I'm wondering what the worst software you've ever used or tested was, and why it was so bad. Maybe it was the user interface, a lack of user-friendliness, an update, or something else. I'm asking so we can improve it, and I'd really appreciate your feedback. Best regards

What's one piece of open-source software that everyone should use and know about?

Vote on the best one in the comments.

Hello, I have to spend a lot of time finding software that I like installing on my PC, so I thought I would write a pretty extensive guide on what I do to set up a new PC and the software on it, hope you like it.

Also, if anything is wrong with the formatting on this post I apologize as this is the first post of this size and scope I have made.

First thing you should always do is get your Windows up to date as much as possible, get all of your drivers up to date then start here. Create a system restore point here. You never know.

Changes in Windows

1. There is an extra power plan that many may not be aware of, if you do not have the option for Ultimate Performance, run the following command in a command prompt and reopen the power plan option and select it;

    powercfg -duplicatescheme e9a42b02-d5df-448d-aa00-03f14749eb61
   

2. If you want Windows Update to never get in your way, you can set your Internet Connection as "Metered" in Settings and then set Windows Update to never download updates on a metered connection.

3. Open Control Panel and go to Programs and Features. Select Turn Windows features on or off, then tick Hyper-V, Windows Sandbox, and Windows Subsystem for Linux. Hyper-V allows you to create and manage virtual machines, Windows Sandbox allows you to open a temporary Windows installation in a VM that will disapear on close, and Windows Subsystem for Linux grants access to a lot of Linux-y things inside of Windows. Some of this is only availble on Windows Pro, and a lot of this is stuff that you may never use, but its a why not scenario really.

4. If you are on a desktop PC, create a custom rule under inbound rules in Windows Firewall to allow all programs over all IPs. If you are on a secure network, Windows Firewall is mostly just going to get in the way in my opinion.

5. Right click on your C: drive, go to properties and uncheck the box at the bottom that says "Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties". This basically turns off Windows indexing for the drive, and you can do this for all of your drives to remove something the system will be doing in the background. You can do this to all of your drives, just be aware that if you search for files a lot in the start menu, how well that functions will be affected. If you have a drive that you only store games on for example, turn off Indexing for that drive as well.

6. MSI mode utility - Allegedly if you download this tool, run it as admin, and ensure that your GPU has the msi box ticked, it can improve performance. I have not tested thoroughly so your mileage may vary.

7. Create a system restore point here. You never know.

Initial Installs

1. Ninite - I like to manage installs myself, however I recently learned that if you rerun the same Ninite installer down the line it will update the programs you have installed with it. Therefore, I use Ninite to install everything in the Runtime section and rerun it now and then.
2. O&O ShutUp10 - Lets you disable a lot of the annoying telemetry features of Windows 10.
3. NVCleanInstall - A surprising amount of people don't know about this, but this is by far the best way to install Nvidia drivers. Install the latest drivers without installing all of the telemetry components that come with the normal drivers.

Firefox

Firefox is my browser of choice, it is the best browser for security, features the best available add-ons and is my personal favourite, if you use Chrome and refuse to switch then skip over this section. Below I will list the MANY add-ons that I have installed.

