Whats your favorite free open source software that everyone should try?
Whats your favorite free open source software that everyone should try?
Lemmy seems like the right place to ask this. Personally I've really enjoyed Gurgle, which is a FOSS Wordle clone app.
Libre office, a great office option. I've been using it for 15 years. Foreshadowing
VLC, Plays media. It's a tank. Also Highways use VLC to mark many winter potholes.
Linux, It's not that hard to use anymore.( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
WINE, not just for one night stands! it's great for running Windows Stuff on Linux.
Also, and my personal favorite, your mom is free and open source. Mic Drop going to bed. With your mom. Wasn't expecting that twice were you? Well, neither was your mom. Got 'em.
OpenStreetMap (OSM) is an open-source (open data) project. OpenStreetMap is a collaborative mapping platform that allows users from around the world to contribute, edit, and use geographical data. The data and software behind OSM are open-source, which means they are freely available for anyone to view, use, modify, and distribute under open licenses.
The data contributed to OpenStreetMap islicensed under the Open Database License (ODbL). This license allows for the free use of the data as long as proper attribution is given and any derivative works are also made available under the same open license.
I got addicted to using and contributing on OSM daily and enjoy spending my time improving the map. In fact a lot of closed source maps such as Google Maps and Apple Maps pull from some of the OSM data, so everyone gets to benefit from contributions.
In case you're looking into this out of curiosity, check out the Beginner's Guide and try to verify that the data around your neighborhood is correct and maybe add a point of interest (PoI) or a street name or two. Beware, it gets addictive quite fast.
OSM is also used for humanitarian use thanks to the HOT tasking platform. For example the majority of relief effort in Turkey's February earthquake, Sri Lanka flooding, and the recent Marocco earthquake. Mapping can literally help save lives. It's fun and easy too!
Jellyfin, it's pretty simple and if you have a spare computer, a decent connection (and by decent I don't mean even a decent one by 21th century standards, I still have a 100/10mbps ADSL) and a 2/4tb Hdd, you can host your own FOSS Netflix/Hulu with all the shows you want, if you're in a county where "sailing the seven seas" is a huge deal, the only subscription would be a cheap VPN or even better something like real debrid.
Home Assistant. If you ever want to do home automation properly, this is the way. Works with pretty much anything—Zigbee, zWave, BT LE, MQTT—while keeping things manufacturer agnostic, local, private and highly responsive (your commands don't need to go through some server 3000 km away and won't have ugly 1 second latency as a result).
DAVx⁵ and Radicale to sync contacts and calendars between devices without snooping middle-men.
Syncthing to sync any files between devices. Works remotely, too, thanks to Syncthing relays.
Navidrome for your personal music streaming service.
Debian, Docker, Docker Compose and Portainer as the backbone to run all your services.
And many others.
For anyone doing academic writing, I use a combination of Logseq, Zotero, and Zettlr. All open source. Collect articles in Zotero. Annotate and take notes on those articles in Logseq with absolutely amazing PDF annotation tools. Write draft in Zettlr which allows me to enter Zotero citations and reference Logseq notes.
Bonus shoutout to LibreOffice for exporting and formatting the final draft. And that’s your recipe for one all-natural, organic, FOSS thesis!
PC:
- Libreoffice -- the best, most customisable and powerful office software available
- Onlyoffice -- alternative for less-advanced users who are used to the UI of contemporary MSO
- Zotero -- great bibliography manager useful when writing scientific papers: lets you collect books, journal articles and all other types of sources, automatically finds full text PDFs online, fills in metadata and then inserts dynamic citations in thousands of different, customisable styles. Also generates bibliographies. Works with LO, MSO and GDocs
- Caprine -- clean Facebook Messenger client (web wrapper based)
- TeXStudio -- my LATeX editor of choice; integral (ha!) when formatting maths-heavy documents
Android:
- Cloudstream --- free streaming app, works with SFlix, Sodastream, PH and other legally dubious streaming providers. Takes some trickery to set up though.
- Osmand --- OpenStreetMap client with offline (optional online) navigation and plenty of plugins; loads of customisation
- Material Files --- nicest file manager, especially for rooted devices
- Showly --- freemium open-source TV and film tracker. Syncs with Trakt.tv
- Simple Gallery --- out of all Simple Apps by this developer, this is the only one which is in fact superior to its alternatives. Highly customisable, powerful, lightweight gallery app
Every other classic board game should have a game client as good as lichess.
But, speaking of games, Simon Tatham's puzzle collection.
I'll skip the common ones that are frequently mentioned to give Zim some love! Zim is a desktop wiki app which, as implied, allows you to make your own private wiki which is invaluable for my writing and worldbuilding hobby.
Lemmy
A little different from many of the things mentioned, but...
- Tales of Maj'Eyal - an open source Roguelike with a ton of content. There are paid expansions but the engine and base game are FOSS.
