Basic, non-subscription software for Windows 11

[Santilli]

Hi
I'm really not a big fan of subscription software.
With 11, I'm searching for new software to do basic tasks that I had covered in the past.
PDF reading and creating?
Basic Word Processing documents, and printing?
VPN?
Downloading Torrents?
Music?
Photoshop type stuff: Looking at pictures, creating documents with pictures in them,
and saving them.
(Gimp)?
Still using VLC to view movies, and it does it with little processor use, and high quality...
Kind of wondering how you all are dealing with this. Plus, after a couple moves, a lot of the stuff I was using
is either lost, or 11 obseletes it.
Thank you for your suggestions...

 

[Mercutio]

I'm personally a Google Docs fan for my word processing and note-taking needs. LibreOffice exists and it works great unless you have specific demands for compatibility with Excel macros. Wordperfect Office still exists and does not require a subscription. I see it sold by Humble Bundle periodically, usually for about $30. You can also get a grey-market copy of (not-365) MS Office and either activate with the Massgrave script or from a key reseller.

PDFGear is free and does all the PDF Editing you'll ever want.

VPNs are something you should absolutely pay for. If you just want to have access to stuff at home, you can run Hamachi or Tailscale or an OpenVPN end point. If you want to do shady online stuff, don't mess with free options. Do not. No. Bad. Wrong.

Torrents? Have you never tried qbittorrent?

Not sure what you mean by Music, but WinAmp is free and does what I'd expect it to do.

Image Editing? Paint.net can do a lot. Photopea is an online clone of an older version of Photoshop. It can be installed as a Progressive Web App. Darktable can do digital lightroom tasks. Affinity Photo and its related offerings are very inexpensive for commercial software. XnView is nice for viewing. So is the Windows 7 Photo Viewer that's still on your PC.

VlC or MPC-HC are my go to video players. Both are free.

 

[Santilli]

Thank you for the help.
I use VLC.
Trying Photopad. Fast even on my laptop.
Going to try the others in time.
Trying One Picture Viewer. Is that the one you meant?
VPN using NordVPN, except on my laptop.
Only problem then is I can't use Hulu, which I do a LOT.
Never tried qbittorrent. Trying now.

PDFGear I had never heard of. THANK YOU. LOOKS GREAT.

Thank you for reinforcing what I am using. Have legal copies of Wordperfect Office, X6
and MSFT office 2006-7.
Google docs and Libreoffice are programs I haven't used much.
Going to have another look.
Thank you again..

 

[Santilli]

Any suggestions for something to replace PirateBay?

 

[sedrosken]

I'm also in favor of using an older copy of Office if you've got it around. Basic computer competence will keep you from getting got by Word macro viruses or whatever, the Office 07 compatibility pack will work as far back as Office 97, and it's very unlikely you'll regularly find files that get their formatting bungled in old MS Office. I just telephone activated my legit copy of Office 03 Professional on my T42 last month or the month before.

I'll defer to Merc on PDFGear, I still don't really have much need for editing a PDF. I vastly prefer SumatraPDF for anything to do with reading them, with the bonus of it also being a very good CBZ/CBR/EPUB/MOBI reader. It's lightweight and fast, I use an older version in KernelEx on Win98 on my Pentium MMX build and it is still extremely slick and speedy compared to even Acrobat 5, and it's more standard compliant than Acrobat 5 these days anyway.

+1 on paying for a good VPN. I'm partial to AirVPN, their rates are extremely reasonable, they're based outside of the Five Eyes countries, and their service works very well and at quite a clip too. They provide OpenVPN profiles for devices that can't run their native app. For VPN'ing into your LAN, I use OpenVPN, but if I were to do it all over again I'd probably try Wireguard first. I suffered through the server-side config and slamming my head directly into a brick wall until it just worked and I was able to export the config and restore it to whatever I ended up installing the server on, but I wouldn't do all that bullshit again now that my time is actually worth something.

+1 for qBittorrent, though other acceptable options would be Transmission or Deluge. I believe qBittorrent is what's available through a Ninite installer, so that's what I'm using right now.

Winamp is run by a crypto company these days I think. Or something. Whatever it was made me avoid it like the plague, though I do use 2.5e on the PMMX. I use foobar2000 myself. Very configurable, but a pretty sane (basic, even) configuration by default.

Paint.net is my go-to for basic image editing, I hear Krita is a very good art program as well. I'm no professional by any means so I'll leave it at that. I use IrfanView for viewing, mostly because it's always been good and I had some memory leak issues a while back from XnView. I actually got recommended IrfanView by some Windows XP tips book from O'Reilly publishing circa about the time it came out, maybe the SP1 era. Of course I was reading it in about 2009 or 2010. It's a no-brainer install on everything I use, even the 486 under Win95 has version 4.32 installed.

+1 for VLC. I wouldn't use anything else for watching videos, unless I'm trying to leverage hardware codecs, in which case I might be persuaded to use MPC-HC.