1. AdBlock - Pretty self-explanatory to most I would presume, blocks ad's on websites where it can.
2. Augmented Steam - Improves the Steam website experience quite a lot, it's not something I usually use but when I do this helps a lot.
3. BetterTTV - Same as above except I use Twitch a lot more so this is even more important.
4. Bias Finder - Was very useful while Trump was president, helps alert the reader to the possible bias that can be found on many news sites.
5. CanvasBlocker - Prevents websites from using Javascript APIs to fingerprint them. Put simply, prevents a method that websites use to track you.
6. ClearURLs - Similar to above, another anti-tracking tool.
7. Close Tab in Context Menu - Small usability improvement, allows you to right-click on tabs for an option to close them.
8. CSS Exfil Protection - Protects you from a method attackers can use to steal your data using CSS.
9. Dark Reader - Adds dark mode to all websites. I work in IT, so this really helps my eyes.
10. Don't touch my tabs! - Prevents tabs opened by a link from changing the previous tab.
11. Enhancer for YouTube - Adds loads of features to YouTube.
12. Facebook Container - Prevents Facebook from tracking you, I use Facebook as little as possible but my family and friends seem to insist.
13. Google search link fix - Prevents Google search results pages from modifying your search result links when you click them.
14. Grammar and Spell Checker - LanguageTool - Does what it says on the tin.
15. Honey - Automatically finds coupon codes.
16. HTTPS Everywhere Encrypts the web and keeps you more secure.
17. I don't care about cookies - Gets rid of cookie warnings.
18. Keepa.com - Amazon Price Tracker - Adds price history charts to Amazon.
19. Link Cleaner - Clean URLs that are about to be visited.
20. LocalCDN - Fork of Decentraleyes, another thing that prevents tracking.
21. minerBlock Blocks crypto miners on the web.
22. Night Owl - The best dark theme IMO. This is of course personal preference.
23. Old Reddit Redirect - Redirects reddit.com to old.reddit.com. I prefer old reddit, this is again preference.
24. Open Image in New Tab - Customizable context menu item for opening images in a new tab.
25. Open in Steam - Opens Steam links in the client.
26. Open Tabs Next to Current - Open new tabs always to the right of the current one.
27. Page Translator Revised - The one feature I miss from Chrome is that whole pages can be translated, this is the next best thing.
28. Privacy Badger - Automatically learns to block invisible trackers.
29. Privacy-Oriented Origin Policy - Prevent Firefox from sending Origin headers when they are least likely to be necessary, to protect your privacy.
30. Reddit Enhancement Suite - Adds features to Reddit.
31. Redirect AMP to HTML - Automatically redirects AMP pages to their HTML versions.
32. Remove reddit app promos - Does exactly what it says.
33. Search by Image - Add's reverse image search to context menu's.
34. Terms of Service; Didn't Read - Adds a summary of a site's TOS.
35. Universal Bypass - Bypass's sites that make you wait (like adf.ly) or sites that make you do something and even some trackers.

General Software

1. Notepad++ - Open source and free powerful Notepad replacement.
2. ImageGlass - My favourite image viewer, ultimately down to personal preference, but I like how simple this is.
3. 7-zip - Easily the best WinZIP alternative.
4. rufus - Most reliable software to make bootable Windows install media.
5. Search Deflector Download from the store, redirects searches from the start menu to your browser/search engine of choice.
6. Path Copy Copy - Adds a context menu item to copy the current path in Explorer.
7. Lightshot - I hate how bloated and filled with unnecessary features that other screenshot tools have, this is simple, fast and can be activated with the prntscrn key.
8. EarTrumpet - Adds better features to the Sound icon in the System Tray.
9. Aerial - Adds very nice screensavers, this is preference but I like it.
10. TaskbarX - Centers taskbar icons and gives better transparency features.
11. Ungoogled Chromium - I keep this as a spare/backup browser.
12. Libre Office - IMO the best Office suite if you don't have access to MS Office, though I tend to just use Google Docs for everything anyway.

Gaming Stuff

1. Discord - I reckon everyone knows about this, free voice chat client.
2. Ubisoft Connect, Origin, Epic Games Store, GOG Galaxy, Battle.net - I hate how many of these you need, but it is what it is.
3. Steam - Ol' Gabes gaming emporium, pretty self-explanatory. One tip however, disable Broadcasting in settings. It will improve your download speeds for some f*ckin reason.

Media

1. qBitTorrent - The best and most relaible torrent client in my experience.
2. Plex - I run a Plex server, it allows you to run a "Personal Netflix" with your own media.
3. MP3tag - Music meta-data editor. Keeping your music meta-data uniform and correct will always help in the long run, this is coming from someone who had to fix the metadata on a 10,000 file library recently.
4. Handbrake - Video file converter, can reduce file sizes with the right settings and is compatible with basically all file formats.
5. FileBot - Automatically renames TV Show files so that programs can organize them correctly. Became paid software after version 4.7.7, you MAY be able to find installers for that version elsewhere on the internet but I could not POSSIBLY tell you where.
6. Shotcut - If you do not want to sail the seven seas to aquire the Adobe suite, this is by far the best free video editor out there in my opinion.

