Installing extra applications for Windows 10

Other Windows 10 related notes

Misc notes

You don't have to install all the applications mentioned of this page. Just pick the ones you need

The listed applications are not in alphabetical order. They are sometimes grouped by similar usage

The applications will be installed by default on the C: disk. You may want to check the free space available on C: from time to time (remembering that you need space there for the system, system updates, what you store on your desktop, etc…)

Some installers will let you choose where you want to install the programs

Some applications can be installed directly from the Microsoft Store but you will have to download and execute the installer for most of the applications listed below

You are probably running the 64bit version of Windows 10, so download the 64bit version of the installers, if you have to choose!

Getting the list of installed applications

Firefox and Thunderbird

Thunderbird

Firefox

Once you have installed FF and/or TB, you should follow the instructions for moving and restoring FF and TB. You should probably even read these before moving to a new computer, if you want to restore the FF and TB settings you had

TB settings

FF settings

Google Chrome

Install Chrome if you think that you may need an extra browser (besides the builtin Edge and the preinstalled Firefox) to test the content of some web pages or to use some videoconferencing software

Notepad++

Notepad++ is a free source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages

Notepad++ cheat sheet

Image (bitmap) editors

The editors listed below go from the simplest to the most powerful (but harder to use)

Snip & Sketch

French : Outil Capture d'écran

For simple screenshots and/or annotating images, you can launch the preinstalled Snip & Sketch (Capture d'écran et croquis) tool from the Start menu

Shortcut for taking a screenshot (and annotating it): Win + Shift + S

You can only annotate (and save) the screenshot you have just taken. You can't open (and annotate) an existing image file

Autodesk SketchBook

For freehand drawing (especially if you have a tablet or touch screen), you can use the preinstalled Autodesk SketchBook

SketchBook seems to be free (now), but there is also a page that mentions that SketchBook for Enterprise is free for education

XnView Classic

JYP recommends using XnView Classic rather than MP, because of the very useful slideshow feature of the Classic version

XnView Classic is an efficient image viewer, browser and converter for Windows. This software is really simple to use and totally free for personal use. It supports more than 500 image formats

Download page

Paint.net

Paint.NET is an image and photo editing software for PCs that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools.

You can either download Paint.net for free (and choose to make a donation), or buy it from the Windows 10 store (the payment is the donation)

GIMP

GIMP is a cross-platform image editor available for GNU/Linux, OS X, Windows and more operating systems. Whether you are a graphic designer, photographer, illustrator, or scientist, GIMP provides you with sophisticated tools to get your job done. You can further enhance your productivity with GIMP thanks to many customization options and 3rd party plugins.

Get this powerful image editor only if you need a free replacement of Adobe Photoshop and you have time to read tutorials! The image editors list above should be enough for your needs

Image (vector) editors

Dia

Dia is roughly inspired by the commercial Windows program 'Visio,' though more geared towards informal diagrams for casual use. It can be used to draw many different kinds of diagrams. It currently has special objects to help draw entity relationship diagrams, UML diagrams, flowcharts, network diagrams, and many other diagrams.

Inkscape

Inkscape is professional quality vector graphics software […] for creating a wide variety of graphics such as illustrations, icons, logos, diagrams, maps and web graphics.

Inkscape uses the W3C open standard SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) as its native format, and is free and open-source software. Inkscape has sophisticated drawing tools with capabilities comparable to Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW and Xara Xtreme. It can import and export various file formats, including SVG, AI, EPS, PDF, PS and PNG.

Inkscape can theoretically be used as a replacement of Adobe Illustrator

SVG (not ps/pdf) is the native format of Inkscape. If you know that you may have to alter/update a vector image later, you may want to save it in .svg format as well as .pdf, when possible.

Data visualization

The following applications allow you to visualize NetCDF files without using a programming language (and probably more). You can of course also use Python

Panoply

https://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/panoply/ plots geo-referenced and other arrays from netCDF, HDF, GRIB, and other datasets. Panoply is a cross-platform application that runs on Macintosh, Windows, Linux and other desktop computers.

Vapor

NCAR Vapor is the Visualization and Analysis Platform for Ocean, Atmosphere, and Solar Researchers. VAPOR provides an interactive 3D visualization environment that can also produce animations and still frame images. VAPOR runs on most UNIX and Windows and OSX systems equipped with modern 3D graphics cards.

