Yeah, and no more futzing with opening a vnc connect to a server to run a control panel or system application...very nice indeed.

Opera browser should be added here. (http://opera.com/download).

Starting with the newest version 8.5, Opera's now completely free; no ads, no bs. I prefer it over Firefox... all the features, speed (and then some) of FF without fooling around with plugins. And it's more secure to boot.

nLite (http://www.nliteos.com/)

From their website:
"Have you ever wanted to remove some Windows components like Media Player, Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, MSN Explorer, Messenger...

How about not even to install them with Windows ?

nLite is a tool for permanent Windows component removal and pre-installation Windows setup. After removal there is an option to make bootable image ready for burning on cd or testing in virtual machines. With nLite you will be able to have Windows installation which on install doesn't include, or even contain on cd, unwanted components."

nLite is one of the best ways I've found to reuse old hardware (if you must run Windows). Just burn yourself a minimal XP install, stick it on an old PIII, and you have a pretty fast machine. I've seen a PII run a stripped-down XP install with no problems; it actually ran Office at a decent speed.

Format Redux
Line 1: Program Name
Line 2: Classification of the program
Line 3: http;//Original.program.URL (no 3rd party sites)
Line 4: http;//Screenshot.URL (OPTIONAL!)
Line Aux: Description of program, likely to be abridged quotes from the site



FullSync
Backup Utility
http://fullsync.sourceforge.net/
"FullSync is a powerful tool that helps you keep multiple copies of various data in sync. It can update your Web site using FTP and SFTP, back up your data on the local disk or refresh a working copy from a remote server on your local drive using SMB (Windows File sharing), and much more..."


Autoruns
System Start-up Configuration/Viewing Utility
http://www.sysinte...ties/Autoruns.html
http://www.sysinte...shots/Autoruns.gif
"Simply run Autoruns and it shows you the currently configured auto-start applications as well as the full list of Registry and file system locations available for auto-start configuration. Autostart locations displayed by Autoruns include logon entries, Explorer add-ons, Internet Explorer add-ons including Browser Helper Objects (BHOs), Appinit DLLs, image hijacks, boot execute images, Winlogon notification DLLs, Windows Services and Winsock Layered Service Providers. Switch tabs to view autostarts from different categories."


Boot Image Extractor
Easy way to copy the boot sector of a CDROM, such as for slipstreaming service packs.
http://www.nu2.nu/bbie/
"BBIE will extract all boot images from a bootable CD-Rom or ISO image file. It follows El Torito Bootable CD-ROM Format Specification v1.0. Getting boot images from a bootable CD-Rom has never been easier."


CrypTool
Cryptography in action.
http://www.cryptool.com/
"The Windows program CrypTool is eLearning software with which you can apply and analyse cryptographic mechanisms. It contains exhaustive online help with tutorials/scenarios and a script with more detailed information information e.g. about primes, hash functions, digital signatures, ... "


TinyHexer
Hey Editor, featurefull and free.
http://www.mirkes....eeware/tinyhex.php
http://www.mirkes....are/en/mpth_16.png
"tiny hexer - free hex editor with disk editor, scripting, plugin interface and more"


DeepBurner Free Portable
Free burning software, even runs off a USB-key
http://www.deepburner.com/?r=products
"Totally free, yet more advanced than other software calling itself professional", this version of our CD/DVD burner is for your own personal use."


Resource Hacker
Resource Editor (If you don't know what that is, you don't need it)
http://www.angusj.com/resourcehacker/
http://www.angusj....er/specialmenu.gif
"Resource HackerTM is a freeware utility to view, modify, rename, add, delete and extract resources in 32bit Windows executables and resource files (*.res). It incorporates an internal resource script compiler and decompiler and works on Win95, Win98, WinME, WinNT, Win2000 and WinXP operating systems."


rfstool
Read-Only ReiserFS for Windows
http://p-nand-q.co...nload/rfstool.html
Allows you to access ReiserFS partitions from a Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP system.


Restoration
Freeware undeletion program
http://www.geocities.jp/br_kato/
Restore deleted files from any NTFS-, FAT32- or FAT16-Partition.


ShelExec
Launch files as if you had clicked them instead of having to run programs directly
http://www.naughter.com/shelexec.html
"Welcome to ShelExec, A very simple utility to allow you to call the ShellExecute API from the command line. Places where you might find ShelExec useful are in adding an autorun.inf file to your CD / DVD +/- RW discs. For example suppose you have a HTML page called index.htm on the root of your CD which you would like to run automatically whenever the user inserts the CD."