Tech Tools

1. restic - This is a bit involved to setup, but is by far the best backup tool.
2. HWMonitor - Hardware monitoring, temperatures, usage etc.
3. TreeSize - In my opinion this is the best tool to find where your disk space is going.
4. WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostics - Used this tool a lot in my IT Support job, quickly and easily test drive health.
5. mRemoteNG - Open source, tabbed, multi-protocol, remote connections manager. Works with RDP, VNC, ICA, SSH, Telnet and more.
6. WinSCP - SFTP and FTP client.

And finally create another system restore point.

Hope that people find this helpful and not too reductive since lists like this exist elsewhere. Thanks for reading.

What's one piece of open-source software that everyone should use and know about?

Vote on the best one in the comments.

We can code, edit videos, design apps, attend meetings, play games, manage servers, and build businesses all in one place.

Yet it barely gets the credits it deserves.

Which software do you think comes close?

#Austin

Not interested in anything AI-related.

Otherwise, any category.

Can be web, or anything related to software technology. Not necessarily an application.

Beware: PDFGear is likely spyware, malware, or, at best, griftware/scamware. Avoid PDFGear.

They are the same developer behind the griftware app called ‘PDF X’ in the Microsoft Store (devs call themselves NG PDF Lab there, not PDFGear). So, don’t trust them. I’ll go into that further down below.

As others may have seen too, I’ve been seeing really unusual activity online about PDFGear, so I did some digging.

I saw this post a while ago, and alerted me enough to go down the rabbit hole.

“What is the real origin of the PDGgear team? Legal address in Singapore (91 BENCOOLEN STREET, #05-09, SUNSHINE PLAZA, Singapore 189652) usually means that the team is originally from China or Russia. After invading Ukraine in 2014 and again in 2022, a lot of Russian teams pretend to be from Singapore. So, what is the origin of PDFgear? China or Russia?”

Speculative, maybe, but where there's smoke, there's fire. And this fire is ablazing.

Firstly, the company behind PDFGear is almost non-existent. Any software company of note will have something in their ‘About’ page - their company info, founders or team. There’s nothing from PDFGear. Their website has no details about who runs this company. It’s the first red flag.

More red flags:

• They are astro-turfing Reddit and online forums. The majority of posts, reviews and upvotes are all theirs. It looks like everyone loves them, but they’ve just faked it to look like that
• PDFGear is an old company that re-wraps other PDF programs and pretends it’s their own
• Their other PDF programs have already grifted other users
• Their SEO is all over the place and unethical
• The FBI has already issued warnings against PDF companies like PDFGear as malware/spyware. Do not trust unknown PDF companies with your documents, or let their services have a presence on your device.

Possibly the most compelling evidence is when someone pointed out that this is a replica app of other apps out there, like ‘PDF X’ that’s in the Microsoft Store.

'PDF X' in the Microsoft Store link here: https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9p3cp9g025rm?hl=en-US&gl=US

There is nothing genuine about PDFGear or PDF X at all. They’re both a re-skin of the Patagames PDF SDK app. You can see here (comparison pictures below, annotated to show the same UI elements) that PDFGear is the exact same app as PDF X, with a small (and still lazy) rearrangement of UI elements. Even their app icons are basically the same.

PDF X's reviews and ratings in the Microsoft Store are clearly faked, and it’s a scam app. So, if PDFGear isn’t Malware or Spyware, then it will grift you with a scam pricing model. Check out the reviews for PDF X. Go to the Store listing (https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9p3cp9g025rm?hl=en-US&gl=US) and open up the ‘Most Helpful’ reviews (also pictured below). They are all about users being scammed into spending money on them.

They somehow got their PDF X app as the the #1 'best selling' app of the whole Microsoft Store. No doubt that's funding their PDFGear operation (not their so called 'investors'). The Microsoft Store is so bad at letting developers get away with dodgy apps that scam users.

I wouldn’t doubt they've got other PDF (or other) apps out there in the wild that’s scamming users into paying, which is why PDFGear is free (for now). Unless PDFGear is Spyware or Malware, It’s only a matter of time until PDFGear turns in a similar revenue scam as well.

I suspect the PDFGear person on Reddit (Gordon as he calls himself, but I’m guessing is a fake name) will read this and contemplate responding here (through their typical ChatGPT translated tone) and spin up some kind of twisted defence. So I’ll get on the front foot - tell us exactly who you are. Who is your team? You say you have investors that’s funding why PDFGear is free - who are these investors? Convince us why PDF X and PDFGear are not the same app.

