More than 2 years have passed since I’ve assembled a list of the software I use. So I guess it’s time for an update.

• FreeBSD
• Linux
• OS X
• Windows 7
• Firefox Add-Ons
• Vim Plugins

Windows 7

• 7-zip
  Archiving and compression tool.

• Audacity
  Audio editing.

• Blender
  3D modelling/animation/rendering.

• Canon Digital Professional
  Canon RAW converter. Distributed with the hardware. Only updates are available on Canon’s website.

• clamwin
  Open-source anti-virus.

• Console
  The default Windows console is a blight. Console 2 is the remedy for that. Now if there just were a good shell for Windows…

• cwRsync
  I use rsync for all my local backups, so I needed a Windows version of it. cwRsync is exactly that.

• DAEMON Tools Lite
  Not having to grab physical discs, insert them into a drive and have the drive being really loud was reason enough for me to store images of all my discs on a big HDD. Then I use DEAMON Tools to mount the images if need be. Much quicker and convenient, but most of all: silent.

• Desktops + DesktopsUtil
  Desktops allows to create multiple desktops and access them via hotkeys. For me it’s simply a faster way to access applications directly, instead of having to press Alt-Tab varying/multiple times. DesktopsUtil is a tiny tool I wrote to control Desktops from the command-line.

• Debugging Tools for Windows
  The only debugger for Windows I need.

• f.lux
  Changes the colour-temperature of your screen during the night. I’m not sure if it is the actual colour change that helps me to fall asleep faster at night or if it is just learnt behaviour. Nonetheless, it works for me and that’s enough.

• Firefox ^[add-ons]
  Firefox is a web browser. Yes, really. For me it’s mostly about the Pentadactyl add-on.

• FishSpeak
  Voice-communication without bells and whistles. Low latency and no speeding-up/down like Skype does.

• FL Studio
  Digital Audio Workstation.

• GrafX2
  Old-school pixel graphics editor.

• grepWin
  Adds find+grep-like functionality to Windows.

• gVim ^[plug-ins]
  For a while Vim used to be only a text-editor for me. But over the years it became a philosophy and integral part of my life. That’s why a lot of items on this list are either vi-like or allow me to use Vim directly.

• IcoFX
  Icon editor.

• Inkscape
  Vector graphics.

• Lightworks
  Professional video editing software.

• Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator
  Tool to create/edit keyboard layouts.

• mirkes.de Tiny Hexer
  Hex editor. It’s primary web page is long gone, but it’s still out there.

• Photoshop CS
  Well, what is there to say about Photoshop? I still use the 10yr old CS, because I don’t see any reason to upgrade.

• Putty
  SSH client for Windows.

• Python 2&3
  While Perl is my primary scripting language I also do like Python. It’s used by a lot of programs and it’s especially useful for writing Vim plug-ins without diving into Vim-script too much.

• s3cmd
  Amazon S3 client for the command-line. Very useful for (semi-)automatic backups.

• SharpKeys
  Remap keys on the keyboard, which normally cannot be remapped through a custom keyboard layout.

• smartmontools
  I use smartmontools in a cron’ed script to monitor my SSDs and collect long-term stats.

• SpeedCrunch
  Perfect replacement for the default calculator.

• SportTracks
  AFAIK unmatched solution to keep track of your training.

• Steam
  Games and more. And I’m using the opportunity to link to GoG.com also.

• Strawberry Perl
  Perl for Windows.

• SumatraPDF
  Tiny and fast PDF viewer.

• TortoiseHg
  GUI for Mercurial. For some things its more convenient than using the command-line.

• vifm
  Vi-like file manager for the console. Among other things it makes mass-renaming a no-brainer.

• VLC
  Used to be my video player of choice only. Then I started to listen to podcasts with it, because it allowed me to increase the playback speed. This is most appreciated if the host/guest is talking annoyingly slow. So it also became my general audio player.

• WinDirStat
  Renders a graphical view of the files and their sizes on your disks. Great to find what is taking up a lot of space or where gazillions of files are located.
  Rant: WinSxS really is an ugly concept.

• XnView
  Image-viewer and conversion, editing, batch-processing, …

OS X

• Audacity
  Audio editing.

• Blender
  3D modelling/animation/rendering.

• f.lux
  Changes the colour-temperature of your screen during the night. I’m not sure if it is the actual colour change that helps me to fall asleep faster at night or if it is just learnt behaviour. Nonetheless, it works for me and that’s enough.

• Firefox ^[add-ons]
  Firefox is a web browser. Yes, really. For me it’s mostly about the Pentadactyl add-on.

• FishSpeak
  Voice-communication without bells and whistles. Low latency and no speeding-up/down like Skype does.

• GrafX2
  Old-school pixel graphics editor.

• Grand Perspective
  Renders a graphical view of the files and their sizes on your disks. Great to find what is taking up a lot of space or where gazillions of files are located.

• HexFiend
  Hex editor.

• homebrew
  Packet manager for the UNIX side of OS X.

  • htop-osx
    Replacement for top.

  • smartmontools
    I use smartmontools in a cron’ed script to monitor my SSDs and collect long-term stats.

  • Vim ^[plug-ins]
    For a while Vim used to be only a text-editor for me. But over the years it became a philosophy and integral part of my life. That’s why a lot of items on this list are either vi-like or allow me to use Vim directly.

  • vifm
    Vi-like file manager for the console. Among other things it makes mass-renaming a no-brainer.

• Inkscape
  Vector graphics.

• iTerm2
  While OS X’s Terminal has mostly caught up with iTerm2, it fails epically in one regard: It uses the annoying fullscreen-mode of OS X 10.7 and above, instead of just making the window fullscreen and always-on-top like iTerm2 does. So Cmd-Tabbing is much quicker with iTerm2.

