i know y’all have (non-game) software that you really love
tell me about it!
what internet browser do you use?
text editor?
file manager?
software is amazing except when it sucks. you can talk about software sucking too
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Snipping Tool is the shit.
I hate LaTeX because of how hard people evangelise it and needlessly denigrate other word processors in the process. Word is fine.
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snipping tool is cool. i’ve adapted to the new snip’n’sketch so i know how it works when/if snipping tool is deprecated (i do tech support). snip’n’sketch is kind of a regression from what it is replacing (what software developed by microsoft in the last 10 years isn’t???) but i still use snipping tool for work a lot. i used to use ShareX which was pretty good but i am not that Online anymore so it seemed like bloat
word is… kind of a shitty fucking application lol. word is intrinsically style-based, yet something like 80-90% of users have no idea how styles work nor how to use them in the “best practice” way, which means 80-90% of word users are forever fighting against the very nature of the application. it’s not great
even if you know exactly how word works you’re going to be fighting with it and it’s extremely, maybe exponentially likely that you will encounter utterly inexplicable and nigh unfixable issues as your documents grow in size and complexity!!!
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nobody uses tables in Excel, either, they just draw boxes
I’ve loved Sublime Text ever since I started using it. A super-featured text editor that always boots quickly, has extremely cool multi-line editing tools and shortcuts (put a cursor on every line that includes a text string? sure!), and saves all open pages and never, ever nags when I close it, it’s just perfectly back where I want it and left it
And it’s not an electron app and that matters, Felix! Felix the person who notices Bluetooth keyboard latency but not Electron apps hanging for hundreds of milliseconds when receiving input Felix! !!!
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You would not believe how many tables of contents I have seen with oddly spaced periods because people never learned to do tab leads
I think the new chromium-based edge is quite good because I am more irritated by google than microsoft and microsoft’s hooks for PDF inking and office are nice.
I miss software I loved on the mac like adium and quicksilver.
Discord is the best of the VoIP/chat apps but it’s still too busy and stubborn. (There’s a couple lines that prevent it from getting narrower than ~960 px and they’re unforgiveable.)
QMK keyboard firmware is everything I want in a text expander in a single text file that lives on the keyboard.
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Browser: Vivaldi
Text editor: Visual Studio Code
File Manager: Default
Music Player: Foobar2000
Screenshots/Video Rec: Dxtory
FTP: FlashFXP
Patching: Lunar IPS
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i’ve been using firefox on my test linux machine in anticipation of chrome breaking ublock origin whenever they feel like it and i’m trying to get used to it again but something about mozilla lol. something always feels off! lord i’m trying tho because i truly hate google
i guess vivaldi is like opera but better? i have opera as a backup browser on windows just to get around chrome’s horrible invasive file scanning shit where it utterly refuses to let you download “unsafe files” holy shit go fuck yourself google. time to swap that shit out for vivaldi. i’ve also heard good things about brave - anyone tried it?
I use Vivaldi and I like it but it’s built on Chrome and has that same ‘unsafe file’ prompt – you have to click through more options to do it anyway, I think?
Firefox got really bloated with shit around version 3, so I’ve refused to use it since. I’ve never liked the way Chrome “felt”, so I never use it. I’ve never used Opera. Vivaldi just offers me a decent amount of customization and control over the browser while also supporting Chrome plugins. I’ve been using Vivaldi since I think like, 2014? And I’ve only had a few complaints (one of them was that you could accidentally close the browser or all tabs without it prompting you beforehand, but I bitched about that and now it prompts you).
Vivaldi has never told me I couldn’t download a file. Fuck a browser telling me what I can’t do, it’s the software, I’m the user, it doesn’t tell me what the fuck to do!
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Applications I use every day (not counting work; that would be a different list):
- Discord
- Firefox
- Paint Shop Pro 8
- SnagIt
- Thunderbird
- Winamp
Not every day, but frequently:
- Calibre
- CCleaner
- FileZilla
- Handbrake
- KeePass
- Microsoft Office (very old versions of Word, Excel, and Visio; newer version of OneNote)
- Notepad
- Putty
- Soulseek
- WinSCP
In my last job, I had to learn to push Word to its limits and recover documents in all manner of corrupted states. I use styles extensively but whenever I hand over a document with styles applied I know it’s going to be destroyed regardless of how much guidance I provide on maintaining it.
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I used Opera on the Wii so I don’t think I can give an accurate opinion of it.
Swivel (swf to video) was a really nice piece of software to use back in the day but will probably fall to obscurity soon if it hasn’t already.
Word is a victim of its widespread use (and of being shitty) but I still think its fine.
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On Windows 10:
Text: Notepad++ - excellent software, one of my favorites
FTP: WinSCP - i have no opinion about this software. it works just fine and has been intuitive but there are probably better alternatives
Music: Winamp 5.8 - the OG. never had any reason to switch - it does everything i’ve ever asked it to do
File manager: explorer.exe / ClassicShell - i should probably get a better one, though, i hate not being able to use dual totalcommander-style windows in explorer.exe
IRC: HexChat - simple, intuitive, works. never given me any issues
Video editing: avidemux - all i needed was to make simple edits and transcodes and muxes and this does it all incredibly fast. some of the options take some manual reading but it’s not too complicated
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There’s a Winamp 5.8? I am still on 5.66. I need to get with the times.
I’ve never gotten into e.g. Scrivener, Ulysses for writing long-form documents. LibreOffice and Google Docs mangle formatting when you inevitably have to cross over into .doc land. Does anyone have an alternative they use for writing things over 20 pages with footnotes/ToC/etc.?
Pages is nice enough on Mac/iPad if you’re working alone.
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https://download.nullsoft.com/winamp/client/winamp58_3660_beta_full_en-us.exe
it’s nice! it’s a beta but i haven’t had any issues
software i use at work:
Microsoft Office 365/2016
Amazon WorkSpaces
Citrix Workspace/Receiver
it’s actually fun to troubleshoot some word/excel issues even though it is a massive headache because you feel like a wizard. other times you have to say… uh i guess we’re going to have to create an entirely new document and transplant shit into it lol - the nuclear option
i have microsoft office “mastery” certification but honestly word still scares and overpowers me. i still don’t understand why you can’t delete some page breaks or paragraph marks without the document upending itself even though i know it has to do with these elements becoming associated with style information… but like
why
I’ll forever be glad that RealPlayer and QuickTime died
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I remember having to use “Real Alternative” and “QuickTime Alternative,” but even those were a pain. (I don’t remember exactly why they were a pain, since it’s been ages.)
Applications I miss using:
- Trillian (I still have my ICQ number memorized.)
These days when I use IM at all it’s Discord and Steam chat, and occasionally Facebook (not their app, of course, just in the browser) or Skype. A modern Trillian sure would be helpful.
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Microsoft Office programs are unreliable pieces of shit. I’ve gotten so pissed off at Excel I’ve named tabs stuff like “WORKYOUFUCK” and accidentally sent them off to my boss without renaming them and had to explain why he has a file with a bunch of tabs that are named vulgar, angry things. “Sorry, Excel was a pain in the ass.”
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Oh I guess using R at my old job was the smartest I’ve ever felt.
I hate SPSS.