Paraview

ParaView is an open-source, multi-platform data analysis and visualization application. ParaView users can quickly build visualizations to analyze their data using qualitative and quantitative techniques. The data exploration can be done interactively in 3D or programmatically using ParaView’s batch processing capabilities.

Backup software

You probably think that just copying a folder from time to time with a drag 'n drop is enough, but this becomes difficult to manage when the folder size grows and you have several folders to manage

There are several types of backup (mirror, incremental or differential imaging, cloning, 2 way synchronization, etc…) of different sources (full disks, partitions, directories, …) to/from different destinations (external disk, cloud, …)

Our basic need is to mirror one source directory on a local disk to a destination directory on an external disk (check the users' manuals if you need more features). This can be easily done with SyncBack

Copy all the files of the source to the destination. All the files are copied on the first run, only the new/changed files are copied on subsequent runs.

Warning! if a file is not on the source anymore, mirroring will automatically remove it from the destination! The idea is that the destination should be an exact copy of the source! If that's not what you want, check the backup (rather than mirror) options.

Note: List of backup software (wikipedia)

SyncBack

You can use the SyncBack family of products to backup, synchronize, and restore data files.

The SyncBackFree version should be enough for easily mirroring directories, or groups of directory to an external disk, but you can compare the features available in SyncBackPro, SyncBackSE and SyncBackFree: summary comparison and full comparison.

It is very important to backup your work regularly. Check the Using SyncBack page for more details.

Macrium Reflect

Macrium Reflect is image based backup and cloning software. Macrium Reflect creates an accurate and reliable image of a hard disk or the partitions on the disk. In the event of a partial or complete system loss, you can use this image to restore the entire disk, one or more partitions, or even individual files and folders.

The Free Edition can be used for imaging or cloning a full disk

Check the Product Comparison to determine the available features

Tutorial on Windows Central

rsync (Linux !)

rsync is a convenient Linux command that can be used for mirroring a directory hierarchy to another location on the same computer (e.g. a removable disk) or a remote server. It can also be used on a Windows 10 computer where WSL + Ubuntu is installed! On Windows, it is easier to use the mirroring option of SyncBack.

Mirroring means in the rsync case that we will only copy new or changed files. The first copy may take some time, but will be much faster afterwards, when only a few files have been created/changed and have to be copied. Or, if a copy is interrupted, the files already copied will not be copied a second time.

Warning! It is easy to lose files with rsync if you use the wrong syntax or options! Mirroring no files by mistake, to a place where there are files, with the --delete option, means that existing files or whole directory hierarchies will be deleted! Be sure to understand the basic options, and use --dry-run (simulate what would be done) and -v (verbose) before performing an actual synchronization Having a trailing / or not behind a directory name makes a difference! Use man rsync for more options and details…

Some rsync options

Use man rync for more details and options

-a, --archive archive mode; equals -rlptgoD (no -H,-A,-X)
-r, --recursive recurse into directories
-l, --links copy symlinks as symlinks
-p, --perms preserve permissions
-t, --times preserve modification times
-g, --group preserve group
-o, --owner preserve owner (super-user only)
--devices preserve device files (super-user only)
--specials preserve special files
-D same as --devices --specials
-v, --verbose increase verbosity
-z, --compress compress file data during the transfer
-W, --whole-file copy files whole (w/o delta-xfer algorithm)
-C, --cvs-exclude auto-ignore files in the same way CVS does
RCS SCCS CVS CVS.adm RCSLOG cvslog.* tags TAGS .make.state .nse_depinfo *~ #* .#* ,* _$*
*$ *.old *.bak *.BAK *.orig *.rej .del-* *.a *.olb *.o *.obj *.so *.exe *.Z *.elc *.ln
core .svn/ .git/ .hg/ .bzr/
--delete delete extraneous files from dest dirs
-n, --dry-run perform a trial run with no changes made
-c, --checksum skip based on checksum, not mod-time & size

Examples

We have an existing source /mnt/h/test/ directory that we would like to mirror to another disk or destination, as /mnt/i/test/.
i.e we want to recursively copy the content of test/ to a test/ directory somewhere else

Show what would be done, but do not do it (yet)
Note that we have a trailing / after the source directory, and NO / after the destination directory
rsync --dry-run -avW -C /mnt/h/test/ /mnt/i/test

Note: using -C makes sure that files and directories considered as temporary will not be copied.
Do NOT use the -C option if you really want to copy all the files!