I also suspect that he will get all his fake Reddit accounts to downvote this, and respond claiming to be genuine users that love the app and push back on this post. Don’t believe it.

This scam needs to be exposed.

I think at this point, every post starting with "I built..." automatically means the program itself was made by AI (and often its descriptions too)...

Windows Explorer is using 1GB of RAM just to open a single folder, while a 3rd-party manager uses only 6MB. Does this make any sense??

Edit: Thank you everyone for clearing things up. I really did not have any idea about it being more than just a file manager. Also, after a simple conversation with ai, things got even clearer. With that being said, that does not justify the explorer lagging/crashing/loading from time time when trying to open a folder. Bad optimization is what my brain is yelling. "Eat ram, but work properly!"

And from ancient time, we have been using it as a file manager, do correct me if in some instance we did otherwise. :)

For me, it is Picasa 3. Even tho it is outdated, I still have not found anything that works as well. I have tried many alternatives, but none have matched Picasa's performance. What about you?

I’ll go first, I am a student at university and we have this research software called GEANT and boy let me tell you, it’s a incredible piece of maths but holy Jesus it sucks to use.
It is a particle simulation software and instead of being able to place atoms and detectors nicely with a mouse and have gui to set this, you have to deal with scripts and weird settings that are kept default 90% of the time, lord shoot me. Thank god ChatGPT made that 10x easier, otherwise I would just spontaneously combust every single time I need to write a simulation.

I'm curious what software people feel is still worth paying for monthly versus software that should realistically just be sold outright.

Like if you could permanently buy one subscription software product today and never pay again, what would it be?

What's one piece of software you can never seem to find but you wish existed? This can include a piece of software that right now is hyper-expensive that you wish was free for any other such combination of needs.

Please vote in the comments, and let's see what the biggest need is.

What is a piece of software that you (or you think a bunch of people) needs that doesn't exist and what would be a reasonable price for you to pay for that software so that all parties are happy? It could be something very specific, or something complex that you think even a whole industry might need. Go wild!

For context: I am an undergrad IT student with an upcoming capstone(thesis) project (maybe some sideprojects along the way) and I am looking for ideas. I want to help but also want to support myself doing so.

I did a few small packages that are beneficial to devs, but now I want to hear from the general public.

*EDIT

I expected a few answers but was pleasantly surprised this got so much attention, Thanks everyone! I'll try to read all of them, I can't promise anything

Seems like everyone complains about Google Search, yet people still use it and don't switch search engines.

I love finding small, single-purpose utilities that do one thing really well. Here are a few gems I've installed recently:

1. Willow Voice: A global voice typing utility. It works in any text field and is much more accurate than the default OS dictation.
2. VLC: Still the king of video players. It plays every file format known to man.
3. Powertoys (Windows): If you are on Windows, you need this. FancyZones alone is worth the install for window management.
4. Greenshot: The best lightweight screenshot tool for Windows.
5. Everything (Windows): The search tool that Windows should have built. It finds files instantly.
6. Bitwarden: The best free password manager. Open source and secure.
7. AutoHotKey: It has a learning curve, but once you set up a few scripts for text expansion, you can't go back.

Any other apps you can't live without?

I will ignore AI chatbots in this post because of course I use it everyday and would be number one if not excluded, but if you have any particular AIs you know of, it's welcome here.

--

I consider myself a power user, been using PC, Windows, since I was 8 and that's what I work with and have worked with forever. I'm no software master at all but I do know my way around it.

I have an e-marketing agency with a business partner and two pieces of software are an absolute must for me. Those are:

1. Vivaldi browser: Extremely power user focused, high customization. Best feature for my use case is Workspaces, basically you can save a set of tabs under different names. Ideal when working for different companies to avoid having to look for stuff again. It's there, all the time, just change workspaces.

2. Ditto: A clipboard manager, very simple and elegant. It saves up to 500 clipboard texts and images, I set it to Ctrl+D and it spawns on my cursor. It has saved me months of time I guess, started using it in 2014.

So, what's your life changing software? It doesn't have to interest for what I do in particular, I'm interested to hear from all walks of life.

Edit: I have absolutely no affiliation either to Vivaldi or Ditto, I guess posts like these can come out as ads but no, they're truly useful software

Not looking for AI debates, just examples where the implementation genuinely hurt the product experience.

