Ask HN: What software do you install on a clean windows install

7 points by thexa4 17y ago ↗ HN

There probably are a lot of hackers that use linux and don't have the problem of reinstalling their operating system. I am curious, what software do you install when you install windows (again)?

9 comments

[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 37.9 ms ] thread

davidw 17y ago ↗

This stuff:

http://www.welton.it/articles/windows_for_linux_users

SwellJoe 17y ago ↗

Usually just vim, putty and Cygwin. But I never do any real work under Windows (putty means I don't have to), so I'm probably missing some things.

When I worked with Python I installed the Enthought Python distribution (which I also happened to be the maintainer of, at the time): http://www.enthought.com/products/epd.php

Now that I work with Perl, I'd probably install Strawberry Perl.

mahmud 17y ago ↗

Zonealarm. First and foremost. Then firefox.

after that, just the usual comfort foods; mingw, dev-cpp, emacs, and a few lisp dialects.

brianto2010 17y ago ↗

I second Zonealarm and Firefox.

For me, its Vim, GNU Octave and Maxima, a few languages, Winsplit Revolution, and a few console tools (curl, mc, mplayer, unxutils, etc.,)

viggity 17y ago ↗

taskbar shuffle (http://www.freewebs.com/nerdcave/) lets you reorder taskbar applications via drag and drop. Windows 7 has the feature, but XP and Vista don't.

[dead] visakhcr 17y ago ↗

1. AVG 2. Firefox(Chrome from now onwards) 3. VLC player 4. uTorrent 5. Nova PDF printer 6. Open Office 7. Free Download Manager 8. WinRar

costan 17y ago ↗

I use Windows to build Ruby gems, for a smart-card simulator, and to see my sites in IE.

Therefore I install the following: disable anti-virus warning, disable firewall + warnings, all updates, Firefox, Safari (also gets me Bonjour), One-click Ruby, Eclipse, Aptana Studio, Git (the msys port), Visual Studio 6 SP6.

Caveat: my latest Windows (XP) installs are in a VirtualBox VM.

[deleted] 17y ago ↗

(comment deleted)

hs 17y ago ↗

i have a 2gb image of win98 simply because win98 has generic kernel (you can swap the hard drive to any hardware and most of the time it won't BSOD).

driver for samsung mfc was installed (never buy korean again, their hws are not friendly toward mac/unix), maybe gvim, putty and some other softwares

i didn't even install antivirus since i can just dd the hd again if it's acting weird. it's fair to say i don't use windows. it's there only for win-only hardwares which over time lose their significance.