24 of the best free alternatives to the most popular paid software

AnActOfCreation@programming.dev to Technology@lemmy.world – 376 points –
xda-developers.com

Note that these are not all FOSS.

  • Photo Editing:

    • GIMP
    • Krita
    • Paint.NET

  • Video Editing:

    • DaVinci Resolve
    • CapCut
    • Shotcut

  • Audio Editing:

    • Audacity
    • Cakewalk
    • GarageBand

  • 3D Graphics:

    • Blender
    • Spline
    • Rumba

  • Office Software:

    • LibreOffice
    • Microsoft 365 Free Apps
    • WPS Office

  • Antivirus Software:

    • Windows Security
    • Avast Free Antivirus
    • Malwarebytes

  • Productivity Tools:

    • Bitwarden
    • VSCodium
    • PDF-XChange Editor
    • 7-Zip
    • OBS Studio
    • LanguageTool
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Avast? Bruh

I always recommend Windows Defender and a good sense of Internet security to anyone who uses a computer.

If you're dumb, no antivirus can protect you. If you're reasonably intelligent, any antivirus will protect you.

Avast should not be recommended.

In late 2019, Avast browser extensions were found to collect user data, including browsing behavior and history, and send it to a remote server. The discovery led to the extensions of the Avast and AVG brands being temporarily removed from the Google Chrome, Firefox and Opera extension stores, however, they returned a short time later as there was no concrete evidence that demonstrated a breach of private data of the users.

In January 2020, a joint investigation by Motherboard and PCMag found that the Avast Antivirus and AVG AntiVirus Free version were collecting user data, which was being resold to personalize advertising through a subsidiary, Jumpshot. The leaked documents showed that Jumpshot offered to provide its customers with "Every search. Every click. On every site." from more than 100 million compromised devices. In response, Avast announced on January 30, 2020, that it would immediately shut down Jumpshot and cease all operations due to the backlash of its users' data privacy.

On the basis of the information revealed, on 11 February 2020 the Czech Office for Personal Data Protection announced that it had initiated a preliminary investigation.

In February 2024, the Federal Trade Commission fined Avast $16.5 million for collecting user data and reselling that data. The collection was done under their program to ensure that such collection of user data was not happening.

I'd like to add KdenLive to the Video Editing point.

I successfully edited a video with it having never done so before, which I think speaks to how well it's designed. There's definitely a tiny learning curve, but it's a kiddy coaster.

How’s the performance, size and features compared to Premiere?

I find Premiere to be a bit of a pain in the ass sometimes and pretty slow, but I didn’t like Davinci + I’m paying for Adobe anyway.

I recommend Okular for PDF reading. No ads, no upsells, no BS. It also has native dark mode

I only discovered Krita recently, but holy shit does it fill the Photoshop void very well. The UI isn't the same as PS, obviously. But I find it much easier to navigate than Gimp's UI. And Krita is surprisingly feature-rich.

I like Krita. But to be honest, after years and years of using GIMP, I ironically have nothing but trouble trying to rewire my brain to do things any other way. The same problem that many people have when moving from Photoshop to GIMP.

Also, i fundamentally need DDS files, which Krita (AFAIK) doesn't handle.

You should totally get on some PS forums and start bitching about its UI being 'backward and unusable' compared to GIMP :)

If you don't mind paid, Affinity is pretty nice too.

I've just found out about kitra right now but from the site it says it's mostly focused are drawing and stuff like that so would photo editing be netter with something like rawtherapee?

Yeah it's definitely more of a souped up Paint app than photo editor.

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*Tenacity, not Audacity

Gonna share this, because I had no idea... I think the last time I updated Audacity was, like, 10 years ago...

Here's Tenacity, which I'll be checking out shortly...

Doesn't that apply to every project hosted in America, too, though? Every project is subject to the jurisdiction in which it is hosted. And I know they're not the only project that accepts error reports and in-app updates. Unless there is more telemetry involved or tracking of out-of-app activity, I'm not seeing cause for alarm here. Though I'm open to evidence that there is.

From what I've seen on their site since is that they're saying they are now GDPR compliant. And I suppose, since they are still open source, that anyone finding anything seriously malicious would have pointed it out by now. Maybe just a bit of bad press and people jumping to conclusions because "Russia bad."

I do still plan to check out Tenacity though and see if it's a better project.

As someone who contributes to FOSS projects, I think you put too much trust in the ability of the community to police such things. There simply aren't enough people reviewing project code to ensure it's safety and compliance if a maintainer or team decide to follow bad local laws or act explicitly in a malicious way. Some things get caught but I'm sure there are things thst slip through.