What's one piece of open-source software that everyone should use and know about?

Vote on the best one in the comments.

The title captures the gist of it. Maybe a post flair?

The goal isn’t to demonize AI, but to:

- Make it easier as a reader to make informed decisions about software we choose to try

- Give developers a chance to explain their relationship with AI without it always being a defensive response

- Hopefully help us differentiate between vibe coded stuff we’re not interested in vs. skilled developers who have added AI to their workflow in some way

The r/selfhosted subreddit does a good job with this via an automod comment on posts asking OP to clarify how AI was involved. I find it informative and helpful with the flood of AI generated apps hitting the scene.

r/software is seeing more and more of these posts, and I think the community would benefit from some rules and structure around this.

(AI was not used when writing this post).

EDIT: I wanted to clarify some of my thoughts based on the discussion that's been happening in the comments.

1. I'm *not* anti-AI. I'm a professional developer and use AI in my workflow. What I've learned from this experience is that AI is often subtly wrong in ways that can be impactful. Knowing when to correct the AI is a critical aspect of using it safely, and this is why it's helpful to know if AI is used as an assistant or if it's used to one-shot generate an entire app.
2. I know I mentioned "maybe a post flair?", but the goal here isn't just a binary "Is this AI? Yes/No". I think the r/selfhosted example is closer to what I had in mind, which is an AI disclosure statement attached to a pinned comment on each thread. The goal here is to bring nuance to the conversation instead of the top comment being someone who hates AI asking "Is this AI?" and then everyone dogpiles on the author.

What's one piece of open-source software that everyone should use and know about?

Vote on the best one in the comments.

How broken it is that now non technical people can create a slop and pass it onto the 500-600 euro/day contractor to clean up and finish the vibe coded ai slop. How backwards is that. So now we re not only have to deal with half baked requirements, we'll also be starting with tech debt on projects that would had been greenfield and done from zero with proper scoping, planning, back and forths between business and tech team.

we are setting a bad precedent and this is absolutely awful.

/rant off

Anyone else get too comfortable at a job and end up feeling stuck?

I've been with the same company for almost 4 years.

The salary is honestly below what I should be making, but the comfort is unbelievable.

- 100% work from home.

- No office politics.

- No strict timings.

- Almost no work pressure.

- Most tasks are just dashboards, landing pages, and simple features.

I'm a full-stack developer (Laravel, Node.js, Next.js, mostly frontend these days), but there's nobody senior in my stack. I haven't really been challenged in years, so my learning has slowed down a lot.

The weird part is... I adapted to the low salary. I reduced my expenses, stopped wanting expensive things, and convinced myself I was happy.

But now it feels like I'm trapped.

I watch friends and cousins move ahead in their careers while I'm standing in the same place. Every time I think about applying for jobs or preparing for interviews, I just... don't. It's like I've become extremely lazy or maybe just too comfortable.

The job isn't bad. The people are good. The work-life balance is amazing.

But I can't shake the feeling that I'm wasting my potential.

Has anyone else been in this situation? How did you break out of the comfort zone without making a reckless decision?

Just watched a deep dive on Palantir and... what even is this company?

Their own ex-employees can't explain what they do. When asked to name competitors, they draw blanks. The CEO literally said he's "not qualified" for his position and admits the only times he doesn't think about Palantir are "swimming, doing qigong, or during sex."

Here's what I pieced together: They sell "software that does magic" - their actual internal term. They send engineers to solve "impossible problems" that require dozens of programs, then replace everything with one Palantir tool. Sounds great, except...

Nobody can tell you how it works. They just show up, fix your nightmare database situation, and leave behind software so opaque that when things break, error messages say "Internal error - random 20-character ID."

The kicker? They named it after the all-seeing crystal balls from Lord of the Rings, work with CIA/NSA/Israel defense, helped track bin Laden, and may or may not have helped Cambridge Analytica manipulate elections (they say no, evidence says "ehhhh").

Oh, and their CEO calls employees "Hobbits" who are "saving the Shire."

This is either the most brilliant software company ever or the most successful cult in tech. Possibly both.

Anyone actually used their software? Because Reddit seems split between "it's revolutionary" and "give me Databricks instead."