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Adding the following that i have not seen mentioned yet:
Docker - I literally run most of my server programs with docker now. Home Assistant, Jellyfin, and many others.
Tiny Media Manager that I use to scraper and organize my media library
Tiny Tiny RSS to combine my news sites into one aggregator. I actually saw this post on it since Lemmy has RSS feeds!
Openwrt I run as my home router.
I2P but it’s still pretty clunky.
Nomachine I use as a remote desktop client.
RocketDock I still use on my windows desktop after windows removed the programs toolbar.
ImageJ/Fiji I use for image processing, it’s from the NIH, with a bunch of Java plugins.
Gluetun I use to run my vpn client
Kodi for multimedia
Windows
- MPV - Video Player
- DaVinci Resolve - Best Free Video Editor
- Audacity - Audio Recorder
- TeraCopy - File Copy Tool
- Rufus, BalenaEtcher, Ventoy - Bootable USB Creator
- Wireguard, OpenVPN - VPN Client
- ShutterEncoder - Media Converter
- Revo Uninstaller - App Uninstaller
- Throttlestop - CPU Tweaker
- Peace, EqualizerAPO - Audio Equalizer
- Voicemeter - Virtual Audio Mixer
- Qbittorrent - Torrent Client
- Raindrop - Bookmark Manager
Android
- Aegis - Authenticator
- Wireguard - VPN Client
- NextDNS Manager - DNS Manager
- MPV - Video Player
- NewPipe, GrayJay, LibreTube - YouTube Client
- FUTU Voice Input
- FUTO Keyboard
- Aves Gallery
- Delta Icon Pack
- K9 Mail - Mail Client
- QKSMS+ - SMS App
- Perplexity Ai - GPT
- Wavelet - Audio Equalizer
- SafeSpace - Encrypted Vault
- AppOps - App Permission Manager
- Shizuku - Required by AppOps
FUTO voice and keyboard are open source, but not free… Just sayin’
Payment is optional.
I love Aves’ functionalities and speed, but I can’t stand its UI design. Who TF thought it would look good to have a bright and glowing ring around photo folder thumbnails in an otherwise minimalistic UI?
The dev is also a dickhole
I am not surprised but please elaborate.
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I really didn’t like the UI too at first. It felt odd since no app looks like that.
Now that I’m used to it’s functionality, I am totally blind to the colorful rings. I barely notice the colors.
Oh I just noticed I can turn it off.
But it still has a white ring on every folder which is ugly.
I’d add to both of these - KDE Connect - for sending files and clipboard between phone, tablet and PC
That or Local Send.
Davincis great, they lost some hype for me since you now need premium for the free user created addons
QKSMS isn’t maintained anymore. There is an active fork called: QUIK
Off the top of my head from daily use;
- Borg backup, powerful backup software for self-hosted oriented users or enterprise automation.
- proxmox, hypervisor that is performant and easy to setup for simple and complex virtualization needs.
- bitwarden (combined with vaultwarden self-host), password management, secrets management, and available on basically all platforms and browsers. Self hosting your vault gives you peace of mind over who has your most sensitive data.
- obsidian, a great notes app with polished cross platform applications that don’t do any funky proprietary storage shenanigans. Files are files and folders are folders.
- kate (and most of the KDE suite), premiere Linux desktop environment suitable for customization and all the expected luxuries user would expect from windows or macOS. Kate specifically is a noticeable modern upgrade over notepad++ and rivals VSCode for programmers.
Could you expand on what you mean by ‘complex virtualization needs’ - I read this phrase sometimes but would appreciate an expert’s perspective 🙏
My only point was to explain that proxmox is great free software because it supports both simple virtualization needs, such as having several different VMs or containers running on one headless system with very little overhead, and complex multi-system setups that include multiple machines running proxmox and clustered together for both reliability and redundancy with distributed services and applications.
Blender, Gimp, Inkscape, OBS (open broadcast software), Linux distros of various sorts, openHAB, LibreOffice, Firefox (and plugins like uBlock), PiHole, VirtualBox, Notepad++, Paint.NET, VLC, 7-Zip, FileZilla…
I’m sure there’s more.
Brave
Retroarch.
God awful complexity but once you figure out how it all works it’s incredible.
I’m still trying to figure it out. It’s not easy when you have ADHD and get frustrated easily.
I wouldn’t say it is complex but rather they have the shittiest UI I have ever seen, which makes it so difficult to use.
I’ve been a retro gamer since retro gaming meant Pong and I’ve used a lot of fiddly emulators in my time but I’ve never quite figured out RetroArch’s interface.
It’s shitty until you realize how it’s put together and what operates what. It makes a lot more sense since I watched Russ’ video on shaders and overlays at Retro Game Corps.
Quite a few of my favorites have already been mentioned, so I’ll add some that live on my toolbar:
Zim, a desktop wiki with markdown and a lot of plugins. Great for organizing all of your notes with links and a fast search function.
Heroic launcher, for organizing your Epic, GOG and Prime collection.
Geany, an extremely configurable and light editor that can be as simple or as full featured as you want, via plugins.
Terminator, a solid multi terminal emulator where I spend most of my time at work.
Linking for anyone else interested; Zim
I miss when apps were specific to phones and we kept desktop computers out of it.
Im going to throw libre office in. Spreadsheets are so versatile. You always here about this is done so badly they are using spreadsheets but that just shows how friggin powerful and versatile they are and the other parts of the suite are nice to.
There are so many complex applications that I can’t believe are free: KDenLive, Gimp, Audacity, Firefox, Discord, Calibre, Jellyfin, Rainmeter, Godot, Retroarch
Discord isn’t free, you’re paying with your data. 😅
I think Blender is a very honorable mention, especially since the team that makes the software has also used it to make some really impressive short films, such as Big Buck Bunny. Who knows, maybe some indie studio can use it to make some truly wonderful stuff (and I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case).
KiCad. It’s an electronics design tool on par with commercial options in the industry, which cost a ton of money. Ever since the UI facelift it got a few years ago, it has become my go-to option. They are even working on integrating circuit simulation and finite element analysis, which is just crazy.
Anki flash cards. I use it everyday and commercial programs can’t hold a candle to it.
Right now, it’s Calibre because I just got a Kobo eBook reader and it’s so great to be able to install pretty much any format of book onto my device and convert it if it’s a format the device can’t use. And even convert it if the book works better in a different format.
There are some excellent apps already listed that I won’t repeat, but I’ll add FFmpeg. Not sure it’s quite what you’re after, but it’s incredible.
If we’re talking CLI I’ll add Chdman. Like magic for compressing ISO’s.
