Big update to wiki 'Essential Software List' page

[danboid]

Hi!

I'm new here. I thought the Edugeek wiki was great but I saw a lot of room for improvement on its 'Essential Software List' wiki page so I just added a whole bunch of stuff, namely:

Network Utilities
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NetSetMan - Allows you to quickly and easily switch between multiple static/dynamic wired and wireless network settings.

BeyondExecv2 - Free, tiny but very, very useful and powerful tool for the Windows network admin. Spawn processes (such as .exe's or batch files) on multiple remote machines simultaneously without having to install anything on the clients! Can also be used to shutdown and reboot machines.


Installation Utilities / RIS / MSI
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DriverPacks - Driverpacks.net have collected together almost every driver and made it easy to make a remastered Windows install CD that sets up most all hardware automatically. Can also be used to upgrade existing installs. Perfect companion to nlite/ vlite.

Clonezilla - Clonezilla is an open source disk imaging tool similar to ghost. Its got a clunky, retro interface but it creates images much faster, gives more options and I've personally found it more reliable than ghost. Also see drbl-live and PING (partimage is not ghost)

Scripting
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Take Command - Used to be called 4NT, which was the successor to 4DOS. TC is the perfect tool for those who are unhappy with the standard Windows cmd.exe shell. TC features persistent command history, tabs, better/more scripting language support, faster display and more.

Web / Internet
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downloadhelper - Free Firefox 3.x plug-in that makes it simple to download videos off YouTube, Google Video etc.

DownloadThemAll - DownThemAll lets you download all the links or images contained in a webpage and much more

Operating Systems
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Mint Linux - Mint is the most popular Ubuntu-based Linux variant, mainly because it comes with multimedia codecs pre-installed (MP3/DVD playback etc.) as well as some extra config tools not found in vanilla Ubuntu.

Mandriva - Mandriva (and PCLinuxOS) features a unique control panel and set of desktop tools (such as its own excellent, unique wifi and bluetooth apps) not found in other Linux distributions. Mandriva makes an excellent choice for desktop Linux newcomers and is one of the best choices for those who want easy wifi setup and use.

antiX - antiX is a customised version of the popular Debian derivative Mepis. antiX is an installable 'live' CD (you can run it straight off the CD) that is designed to run well on older hardware (ie ~128MB RAM machines) and I have singled it out because it very importantly includes wicd on the CD. wicd is the best wifi and wired internet connection tool for non-Mandriva based Linux distros but is currently still missing from official Ubuntu and Debian repositories. Hence, if wifi is important to you and you don't fancy Mandriva then this could be your best bet.

Office
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AbiWord - Maybe you don't quite need all the bells and whistles of Word or OOo Writer but need something better than Wordpad? If so then Abiword is for you. Free and open source with Lin/Win versions available.

Gnumeric - Widely regarded as the best open source spreadsheet bar none. Win/Lin versions available.

Drawing / Painting
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Krita - Part of the Koffice suite, Krita is a hot contender for the best open source bitmap graphics app crown. It supports higher bit depths and colour spaces that GIMP does not. Version 2.x is available freely for *nix, Windows and OSX.

Multimedia
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Ardour - Free, open source multitrack recording/ DAW in the vein of Pro-Tools. Available for Linux and OSX.

DeVeDe - DeVeDe is a free tool available for both Linux and Windows that makes it simple to convert any video into a video DVD or (S)VCD disc.

winff - WinFF is a free, open source cross platform front-end to ffmpeg that makes it simple to convert one or more videos of any format into any other format.

MuseScore - Up-and-coming open source, cross-platform music composition and notation software ala Sibelius/ Finale

LMMS - Another very promising open source electronic music creation tool available for Windows and Linux but more similar to FruityLoops.

CDburnerXP - Best free optical disc burning tool for Windows. Requires .net.

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I'm sure most of you would've heard of most of them before but I'd imagine some will be new to some of you so just thought I'd let you all know.

The Essential Software List

EDIT

PS

I also think we should add a link to the magic-uninstaller vbs script to the wiki but I'm not sure where. Obviously, under the scripts bit but what sub-section or should we start a new one for software installation/removal? See this thread:

remove apps via cmd, winadmin irc?

[danboid]

Just felt the need to add a few more apps to fill a few critical holes in what is now a superb list of great software IM oh-so-humble O

Web / Internet
--------------------

Kompozer - Kompozer is the best free cross platform WYSIWIG HTML editor. It is a bug-fixed version of NVU

Operating Systems
----------------------------

VirtualBox - VirtualBox isn't actually an OS as such but what it is a free, fast, open source virtualisation platform that lets you run Windows under Linux, or Solaris under Windows or whatever combination or as many virtual machines and OS's as your machine can cope with. Perfect for running legacy DOS and Windows software under modern operating systems.

Multimedia
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avidemux - Avidemux is a basic video editor available for all three major platforms. It is largely based on the Windows only but also GPL'd Virtualdub.

KDEnlive - Linux users needing powerful video editing features should use Cinelerra currently but the future of free, easy, powerful AND (eventually) cross-platform video editing would seem to be in the hands of KDEnlive.

[danboid]

This was a criminal omission - iTALC! - rectified now!

Network Utilities
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iTALC - Intelligent Teaching And Learning with Computers, by the same coder who brought you LMMS, allows teachers to remotely power on/off and restart, view, control, send messages to labs/classrooms of computers that have the iTALC client installed ala Netsupport. iTALC is GPL software which has both *nix/X11 and Windows client and server aspects.

Web / Internet
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FileZilla - Filezilla is a great, GPL cross platform FTP server and client solution

[EduTech]

Thank you, will have a look through all that now.

ur time is appriciated.

James.