I’m always curious about how people set up their computers and what software packages they have, so I thought I would share mine. So you know where I’m coming from, I use Windows, Mac, and Linux nearly every day. Part of my goal is to make transitioning between these systems as seemless as possible, but the exact setup varies by operating system. For those of you on Windows, many of these can be installed with Ninite. I do a pretty good job of keeping this list up-to-date, so it should reflect pretty well my recommendations for current software.
Table of contents
- General
- Programming
- Terminals
- Shells
- Security
- Databases
- LaTeX Editor
- Hex Editor
- Video Conferencing
- Image Editing
- Photography
- Other
General
Text Editors
- I absolutely love this. Use it every day
- With package control
- Be sure to include the Markdown Editor
Evernote (Ninite)
- Really good but I just don’t use it that much anymore
- Good for long-term memory stuff, storing pictures (like receipts)
Office Suite
- Don’t love it, but great for sharing and multi-person editing
- I prefer Excel, but it’s free and I don’t use spreadsheets enough to buy Excel
LibreOffice (FOSS, Ninite)
- I prefer this to Google’s offerings but I don’t use this very much anymore.
Utilities
File Explorer
Commander One (Mac only)
- Dual-panel file explorer
- Much better than Finder
Path Finder (Mac only)
- Dual-panel file explorer
- Might become my new file explorer for Mac
- You might need to customize the hot keys
Files (FOSS, Windows)
- I recently started using this on Windows and like it
- Good use of tabs and windows
- More lightweight than Commander One, so I’m starting to prefer it
- This website offers good tips on how to get started with it
Searching for files
Agent Ransack (Windows)
- Perfect search tool. I strongly favor this over the (otherwise also very good) alternatives
- No equivalent for Linux or Mac, although there are decent built-in options
Screenshots
Greenshot (FOSS, Windows)
- This is a perfect screenshot tool. It does everything I want
For a mac I just use the built-in tool
- Note that if you want to select just a part of your screen, you should use
command + shift + 4
, then if you want to copy it straight to your clipboard (so you can paste it), holdcontrol
while you draw the outline
Package Managers
Homebrew (Mac)
- By far the best pacakge manager for MacOS
Unzipping
7-Zip (Ninite)
- The clear winner for Windows
Checking disk space
WinDirStat (Ninite, Window)
Web Browsers
I always have three or more web browsers on each computer. I use them for different things. All are very good.
- Google Chrome (Ninite)
- Mozilla Firefox (Ninite)
- Brave
Brower Extensions
Media
Spotify (Ninite)
- Seems to have won the music player market for now
VLC (FOSS, Ninite)
Audacity (FOSS, Ninite)
Cloud Storage
Google backup and sync (Ninite)
- Unlimited photos, very good app
- They keep renaming it, and I expect that to continue. It’s Google
Dropbox (Ninite)
- Poor website interface but other than that one of my favorites
Microsoft OneDrive (Ninite)
- This does syncing very well
Yes, I do use many different cloud services. All for slightly different purposes.
Productivity
Rectangle (FOSS, Mac only)
- Makes moving and resizing windows easy on a Mac
- Here are the default hot keys
Alfred (Mac only)
- In the running for one of the best productivity apps in existence
- This is probably my favorite app for the Mac
- Can be as simple or complex as you like
Karabiner-Elements (FOSS, Mac only)
- Great for remapping keys
- You can add the best Windows shortcuts to Mac with it
- I use this to make control jump over words
- Lots of useful things under complex rules
Programming
Python Distribution
Anaconda (FOSS)
- Now a no-brainer for data scientists
Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
VSCode (Ninite)
- Right now it’s VSCode and I’m very happy with it. I have used many of the alternatives and, in general, I think there are a lot of good options, but I like VSCode.
- Configuring your IDE that way you like it is essential, and VSCode is incredibly extensible.