 

[Santilli]

I'm also in favor of using an older copy of Office if you've got it around. Basic computer competence will keep you from getting got by Word macro viruses or whatever, the Office 07 compatibility pack will work as far back as Office 97, and it's very unlikely you'll regularly find files that get their formatting bungled in old MS Office. I just telephone activated my legit copy of Office 03 Professional on my T42 last month or the month before.

I'll defer to Merc on PDFGear, I still don't really have much need for editing a PDF. I vastly prefer SumatraPDF for anything to do with reading them, with the bonus of it also being a very good CBZ/CBR/EPUB/MOBI reader. It's lightweight and fast, I use an older version in KernelEx on Win98 on my Pentium MMX build and it is still extremely slick and speedy compared to even Acrobat 5, and it's more standard compliant than Acrobat 5 these days anyway.

+1 on paying for a good VPN. I'm partial to AirVPN, their rates are extremely reasonable, they're based outside of the Five Eyes countries, and their service works very well and at quite a clip too. They provide OpenVPN profiles for devices that can't run their native app. For VPN'ing into your LAN, I use OpenVPN, but if I were to do it all over again I'd probably try Wireguard first. I suffered through the server-side config and slamming my head directly into a brick wall until it just worked and I was able to export the config and restore it to whatever I ended up installing the server on, but I wouldn't do all that bullshit again now that my time is actually worth something.

+1 for qBittorrent, though other acceptable options would be Transmission or Deluge. I believe qBittorrent is what's available through a Ninite installer, so that's what I'm using right now.

Winamp is run by a crypto company these days I think. Or something. Whatever it was made me avoid it like the plague, though I do use 2.5e on the PMMX. I use foobar2000 myself. Very configurable, but a pretty sane (basic, even) configuration by default.

Paint.net is my go-to for basic image editing, I hear Krita is a very good art program as well. I'm no professional by any means so I'll leave it at that. I use IrfanView for viewing, mostly because it's always been good and I had some memory leak issues a while back from XnView. I actually got recommended IrfanView by some Windows XP tips book from O'Reilly publishing circa about the time it came out, maybe the SP1 era. Of course I was reading it in about 2009 or 2010. It's a no-brainer install on everything I use, even the 486 under Win95 has version 4.32 installed.

+1 for VLC. I wouldn't use anything else for watching videos, unless I'm trying to leverage hardware codecs, in which case I might be persuaded to use MPC-HC

 

[Santilli]

Thank you for the reply. Running ESET NOD 32 right now, and it should be clean. Pay for that.

I haven't installed 2006 office on the laptop. Using WPX6 office.
PDFGear looks to work well for me.
Google docs is a solution I may try for awhile.

I will try SumatraPDF.

NordVPN was paid for, but didn't install on my desktop. When I get it back, that's something to address.

Winamp and I did not get along. Couldn't get it to find the disk with all the music on it. Guess I stay with VLC.
What music player has the best output quality?
foobar2000 will be getting a try, thanks.

I've got Gimp and Photopad now for photos. I like Photopad because it's more like PS 7, which I used for a LONG time.
Gimp feels like a bunch of photo genius guys came together, threw everything together, and let you figure out how to configure it, and not make it easy, but make it work, and do anything you could think of, free.
Thank you for the response.

 

[sedrosken]

Thank you for the reply. Running ESET NOD 32 right now, and it should be clean. Pay for that.

I wouldn't. We're far past the era in which it makes sense to pay extra for an antivirus. Windows Defender is 100% just fine.

NordVPN was paid for, but didn't install on my desktop. When I get it back, that's something to address.

Again -- don't. I'd heard Nord shares logs with anyone who asks, but that doesn't appear to be the case -- however, apparently they DO make it very difficult to cancel and they're cozy with Google, their clients making connections to their analytics servers all the while they're in use. If you're going to pay for one, my advice is to avoid the ones who have money to place ads and sponsored segments in YT vids. Something like, as mentioned, AirVPN, or Mullvad would be best.

What music player has the best output quality?
foobar2000 will be getting a try, thanks.

You answered your own question. In all seriousness output quality isn't a concern anymore. foobar2000 has an addon component available I believe for ASIO output for devices that support it, but in general, digital music is digital music and player software is practically indistinguishable on quality and has been since it's been the default to decode in full 44.1KHz 16-bit. Modern music players will do whatever insane settings and files your heart desires -- I think my DAC is good for 192KHz at 32-bit, and foobar supports it fine, but it really doesn't matter. You flat out won't notice a difference above 96KHz 24 bit, and the difference between it and 44.1/16 is inaudible to anyone less than an audio engineer on a professional level.

Edit: corrected my NordVPN slander to something that's actually more verifiable on further research

 

[Mercutio]

I use PrivateInternetAccess for VPN. Its status as logless has actually been tested in court and it has an extremely fast end point in Sweden, which is the main need I have. I use Tor and .onion addresses when I can but of course that does depend on what I'm looking to find.

AVG, Avira, Avast and Norton AV are all owned by the same umbrella company now. They are all equally worthless. Windows Defender is fine for home users. I do still like having Malwarebytes around for simple cleanups, but it's getting worse as well. Make sure you turn off Trusted Advisor and the setting for Marketing Notifications if you're going to use it.