrent is crap these days, Qbittorrent is still too weird and basic, Bitcomet has been a staple for the past few years!

OOSU10 or O&O Shutup10(for win10), applies a huge array of options to protect your privacy in windows 10.

Klite codec pack - I like the simple and highly customizable player it has, it also has every codec you may ever need and you can install icaros thumbnail handler as option and have thumbnails for every video.

Libre office
VLC
CC cleaner
Malwarebytes (free)
ghostery plugin + Adblock for Firefox

Lightworks
Resolve
FFmpeg
REDCINE-X Pro
Audacity
MediaInfo
Gimp
Paint.net
ImgBurn

I'm a music fan so as well as a lot of the excellent suggestions so far I would go with MuseScore and of course the JACK audio connection kit.

just adding my 2 cents for what the other have mentioned already.

To OSX/Linux/Windows I install:

Libre Office (I haven't seen compatibility problems with MS office for years, but I'm cautious when opening MS files)
VLC
Gimp
7zip
firefox
winamp

and if it is windows machine, Avast antivirus, ccleaner and auslogic disk defrag, but the last 2 mostly to clean up after the primary installations, I don't expect their users ever bother with them till they call me because their PC is slow :P

also does steam and spotify qualify for this list? :P add them too

Been listed previously but here goes:
Video playback: VLC
Music playback: XMPlay
PDF Viewer: SumatraPDF
Browser: Firefox

Dopamine is a cool media player for Windows - looks a lot like the old Zune player if it was upgraded to fit into Windows 10's design.

For MP3 tag editing and MP3 playlist creation:-

AHD ID3 Tag Editor
Playlist Creator

Daum PotPlayer. It's like all the best bits of VLC & MPC:BE rolled into one then with a ton of quick shortcuts added (the cursor keys for instant FF/RW for example). It's superb for desktop video playback. The playlist works brilliantly too, whereas it feels like a poorly tagged-on extra on VLC & MPC:BE. It's just a shame about the silly name.

Foobar. Nothing needs adding here. I never even bothered theming it as it's minimised most of the time - just added a lyrics plugin for those odd songs.

Notepad++. Perhaps Sublime is better as a few have mentioned here, but it's not free and I'm not enough of a coder to warrant spending that sort of money on a text editor, irrespective of how good it is. This is plenty good enough for me to work on scripts, XML files and so on. Handy for quick notes too as you don't even need to save documents - it will just remember it when you reopen it.

Faststone Image Viewer. It's just awesome, especially in full screen mode with the mouse zoom & drag. Just gutted I couldn't roll it out at our school as it automatically generates thumbnails for nearby images which kills the wifi when a class starts needing access to a folder full of photos. Got some nice basic editing tools too. Faststone Resizer is good too if you work with photos a lot.

Paint.net I suppose. Obviously no Photoshop or even GIMP but for simple image editing it's hard to beat for simplicity. I don't tend to use it much as I have Photoshop, but it's still good.

Lastpass. Free if you only use it on desktops (subscription if you add mobile support), but it's pretty great. Obviously Keepass with Dropbox is great too but it's just not as fluid even with it integrated into a browser.

Teamviewer. Obviously.

Avidemux. Nice and simple to trim videos ready for encoding with…

Handbrake. About as good as video encoding gets. The default quality (20) is too high, but knock it down to 26 or 27 and it's remarkable how good it can make 1080p videos look at about 400mb per hour. Far better than working with bitrates.

Macrium Reflect. No excuses for not doing backups when you've got free versions of reliable software this good. No incremental backups with the free version, but it does do differential backups which is enough. I have bought the paid version for home though.

And finally, ASUS AI Suite if you have a semi-recent ASUS motherboard. When you see software like this it's hard to believe it was only a few years ago that you'd go out of your way not to install the software that came with hardware.

Corky34
Sumatra PDF is less bloated than the already mention Foxit (IMHO)

Another vote for that here too. I switched to it a while back from Foxit Reader as Foxit had got too bloated and it kept installing (without asking) their unnecessary “Foxit Cloud” too.

I also agree with the votes for 7-Zip, LibreOffice, Notepad++, Paint.NET (be sure to also check out the various plugins), VLC Player and WinSCP.

I'd also add MyPhoneExplorer for those who wish to backup & restore/sync their Android phones (or a number of Sony Ericsson ones if you still have one of those).

nitro912gr
just adding my 2 cents for what the other have mentioned already.

To OSX/Linux/Windows I install:

Libre Office (I haven't seen compatibility problems with MS office for years, but I'm cautious when opening MS files)
VLC
Gimp
7zip
firefox
winamp

and if it is windows machine, Avast antivirus, ccleaner and auslogic disk defrag, but the last 2 mostly to clean up after the primary installations, I don't expect their users ever bother with them till they call me because their PC is slow :P

also does steam and spotify qualify for this list? :P add them too

Good to see someone else recognise that PC != Windows

peterb
Good to see someone else recognise that PC != Windows

Not all distros of linux are ‘free’ though ;)

displayfusion.

