What is your favorite open source software?

Gonna go with Firefox as both my most-used piece of open-source software, and the software I see as most important to its ecosystem. If Firefox fails then we've just got Chromium-based browsers and, I guess, Safari.

I love and use Bitwarden daily.

Firefox and its derivatives. They're the last free bastion preventing a Chromium monopoly on the browser market, which is hugely important - especially these days with Google's push for Mv3.

Signal, Thunderbird and Bitwarden

Ill throw in some obscure ones I use daily.

• StemRoller. It's an AI-powered toolthat takes an mp3 and separates each instrument into its own file. Im a musician, and having access to stems like this is a game changer.

• Carla is a tool for hosting VST plugins without the need for a full DAW. I primarily use Amp Simulators, and this has become a mandatory tool on any computer I use. It's also maintained by the creator of KXStudio.

Firefox. It is the only thing keeping Google from total internet domination

Blender by a huge mile. Yes, there’s tons of other software like Linux, of course, but Blender is such a powerful, well managed, economically viable and healthy (community) project that it should be shown as an example of how Open Source should be.

My biggest hurdle with other projects is the fanboys, because many times they’re quite toxic, insulting everybody who doesn’t adore the project and don’t accept constructive criticism.

uBlock Origin, it's not even close!

GNU+Linux

Linux.

Firefox and Bitwarden

LibreOffice is equal to any office software out there, and has been much more stable than OpenOffice, and works without an internet connection unlike Google Docs.

I'd go with either Firefox or Thunderbird. Both are immensely useful pieces of software that I use on a daily basis, and have evolved (mostly) nicely over time.

Not to give Mozilla too much credit, Nextcloud is also pretty slick!

Proxmox, opnsense, fdroid, and many more on r/selfhosted (now on lemmy also) .

sunshine, moonlight ( play my games anywhere in the world, games run on my pc at home)

Firefox (the best browser against google monopoly), thunderbird (best mail client)

LineageOS, microG, Mozilla Location services, Magisk, aurora store (let me use Android without any of google tracking)

Bitwarden, Proton mail/vpn, Nextcloud (finally no gmail tracking)

Jellyfin, kodi (lets me create my own Netflix)

GNU/Linux, GNOME, KDE and host of other Linux projects. No more windows tracking. Also if you want to really know how the OS works, you should start tinkering with Linux. I expanded my knowledge base by just using Linux as daily driver.

The list just goes on and on. I am so grateful for all the open source devs that put their time in developing these tools.

For those wanting to go further, checkout https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted

uBlock Origin - the chaddest AdBlock of them all!

Not by importance. Obviously that would be the Linux kernel, GCC and GNU coreutils, and the Firefox web browser, among some other foundational things (code to run my desktop GUI, for example).

So, I'll say my favorite is PCSX2. Ever since they got rid of the ancient plugin architecture this emulator has been getting sooooooo much better, and it was already great! I would add other top tier emulators like Dolphin, DuckStation, SNES9X, SameBoy, and so on. I just love emulators :)

It's Lemmy you fools. It's always been Lemmy.

Not one per se, but I love when a piece of open source software absolutely destroys it's competition. I'm not talking Firefox vs. Chrome or Unity vs. Godot debate (both are better, don't @ me), I'm talking when it's not even close, the open alternative is just industry standard.

VLC, Calibre, OBS and Blender come to mind.

If i had to go with just one the linux

Home Assistant, a powerful home automation platform.

Newpipe, tor, keepass xc , syncthing and KDE connect

Blender, don't even use it that much but I love it

Blender. Probably one of the best pieces of software I've used ever.

My favorites based on usage:

1. 7Zip. It's clean and has a lot of convenient features.

2. Bitwarden. I have too many accounts these days. It's a life saver and it's on all my devices!

3. Rufus Formatting tool. This rules. It's great for just formatting or creating a bootable USB. Not to mention it's portable so I can bring it with me to work.

So many to choose from...Linux, Syncthing, Vim, Firefox and Thunderbird/K-9 Mail, Keepass and derivatives, GrapheneOS, Inkscape, VLC/mpv, yt-dlp...there are just too many daily drivers to name them all.

Git itself.

Which allowed this monstosity I contributed heavily to, to leave a hellscape of svn patches: https://github.com/LandSandBoat/server

So git earns the "favorite" designation hands down.

I use a lot of Open Source software at home but Home Assistant is by far the most used, although mostly it's doing its automations in the background without me having to think about it.

vim, neovim and a bunch of plugins. It's such a great productivity booster, I am using it daily for SW development.

