open source gis - What free programs should every GIS user have installed?

Note: This question is specifically about installed, desktop software. There is another question specifically about free cloud-based software and services.

What free programs should every GIS user have installed?

I'm not necessarily referring to ESRI extensions or open-source products, but others that increase your productivity and ability to handle GIS tasks.

For example:

• Notepad++ for writing code snippets or editing XMLs. Paint.NET or GIMP for quick graphic editing.


• I use Google Tasks daily and I think it's worth mentioning. It's not GIS-specific, but it's a great tool, especially if used independently and on multiple projects where purchasing time-management software isn't reasonable.


• While it's not focused on GIS development, Rainmeter has proven to be very useful in terms of increasing productivity and monitoring system resources. I have created a GIS "sidebar" on my desktop that holds all of my development tools, as well as links to the online resources I used the most. It's nice to be able to use one location, rather than many (e.g. taskbar, bookmarks in browser, search engine).

Answer

---

• Google Earth, for viewing and creating KMZ/KML files


• Trimble Sketchup, for creating 3D models


• PointVue LE, Fusion/LDV, LAStools, for viewing LAS (LiDAR) files in 3D



• PyScripter, for Python scripting


• ArcGIS Diagrammer 10.0, for designing geodatabases and modifying schemas (ESRI XML workspace documents) (for 10.1 and for 10.2) (discontinued at 10.3)


• Visual Studio Express (C# or VB.NET), for .NET development


• SharpDevelop, alternative IDE to Visual Studio for .NET development -- also handy for converting between VB.NET and C#


• TortoiseSVN, TortoiseCVS, TortoiseGit, or TortoiseHg for version control on Windows


• Oracle SQL Developer, for poking around the back end of ArcSDE, running queries, etc.


• PrimoPDF, for printing/appending to PDFs


• LightShot, for quickly taking and uploading screenshots, or GreenShot which is similar but quite a bit more powerful/customizable (thanks @Mike Toews for mentioning it in one of the comments).


• VLC media player, for desktop video recording and video playback


• Open Broadcaster Software, for 2D and 3D video recording and screencasting (requires Windows Vista or newer)



• MSI Afterburner, for 3D video recording


• VirtualDub, for basic non-linear video editing


• XnView, GIMP, Paint.NET, and InkScape for various graphics tasks (each has their own strong suits)


• FileZilla, for FTP sites


• 7-Zip, for ZIP/RAR files


• UnxUtils - For a lightweight (native Win32) port of common GNU utilities like "tail" and "grep". Tail is great for displaying log files in realtime, while grep is a powerful (regular expressions-based) text search tool.


• Copy Path - A shell extension for Windows XP, Vista, 7, etc. that adds a "Copy Path" context menu item to files and folders in Windows Explorer. Makes short work of finding the full path (and also normalizes to UNC paths if it is on a mapped network drive). Great timesaver!