- The clear winner in my opinion for R IDE, although I don’t use R much anymore so this could no longer be true
Version Control
- I think git has by-and-large won the version control market
- Used in partnership with GitHub
- Git is great but frustrating when you can’t figure it out (yes, I’ve done this)
- GitHub Desktop is amazing and makes git much more beginner-friendly
- I also recommend the GitHub CLI
- GitHub Desktop also has a version for Linux that I use
Terminals
Mac
- The clear winner for Mac and my overall favorite. I wish Linux and Windows had this
Windows
In Windows, I use a mix, mostly because none of them are perfect. Here’s a case (unlike browsers) that I would rather just have one
- Allows Unix style commands, makes switching between Mac and Linux and Windows much easier
- A top contender for the best terminal in Windows. This is a really good terminal
- Sometimes I like it and sometimes I don’t…
- I only use this for Anaconda stuff
Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)
- Promising, definite promising. Keep working on it Microsoft!
- Still a work in progress. Gets better all the time but still has room for improvement.
- Update: This has gotten much better. I’m now using this with zsh like I do on my Mac and am liking it a lot.
As you can see, I’m strewn across half a dozen terminals in Windows and have found the one on Mac. For me, nothing beats iTerm2.
Linux
- Favorite for Linux at the moment
Shells
- Default on Mac now
- Manage it with Oh My Zsh
- You can also install it on Windows
- Overall, I like it. Easy to customize
- Also zsh-syntax-highlighting is great
Terminal Add-ons
- Syntax highlighter
- I use it so often I alias it to the letter “c”
- it’s like
cat
but with colors
- This is the best way to get around a Unix terminal
Security
Malware Protection
I have no loyalty to any of these. I usually just go with the top free one recommended. I’ve also used paid ones in the past but I don’t know if it’s worth it.
Malware Bytes (Ninite)
Password Managers
- I feel like I’ve finally found the password manager that I’ve been looking for. Does what I want without being obnoxious
Managing Updates
Patch My PC (Windows only)
- I’m still looking for something to help me automatically update software on my computer. So far I’ve gone with patch my pc but there’s nothing I like
Messaging
Discord (Ninite)
- I can’t believe this took so long to be invented. This is how communication should be
- Beware: has ads, though I don’t find them particularly intrusive
Databases
- Not free but this is my favorite for databases
DBeaver (FOSS)
- My current favorite open source to Navicat
LaTeX Editor
- Requires a distribution with it. I like MIKTEX
- I also recommend pdflatex (through miktex)
Hex Editor
Video Conferencing
Zoom (Ninite)
Image Editing
Adobe Lightroom (Windows, Mac)
- As much as I’d like to say GIMP is just as good, it’s no match for the features of Lightroom. For someone who spends serious time editing photos, I don’t think there’s a better alternative.
GIMP (Linux)
- The Paint program I like on Windows doesn’t exist for Linux, so I use GIMP instead.
Photography
- Free tool from Microsoft to stitch images for panoramas. Works better than Lightroom
- Great for making star trails
- A really nice simple piece of software that does one thing well
- Online only, no download
Other
- Pretty good. I hope it keeps getting better as natural language processing improves
Google Earth (Ninite)
Speccy (Windows only)
- Get beautiful backgrounds every day
Inkscape (FOSS, Ninite)
Excalidraw (FOSS)
- Can download it but also words directly on the website
- Super simple to use
- Can also make graphs with it
- Still a pain on Windows Home. Wonderful for Linux and Mac
- just stick in somewhere in your path, C:\Windows
Sumatra PDF (Ninite)
- For reading pdfs
- I mainly just my web browser now
Wireshark (FOSS)
- The clear winner for free network protocol analyzers
- Cloud-hosted logging
Scroll Reverser (FOSS, Mac)
- Very nice tool to tracking GPU usage
- Includes which user is user the GPU, significant upgrade to
nvidia-smi
- Another nice tool for looking at GPU usage
Research
- The best app for keeping track of scientific papers
- Definitely use the browser extensions as well
New Tab Page
Evaluating
- Similar to Speccy
Sysinternals (Windows)
PowerToys (Windows)
- Might become my new package manager
Wox (Windows, FOSS)
- Like Alfred for Windows
- Default is Alt + Spacebar, which is a little different on the keyboard than Alfred.
Boop (Mac, FOSS)
Pixea - good for a scroll through images on a Mac
Static Type Checker - mypy
- I put my mypy config in ~/.mypy.ini
Honorable Mentions
- Free and feels like VSCode in many ways
- FOSS alternative to Navicat for PostgreSQL for me
Postico (Mac only)
- Not free but still very good