Essential Softwares

This features a non-exhaustive list of my Essential Softwares for PC.

Common

Coding

Visual Studio Code: general-purpose IDE for Linux, Windows and MacOS:

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choco install -y vscode

Languages

Learning

BBC Learning English: beautiful English tutorials at beginner and intermediate level available for Web, iOS, Android.

Dictionaries

Lingoes: a dictionary reader available for Windows only.

GoldenDict: another dictionary reader available for Windows, Linux or MacOS. It provide a manually configured dark theme by ilius (remember to download the zipped gist to get both CSS files).

Flashcards

Anki: powerful, intelligent flash cards available for Windows, Linux, MacOS, iOS (non-free), Android.

Others

DeepL Translator: AI Assistance for Language available for Windows, MacOS, Linux.

DeepL Linguee: translation database from DeepL available for Web, iOS, Android.

Utilities

Screen capturing

ShareX: free and open-source available for Windows

Greenshot: free and open-source for Windows and 1.99$ for MacOS

Faststone: powerful, not-free, lightweight, available for Windows

Paint 3D: for fast text addition

Download Manager

Xtreme Download Manager: IDM-like downloader, available for Windows, Linux and MacOS

Windows 10

General tools

Chocolatey: command-line-based package manager for Windows

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# Open cmd or powershell in Administrative mode
Get-ExecutionPolicy
# If it returns Restricted, then run
Set-ExecutionPolicy AllSigned
# or
Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process
# Install choco
Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))
# check
choco

7zip: compression and decompression tool

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choco install -y 7zip

LockHunter: find and kill processes occupying certain files. Unlocker is not longer supported.

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choco install -y lockhunter

Remote working

TeamViewer: connect to remote computers

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choco install -y teamviewer

Browsers

Google Chrome

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choco install -y googlechrome

Security

Brave: Chromium-based browser with novel mechanism for ad filtering and tracker blocking

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choco install -y brave

Tor: Firefox-based browser with emphasis on privacy

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choco install -y tor-browser

Windscribe VPN: Canadian-based VPN service with 10GB/month for free users

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choco install -y windscribe

Seed4me VPN: lightweight VPN but not free

Linux

Terminals

terminator + oh-my-zsh or all-in-one instruction: enhanced terminal and z shell

vimrc: ultimate vim configuration

Shell tools

fasd

silversearcher-ag

jq: C-based JSON parser in shell. An example:

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cat package.json | jq . -C | less -R

fx: JS-based JSON parser in shell

tldr: JS-based simplified and community-driven man pages