Yeah, it’s actually a major issue with FOSS in general. It’s essentially the bystander effect in code review; When everybody is reviewing the code, nobody is.

Some of us use FOSS because of access to the source and the benefits of an all FOSS system. Not because it's zero cost. This list is just zero cost and some happen to be FOSS.

They aren’t even free. CapCut, for instance, requires a subscription to access most of the features.

Some of us like free stuff though and the post never said that it was supposed to be a list of FOSS projects.

I guess this is Technology not Linux or FOSS, but feels like the difference is often mixed up and it's not all about cost. Anyway, looks like there is now a added note they aren't all FOSS.

looks like there is now a added note they aren't all FOSS.

The post hasn't been edited.

Well then I missed that the first time.

I'd have put in bracket with each list item if it was FOSS, shareware, free trial, free for non corp use, etc.

Yeah that would have been nice but it would be time consuming for the poster.

Although not technically free, I would add Reaper to the list for audio editing. It gives you a pop-up asking if you want to buy the program, but it's not required. I know people who have been using it for years without actually purchasing it. (I have since purchased a license because I use it professionally). No features are locked behind the paid license.

Reminder than Tenacity is an open-source fork of Audacity.

Audacity isn't open source? I thought I installed it from the Debian free repo...

It is open source, but had some controversy. Most prominently the addition of telemetry a few years ago, which was never included in the builds managed by Debian or most other distro maintainers. They also added a Contributor License Agreement which lets the Audacity project change its own license (even to a non-foss one, though they promise they won't) without needing to have the change approved by any individual developers.

Just to know, how do you disable telemetry, if it isn't off by default?

I'm not completely sure but I think they removed it at some point after the public backlash (which was 3 years ago now). For the Windows version at least, there apparently used to be an option during the installation wizard for setting whether telemetry is enabled or not. Most Linux distros never had the telemetry at all. I don't know about Mac.

Audacity is open source, but they had a few controversies recently.

Take CapCut off because it's more like TikTok editing than video editing.

Divinci has a learning curve but any curve is better than learning solely on a ByteDance owned product.

These are alternatives? This is essentially a list of software that I use.

I know it's not a category in this post, but I just want to mention Audacious as a the best open source music player and also to confuse people with Audacity and Tenacity.

You forgot vector-graphics stuff.

I believe Inkscape is the current leader of the open-source pack in that department.

Photo Editing: Gimp

I found "Darktable" so much more useful.

I think there is an important distinction here between photo editing and image manipulation. Similar the the relationship between Lightroom and Photoshop

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I see this is free as in price, definitely not free as in freedom. Should delete the anti virus section and replace it with Linux lol.

I would add FreeCAD to 3d editing software.

Dafuq is freecad? It sounds waaaaaay too good to be true. Maybe above hot singles in your area want to fuck lol. I had a software I was using that let you use it free x amount of times but all you had to do was clear your cache/data each time it was triggered to expire and you had a fresh set of uses. Can't remember the name I'll jave to look it up.

WARNING Windows, Avast, Malwarebytes, anti-libre software bans us from removing malicous source code. Don't let this malware infect you.

I've never been super happy with Ardour. Using the in-distro build used to crash some years back, and more recently wasn't able to get it using some audio interface. And I'm not in love with the interface. But my impression from what I've read is that it's more on-par with other DAWs than Audacity is, does stuff like non-destructive editing. Audacity is, as I understand it, considered something of a lightweight application. If someone is looking for something more on par with some other DAW that they're familiar with, Ardour might be preferable.

Audio editing is still shit. GarageBsnd is on Mac, Audacity has a stupid interface, Cakewalk is the first time I hear that name. On Linux, video editing tools are probably the only way to edit audio, and it's obviously lacking.

edit: Now I have stuff to try, thank you guys.

Cakewalk has been around for decades. It was a popular paid daw in the late 90s and 2000s. It became free a few years ago. Haven't used it lately. But, used it a lot many years ago. It was a top daw back in its day. I hear it's still pretty good.

Fairlight, which is part of Da Vinci Resolve, is pretty powerful. I don't use Audacity because it's mostly a destructive workflow.

What would one use for something like editing photos into gifs. I would edit a lot of still images in photoshop using the puppet warp and the animation but haven't really found anything to do that

No WinRAR?

It is not free (which is the main goal of this list) or open source.

https://alternativeto.net/software/winrar/about/

Oh yeah. I forget it's not free after using it for almost 3 decades without paying for it...

I know, it loses on a technicality.

I know, it looses on a technicality.

Aside from the comma splice, did you mean 'loses' or 'loosens'?

My bad. It's lose, as in "not win". In this case, "it does not earn a place on the list due to a technicality". The technicality, being an infinite free trial does not truly count in the spirit of being free.