Process Explorer
Windows "Task Manager" on a mixture of LSD and ecstacy.
http://www.sysinte...ocessExplorer.html
http://www.sysinte...rocessExplorer.gif
"Ever wondered which program has a particular file or directory open? Now you can find out. Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded."


ObjectDock
Free, cute MacOS-style program launching "Dock"
http://www.stardoc...oducts/objectdock/
My description is good enough.


HashTab
Have hashes calculated in a tab in File Properties automatically
http://beeblebrox.org/hashtab/
"HashTab is a Windows shell extension which adds a tab called "File Hashes" to the Windows Explorer file properties. The tab contains the MD5, SHA1 and CRC-32 file hashes."


FileMon
Imagine if your Task Manager could show all file system activity at all times...
http://www.sysinte...ities/Filemon.html
"FileMon monitors and displays file system activity on a system in real-time. Its advanced capabilities make it a powerful tool for exploring the way Windows works, seeing how applications use the files and DLLs, or tracking down problems in system or application file configurations. Filemon's timestamping feature will show you precisely when every open, read, write or delete, happens, and its status column tells you the outcome."


NewSID
Use this when you clone or Ghost systems so they get different ID numbers...
http://www.sysinte...lities/NewSid.html
"Many organizations use disk image cloning to perform mass rollouts of Windows... While this method saves hours of work and hassle over other rollout approaches, it has the major problem that every cloned system has an identical Computer Security Identifier (SID). This fact compromises security in Workgroup environments, and removable media security can also be compromised in networks with multiple identical computer SIDs... NewSID is a program we developed that changes a computer's SID. It is free, comes with full source, and is a Win32 program, meaning that it can easily be run on systems that have been previously cloned. NewSID works on Windows NT 4, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows .NET Server."


FileAlyzer
File Analyser
http://www.safer-n...org/en/filealyzer/
"FileAlyzer is a tool to analyze files - the name itself was initially just a typo of FileAnalyzer, but after a few days I decided to keep it. FileAlyzer allows a basic analysis of files (showing file properties and file contents in hex dump form) and is able to interpret common file contents like resources structures (like text, graphics, HTML, media and PE)."


ac'tivAID
This one is a bit complicated to explain, so I'll show a screencap and explain below.
http://www.heise.de/ct/ftp/05/22/210/
This is a graphical user interface to the keyboard-control software AutoHotKey, along with a collection of built-in scripts.
WARNING: Denglish. (German software privately written by an Admin's magazine in Germany, translated offhand to English, so while it works, and very well, expect the FAQ to be in German, and bad grammar in other places ;) - Also, the AutoHotKey source codes are available for this project)

click to view

OTHER:
The c't magazine had quite a few promotions this week, including free registration codes for two of my favorite Acronis products (I do not know if they work with downloadable English trials - I have not tired it - but I assume they do, and if not you only waste what? 20 seconds filling in the form? - and, if not, I might even be nice enough to send the trial installation packages if you want, and you can unlock them yourself).

Acronis True Image 7.0 Personal
Disk imaging software
http://www.acronis.de/mag/heise/ti7pe
"Acronis True Image 7 is a disk imaging software utility that’s designed to create reliable and complete backup images (including temp files, windows settings, patches) of complete hard disks or individual partitions on a hard disk. These images can be stored on another internal or external hard drive or sent to recordable cd or dvd writers. Disk Imaging Backup software has evolved, adding features over the last few years, with Symantec’s Ghost and Drive Image being perhaps the best know programs, but Acronis has led the evolution recently, with Acronis True Image 6 being the first of these three programs that was able to back up your boot drive without booting to DOS. Acronis True Image 7 builds on that version by offering the following key features:

- Create backup images for any partition or complete drive from Windows or DOS
- Automated backup
- Incremental backups
- Image verification
- Able to “mount” an image as a “virtual drive”and restore files or directories
- Clone or upgrade/replace disk drives
- Supports Firewire and USB drives "
More info and reviews:
http://www.epinion...ntent_133971676804
http://www.itrevie...software/s268b.htm
http://www.itrevie...software/s268h.htm
http://www.compute...acronis-true-image


Disk Director Suite 9 Personal
Partioning Program, better than PartitionMagic (opinion)
http://www.acronis.de/mag/heise/dd9pe
"Acronis Disk Director Suite 9.0 brings together the most popular disk management functions in a single suite:

Partition manager: Resize, copy, and move partitions without losing your data;
Boot manager: Create dual boot and multiboot environments;
Disk editor: Edit hard disk manually;
Partition recovery: Recover lost or deleted partition."
More info and reviews:
http://www.pcplus....subsubsectionid=65
http://www.windows...rector_suite_9.htm

Posted by Beryl Boot Image Extractor Easy way to copy the boot sector of a CDROM, such as for slipstreaming service packs. http://www.nu2.nu/bbie/ "BBIE will extract all boot images from a bootable CD-Rom or ISO image file. It follows El Torito Bootable CD-ROM Format Specification v1.0. Getting boot images from a bootable CD-Rom has never been easier."