• KeyRemap4MacBook
  Allows me to remap some keys to make German and US International Keyboards more like the US Keyboard. More about that in another post.

• MacVim
  Often has rendering bugs, where parts of the text wouldn’t update, so I don’t use MacVim for getting things done anymore. I rather use Vim, installed via homebrew, on the command line. However I still keep MacVim around and have it open files by default. Wouldn’t want to be thrown into XCode or TextEdit every time I open a code or text file.

• Osirix
  A professional DICOM (medical images) viewer.

• PCKeyboardHack
  I use it to map Escape to the CapsLock key.

• Perl
  Call me strange, but I really like Perl. (Like many others.)

• Plot
  For the rare occasion that I need to visualise a function Plot comes in handy.

• Python 2&3
  While Perl is my primary scripting language I also do like Python. It’s used by a lot of programs and it’s especially useful for writing Vim plug-ins without diving into Vim-script too much.

• SpeedCrunch
  Perfect replacement for the default calculator.

• SynalizeIt!
  A more sophisticated hex editor than HexFiend.

• TortoiseHg
  (Dependencies installed via homebrew)

• Ukelele
  Edit/create OS X keyboard layouts.

• VirtualBox
  I only need it to run a Windows XP VM to access my old scanner.

• VLC
  Used to be my video player of choice only. Then I started to listen to podcasts with it, because it allowed me to increase the playback speed. This is most appreciated if the host/guest is talking annoyingly slow. So it also became my general audio player.

• Xee
  Quick and tiny image-viewer, that I find more intuitive to use than Preview.

• XtraFinder
  Makes the default Finder a bit more useful. I still prefer to use vifm if I can.

FreeBSD

(Text-mode only via SSH)

• DenyHosts
  Helps to keep the daily security mails short and sweet.

• getmail + maildrop
  My MRA and MDA of choice.

• Ledger
  Finance software that uses a text file for its data. In other words: allows me to keep my ledger within Vim. Instant win.

• Lynx
  Text-based web browser. I primarily use it to render HTML-mails in mutt.

• MCabber
  XMPP client with OTR support.

• Mercurial
  When I made the jump to a DVCS, it was easier to use (coming from Subversion) and had better Windows support. Nowadays the differences to git are minute.

• mutt
  For me it’s the best MUA. Fast, configurable and allows me to compose my mails with Vim.

• Newsbeuter
  Crashes sometimes and consumes a huge amount of memory, but it is highly configurable.

• Perl
  Call me strange, but I really like Perl. (Like many others.)

• Polipo
  Caching web-proxy. A bit unstable.

• Python 2&3
  While Perl is my primary scripting language I also do like Python. It’s used by a lot of programs and it’s especially useful for writing Vim plug-ins without diving into Vim-script too much.

• smartmontools
  I use smartmontools in a cron’ed script to monitor my SSDs and collect long-term stats.

• Tarsnap
  Secure backups. Can’t laud it enough. I really do like Tarsnap.

• tmux
  Terminal multiplexer.

• vifm
  Vi-like file manager for the console. Among other things it makes mass-renaming a no-brainer.

• Vim ^[plug-ins]
  For a while Vim used to be only a text-editor for me. But over the years it became a philosophy and integral part of my life. That’s why a lot of items on this list are either vi-like or allow me to use Vim directly.

Linux

(Used for development/testing only)

• Firefox ^[add-ons]
  Firefox is a web browser. Yes, really. For me it’s mostly about the Pentadactyl add-on.

• htop
  Replacement for top.

• Perl
  Call me strange, but I really like Perl. (Like many others.)

• Python 2&3
  While Perl is my primary scripting language I also do like Python. It’s used by a lot of programs and it’s especially useful for writing Vim plug-ins without diving into Vim-script too much.

• SLiM
  Simple display manager for X11.

• smartmontools
  I use smartmontools in a cron’ed script to monitor my SSDs and collect long-term stats.

• TortoiseHg
  GUI for Mercurial. For some things its more convenient than using the command-line.

• urxvt
  Unicode enabled fork of rxvt, a terminal emulator.

• vifm
  Vi-like file manager for the console. Among other things it makes mass-renaming a no-brainer.

• Vim ^[plug-ins]
  For a while Vim used to be only a text-editor for me. But over the years it became a philosophy and integral part of my life. That’s why a lot of items on this list are either vi-like or allow me to use Vim directly.

• wmii
  Tiled window manager.

Firefox Add-ons

• 1-click Youtube Video Downloader
  Enables me to download longer videos for watching them offline and, thanks to VLC, with increased playback speed.

• CookieMonster
  Change cookie-settings for the current site via the context menu.

• DownThemAll!
  Mass-download things from a webpage.

• Flashblock
  I’d prefer not having Flash installed at all. But until then Flashblock makes the whole thing more bearable.

• NoScript
  Makes things faster and less annoying. However, it often breaks even the simplest of links. W.T.F.?!
  Rant: The web’s broken in my eyes, since people use JavaScript instead of a simple anchor-tag. It’s all going to JS-hell in a handbasket…

• PassingPix
  To conveniently submit things to PassingPix.

• Pentadactyl
  Makes Firefox Vi-like.

• Stylish
  Helps to turn off distracting, annoying or time-wasting elements on web-pages. Yes I’m talking about comments and suggestions on YouTube!

• Tree Style Tab
  Having tabs on the side instead of the top is much more reasonable, since wide screens are the norm. It wastes less vertical space and allows more and wider tabs to be at the screen at once. Also they can be displayed hierarchical which is great.

Vim plugins

• a.vim
• EasyMotion
• FuzzyFinder
• mru.vim
• vim-seek
• Surround
• UltiSnips
• vimwiki