The List of Windows Software You Should Be Using

Still trying to learn the ropes around here at Medium, I though I would start today with a list to clear my head and my browser.

Firstly, this list is not mandatory, it is voluntary. It’s your choice if you want to use this software or not, but in this case it is not only a reminder to myself as to what to install when I swap out the 128 GB M2 Solid State Drive that my new laptop came with with a more spacious 500 GB M2 Solid State Drive.

This blog — should I call it a blog or a Medium? — this blog is not of the faint of heart or the kind of person who feels like they would be put into a debt for asking questions when really the worst questions are the ones that are never asked like “where can I find that?” or “how did he do that?” All you have to do is ask.

Secondly, I said I would write about Bash on Ubuntu on Windows, and that is true, but not until I can flush out the over 200 tabs I had open in Chrome that had me waiting until 10:30 this morning to finally start this story. Eventually, I’ll get into writing a story about what extensions on Chrome to use to handle this madness and a few thoughts as to how to avoid it on start up. The BUW story is underway and I have the history files ready to complete this task along with setting up a PHP server, which would have been done using Docker, but my understanding of containers is still pretty new. Besides, it was a good idea to do that the classic way as I will adapt those instructions to consider Python for services since everybody seems to be enamored with Python more than PHP these days for programming.

So, let’s get going.

Chocolatey

Being an Ubuntu Linux user, you get used to installing software using apt-get. And while the most practical way to install software on Windows is to use the various installers provided by different software providers, adding Chocolatey is a must-do.

Chocolatey is an automated software management system for Windows and works in both the Windows Command Prompt (cmd) or PowerShell.

Because of how the Command Prompt and PowerShell generally can be run in either a regular user or as an administrator, installing software with Chocolatey can be a bit fickle, especially since the recommended way to run Chocolatey is to run the Command Prompt or PowerShell as an administrator. I would recommend using the Command Prompt over the PowerShell mainly because the installation method for Chocolatey is more thorough. (Also, be sure to read the installation instructions.)

In the Start menu, search for cmd and right click on the Command Prompt icon and select “Run as administrator”. You will then be asked if you want Command Prompt to make any changes as an administrator. Click “Yes”. Next, paste this line into the command prompt simply by right-clicking.

@powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))" && SET "PATH=%PATH%;%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\chocolatey\bin"

This tells the Command Prompt to run the Powershell without a profile and with the execution policy bypassed to run an iexcommand.

In case you were wondering, Chocolatey installs the software it downloads to C:\ProgramData\Chocolatey by default. It is possible to change the path, but using C:\Program Files or C:\Program Files (x86) is highly NOT recommended. If you would prefer such software to be put in those places, then don’t use Chocolately to install software.

Keep in mind, that when you use Chocolately, you are using the Windows Command Prompt, which means Microsoft has about as much respect for this venerable program as a Die Hard movie villian in the past couple of films. (Oh, John McClane may have aged, but he can still kick your ass!) And like the young sidekick who needs help comprehending how Windows Command Prompt can be this streetwise old guy and take down technovillans, it helps to read up on some of the commands that Microsoft just can’t seem to document or include on the operating system. You will find them useful especially if you use Chocolatey.

For your convenience, here’s a short list of commands to know.

choco -?                              # Chocolatey help
choco feature                         # See and set options for Chocolatey
choco list                            # List all the packages, unsorted
choco list | sort                     # List all the packages, sorted! (SLOW)
choco list | sort | more              # List all the packages but scroll through them
choco list | sort | find /I "string"  # Find a package. (SLOW!)
choco list | find /I "string"         # Find a package. (Faster)
choco list <string>                   # Find a package. (Fastest)
choco info <package>                  # Get more info about a package
choco install <package>               # Install a package
choco uninstall <package>             # Uninstall a package
choco upgrade                         # Download upgrades

I would suggest that if you plan on installing BUW later, not installing any Chocolatey programs that will be in BUW.

There are two pieces of software that I do recommend for Chocolatey, and they are Deluge and Virtuabox.