So wait a minute, Would I be able to create a PS2 disk with this program and not have to have a modchip to boot it? Or am I completely off? I am having trouble getting some way to play a pirated game on my PS2 since it is the mini version.

Posted by Sinister Crayon So wait a minute, Would I be able to create a PS2 disk with this program and not have to have a modchip to boot it? Or am I completely off? I am having trouble getting some way to play a pirated game on my PS2 since it is the mini version.

Hmm, I honestly don't know.

In theory, that could work, but they probably have a special bootloader that only works for one game on special media like "RUN MEMORY CODE "fdkjagfjsvxnbv" THAT A CD CAN'T DO" instead of "RUN GAME" - or something.

CDs are only a few pennies each though, I'd say to try it.

Sorr,y I don't know anything about PS2s so I can't give better info.

PumpKIN
TFTP Package (Client and Server) - NOTHING TO DO WITH FTP.
http://kin.klever.net/pumpkin/
"PumpKIN is an open source, fully functional, free TFTP server and TFTP client, which implements TFTP according to RFC1350. It also implements block size option, which allows transfer of files over 32MB, as well as transfer size and transfer timeout options..."

KLog
Syslog for Windows
http://kin.klever.net/klog/
"KLog is our Win32 implementation of *nix syslog daemon to support remote logging of message from syslog-enabled unix servers, routers and other networked devices and applications."

Posted by Sinister Crayon So wait a minute, Would I be able to create a PS2 disk with this program and not have to have a modchip to boot it? Or am I completely off? I am having trouble getting some way to play a pirated game on my PS2 since it is the mini version.

Unfortunately, you are off. El Torito refers to how a CDROM can emulate a floppy or hard drive for the purposes of booting an IBM Compatible PC. The PS2 and other computers don't boot this way.

Posted by Beryl Format Redux Line 1: Program Name Line 2: Classification of the program Line 3: http;//Original.program.URL (no 3rd party sites) Line 4: http;//Screenshot.URL (OPTIONAL!) Line Aux: Description of program, likely to be abridged quotes from the site

What can I say? Another excellent post! You come up with an amazing amount of stuff, most of which I've never come across, and I try to keep my eyes open.

Kudos to you!

EGV

NASlite
Free Single-Floppy-Disk-FileServer requires only a 486 and 16MB of ram and even works with SMB (Windows shares)! You heard me!
http://www.servere...ts.com/naslite.php
http://www.servere...ic/NL1-PLUS/w0.gif
NASLite v1.x is a collection of single floppy disk based Network Attached Storage (NAS) Server Operating Systems designed to transform a basic computer into a dedicated file server.

Coolmon
Display system statistics and information on your desktop...
http://www.coolmon...me/screenshots.php
CoolMon is a program for monitoring vital system stats and almost anything else you wish to display on the desktop. It can also display stats from remote pc's and publish real-time stats on a webpage. The application can display CPU, RAM and page file usage, hard drive usage, MotherBoard Monitor temperatures and fan speeds, various network stats and much, much more.

VMware Player
Original legally free VMware "player", that can be easily modded to create VMs. (You can run Linux in Windows, for example)
http://www.vmware.com/products/player/ - VMware Player
http://www.hackada.../1234000153064739/ - How to hack it
http://johnbokma.c...er-windows-xp.html - Another Haxing guide, simpler and stronger focus on XP.
VMware Player is free software that enables PC users to easily run any virtual machine on a Windows or Linux PC. VMware Player runs virtual machines created by VMware Workstation, GSX Server or ESX Server and also supports Microsoft virtual machines and Symantec LiveState Recovery disk formats.

Caution - This program is NOT open-source. There is no way of knowing if/who it will report to.

µTorrent (Micro Torrent)
Incredibly (100k download and 6MB memory use - so between 10 to 20 times smaller than Azureus) small full-featured Bittorrent client that also runs off a USB drive. With uPNP and DHT and everything you could want.
http://www.utorrent.com/
http://www.softped...eenshot-27295.html
µTorrent is an efficient and feature rich BitTorrent client for Windows sporting a very small footprint. It was designed to use as little cpu, memory and space as possible while offering all the functionality expected from advanced clients.

