What open source programs do you recommend for Windows? (Windows exclusive or not)

Xirup@lemmy.dbzer0.com to Open Source@lemmy.ml – 199 points –

I am and all my life have been a Linux user, I have nothing against Windows or MacOS, I just like Linux, and lately I have been experimenting with Windows in a virtual machine and I don't really know much open source software there apart from the one that is cross-platform like Firefox or Joplin.

At the moment I know:

Flow Launcher: It's a typical rofi style launcher, although I'm not a TWM user I like to just press super and type the first letters of the program I'm looking for to open it.

Lively Wallpaper: A program to have animated wallpapers, in the style of Wallpaper Engine.

Edit: I want to clarify that I read all the comments, I only respond to some because many times I have nothing to contribute to many of them because I don't know what to comment. Thanks to all of you for providing your lists of programs, I will be sure to try as many as I can because they are great, at least I know what to install if I use Windows one day!

136

Wild, you are like from the alternate universe where Linux is dominant and nerds play around in windows. Are things better where you are from? :P

Of course! In this universe everybody uses linux phones and they are actually usable (and repairable)!

Well Android is Linux based.. so maybe this is a similar universe.

Being around the Steam Deck forums when it initially launched felt otherworldly. A super popular device launched with Linux as a first class citizen, and Windows users were desperate for drivers that improved unstable usability. It was surreal.

1 more...
1 more...
  • Firefox: best web browser out there
  • Bitwarden: password manager
  • ShareX: screenshot utility. Greenshot is also good, but I prefer ShareX
  • WinDirStat: disk usage utility
  • KDE Connect: connect Android phone to PC
  • Image Glass: image viewer
  • OBS: video & audio capture
  • Blender: 3D modeling, animation, video editing
  • Handbrake: video conversion
  • VLC: video/audio playback
  • Audacity: audio editing
  • SpeedCrunch: calculator
  • Notepad++: text editor
  • Spyder (via Anaconda): Python IDE

If you liked windirstat i warmly recommend wiztree ( not sure if open source tho).it’s the same but faster. like FASTER faster

although I'm not a TWM user I like to just press super and type the first letters of the program I'm looking for to open it.

It will never stop to amaze me how many people don't know it's a feature in every major DE and every Windows starting from Vista.

Even on Windows 10/11, just tap windows key and start typing without clicking anywhere.

My list of FOSS I use everywhere (these work in Win and Linux):

  • Open Tablet Driver - if you've got the drawing tablet it probably supports it. You can customize everything and has even built-in plugin manager.

  • Krita - GIMP alternative with non-destructive editing capabilities.

  • yt-dlp - download videos from almost any video sharing service, even TikTok, Instagram etc.

  • neovim - for quick file edits

  • vscode/vscodium with vim plugin - my IDE for everything

  • ffmpeg - forget handbrake - you can do even basic video editing here. Join two videos together? Done. Add audio to video? Done. Crop part of the video without reencoding it? Done. Loop a video to 10 hours without reencoding it? Done in matters of seconds.

  • kdenlive - an actual video editor that is 100% FOSS, doesn't suck and works on Windows and Linux.

  • imagemagick - ffmpeg for images

why not use neovim as your ide instead?

I used to, but I need to get my job done, not play with configuring it for hours just to achieve what VSCode does out of the box. Plus settings sync is great.

It recently stopped working for me (windows key search) and it's super debilitating once you got used to it.

  1. GIMP (Image editor)

  2. putty (Secure shell/terminal emulator)

  3. WinSCP (Secure FTP client)

  4. QBittorrent (guess.)

  5. 7zip (All in one compressed archive manager)

  6. Firefox

  7. Notepad++ (text editor with syntax highlights)

  8. Handbrake (Video transcoder)

  9. VLC (all in one video player)

These are my top must have installed. There are others but they're situational

Let's not forget the various console emulators that are open source as well. All the good ones are.

That's a good list!

I use the same, except I use LibreWolf (privacy focused fork of FF) and VS Code instead of Firefox and Notepad++

Vs code

I would actually recommend VSCodium; it's the same product but without the Microsoft telemetry.

Does it lose any MS connected features? Other than surveillance.

VSCodium can't use the official Microsoft extension marketplace, but there is an alternative. You can also install extensions manually.

