Hier findet eine Liste von mir empfohlener und auch zum Großteil eingesetzter Software, die sich über die Jahre hinweg als sehr nützlich herausgestellt hat.

Operating Systems of choice

• Ubuntu
  Beste Distribution für den Desktop-Einsatz
• Nexenta
  OpenSolaris mit GNU Userland und Ubuntu-Repositories (leider noch viele Bugs)
• Debian Linux
  Beste und stabilste Distribution für den Server-Einsatz, bei der auch die Updates tadellos funktionieren!
  
• Mac OS X
  Hopefully the way of the future which unites the world of Unix with a desktop for dummies and pros and gives contra to the Microsoft world
  
• Windows
  Empfehlungen gehen bis Windows2000 mit Einschränkungen noch bis XP; jedoch kann das Betriebssystem nicht wirklich empfohlen werden!

Editors (or Notepad-Replacements)

• EmEditor (Commercial; Win32; Tipp!)
  Bester Ersatz für das Windows-Notepad; GREP mit RegExp, Wunderbarer Umgang mit Encodings
  
• Notepad++ (GPL; Win32)
  based on Scintilla, Syntax-Folding, RegExp-Search, Highlighting, Plugins á Code-Explorer usw.
• PSPAD (Freeware; Win32)
  best free editor incl. hex-editor, diff-viewer, ftp-folders, project management, syntax-highlighting, code-explorer, autocompletion and so forth
• Nano (GPL; Linux)
  Useful editor and life saver for non-vim users that can handle 1GB SQL Dumps

Integrated Development Environments (IDEs)

• Eclipse PDT
  My favorite Distiribution of Eclipse and my Standard IDE
• Eclipse with Aptana and several Plugins (GPL; Java)
  Leider viel zu überladen, auch wenn es sich mit 3rd Party-Installern mittlerweile bessert
• ActiveState Komodo
  Definitv die beste IDE für PHP & Co. ? nicht vergessen die „File-Explorer?-Extensions und XDebug noch zu installieren!
  
• Sharp Develop (GPL; all)
  Unter Windows gibt’s .NET, der Rest der Welt hat Mono, und das ist die IDE dazu

Burn & Rip

(due some nonsense german laws, no links - search on Google for it!)

• InfraRecorder (win32)
  GUI
• ImgBurn (Win32)
  Does burn ISOs
• DVD Decrypter

• burnatonce

• Elprime Media Recovery

• k3b (GPL; KDE)
  Equivalent of Nero on Linux (although there’s a linux version of Nero)

• UltraISO

Development Tools

• Altova XMLSpy (comercial; win32)
  My favorite XML Editor which easy handles xml-files with more than one megabyte!
• Turtoise SVN
  Wunderbare Integration in die Desktop-Oberfläche (wenn auch oft noch mit falschen Icons!)
• RapidSVN
  Nice GUI for Subversin (if you don’t want the explorer extension or having trouble with it)
  
• VisualDiff
  Simple free diff viewer
  
• Beyond Compare (commercial; Win32)
  Wonderful diff- and folder-compare utility mit dem sich in handumdrehen ein Zweig aktualisiert hat
• DBWrench (commercial; Java)
• jave5
  Need a cool ASCII logo in file comments?
• poEdit
  Yes, I like gettext because it’s fast!
• SQLyog
  Best SQL Manager and Query Utility for MySQL so far; really fun towork with
• The RegEx Coach (GPL; only windows-version still beeing developed)
  Interactive regular expression; good utility when writing complex regular expressions
  
• Visual RegExp (GPL; TCL and win32-binary)
  Nice regular expression editor with color highlighting
  
• TidyGUI
  Nice GUI with some options for tidy
• mirkes.de TinyHexer (Freeware; win32)
  A free Hex-Editor
• WinSpector
  Tool to analyze and modifiy windows window properties
• XSL-FO Debugger (Freeware)
  Nice debugger by Altsoft (they also provide Xml2Pdf another xsl/fo to pdf processor)
• Microsoft’s XML Notepad (Freeware)
  Nice tool for XSL Transformations and general XML editing (well, i think Aptana is far better)
• EMS SQL Manager (commercial and free lite-version; all platforms)
  Best SQL management tools for PostgreSQL, Oracle? except for MySQL

Desktop Extensions

• Auto Hotkey
  Very good language for desktop extensions and utilites hotkey

Customizing Windows Desktop

• 3D Color Changer (aka. 3DCC; win32)
  You don’t need Windows-Themes, you just need to tweak some Desktop colors
• Auto Hotkey (aka. AHK; GPL; win32)
  Cool mouse and keyboard macro programming with hotkeys
• Context Menu Editor
  Easy tool to manage entries in explorer right-click menüs
• DialogMate2 (GPL)
  Nice utility to extend the Open/Save Dialogs (anyway, I’m using FavoriteFolders now)
• IconPackager (commercial)
  Nice and easy way to customze icons in explroer
• Junction LinkMagic
  Cereate Junctions in file system
• Nirsoft’s MyUninstaller
  Faster and better than Microsoft’s ?Add/Remove Software? Panel; also a good site with much more good programs!
• ShortPopUp
  Description missing
  
• Sysinternals Autorun
  Very good  control over applications beeing start while booting
• TClock2
  Slighty covers the tasbar providing a nicer look, removing the start-button and showing a useful clock with date (picker).
  