Caution - This program is NOT open-source. There is no way of knowing if/who it will report to.

essentialPIM
Powerful Personal Information Management software, Contacts/Calendar/Etc, with a nice free edition and a free portable USB-key edition. (Compatible with Outlook and others)
http://www.essentialpim.com/
EssentialPIM Free is the award-winning, absolutely free personal information manager. Supported by a large community of users, EPIM has been widely acknowledged as the best personal information management system on any desktop or USB flash. It is not bloatware and has no spyware or adware.



Google Picasa
Image Organizer Utility... I haven't used it, I have a strong disturst for Google. But it looks very good. I'd just not let it access the Internet and it would be fine.
http://picasa.google.com/index.html
Picasa is software that helps you instantly find, edit and share all the pictures on your PC. Every time you open Picasa, it automatically locates all your pictures (even ones you forgot you had) and sorts them into visual albums organised by date with folder names you will recognize. You can drag and drop to arrange your albums and make labels to create new groups. Picasa makes sure your pictures are always organised.
I'll be setting this up later tonight on my laptop and checking it's activity... You might want to wait for more infor before putting it on a trusted system...



SilentNight Micro CD Burner
Way better than the other free burning utility I listed, this one burns CDs, DVDs, ISOs, etc... Even audio CDs and all. Free. Even works from a USB Key. The dude's Norwegian so forgive his spelling errors.
http://silentnight...com/NYDownload.htm
SilentNight Micro CD Burner version 4 is a handy little tool that is able to burn CD/DVD/ISO and AUDIO formats. Nothing really special by that, as there are lots of other products that does the same out there. Still this burner stands out of the crowd in a couple of ways.
1. This burner does NOT need any installation.
2. It is one single executable file, no dll`s or anything else needed.
3. It dont even need windos aspi layer, as it has its own inbuildt.
4. The complete size of the program is just above 1 mb.
5. You can even run the program directly from a CD/DVD or a USBKEY.
6. It is freeware, but it can/should be registered for further improvements.



AVID Free DV
Whereas VirtualDub and such are more of a recompression studio, this is a full-featured completely free Video Editing Suite...
http://www.avid.com/freedv/
Avid Free DV is feature-streamlined, standalone software which includes basic video and audio editing capabilities, up to two streams of real-time effects and support for both Windows XP and Macintosh OS X platforms.

I've exported the majority of the content of this thread and built a new site around it.

Come check out Open For The Masses - www.joojanta.com/oftm

We will need mods and members to update and post new content, please come pitch in!

I noticed that GAIM hasn't been listed. It's a totally open source IM program that supports all the popular services. It's very customizable and easy to use. There's also plug ins that allow you to expand it further, including one that encrypts your conversations (called Gaim-OTR) I think it comes with at least a couple of distros of Linux.

http://gaim.source....net/downloads.php

Posted by Nosferatu Von I noticed that GAIM hasn't been listed.

That's because I only recommend things I think are the best, and Trillian is better than GAIM in every way I can think of (better looking, better support - file transfers, audio chats, etc all work perfectly through a nat without opening ports with all protocols, it support "buddy icons", etc... while it also has built-in encryption and a plugin system, although few people use it), and isn't as ugly.

Hence why I didn't recommend it or Miranda (which causes lots of problems when used on a lan as well as having a lack of features) - Although gAIM is certainly the best IM client for *NIX .

But thank you for participating

Trillian is also technically not open source but it is still free. Gaim has the advantage of being completely open source.

Well sadly I think I'm going to have to convert over to Trillian from using Gaim. When I first tried using Trillian well over a year ago I was decidedly disappointed with the interface and lack of functionality in the free version wheras Gaim did have what I was looking for. Now though both the functionality of Trillian as well as the interface has been drastically cleaned up. I see a switch in my future now.

Sun Java Enterprise System, Developer Tools, and Suites
Astounding server software for data centres, messaging, web serving, directories...
http://www.uer.ca/...d=1&threadid=25488
http://developers....=102&tid=8&tid=218
http://www.prnewsw.../0004225179&EDATE=
The Sun Java Enterprise System is a revolutionary, subscription-based approach to infrastructure software that reduces cost and complexity throughout the data center.

* Sun Java Application Platform Suite
* Sun Java Identity Management Suite
* Sun Java Availability Suite
* Sun Java Web Infrastructure Suite
* Sun Java Communications Suite
* Sun Java Integration Suite