Yeah VS Code definitely if ya doing programming. I'm just editing config/ini files once in a while so N++ is just right for me.

I use Kitty instead of Putty recently, though I don't know if the difference is worth it.

Some of these are cross platform but:

7zip

Autohotkey

Bitwarden

Calibre

Draw.io

Handbrake

Speedcrunch

WinHTTrack

WinSCP

I prefer nanazip to 7zip because it's just forked 7zip that's been updated for modern windows. They're working on a dark mode too.

PowerToys: productivity utilities like window pinning, window management, accented character typing assistant, color picker, text extractor, etc.

You forgot the best thing. Window management, aka Fanzy Zones. You can set areas to your monitor and snap windows to those instead of just left / right side of monitor. Completely customizable.

Seconding this. It has every feature you know Windows needs but it still doesn't have (likely because of the need for testing or being aimed at power users).

I have to say it, Rufus.

Ventoy is the easier answer these days IMO. Just drop ISOs on your Ventoy'd usb key and choose them from a menu at boot time.

Ventoy is easy, but not perfect. I tried multum of unique images and it struggled hard. From openwrt to freedos to reboot of Hiren's boot cd, it just couldn't load them correctly.

Not to be argumentative, but in case you're interested:

According to the ventoy site it supports those images, though openwrt requires a plugin and freedos seems to require using memdisk mode, though I'm less clear on the limitations there.

Oh, I didn't know that, but still, I don't expect to be truly universal. But as long as you are dealing with ISOs of LX server/desktop or WIN, it's an amazing tool.

For sure. Nothing will ever be as reliable as writing the image to usb/cd/floppy.

Well, there is an option of using multiple partitions and setting up grub

BalenaEtcher or Rufus for writing ISOs to usb.

Or ventoy ? More useful, and so much faster than rufus.

dd works very well if it's a Linux ISO and you're using the USB solely as a livecd.

It can also byte-clone discs and partitions, including ripping CDs and DVDs.

BloatyNosy

Universal Debloater and PC Manager for the most up-to-date version of the Redmond OS (Windows 11)

https://github.com/builtbybel/BloatyNosy

sleek

an open-source (FOSS) todo manager based on the todo.txt syntax

https://github.com/ransome1/sleek

WinDirStat

a disk usage statistics viewer and cleanup tool for various versions of Microsoft Windows

https://github.com/windirstat/windirstat

MacType

Better font rendering for Windows

https://github.com/snowie2000/mactype

In my experience, windirstat is inferior to other similar software. It’s mostly fine but it can be very, very slow to get you results. Though honestly I don’t know if the alternatives like space sniffer or Wiztree are open source.

I dont get mactype there simply is no explanation what it does?

Yeah, the documentation is very sparse. I think it was originally all in Simplified Chinese, but some things have been translated to English. Basically it gives you tools to fix subpixel font rendering issues on windows. Using a rotated monitor? An OLED monitor? A TV? All of these are examples of screens that don't have standard subpixel layouts, so fonts tend to have weird color fringing as a result. MacType allows for a lot of tweaks to how fonts are rendered, but I tend to just switch to grayscale rendering, which works well.

This reddit thread walks through the process with some specific configs and they have pictures to show how it changes things.

https://www.reddit.com/r/OLED_Gaming/comments/t30fi7/better_text_rendering_for_oled_displays_getting/

1 more...

Xoblite: Blackbox/Fluxbox-style WM/shell for Windows.

Open Shell: Brings back the classic start menu and other classic Explorer.exe features

Notepad2e: A lightweight and portable alternative to Notepad++

AutoHotkey: Probably the best GUI automation tool out there, this is the tool that I miss the most in the Linux world.

There's also Kate, the KDE Advanced Text Editor. It's available from the Windows store, and works amazingly well on Windows, fast snappy and (almost?) just as featurefull as on Linux. I use it side by side with Notepad++

Notepad2e: A lightweight and portable alternative to Notepad++ Nice! Why do you prefer it at Notepad++?

Because it's lightweight and portable. :)

Notepad2e is just a small exe file which doesn't require installation. This allows me to run it on my work PC or random work VMs without filling out any paperwork. And on my personal machines, I can replace the OG Notepad with this by renaming notepad.exe in the Windows folder, so when I press Win+R -> and type "notepad", it fires up Notepad2e. It launches just as quickly as the original Notepad, and doesn't use much RAM either, and provides most of the features that I'd commonly use in Notepad++, such as text transformations, syntax highlighting, large file support and live monitoring (which makes is handy for viewing logs). With this, I don't really have a need for Notepad++ - if I want more features, say I'm working on a proper coding project or something, I'd use a proper IDE like VSCode, but otherwise, Notepad2e satisfies most of my text editing needs.

