Here is a list of software that I use regularly. I do not pirate any software, and encourage students not to too! The use of non-licensed/pirated software is unacceptable! I use a mix of proprietary and free/open-source software. I like open-source, but I am allergic to open-source fundamentalists, who cringe at the mention of proprietary software (or Microsoft!). I believe in using the software that helps me get my work done with the highest quality in the least possible time!
Preferred OS
- Windows 11 Pro
Linux Mint 17.1, now over Ubuntu (Unity drove me away too!) - inside a VM (VMPlayer) Windows Bash/Ubuntu on Windows Subsystem for Linux!
I was a long-time Linux user but gave up at a point where I had to install patches to make MATLAB icons show up on the Desktop environment 😃. And increasing dependence on Excel pushed me to Windows!
WSL gives me the best of both worlds now. If only, if only, Windows search would work a bit better…
Package manager
- Ninite used to be a life-saver before, but now winget does it!
Proprietary
- Adobe Acrobat Professional
- Microsoft Office 365 (PowerPoint has come a long long way since 2007) incl. Microsoft Teams
- Zoom
- MATLAB R2020b
- Synergy, to share keyboard/mouse across systems
- Grammarly
Open Source/Freeware
- Sublime Text, have paid for it
- f.lux
- AutoHotKey
- Visual Studio Code
- CopyQ: superb clipboard manager
- Foxit Reader (denounced Acrobat Reader once they moved to the heavier DC)
- SumatraPDF
- DiffPDF - fantastic tool to compare PDFs
- OneNote: best-ever note-taking tool
ChromeBrave and Edge (Chromium-based)- Octave
- Everything - some respite from Windows search!
TeXStudio, which I now favour over TeXworks, thanks to Rob Hyndman (only Sublime Text/VS Code now!)- TeXLive, which I now favour over MikTeX
- JabRef - but moved to Zotero almost entirely
- PyCharm
- jDiskReport
- Cytoscape
- Inkscape
- ImageMagick
- VLC media player
- gVim
MendeleyZotero- Calibre
VMWare Player- WinSCP
- PureSync
- 7-zip (x64)
Proprietary software I have stopped using
- Adobe Illustrator (Inkscape/Tikz/TeX can together more than replace it!)
- Dreamweaver (use CMS systems for web pages; e.g. MediaWiki/Wordpress/Dokuwiki) or better still Jekyll/Hugo!
- EndNote (Use Zotero!)
- Notion.so
- Evernote free: for clipping the entire internet
Dynalist Pro - fantastic to-do list ClickUp works for everything now!- RescueTime premium - the most powerful tool to analyse and manage your time
LastpassBitWarden- Feedly Pro- the best replacement ever for Google Reader
Trello - an excellent project management tool
See Also