Deluge

The controversy of using torrents is highly overrated with the constant news that always comes from TorrentFreak. But there really is nothing wrong with using torrents.

For the uninitiated, a torrent is a file that contains metadata about files and folder to be distributed over a network, of which the file often will include the various nodes that hold the file. Torrents can download rapidly by taking parts of those files and assembling them to where you download them.

So why use Torrents? Well, you can download a Linux image and burn it to a flash drive or try it out in a virtualization.

The application I recommend for torrents is Deluge. While Transmission is popular, Deluge has more controls that users may use to determine which files they want to download from the torrent.

To install deluge, use Chocolatey in an Administrator Windows Command Prompt.

choco install deluge

VirtualBox

Oracle’s virtual machine VirtualBox can let you try out a Linux image on Windows. If you are interested in giving Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora, Kali Linux, or Arch Linux a try before burning it to a flash drive, consider installing VirtualBox.

choco install virtualbox

Rufus

If you are content with a version of Linux you’ve tried out, why not burn it to a USB flash drive and have that boot up at startup? Rufus is the app that you’ll want to use for that. Eventually, I’ll write something about how to use it for Raspberry Pi projects which will be applicable for other Linux distributions.

choco install rufus

It should be noted, that Rufus may not appear in your Start menu. If that is the case, type into the Window Start bar rufus.

The Kitchen Sink

Clearly this story is going to become very long, so let’s just list the rest of the things worth looking at. If they don’t appear in the Start bar after installing with Choloately, consider uninstalling it and then going to their websites and downloading the installing the software.

• Android Studio for Android development
• Atom for software development
• Chrome for browsing
• Dropbox for remote file access.
• Flux to adjust the screen for your eyes.
• FreeCommander XE — A File manager with side bye side comparison.
• GNU Image Manipulation Tool — an open source alternative to Adobe Photoshop, although it doesn’t really behave like Photoshop unless you add something to it. (I’ll talk about that someday.)
• Git for Windows for using Git, although, I would really recommend not doing this as you can use this in BUW much better. I’ll explain later.
• Google Drive Sync — Synchronize the files in your Google Drive locally.
• Inkscape — an open source Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Editor which could be used as an alternative to Adobe Illustrator.
• IntelliJ IDEA — A Java Integrated Development Environment (IDE). I like this way better than Netbeans or Eclipse. Android Studio is based on this.
• IrfanView (with plugins) — An image viewer. The great thing about IrfanView is that it allows you to correct the extensions to image files that were incorrectly assigned on-the-fly.
• Java Development Kit (with demos) — Let’s face it, we just can’t quit this!
• League of Legends — Riot Games’ popular Free-to-Play MMORPG.
• Minecraft — Mojang’s popular construction game.
• Notepad++ — Best. Text Editor. Ever.
• Scribus — An open source alternative to Adobe InDesign for desktop publishing.
• SDRSharp — Software Defined Radio Scanner. Requires some hardware and software. All of it is really cheap! I’ll have a lot to talk about this.
• Slack — A messaging application for team communication.
• SourceTree — Atlassian’s visual repository manager. I’m really not a fan of this. I’d like to find some way to have Github gitk app do this in BUW. It would be nice if there was a Linux app.
• Spotify — Streaming music service. It has a desktop app.
• StarUML — A Unified Modeling Language (UML) program. Useful for software development.
• Steam — The videogame supermarket.
• SumatraPDF — A free PDF and EBook reader. It reads more file formats than Adobe Reader.
• Unity — Game engine. See Visual Studio.
• Vim — Free Open Source Text Editor. There is a version for windows, but use it in BUW for the advantage of using the Powerline features. I’ll talk more about this later.
• Visual Studio — Honestly, I’m not a fan of this. However, if you want to do Unity Development, you’ll need it. The most reasonable way to get it is by downloading Unity Personal. It still wants 10GB from all connected drives so make sure that ONLY the C: drive is mounted when you install it.
• VLC Media Player — Open source media player. Don’t get it from the Windows Store.