Helpful software for composers, gamers, and the average computer user; with a special emphasis on free and open-source.

Table of Contents

 ‣ Music
  • DAW Software
  • VST Instruments
  • Soundfonts

 ‣ Gaming
  • Emulators
  • Abandonware
  • Jailbreaking tutorials

 ‣ Computers
  • Cutting Google out of your life
  • Essential Firefox addons
  • Essential computer software

Every great composer had to start somewhere. These resources will allow you to build your first studio and sound like a pro without having to spend anything.

Digital Audio Workstations
‣ Audacity v.3.0.2. The last version of the world's best FOSS audio editor before the bunglesome takeover by music technology monopoly, Muse Group.
‣ FL Studio. Free unlimited trial, full VST compatibility in trial mode. The only problems are that you will not be able to load existing project files, save presets in any Image-Line plugins, or export to MIDI. Also, Image-Line website will autoload when you exit.
‣ LMMS. Free and open source with some VST compatibility. Bigtime pro audio plugins won't work with it and compatibility with macOS is sort of sketchy. Supports SF2 (soundfont) files, compatible with Hydrogen *.H2SONG format.
‣ Hydrogen. Free and open source Fairlight CMI Page R style sample sequencer.

VST Instruments
‣ E-MU Emulator X3. Abandonware, full version of this once industry-leading software. Standalone and VST compatible, it might even work in LMMS. Windows only, but can be convinced with Wine to run on Linux. All the Sound Central instrument libraries are also abandonware and available from the Internet Archive.
‣ Plogue sforzando. Freeware soundfont player with some limited sampling abilities (drag a single WAV file onto the workspace to import it as audio). Standalone and VST2/VST3/AAX/AU compatible.
‣ DecentSampler. Freeware Kontakt-like sample bank player. Pianobook has a lot of free sample banks for it.
‣ Spitfire Audio LABS. Freeware sample bank player with loads of broadcast-quality sample banks, including a versatile full-keyboard strings ensemble and grand piano. You have to download the Spitfire Audio software first, then use it to grab the LABS banks you want from their database. Account required, but no payment info or personally-identifying data is asked for. VST2/VST3/AAX/AU compatible. Absolutely will not run properly on LMMS!

Soundfonts
‣ Polyphone. Soundfont editor. Not a VSTi, but might provide greater stability than sforzando for problematic soundfonts. Windows, Mac, and Linux.
‣ Internet Archive. The largest repository of soundfonts on the internet at the moment. Ignore all files except *.SF2, *.SFZ, and *.SFARK!
‣ Sadly, musical-artifacts seems to have been taken offline :(

Emulating console games on your computer gives you access to all the thousands of games that no giant corporate outfit is ever going to release again.

Emulators
‣ Atari.
    VCS/2600. Stella
    400/800/5200. Atari800 Emulator
    7800 SuperSystem. A7800
    ST. Hatari
    Lynx. Handy
    Jaguar. BigPEmu

‣ Sega.
    All 8- and 16-bit consoles and their add-ons. Kega Fusion
    Saturn. Mednafen
    Dreamcast. Flycast

‣ Nintendo.
    NES. Nestopia
    Super NES. Snes9x
    Game Boy/Color/Advance. VisualBoyAdvance-M
    Nintendo 64 (legacy video card). Project64 1.6-2.1 (anything newer than this is malware)
    Nintendo 64 (Vulkan-compatible video card). Simple64
    Nintendo 64 (video chipset). M64Py
    GameCube/Wii. Dolphin
    Nintendo DS. MelonDS
    Wii U. Cemu

‣ Sony.
    PlayStation. DuckStation
    PlayStation 2. PCSX2
    PlayStation 3. RPCS3
    PSP. PPSSPP
    PS Vita. Vita3K

‣ Microsoft.
    MS-DOS. D-Fend Reloaded
    Xbox. xemu

Jailbreaking tutorials
‣ Wii. Use the Letterbomb hack to unlock your standard Wii.
‣ Wii Mini. Just because you can't connect to the internet doesn't mean you can't hack your Wii Mini (warning: Linux is required for this process).
‣ Wii U. Follow the instructions precisely to reduce the risk of a brick to almost 0%.
‣ Nintendo 3DS. Instructions for all the various and sundry firmware (and hardware) revisions.

Abandonware
‣ MyAbandonware. Neglected and forgotten MS-DOS and Windows games.
‣ No-Intro Collection & Redump Hoard. Abandoned games released on consoles.
    CVLT_OF_MIRRORS. (Nintendo, Sega, Sony, Microsoft)
    AlvRo. (Nintendo, Sony)
    shinji257. (Nintendo, Sega, Sony)
    LongAccordian. (Atari, Nintendo, Sega)
    archiver_2020. (Nintendo)
    LoiltonJC. (Atari, Nintendo Sega)
    THE COLLECTOR. (Atari, Nintendo)

Corporate tech has shown how untrustworthy it really is. Cut out the corporations and preserve your privacy with this software.

Cutting Google out of your life for good!
‣ Mozilla Firefox. Replaces Chrome/Edge/Brave/Vivaldi/Opera.
‣ Invidious. Replaces YouTube.
‣ DuckDuckGo. Replaces Search.
‣ LibreOffice. Replaces Docs/Sheets/Slides.
‣ Proton. Replaces Gmail and Drive.
‣ OpenStreetMap. Replaces Maps.
‣ DeepL. Replaces Translate.
‣ cohost!. Replaces Blogger (2-day waiting period required for registering users; the process is not automated).
‣ Neocities. Replaces Sites.
‣ Joplin. Replaces Keep.
‣ FontSquirrel. Replaces Fonts.

Essential Firefox addons
‣ The Privacy Trifecta. The only step up from here is using a VPN!
    uBlock Origin. Blocks trackers, malware sites, and advertising.
    Privacy Badger. Uses the same techniques that the algorithms do to detect new trackers and block them.
    LocalCDN. Emulates corporate content delivery networks without actually accessing them.
‣ AdNauseam. Use instead of uBlock Origin on websites that kill adblock extensions (will not work on YouTube; use Invidious instead).
‣ SingleFile. Save an entire webpage as a single HTML document. Works better on static sites like this one, not so well on dynamic sites like Tumblr or Facebook.
‣ DownThemAll. Download all files of a particular type on a webpage.
‣ Stylus. For Tumblr users, utilises this script to restore your dashboard to its pre-Twitter appearance.
‣ Save WEBP as PNG or JPG. Allows you to save WEBP and GIFV in their proper computer-readable formats.

Essential computer software: Advanced Edition
‣ Linux Mint. Free and open source GUI operating system.
‣ Etcher. Recommended by the Linux Mint team for burning the install ISO to flashdrive.
‣ Mullvad VPN. €5 per month for complete, unchallenged privacy online.
‣ qBittorrent. Trustworthy torrent client, bindable to Mullvad VPN. Able to block pirate sites' leech/seed trackers if you're interested in that sort of thing.
‣ MakeMKV. DVD backup software. Unlimited 60-day trial period, or 35 USD registration for permanent unlock. Can't tell the difference between DVDs you own and DVDs you rent from the public library if you're interested in that sort of thing.
‣ JDownloader 2. Batch downloader for the Internet Archive and many other filehosts, sort of like DownThemAll on steroids.

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