QOTW: Which free PC software should everyone be using?

[TaintedShirt]

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.

[mtyson]

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.

[Namor]

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

[TooNice]

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).

[lumireleon]

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 ++

[lumireleon]

...Google chrome.

[CaptainAmerica]

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

[llololloy]

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.

[Corky34]

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.

[wateva76]

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

[Captain Fizz]

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.

[Marenghi]

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.

[Jaffo]

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!

[Wozza63]

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.

[this_is_gav]

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.

[LSG501]

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