Right now it's Proton. The work that has been done to makengaming possible on Linux is astounding!

I'm convinced anyone who doesn't say emacs is simply just more productive than me

I think I'll go with GIMP: it's such a well made tool and for 99% of use cases is a valid alternative to professional photo editing suites

SQLite. Probably the most widely used open-source library in the world. Pretty much every computer, phone, tablet, and a lot of embedded systems, all use it.

Firefox I think is actually the best browser totally independent of technological ethics issues. Started using it because I was on 2GB RAM at the time and Chrome was much more RAM-intensive (apparently this is reversed now,) and I've never looked back.

7-zip, Firefox, VLC player

We definitely need Blender in the mix as well!

Also Signal, Bitwarden and Firefox.

7zip is such an easy pick, its almost the default option lol

NVDA. Without it I literally couldn't use my computer every day, or do my job.

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Haven't seen Inkscape here yet. I use it for almost every image editing thing I regularly do like cropping, stitching together, adding text and of course creating graphics from scratch.

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qBittorrent came to my rescue after uTorrent went commercial.

Freecad is pretty powerful, and fully functional now that they figured out their topological naming problem.

In terms of overall usage, gotta go GIMP.

Most used for me is Firefox (in fact I'm so used to it, it didn't even come to mind until I saw so many replies mentioning it!).

The favorite is probably git.

For the recently discovered stuff that would probably be the Astro frontend framework (and Svelte).

Also what a wonderful thread to discover stuff. Thank you all!

in terms of time I spend in it:

• linux
• firefox
• vi

BitWarden and Homebridge.

• GNU & Linux (Debian)
• TeX & LaTeX (TeX Live)
• Firefox

Edit (forgot):

• qBitTorrent
• Signal

FFmpeg

Tachiyomi.

Are we only counting FOSS or would Doom count? If Doom counts, my pick is Doom. Having access to Doom's source code is where I learned a huge majority of my programming knowledge making mods for it.

Libre Office

LZMA SDK. I feel nobody speaks about it, considering it is the basis of 7Z and XZ compression formats, and is practically the strongest one with good speed outside of BSC and PAQ family (lolz is too niche for game repacking).

I will add FFmpeg too, for video and audio encoding and compression.

I am a file compression lunatic.

Gnome 44, (probably gonna get roasted by Gentoo users) Nano, Librewolf, Free tube, NixOS, Gnu utils, Krita, kdenlive, Gimp Nuclear, Shredder, Gnome disks, Qemu/KVM

Edit- and test disk, it saved my ass this week. I accidentally wrote a new partion table over my hdd that had all my family photos. Used testdisk let it run on my laptop for 22hours recovered all photos and files. Shout out to the Devs for make great FOSS software

Since major projects like Firefox keep getting mentioned, I’ll throw a shout out to Ant Renamer.

It’s simple, it’s FOSS, and it just works. I often - ahem - acquire a number of files from various sources that are labeled like “Mission.Impossible.7.Complete.zHD.2022.xReloadedx”, and an application like Ant Renamer can batch rename files into whatever you need.

For example, if I need to backup or copy a set of game saves in a folder that all need to have the same prefix like N007 from N002, I would have to manually change 10K files from one prefix to the other. Ant Renamer can do everything in a batch that runs quicker than the blink of an eye.

So, Ant Renamer for the win!

I like a bunch of OSS projects but Firefox is way up there above the rest.

• Linux (generally speaking)
• KDE as a whole
• Tusky
• Brave as a browser
• Bitwarden/vaultwarden

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Linux and GNU too :p

Lemmy

• Git
• (Open)SSH.
• OpenStreetMap and Trekarta (Offline OSM maps for Android)

Firefox and Nethack

Linux, Firefox based browsers, vs code, KDE, and the fediverse.

Firefox, probably. Though Heroic Games Launcher is getting there real fast. And currently I very often use Baby Journal, though it's an app I wrote, so I'm not sure I can really call it "favorite", but it's definitely one of my most used FOSS apps currently.

No love for VLC player?!?

Vaultwarden

Firefox, VLC, LibreOffice

If I had to pick only one artifact's worth: bash, probably. Otherwise:

• bash
• vim
• Linux (the kernel itself)
• Kubernetes
• Firefox
• urxvt
• Python
• pacman
• nix
• util-linux
• procps-ng
• iproute2
• iptables(-ng)/ebtables
• GNU parallel
• jq

I'm only going to mention desktop software, there's too many tools and layers involved in spinning up a server.