Same as above, without the verbose mode. Probably nothing will be displayed on the screen
rsync --dry-run -aW -C /mnt/h/test/ /mnt/i/test

Actually copy the files, without displaying anything
rsync -aW -C /mnt/h/test/ /mnt/i/test

Actually mirror the content of the source directory.
Warning! Warning! the --delete option will make sure that files present in the destination directory, but not in the source directory will be deleted! Be careful, make some tests and use the --dry-run option before using this
rsync -aW -C --delete /mnt/h/test/ /mnt/i/test

PuTTY & Pageant

PuTTY is a free implementation of SSH and Telnet for Windows and Unix platforms, along with an xterm terminal emulator.

In other words, PuTTY is an easy to use ssh client for Windows that will allow you to connect to the LSCE servers with a very efficient text terminal

If you hare in a hurry and PuTTY is not installed yet, you can directly use the ssh provided with Windows 10! Right click on the Start menu and select Powershell Type ssh user@server It is still useful to install Putty, because this will allow you to configure sessions, and then connect very easily to other computers later. And use efficient copy-paste! If you have installed WSL+Ubuntu on Windows 10, you can just open a terminal and type ssh user@server to connect to the server

Read the Installing and configuring Putty page to learn the best way to use Putty (and VcXsrv if you have to display remote graphical windows)

You should probably also have a look at the understanding and using ssh correctly if you want to understand basic ssh options, and how PuTTY and VcXsrv interact

VcXsrv Windows X Server

Check the VcXrv installation and configuration section on the WSL+Ubuntu page

WinSCP

WinSCP is a popular SFTP client and FTP client for Microsoft Windows! Copy file between a local computer and remote servers using FTP, FTPS, SCP, SFTP, WebDAV or S3 file transfer protocols.

WinSCP will automatically use the private ssh key stored in Pageant (installed with Putty) for authentication, if Pageant is running

You can use WinSCP to transfer files between your computer and ssh1 when you are outside LSCE.

When you are on the LSCE network, you should directly use local folders on the LSCE servers

If you have installed WSL+Ubuntu, you can directly use scp from a terminal!

Zotero

Zotero is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share research

ownCloud

ownCloud Desktop Client enables you to connect folders on your desktop to your corporate ownCloud Server. With it you can create folders, organize your local ownCloud directory, and keep the contents of your local directory synced with your ownCloud server. Anything shared with you will also appear in your home directory on your desktop, and changes will be automatically synced.

ownCloud is compatible with:

the CNRS "mycore" cloud

the LSCE "sharebox" cloud

VLC media player

VLC is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.

7-Zip

7-Zip is a file archiver with a high compression ratio

Supported formats:

Packing / unpacking: 7z, XZ, BZIP2, GZIP, TAR, ZIP and WIM

Unpacking only: AR, ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, CramFS, DMG, EXT, FAT, GPT, HFS, IHEX, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MBR, MSI, NSIS, NTFS, QCOW2, RAR, RPM, SquashFS, UDF, UEFI, VDI, VHD, VMDK, WIM, XAR and Z.

Python

Depending on which kind of data, you can install a Python distribution either directly in Windows, or in the Linux section (WSL + Ubuntu or some other Linux flavor) of the computer

CDAT

CDAT is a Python distribution for the climate scientist. It can only be installed in the WSL+Ubuntu part of a Win10 computer. Check the installation instructions for 8.1 (or later)

Anaconda

The Anaconda Python distribution can be installed either directly in Win10, or in the WSL+Ubuntu part of Win10. CDAT (above) uses Anaconda for its installation

Canopy

The Enthought Canopy Python distribution can be installed either directly in Win10, or in the WSL+Ubuntu part of Win10.

Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)

Check the WSL page if you want to run Ubuntu (or another Linux) on your Win10 computer!!

More applications

Samsung phone users

Smart Switch

Samsung Smart Switch seamlessly transfers contacts, photos, music, videos, messages, notes, calendars and more to virtually any Samsung Galaxy device.

Can be used for backing up your phone

SideSync

SideSync is a new PC-Mobile solution that enables screens, windows, and data to be shared easily. Share between a PC and a Galaxy smartphone, or between a Galaxy Tab and Galaxy smartphone