Interesting Windows(-only) software

interesting_windows.md

(footnote order ^{1 2 3 4})

Open-source

• Chocolatey
• OpenShell (successor of ClassicShell)
• Clink
• Notepad++
• 7zip
• Rufus
• AutoHotkey
• KeePass ¹
• cdrtfe 1.5.9.1 ⁵
• Sumatra PDF reader ⁶
• FarManager ⁷
• Cygwin, MinGW-w64, MSYS2
• Sleuthkit Autopsy ^{8 9}

Freeware

• BookRestorer 4.2.1 ³
• DjVu Solo 3.1 ³
• DjVuToy 3.15 ^{10 3}
• ComicEnhancer Pro 6.09 ^{10 3}
• ScanKromsator 5.92 ³
• STDU Viewer ⁴
• LTSpice ²
• CCleaner Recuva
• Vendor scanner programs (Canon, Epson)
• Huawei ThemeStudio ^{4 11}
• Paint.NET
• IrfanView

todo: add links

Commercial

• TSE Pro (The Semware Editor) ¹²
• Worksheet Crafter ¹³

Footnotes

1. Runs on Linux via Mono ↩ ↩²

2. Wine status: 🟢 Works reasonably well; tested features behave as expected. ↩ ↩²

3. Wine status: 🟡 Main interface shows up, but it is unclear whether all of the implemented functionality works as expected. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

4. Wine status: 🔴 Does not work well, or not at all. At least not with the author's version of Wine. ↩ ↩² ↩³

5. cdrtools frontend, shipping Jörg Schilling's original cdrtools 3.02a10, according to the cdrtfe website. cdrtools itself is compatible with Linux etc. Never use crappy old forks of cdrtools. Use the original instead, it's better. (BTW, you can pass INS_BASE to make to define the target directory when building cdrtools from source.) ↩

6. Uses the mupdf library under the hood, which is cross-platform. ↩

7. There is an independent beta Linux port far2l which might however differ from the original ↩

8. "Although Autopsy is designed to be cross-platform [...], the current version is fully functional and fully tested only on Windows." ↩

9. Autopsy seems to create a full disk image rather than on-demand extraction, making it impractical for large disks. You might be better off using the testdisk/photorec suite directly. ↩

10. By Jian Ma (aka stronghorse/strnghrs). See his app collections "newer but fewer" or "older but more" on Mediafire, or even more on Baidu (code: 4hie, sub-folder: 老马的原创空间 > 原创软件) (source). These programs generally seem to run well with Wine. There are also PdfToy and UnicornViewer by the same developer (described in blog posts), but they are not included in the public collections. I've heard they're "friendware", so maybe you can get them by approaching the developer personally (contact info). Also note the developer's interesting blog posts on his apps, DIY scanning, binarization, ScanTailor + comparison to ComicEnhancer, etc. Very fortunately, there is Google Translate. ↩ ↩²

11. Program to create custom themes for Huawei smartwatches ↩

12. An official Linux port is under way, but may not turn out 100% equivalent to the Windows version. Linux port seems to be freeware. ↩

13. Vendor does not release Linux builds, but suggests the program may run on Wine. ↩