• File Type Manager
  Manage editors and default openers for file types on your system
• WAssociate
  Have control over every signle aspect of file association
  
• Y’s Shadow
  Adds nice shadow to windows on your xp system
• XP Taskbar Grouping (VB-Skript)
  Useful script to change the default Grouping behavior
  (my default is group windows of same program with more than 4 open windows)
• Nirsoft’s ShellExView (Freeware; Win32)
  Good shell extensions viewer and editor
  

Office

• OpenOffice.org (GPL; All platforms)
  An office application that instead of Microsoft Office really does what it was made for
• yEd (Freeware; Java - all platforms!)
  Best and easy to use charting and diagram Application
• Foxit PDF-Reader
  Fastest PDF-Reader, does it’s job usually better than the bloated Adobe Reader
• Foxit PDF-Editor
  Easy to use PDF-Editor, but not really compatible to other PDF-Readers yet! Intigrates into PDF-Reader
• PDFasm
• Advanced PDF Tools
• KeyNote
• Adobe Reader (Freeware; Mac OSX, Win32)
  Hell known why everyone uses it. Anyway, PDFs are nice.
• VeryPDF PDF Password Remover (Shareware; Win32)
  Can basically do the same as pdfasm, but i’m lazy and co-workers or friends often have such PDFs;)

System utilities

• System Information Viewer (SIV) (Freeware; Win32)
  Good System- and Hardware-Information Program
• HWINFO32 (Freeware; Win32)
  Another Hardware Information Programm
• TeraCopy (Freeware; Win32)
  Better and not so annoying handler for copying and moving files than the Explorer-Copyhandler
• Unlocker (Freeware; Win32)
• UtraVNC (GPL; win32)
  Best Windows VNC-Client and Server
• WinDirStat (Freeware; Win32)
  See space wasted in folders on your HD and seek and destroy the big ones!

Gadgets and great helpers

Gadgets and great helpers

• Qalculate.sourceforge.net/
  Best calculator and conversion utlity!
  

Network utilites

• WinPCap (freeware; only win32)
  because you will need it for most network tools here
  
• OpenVPN (all platforms)
  VPN that also easily works with windows networking (isntead microsoft’s own implementation)
• Nirsoft’s SmartSniffer (freeware; win32)
  Nice utility to trace HTTP traffic
• DonationCoder’s URL Snooper (freeware; win32)
  nice sniffer that automatically fetches ordownloads multimedia-urls, e.g. mp3 or ogg from http traffic (hopefully also RTSP in future!)
• Replay MediaCatcher (commercial; win32)
  once called myspace MP3 Gopher, this program is he first of his kind to catch RTSP-MP3s as used on myspace.com
• Nework Chemistry RogueScanner
  OpenSource Network Security Scanner
• Network Chemistry Packetyzer
  like Ethereal or Wireshark, just for Windows and far better
• CurrPorts
  Like linux’ lsof this program shows you a lsit of programs and their open ports
• AdapterWatch
  Show some stats about your network adapters
• LanSpy
  My favorite network scanner for getting a clear look what’s on network
• LanWhois
  Graphical WHOIS-Utitlity which can query more than the Standard .com or .de-Domains
• SmartSniff
  Simple HTTP-Traffic Sniffer for those you don’t want browser plugins
• Putty
  he best SSH/Telnet-Client on windows (having less problems than the well known SecureCRT or XSession); anyway I still miss a good tabbed interface or not having to re-enter login information again and again (especially on RSA-Auth)

Internet

• Free Download Manager (Freeware; Win32)
  A free project that cries for beeing open source, has some nice features i don’t use, but good and promising; sometimes seems to be little bit slow

• Orbit Downloader (Freeware; Win32)
  My favorite download manager for windows, very resource friendly! P2P-Download and so on?
  (also with a grabber that catches files over RTSP and RTMP connection like from myspace.com)

• FlashGet (Freeware; Win32)
  Now a freeware download manager; also does RTSP and RTMP, for those who like it!

Video & Multimedia

• MediaPlayer Classic

• KMPlayer (Freeware; Win32, Linux)
  My favorite player on Windows; libvcodec is probably faster loading that ugly Windows Codecs, and you commonly have less errors open files for it; if there is no codec it still can use Windows Codecs.

• rulesPlayer

I guess those are the best players available right now. Trash your Windows MediaPlayer and hava a look at Wikipedia Media Player Comparision

Internet Applications

• jiIRCi (GPL; all-plattforms)
  Multi-plattform IRC client with unicode-support
• XChat (GPL and Shareware on win32;all-plattforms)
  Multi-Platform IRC client