Daily use (most used first):

• Firefox
• MRemoteNG
• Notepad++
• VS Code
• Git
• WinSCP
• 7-zip (love the tool but hate the format, storage and bandwidth is cheap now, let's just use zip please)
• VLC
• Python

It's a pretty boring list: connectivity tools, text editors, and version control are placed front and centre. That said they are great tools and I would hate to live in a world where I was limited to only proprietary products

Stuff I wish I had more time to use:

• Godot
• Blender
• Audacity
• Krita

Special mention:

• QGIS (and the whole OSGeo ecosystem)
• qBittorrent
• RetroArch (and all the FOSS emulators it promotes)
• OpenTTD
• GIMP/Inkscape (I don't need them often but I'm glad they are their!)

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gnu

Going by what I use the most: Firefox, git, less, tailscale, midnight commander

Linux, Firefox, PeerTube

Is Android a valid answer? Maybe not Google's monstrosity but AOSP (although I feel as though it's hard to extricate one from the other save for projects like GrapheneOS).

firefox and lemmy I guess

Os: Linux mint, Solus, endeavour Programs: librewolf, freetube

I don't have "one" favourite but these are up there

Honestly probably neko my friends and I used to love rabbit but it went to shit

Firefox, GNU Linux, VLC, GIMP, Krita, Blender (even if I didn't used it that much), Lemmy of course with it's different FOSS clients

Blender, by far :)

Emacs, tor, mpv, KDE, f-droid, python, qemu

Linux, Firefox, Bitwarden, Android

I use Librewolf for all of my personal browsing

The Linux Kernel and operating system in general. It is simultaneously my favorite and I hate that it killed my prior favorite, the SGI Irix operating system. I was there at the beginning, from kernel 1.1 through today. I remember telling regional directors at silicon graphics that Linux was the future and them disparaging that opinion.

Yggdrasil, an IPv6 end to end encrypted networking proof of concept. There's something about it that I find so innovative that I want it to succeed so badly !

mpv.io !
I discovered it before covid, and it is really lightweight and customizable. So many plug-ins, and they're so simple to create.
I was usually having issues with VLC or settings that he didn't have. No issues with mpv, so far.

I got sick of corporations forcing restrictions so looked into alternatives. Learned how to do it myself & haven't looked back:

Joplin notes - use this every day synced to multiple devices Nextcloud - self hosted on a Raspberry Pi 4. Cloud storage plus syncs multiple stuff including Joplin

So many brilliant options on mobile: OsmAnd+ (nav), Antennapod (podcasts), Keepass (password manager), Obtainium (app updater). Was also enjoying Fritter/Quacker (Twitter without needing an account) until Elons recent meltdown. Also enjoying Liftoff lemmy app for Android

EDIT: hot off the press. For those interested, Quacker is back in the game. Not had chance to check Fritter yet

Linux, MPV, Proton, bash, Newpipe

archlinux firefox thunderbird emacs

Blender

Not entirely software, but the MiSTer FPGA project. Having accurate zero-lag hardware accurate versions of almost every console, many arcade games, PCs (Amiga, Commodore etc), and handheld up to and including the PlayStation in a box the size of a game boy is unreal.

Majority of the project is open source, and has been used for ports to the analogue pocket handheld, which I also have and use often

Gotta go with python here, though vim would be a close second.

A few of mine that I use daily...

Networky Things:

• Caddy
• Tailscale
• Headscale
• Go Simple Tunnel (GoST)

A couple of personal projects:

• Skyhook (Data exfiltration server)
• Eavesarp

OsmAnd

Infinitime, for my PineTime.

Sonarr, Radarr, Lidarr, Readarr, and Prowlarr.

Godot game engine without a doubt.

Subsurface

Its dive planning and dive logging software. It's also the only software I'm aware of that can actually pull the data from my dive computer, which uses some crappy proprietary cable and software. The fact that subsurface exists and is automatically in Linux repositories is what finally allowed me wipe out my aging and barely functioning computer, and revive it with Linux.

Hyprland So much fun

I couldn't get by without AutoHotkey and AltSnap. Especially having extra buttons on my mouse, there's so many custom shortcuts, commands, controls, etc. that I couldn't make without them. AltSnap also has a built-in borderless windowed button that works better with games than some apps I have used that are explicitly for that purpose. I have shortcuts for changing volume, switching windows, toggling always-on-top, and even making windows transparent all from the mouse.

Pihole, Kubernetes, ffmpeg, VLC, pretty much we are so technologically advanced because there is so much free and open source software. If it wasn't for it we would be ages behind technologically.

youtube-dl

OBS is my one of my favorite softwares in general, let alone open source

Freecad. It's a little rough to use compared to professional cad products I've used but it can really do a lot. In a lot of ways it feels less constrained than some of the stuff I've used too

Firefox, Libreoffice, and Bitwarden (I would include Zotero, but idk if it's open source)

I'unno. Don't really think about it that hard.

