MEDIA
Foobar2000 - AUDIO PLAYER - If you listen to digital audio (MP3s or any other type), you can't live without Foobar2000, it has every feature you could want in an audio player (tagging, renaming, CD ripping, ReplayGain, supports multiple formats, ABX) and it's highly customizable with lots of great plugins available. I recommend downloading the special version to get a bunch of great plugins right off the bat.
BurnAtOnce - CD/DVD BURNER - There are plenty of CD burning programs out there, but BurnAtOnce has an extremely simple user interface that makes burning CDs easy as pie. It's simply a GUI for the CDRDAO utility.
MPEG Audio Collection - AUDIO DATABASE - This extremely handy program catalogs many types of digital audio files with a few simple clicks. It can search as well as create reports. Don't go buying a cataloging program before you try this first. It may not have a lot of bells & whistles, but it handles the basics.
Audacity - AUDIO EDITOR - From the website: "You can record sounds, play sounds, import and export WAV, AIFF, and MP3 files, and more. Use it to edit your sounds using Cut, Copy and Paste (with unlimited Undo), mix tracks together, or apply effects to your recordings. It also has a built-in amplitude envelope editor, a customizable spectrogram mode and a frequency analysis window for audio analysis applications. Built-in effects include Bass Boost, Wahwah, and Noise Removal, and it also supports VST plug-in effects." Works on Linux and Mac.
Media Player Classic - VIDEO PLAYER - A simple one-file media player that supports a variety of formats.
GordianKnot - DVD ENCODING - A great all-in-one program for converting DVDs to AVIs.
UTILITIES
7Zip - COMPRESSION - Free compression software. Supported formats: 7z, ZIP, CAB, RAR, ARJ, GZIP, BZIP2, TAR, CPIO, RPM and DEB. Works in Linux with command line via WINE.
Treesize - SYSTEM ANALYSIS - A cool little utility to check the sizes of all your folders. Now you can find out why your 120 GB hard drive has no room left on it! (This is free, but it isn't exactly open source, the full retail version allows you to use this app on network drives.)
Gyula's Navigator - FILE MAINTENANCE - You can use this to replace Windows Explorer. I started using it because Windows Explorer would inexplicably crash everytime I moved folders. Navigator uses two windows so you can easily transfer files between folders. You can also type commands straight into the command line.
IrfanView - PICTURE VIEWER/CONVERTER - A wicked program for converting between loads of different types of picture files. You can also resize as well. I use it to shrink my high res digital camera photos into smaller versions for my website.
JoneSoft Icon Extractor - ICON EXTRACTOR
PRODUCTIVITY
OpenOffice - OFFICE - Who needs Microsoft Office, when you can get this great product for free? I haven't tested it's capabilities, but it does the basic easily enough and it sure looks similar to M$Office. Works on Linux and Mac.
Mozilla - BROWSER - Don't waste your time with IE, when Mozilla offers tabbed browsing & a popup blocker. You wouldn't think a browser could make a difference but believe me, this one does! Mozilla also includes an email program, news reader and an HTML composer. If you just want a great browser, check out Firebird which is super fast. There's also a standalone email program called Thunderbird. Works on Linux and Mac.
SERVERS
mySQL - DATABASE
PHP - SCRIPTING
InvisionBoard - FORUM
Gallery - PHOTO ALBUM - This program looks great, but I am having trouble getting it working on my server. Apparently, it has problems with Windows-based servers; that Linux box can't arrive too soon!
FileZilla - FTP - Great simple and easy to use FTP client and server. Free and open source.
FILE SHARING
eMule - My personal fav in the file sharing world.
BitTorrent - TheShad0w's Experimental Bittorrent Client
Shareaza
Gnucleus