- 0 A.D. - AOE-like
- Battle for Wesnoth - a really fun TBS
- gzdoom + freedoom - while the assets aren't quite on par with the commercial Doom assets, this will allow you to play through any Doom mod/TC
- Hugo has been a phenomenal tool for building light-weight, static websites as I've been working to drop WordPress
- KMyMoney is a life altering personal finance manager that has made budgeting and saving so much more achievable
- KeepassXC is what I use for all of my passwords and important information relative to accounts
- Aegis is also a tool I've been using for 2FA after seeing the benefits of that kind of model
Besides software mentioned by others:
NeoVim: The single most perfect editor of all time.
QOwnNotes: A pretty good note taking app for markdown notes with tons of extension and options. But tbh Obsidian is still the gold standard.
SSH: It's everywhere. Controlling my servers from remote is a trivial task. Also, it does tunneling.
Syncthing: Syncing files around has never been easier than with syncthing. And it's decentralized, encrypted, private.
Kitty: A great Terminal Emulator
Firefox+uBlock (web browser)
MEncoder (video encoder)
OBS (screen recording and streaming software)
Inkscape (vector illustration software)
Mumble (VoIP chat room server/client/protocol)
Julia (programming language great for scripting and mathematics)For Unix systems:
Wezterm (terminal multiplexor)
i3 (window manager)Big fan of Krita as a painting program. You've gotta learn some different hotkeys and all that, but it's better laid out and easier to learn than like, GIMP or Blender ime. Lots of good tutorials, plenty of free brushes, quite customizable. I really like its alpha-locking and groups as an alternative system to clipping masks.
Obtainium - - app with which you can download & update apps (apk's) directly from github/gitlab/etc. (and even f-droid).
Absolutely awesome 👍
i have a few all time favourites on android:
-Aves, a really good gallery app
-openboard, awesome keyboard without tracking software
-fairmail, really good email app
-liftoff for lemmy
-dolphin emulator, if your phone can run it
-SD maid SE, one of those storage cleaner thingys
-syncthing, for making backups over WiFi
there's even more i use on windows. if you look hard enough, you will find an alternative to every program you're using.
I'm not as well versed in FOSS as other posters but FOSS Android apps that I learned about on Lemmy/kbin and am enjoying:
AntennaPod (podcast player)
Inoreader (RSS reader)
Newpipe (YT player)
Bitwarden (password manager)
LibreraFD (PDF and other format reader, substitute for OverDrive)
kbin (I subscribe to Lwmmy communities thru kbin, also)And I rely in Firefox with UBO, as other posters have mentioned.
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KeePassXC, it is a client for KeePass password management, works great
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Krita, KDE's awesome drawing program
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Firefox and its derivatives
Over the years I got bored of repirating photoshop and now I just use GIMP.
I'm not exactly a graphic designer by any means but there's very little I can't do with GIMP. Seems to just run better and more intuitive than photoshop for me too.
Ardour. Great digital audio workstation. It's on par with the proprietary options, would choose it any day over Cubase or Reaper. Listen to some music I made in it!
Top two for me are Freetube and KDE Connect.
Sharing files (and all the other features) with KDE Connect across 2 devices on same network has never been so easier.
If you spend a lot of time in the terminal zellij is a cool alternative to tmux.
I'll second Openstreetmap, I use it exclusively. There's also a set of lightweight versions that are locally hosted, so I use osmap.nl if I want to quickly look at where something is. It also forces the names to the language of the server, so you can use it to improve a second language.
I use an adblocker on my phone called Blokada. It blocks adverts in apps as well as on websites, so I don't get adverts if I play something like Words With Friends for example. Also blocks adverts on Youtube which is an absolute godsend. Advertising is one of the few things I get irrationally upset about.
I make music using LMMS. It has its limitations but it's quite versatile if you're handy with it. This song was made in it for example: https://on.soundcloud.com/dTqgb
I use Betterbird for email on my PC. It's Spartan in design, which is what I'm into, and you can sign in with multiple addresses. I use K-9 Mail on my phone which has the same advantages.
I use an app called Saisonkalender to look at what veg is in season. Quite niche but it's handy for ordering ingredients for soup of the day in work.
I have a game on my phone called Lexica which is basically Boggle. It's good fun.
Blender 3D - Went from being wishful thinking with a quirky UI to a sleek industry competitive 3D modelling tool. The biggest positive has been the growth in the community, with that comes accessibility, it's now become easier than ever to get into 3D modelling. The toolset in Blender easily rivals any commercial competitor, and then some.
Immich: Google Photos alternative (link)
Really going to plug KeePassXC. I think there are several forks for different platforms/slightly different implementations of the KeePass family of password managers, but I prefer the "app that creates a file" paradigm of KeePass to Bitwarden's "server that hosts a database" paradigm.
RedNotebook. It's not 100% what I was looking for in journal software, but it's the closest I tried. For the longest time I kept a journal in plaintext using basically any text editor that fell to hand, but RedNotebook lets me use some formatting and rich text (apparently via YAML or similar markup notation?) and adding pictures/links etc. I do sometimes use my journal to kind of stream-of-conscious-brainstorm, and checklist functionality would be handy for that but any app I've found that provides that is also incomprehensible. I also like that RedNotebook respects my system theme.