I guess firefox, since it gives me porn access to websites.

KDE Plasma desktop

I think alot of Indie and open source games owe their existence to SDL.

I also have a love-hate relationship with meson...

GNU Hurd. Never used it, but I like the idea and would love to see it become a viable option.

Bitwarden & Jellyfin

Since most of what I would have said has already be mentioned I will just go with almost anything under the umbrella of the KDE organization.

As in the Plasma desktop environment and the whole application suite. Includes programs like Krita, Kdenlive and KDE Connect, plus the whole range of "standard" desktop applications like terminal, file manager, document viewers, etc. pp.

And the DE itself is just adorably hackable. Want to replace the Kwin window manager with i3? Sure it's possible, here you go: https://userbase.kde.org/Tutorials/Using_Other_Window_Managers_with_Plasma

Dolphin Emulator always amazes me in how perfect of an emulator it is.

Android and Linux

Debian

Wine, despite the headache that is fiddling with its configurations for specific older games to work.

I’ve been using Logseq after trying Notion and Obsidian a good bit and I’m really enjoying it. It’s a block-based note app that makes connecting thoughts together super easy. So far so goo!

• godot engine

• dungeon crawl stone soup

• ncdu

Pandoc, KeepassXC, NeoVim

Would probably say Firefox, but since many others have already mentioned it, I'll go with Nushell

Ardour

Voyager, Firefox, Tachiyomi (J2K specifically), Bitwarden, Jellyfin and Findroid, Sonarr, LunaSea...there's so much I can't pick.

linux, godot, blender, neural amp modeler

Thunderbird. Hasn't bugged on me once.

Favorite? Hm... I would have to say Codeigniter (PHP framework) but I love these projects as well: Linux/GNU, VLC, LibreOffice, qBittorrent, VSCodium, Filezilla, GIMP, Firefox, Wireguard, GrapheneOS, Matrix, F-Droid.

If I won the lottery I'd donate to these projects or their respective foundations.

Suckless software like dwm, st, dmenu

In terms of what I use daily

• GNU Guix package manager
• Kate text editor
• Quassel chat client
• KeePassXC and KeePassDX password managers
• GNU IceCat browser (Firefox ESR derivative)
• VLC media player

Firefox, Neovim, Pass (password store) and Wezterm. I heavily use all four of them.

I also need to give a special mention to Aegis Authenticator on Android.

Firefox, Bitwarden, and Tachiyomi are some that I use almost everyday

OpenSCAD and Gitlab. I can quickly iterate on designs through code, push it to my Gitlab instance, and have my CI/CD pipelines pick it up, render it, and automatically slice it in some common profiles to send to Octoprint

rust

Playnite, all your games in one launcher.

Ditto ffmpeg gstreamer obs Firefox & addons Thunderbird greenshot everythingtoolbar 7zip Lemmy jerboa and so many more OpenWRT simply a must, eartrumpet gajim conversations

Godot!

Linux

• Duplicati: A backup software that securely stores and restores data across various platforms and cloud services. Supports encryption and incremental backups (versioning). Lots of possibilities, but use it to back up my PC to my NAS and the other way around.

• Ferdium: Messaging and other services combined in a single interface. Using it for Telegram, Whatsapp and services like Home Assistant etc. Allows apps to hibernate when not in use.

• OpenRGB: Control and customize RGB lighting effects on various computer hardware components.

• Firefox

https://www.kicad.org/

linux

Bitwarden, NetNewsWire, Firefox

Arch Linux, LibreWolf & KeepassXC are the first that come to mind.

Favourite, not sure. Maybe my "favourite" would be the one which would be the hardest to replace with something I like.

There wouldn't be something i can think off that could be irreplaceable. However the hardest thing I like may be FanControl.

For the browser, Firefox is very nice, but it's "just" a browser if you think about it. There is brave, and other open source chromium alternatives if it disappears.

For mail clients, I also like the Mailspring design, however Thunderbird just got a new skin and damn it looks good too.

And for the rest, I don't really know. Either I don't remember right now, or no special "like" for the software. Or I like the closed source software convenience more (I may also have no idea of an open source alternative, or an equivalent in features open source).

It depends on the usage really.

Linux

Linux, Tor, and the Ballistica game engine/BombSquad game (not fully open source as stuff used for sensitive data remains closed source 😔)

Edit: forgot git lol