Wild, you are like from the alternate universe where Linux is dominant and nerds play around in windows. Are things better where you are from? :P

• Firefox: best web browser out there
• Bitwarden: password manager
• ShareX: screenshot utility. Greenshot is also good, but I prefer ShareX
• WinDirStat: disk usage utility
• KDE Connect: connect Android phone to PC
• Image Glass: image viewer
• OBS: video & audio capture
• Blender: 3D modeling, animation, video editing
• Handbrake: video conversion
• VLC: video/audio playback
• Audacity: audio editing
• SpeedCrunch: calculator
• Notepad++: text editor
• Spyder (via Anaconda): Python IDE

although I'm not a TWM user I like to just press super and type the first letters of the program I'm looking for to open it.

It will never stop to amaze me how many people don't know it's a feature in every major DE and every Windows starting from Vista.

Even on Windows 10/11, just tap windows key and start typing without clicking anywhere.

My list of FOSS I use everywhere (these work in Win and Linux):

• Open Tablet Driver - if you've got the drawing tablet it probably supports it. You can customize everything and has even built-in plugin manager.

• Krita - GIMP alternative with non-destructive editing capabilities.

• yt-dlp - download videos from almost any video sharing service, even TikTok, Instagram etc.

• neovim - for quick file edits

• vscode/vscodium with vim plugin - my IDE for everything

• ffmpeg - forget handbrake - you can do even basic video editing here. Join two videos together? Done. Add audio to video? Done. Crop part of the video without reencoding it? Done. Loop a video to 10 hours without reencoding it? Done in matters of seconds.

• kdenlive - an actual video editor that is 100% FOSS, doesn't suck and works on Windows and Linux.

• imagemagick - ffmpeg for images

1. GIMP (Image editor)

2. putty (Secure shell/terminal emulator)

3. WinSCP (Secure FTP client)

4. QBittorrent (guess.)

5. 7zip (All in one compressed archive manager)

6. Firefox

7. Notepad++ (text editor with syntax highlights)

8. Handbrake (Video transcoder)

9. VLC (all in one video player)

These are my top must have installed. There are others but they're situational

Let's not forget the various console emulators that are open source as well. All the good ones are.

Some of these are cross platform but:

7zip

Autohotkey

Bitwarden

Calibre

Draw.io

Handbrake

Speedcrunch

WinHTTrack

WinSCP

PowerToys: productivity utilities like window pinning, window management, accented character typing assistant, color picker, text extractor, etc.

I have to say it, Rufus.

BalenaEtcher or Rufus for writing ISOs to usb.

BloatyNosy

Universal Debloater and PC Manager for the most up-to-date version of the Redmond OS (Windows 11)

https://github.com/builtbybel/BloatyNosy

sleek

an open-source (FOSS) todo manager based on the todo.txt syntax

https://github.com/ransome1/sleek

WinDirStat

a disk usage statistics viewer and cleanup tool for various versions of Microsoft Windows

https://github.com/windirstat/windirstat

MacType

Better font rendering for Windows

https://github.com/snowie2000/mactype

For package management I've been really liking scoop.sh

Not everything in there is FOSS but scoop itself is! And you can install neovim, vscodium, bitwarden, Firefox, etc very easily.

Xoblite: Blackbox/Fluxbox-style WM/shell for Windows.

Open Shell: Brings back the classic start menu and other classic Explorer.exe features

Notepad2e: A lightweight and portable alternative to Notepad++

AutoHotkey: Probably the best GUI automation tool out there, this is the tool that I miss the most in the Linux world.

Playnite for launching games

It will open up anything. Battlenet games, steam games, emulated games.. you name it. Supports themes too!

www.playnite.link

FreeFileSync a FOSS backup and folder synchronizer, a must have.

FreeFileSync is a folder comparison and synchronization software that creates and manages backup copies of all your important files. Instead of copying every file every time, FreeFileSync determines the differences between a source and a target folder and transfers only the minimum amount of data needed. FreeFileSync is Open Source software, available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Mostly same list as for GNU/Linux:

• Kate editor (Notepad++ and VSCodium are good here too)
• KeePassXC or KeePass 2 password manager
• Firefox or firefox derivative
• Unison file synchronizer
• Dolphin or Explorer++ file manager
• VLC for audio/video
• 7zip file (un)archiver
• Chocolatey package manager (would like to try alternatives)

PowerToys

VLC player, 7zip, translucent bar, greenshot, irfanview,

Check out https://github.com/auctors/free-lunch (list of free Windows software)

See also https://www.nirsoft.net/ (freeware, not open source)

I think I didn't see these mentioned yet:

• ditto, a clipboard manager
• mpv.net
• espanso
• qview

AltSnap https://github.com/RamonUnch/AltSnap

On most of my fresh installs, i usually install Tinywall, 7zip, and then a different browser like Firefox and chromium based browsers (like mull/brave)

Here are some that I found very useful over the years.

• Barrier: KVM software
• Calibre: e-book management
• Jellyfin: Plex-like media center
• Mumble: VoIP

Can anyone recommend me something that falls somewhere between Paint and GIMP?

<3

Disclaimer, haven't used Windows in years, but back in the day when I did, I swore by cygwin to give me a sane environment to interact in. That and Firefox + GIMP + Libreoffice usually gave me a pretty happy day to day interaction.