AutoKey. You're aware of AutoHotKey for Windows? Well AutoKey runs on Linux, and it uses Python for its scripting language instead of its own proprietary weirdness. I use it all the time.
Gonna mention FreeCAD. FreeCAD probably has the worst case of FOSS disease I'm aware of; it's UI is a klunky mess, it's perpetually unfinished, but if you can survive the utter pain in the ass it is to live with it's extremely powerful. Just the fact that it's a CAD program with a built-in spreadsheet is a total game changer. There's a lot to dislike here, but I honestly don't know what I'd do without it.
Firefox. Everyone reading this already knows everything I'm going to say.
Thonny. A pretty basic Python editor/IDE aimed at beginners and students, but I'm quite fond of it, especially when playing with Micropython on various little microcontrollers.
- Xonotic is an open source FPS with an active community. If you liked Quake 3 and Unreal, then I can highly recommend checking it out. It's got lots of active servers, and perfectly captures old school FPS vibes.
- Calibre is a great way to manage ebooks
- Logseq is a great way to organize notes and ideas
LineageOS
Permanently Deleted
Xtreme Download Manager. Cross platform clone of IDM and insanely valuable if you are a regular downloader. (Though I would argue IDM is better and more polished if you mainly use Windows.)
JDownloader. Cross platform. Do you have dozens of annoying file sharing website links (1fichier, MediaFire, MEGA, Gofile, Sendspace, Turbobit, UploadRar) with even more annoying time limits between downloads? Do you find file sharing websites with ads and popups annoying? Throw all your links into this tool. Start. Go sleep. Do your work.
MediaInfo. Cross platform, and allows to view every possible detail about video and audio files. This is for nerds and media encoder nutjobs like me.
Calibre. Cross platform. THE BEST E-BOOK READER AND ORGANISER ON EARTH.
Bonus for Linux: Thunar is the best file manager, if you do not want a complicated dual pane TC style tool. Nautilus is a close second, because they refuse to have Backspace key as directory up shortcut.
Synfig, very capable animation software.
@Sigmatank
Open source projects that are best-in-class, rather than imitators if commercial softwareRStudio: just an everything box for software development in R, version-controlled website creation, and scientific publishing via Quarto.
Zotero: open-source, shareable citation management.
Joplin, a Markdown-based Evernote that let's you self-host your private notebook instead of giving it to a corporation to hols onto.
VLC: the video player that plays everything.
Yunohost! If you want to get started self-hosting some services, check out Yunohost. It's super easy to setup and run, active development and community, and just awesome. I found it so much easier than docker-based projects. I used to have it running on an old eeepc netbook, but now I have a dedicated tower server for it.
Oobabooga Textgen Webui - because offline open source AI is the biggest force multiplier and most powerful game changer in the last 20 years. It will reshape everything in the next couple of years. This will be bigger than the revolution of capacitive touch screens. Oobabooga is easy, and it makes playing with AI easy even if you don't have the best hardware. Get it on github, then go to Hugging Face for models. Look for prequantized models by The Bloke, read the model card. His models tell you the minimum requirements and what you need to do.
If you have an always on compute: Syncthing. Think google drive or Dropbox but with as many different folders and devices as you want.
If you're already on linux: KDE connect, even if you're not on KDE. Neat little pocket knife of ways to connect to your computer from your phone.
Cherrytree note app, Desktop
https://www.giuspen.com/cherrytree/Micromath plus is a great graphic calculator app for android.
Equalizer APO + Peace equalizer (as the interface) + AutoEq (for the automatic equalization).
It allows to change do advanced and automatic equalization on audio devices, being audio outputs or inputs as mics.
AutoEq is the automatic part. It is more focused on Headphones/earbuds/iems presets. It's an automatic tool trying to equalize measured (by a compatible reviewer source, which is already in the database) headset to match the target the user wants, Then export a file for the software someone uses (peace for example).
As a common preset, the harman over-ear 2018/in-ear (depending on the device) is pretty good, but other presets are available too.
GrapheneOS
squaker for twitter since it helps me get info on calyx xmpp/jabber server
As some who has to do a lot of textwork and text research I really like:
- Recoll
It is a tool that lets you Index and keyword search large amounts of documents easily.
"Everything" is really great for anyone that has a nas system, it will make finding random files a thousand times easier for you.
I also am a big fan of greenshot, although there is a lot of good competition in the screenshot realm.
OpenRA
PhotoPrism
Obsidian for Knowledge base, note taking. https://obsidian.md
Edit: TIL not open source. sorry. They even had a Github and all. I wasn't paying attention. I have to move now :(
Try this one although it is not free but grunted worth money you spend.
Accountants Practice Management Software
CA Office AutomationThis app isn't fully ready yet but Accrescent is a secure and private app store for Android. It aims to be a better alternative app store on Android rather than using the Google Play Store. It currently has 11 apps right now and more to come soon.
Highly recommend to check out and support this project cuz this appstore is the best out there right now security and privacy wise.