Windows Image resizer- right click for a Windows Explorer resize option
Filezilla- easy to use FTP programme
MalwareBytes- picks up stuff that anti virus doesn't
Avast!- the free anti virus I tend to use, seems to fare well in a lot of group tests.
Tree size free- finds large files easily, useful if you have a tablet etc you want to free space up on (and you're disorganised like me when it comes to storing files).
O&O Shutup10- turns off all the stuff you want turned off in Windows 10; snooping, P2P distro of W10 etc. It's a run once job but very handy.

Noetpad++ - text editor.

Paint.net - decent replacement for paint with some more advanced features.

When you say “free PC software” it immediately associates me of Linux OS, not really just a single application. You get a free OS, and with it all the free to use applications you want. ;) But we're talking Windows OS, which I install and maintain on PCs I assemble alongside Linux OS, then some of the essential apps I install and think everybody should use them are: CCleaner, Firefox ESR + Thunderbird nad Lightning if needed, XNView for viewing pictures, Media Player Classic HC for viewing videos, GIMP for picture/photo editing, Wavosaur for audio recording and editing, VirtualDub for video editing, and Abiword for making and editing RTF and DOC documents.

Sometimes I add VLC and LibreOffice to the mix. “Stickies” free app if you need - stickies. And if that's not enough I add TreeLine PIM to the mix for notes. You don't really need more than that for your everyday usage. ;)

Irfanview is a nice image viewer.
IZArc is a friendly compression/decompression utility. Not as fast as 7zip but I prefer its UI so has been using it for years.
SoftMaker Free Office is a nice office suite. I've always found Microsoft Office and Open/Libre Office to be bloated, and I own an older version of SoftMaker Office. The free version has some limitations, but it's still lightweight, has better compatibility with Microsoft Office than LibreOffice (last I checked), Windows, Linux and Android versions, and is the only office software I'm aware of which has a desktop style interface for Android.

My fav freebies are:

7zip, VLC, Libre Office, pwsafe, MP3TAG, Ant Renamer and Paint.NET. Essentials!

Definitely got to agree with all of the folk saying 7zip, VLC, VirtualBox and Paint.NET.
I reckon that everyone ought to give OpenTTD a go as well, just as addictive as the original Transport Tycoon from the early 90's :)

i always go with this lot:

Avast free
Ccleaner
Superantispyware - find it detects more than malwarebites
open office
VLC
Utorrent
Kodi
Teamviewer

Just stumbled across another must have utility for all the family, neighbours and random people that have my phone number.

Unchecky - automatically unticks/declines the optional adware bundled with software updates etc one installs

After a fresh rebuild I use Ninite.com to install the folllowing:

• Chrome - Browser
  
• Notepad++ - Notepad replacement, I also use it for notes
  
• Google Drive - Cloud Storage
  
• CCCP - Media player / pack of choice
  
• qBittorrent - Torrent software of choice
  
• 7-Zip
  
• Team Viewer - I prefer Chrome Remote Desktop but teamviewer has its uses
  
• Classic Start - Better than Win10 start
  
• Steam - Gamez!!
  

After ninite does its thing I then have to install:

• Origin
  

Windows support wise TronScript is FANTASTIC

To be honest since moving to ChromeOS for both personal laptop and work it's been less about what full blown apps I rely on but more what Chrome app/extensions I use:

• ARC Welder - Run Android APK's on ChromeOS
  
• Caret - Notepad++ replacement
  
• Chrome Remote Desktop - For remote desktop to my Windows PC
  
• Crouton Integration - Allows copy/paste from ChromeOS to Crouton
  
• Enhanced Steam - If you use steampowered.com you should have this
  
• Extensions Update Notifer - See changelogs when apps/extensions auto update
  
• Google Docs/Slides/Sheets/Docs Offline
  
• Google Dictionary - Double click any word for the definition. Used it for years :)
  
• Google Hangouts Extension - NOT the app. The extension is so much better and sleeker than the pop out app IMO
  
• Google Play Music App - App gives you a Mini player
  
• JSTorrent - Paid for but best torrent app for ChromeOS
  
• Magic Actions for YouTube - Just a better YT experience - cinema mode, full screen in a window, etc.
  
• Polarr 3 - Lightroom type app for ChromeOS
  
• Readability - Just gives you a nice looking text dump of a webpage. Great for reading long articles or when pretending that it's work related.
  
• uBlock Origin - My adblock of choice
  
• Videostream for Google Chromecast - Cast local media to Chromecast, control it from phone.
  
• VLC - It's VLC, it's better than the built in media player
  

Everything

search for files anywhere on your drives instantly. Great when you´ve got multiple drives with multiple failed attempts at organization, and several previous windows installs hanging around.
Much quicker than any windows search.

Dooms
Windows support wise TronScript is FANTASTIC

Ohhh that looks very very useful, might save rebuilding someones machine when I get told they don't have any backups..:wallbash: