Programs needed on Winows:

• Green: open source
• Blue: open source that works on top of payware (EG modding tools)
• Yellow: freeware
• Red: payware
• White: payware that is probably included with relevant hardware, thus no link.

Internet applications:

• Firefox Get it now Extensions:. This is THE BROWSER (if you never heard of FireFox or don't know what a browser is, PLZ go back to trolling comunities, AOLer).
• Thunderbird Get it now. This is the mail client, obviously.
• GAIM Get it now. Open source client for ICQ, MSN, YIM, AIM and other IM protocols (including IRC, which I personally don't use).
• ncftp Get it now. Great TUI FTP client with bookmarking feature. You'll probably want to use a GUI instead, unless you're a nerd too.
• Freepops Get it now. Access webmail-only accounts via POP (IE, via your web client). I've just found this Thunderbird extension which should work similarly but is stabler. Unfortunately it doesn't work on all accounts.
• DevSide.net Get it now. Easy to install WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP) with a lot of other goodies added. Useful only for web developers.
• DynDNS Get it now. Allows you to report to a remote host if your IP changed - useful if you have a dynamic IP and want to use DynDNS to have a domain name pointing at your computer. Again, nerd only.

Multimedia

• GIMP Get it now. Adobe Photoshop and more, but costs $0.00 rather than half your montly income.
• XviD Get it now. Free video codec (IE, used to compress and/or view compressed videos).
• Winamp Get it now. Media player. If you never heard of it, consider farming rather than using a computer.
• DivX Get it now. Like XviD, but compression is payware (while viewing is not).
• Nero. CD-R and DVD-R burning. Your burner probably ships with some kind of similar programs, so no real need to use this.
• Scanner Software. Well, software to make your scanner work; it's probably shipped with your scanner.
• Motorola Phone Tools. Software to get to work the cable which connects a Motorola phone to your PC. Other brands of mobiles will have similar hardware and software, contact a phone seller nearby.
• PC-Linq. A USB cable to connect two PCs or Macs to transfer files between them. If possible, try to set up a network instead, but has its uses.

Security

• AVG antivirus Get it now. Freeware antivirus with good detection ratio and very few false positives. Mostly chosen because it's freeware.
• Zone Labs Get it now. Great freeware firewall.

Developing

• Cygwin Get it now list of packages .bashrc. Unix-like environment on your Windows. Need I say more?.
• Ocaml Get it now. The programming language WeiDU (and other IE-related programs, like Weinstall, WeiGUI, Tutu, IWG2, or the Weingine) are written in.
• Active TCL Get it now. Needed to develop half-decent GUIs with Ocaml, also Just Another scripting linguage.
• ConTEXT Get it now list of highliters. My favorite text editor.
• Java JRE Get it now. Allows to run NI, among other things.
• XVI32. Hex editor, gets the job done as good as any.

GUI/TUI kewliness

• Litestep Get it now Ghost theme. Alternate shell. Usually faster than the standard Windows one, and has a few cool stuff added.
• Console Get it now config file. Sligtly better terminal program, rather than cmd.exe.
• Tweak UI Get it now. Allows to tweak a bit of your user interface, done by M$ itself.

GPL Games

• TuxRacer Get it now. Basic racing game - Tux has to collect sterrings in as less time as possible.
• Freeciv Get it now. Civilization-like game. Some cool features to spare yourself most boring stuff (building roads from A to B, research up to a goal, worklist, citizen placement...).
• SuperTux Get it now. Super Mario, but with Tux.

Non-GPL Games

• Infinity Explorer Get it now. Nice and clean GUI for reading dlg files, otherwise useless.
• DLTCEP Get it now. People I trust say it's a good editor, although I never use it. Still, I hear it's a need for area editing.
• Near Infinity Get it now. Good tool for editing basic IE files (ITM, SPL, CRE...). Unfortunately, its data is hopelessly outdated.
• WeiDU Get it now. The only good tool for editing IE games. Also taught me how to program.
• BG2. Why, you don't know what that is?
• IWD2. Not the best IE game, but still nice for a change.
• GTA:SA. Lots of fun into a single game - freeform racing, killing people, etc.
• GTA:VC. Not as good as GTA:SA, but still good for a change.
• Morrowind. Freeform RPG. Unfortunately, the diary sucks, making such a vast game as this utterly impossible. The map is also confusing at times, even with a guide.
• NFS:MW. More racing fun.
• NFS:U2. More racing fun.

Other...

• OpenOffice.org Get it now. Like Microsoft Office, but free. At least you can use that if somebody sends you a .pps file.
• Contents of c:\bin Get it now. Some boring script files.
• Contents of ~\bin Get it now. Some boring script files.
• Quick ShutDown Get it now. On Litestep/Ghost, you can't intuitively standby rather than shutdown (useful for faster loading). qsd -d is all it takes with this program to standby.

Firefox extensions

• No Script - whitelist Javascript/Java/Flash for all domains. Good for avoiding browser exploits.
• FlashGot - you can use an external DL manager, if you want to DL a file and Firefox opens the plugin rather than downloading it.
• TabBrowser Preferences. Middle-click = open in new tab is gold.
• IE Tab. For sites that need IE.
• Ref Control. Can visit witout hassle pages hotlinking when they shouldn't.
• Stumble Upon. Discover new sites and lose an year at Uni while reading them.
• Adblock. Useful for avoiding banners that are too large from screwing your pages (BWL banner).
• Site Advisor. Warns if sites have browser exploits, offer adware for download, or e-mail subscribes you to an unwanted newsletter.
• NetCraft Phishing Bar. Phishing defense, if you're stupid enough to click there in the first place.
• Card Games. Handful of solitaire games (surprise!). Time burning = good.
• Blockfall. Tetris-like, with tweaks (hexagonal or triangolar tiles, different number of tiles per piece). Time burning = good.
• Mines. Winmine, but also with hexagonal and/or triangolar tile, and with max to 7 mines per square. Time burning = good.
• Fasterfox. Faster loading of pages. Be careful to use only mild settings, or web-masters may decide to block you.

CygWIN packages

• base. Well, basic packages, needed to get it working :).
• xorg-x11-base. Graphics engine.
• make. Used to run make to compile programs.
• binutils. Something or something else.
• bzip2. Compression software that is more l33t than RAR or ZIP.
• gcc. GNU C Compiler.
• perl. Needed to compile WeiDU.
• zip. Compression program that doesn't require you to burn 30$ in Winrar and works on Windows.
• unzip. Uncompresses zip files.
• curl. CLI downloading of FTP and HTTP urls. If you're cool, you can use cookies and POST data to get yourself 300000 post count on your favorite forum.
• ocaml. Like the Win32 native package, but with more Unix bindings.
• openssh. Access resources on other computer, or access to your computer. Bah, too difficult to explain to Windows people.
• diff. Calculate differences between two versions of a file.
• patch. Applies differences calculated via diff.
• wmaker. Sort-of-cool windows manager.
• upx. Executable compression.
• fortune. Display sayings.
• tar. More compression coolness.

.bashrc

# Use case-insensitive filename globbing
shopt -s nocaseglob

# Don't put duplicate lines in the history.
export HISTCONTROL=ignoredups

# Misc :)
alias grep='grep --color'                     # show differences in colour

# Some shortcuts for different directory listings
alias ls='ls -hF --color=tty'                 # classify files in colour

alias bg2='cd /cygdrive/c/bg2'
alias iwd2='cd /cygdrive/c/iwd2'
alias weidu_dir='cd /cygdrive/c/Documents\ and\ Settings/Valerio/weidu'
alias themes='cd /cygdrive/c/Documents\ and\ Settings/Valerio/Dati\ Applicazioni/LiteStep'
alias winstall='/cygdrive/c/bin/winstall.exe'
alias weidu='/cygdrive/c/bin/weidu.exe'
alias make_test='make_test.sh'
alias make_weidu='make_weidu.bat'
alias make_weidu_doc='make_weidu_doc.bat'
alias winrar='/cygdrive/c/Programmi/WinRAR/WinRAR.exe'
alias matlab='octave --traditional'
alias clear='cmd.exe /c cls'
alias ftp='ncftp'

date
if [ -x /usr/bin/fortune ]; then
    /usr/bin/fortune -a     # makes our day a bit more fun.... :-)
fi

ConTEXT highliters

• BG2 Script
• WeiDU .d
• WeiDU .tp2
• Bash
• Batch
• Latext
• Makefile
• Ocaml

Console Config file

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<console change_refresh="20" refresh="100" shell="c:\cygwin\bin\bash.exe --login">

   <font>
      <size>8</size>
      <bold>false</bold>
      <italic>false</italic>
      <name>Lucida Console</name>
   </font>

   <position>
      <x>0</x>
      <y>50</y>
      <docked>none</docked>
      <snap_distance>-1</snap_distance>
      <z_order>regular</z_order>
   </position>

   <appearance>

      <hide_console>true</hide_console>
      <border>thin</border>
      <inside_border>2</inside_border>
      <taskbar_button>normal</taskbar_button>

      <size rows="max" columns="max" buffer_rows="9999" />
      <transparency alpha="220" inactive_alpha="150">none</transparency>
      <background>
         <color r="0" g="0" b="0" />
         <tint r="0" g="0" b="0" opacity="80" />
<!--         <image relative="true" resize="true">back.bmp</image> -->
      </background>

      <cursor>
         <color r="255" g="255" b="255" />
         <style>xterm</style>
      </cursor>
   </appearance>

   <behaviour>
      <mouse_drag>true</mouse_drag>
   </behaviour>

</console>