For package management I've been really liking scoop.sh

Not everything in there is FOSS but scoop itself is! And you can install neovim, vscodium, bitwarden, Firefox, etc very easily.

How does it compare to chocolatey? Thanks.

it doesn't trigger UAC because the installation directory is different

Some items trigger UAC (installing tailscale, for example)

I love that everying lives in ~/scoop. It's well organized and somewhat portable (until you import the nonportable bucket)

One great thing about scoop is that downgrading an app is very easy. You can also manage multiple versions of a runtime, for example, you can install multiple Node.js versions and switch between them with scoop reset command.

It definitely looks like the first program that should be installed when doing a clean install of Windows!

I recently found out about winget, how is winget different from scoop? Apart from of course, the number of packages and that anyone can contribute to it.

Winget is from Microsoft for one (and already installed with Windows). It basically just downloads the regular windows installer and installs it like usual without the need to click user feedback prompts. Scoop is more of a package manager.

With winget, one nice thing is you can even update packages not installed with winget originally. You can see which apps on your computer have updates available with a single command.

It’s great when you’re updating someone else’s computer they haven’t updated random things in years (typical windows users).

Scoop essentially uses portable apps and everything is in your scoop folder which is great.

I use both. Scoop first and winget for everything else. I use winget to update Libreoffice on all our work computers (because the devs won’t work on auto updates).

I felt like winget was too limited. When I last used it it didn't support installing multiple apps at the same time. scoop feels much more like traditional *nix package management to me, which I like.

Playnite for launching games

It will open up anything. Battlenet games, steam games, emulated games.. you name it. Supports themes too!

www.playnite.link

Mostly same list as for GNU/Linux:

  • Kate editor (Notepad++ and VSCodium are good here too)
  • KeePassXC or KeePass 2 password manager
  • Firefox or firefox derivative
  • Unison file synchronizer
  • Dolphin or Explorer++ file manager
  • VLC for audio/video
  • 7zip file (un)archiver
  • Chocolatey package manager (would like to try alternatives)

I'd recommend scoop!,

Just started trying out Scoop recently and I'm finding it fits my taste more than chocolatey so far. I appreciate the fact that it keeps apps isolated in a standard user directory, doesn't require admin, and uses plain git repos with json manifests instead of whatever chocolatey uses. In some ways it's similar to some things guix does, although obviously they are extremely different in concept.

Hearing and finding out Dolphin is available for windows is great. Totally downloading it to replace file explorer as we speak.

FreeFileSync a FOSS backup and folder synchronizer, a must have.

FreeFileSync is a folder comparison and synchronization software that creates and manages backup copies of all your important files. Instead of copying every file every time, FreeFileSync determines the differences between a source and a target folder and transfers only the minimum amount of data needed. FreeFileSync is Open Source software, available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Is this different than syncthing in an important ways?

Yes, Syncthing needs 2 diferents devices to sync, FreeFileSync syncronize whatever you want within 1 device, for example between 2 Disks or from a network disk to your computer disk.

Syncthing works great if there are 2 devices turned on and connected to a LAN or Internet, and FreeFileSync is totally disconected from the internet and only needs 1 device on (the one that execute it)

I use both, Syncthing to autosync all my devices and FreeFileSync to backup all those files to various disconected hard drives

Oh nice thats really useful ill try it thanks

AltSnap https://github.com/RamonUnch/AltSnap

Oof, just actually installed AltDrag, I can't live without being able to grab my windows with the super key from anywhere (although in this case the alt).

Thanks for letting me know that there is a fork still maintained.

You can also change it to use the super key, (which I did too).

On most of my fresh installs, i usually install Tinywall, 7zip, and then a different browser like Firefox and chromium based browsers (like mull/brave)

https://tinywall.pados.hu

https://www.7-zip.org/

https://mullvad.net/en/download/browser/windows

https://brave.com/

I prefer simplewall over tinywall. I can't remember what I didn't like about tinywall though.

I'm scratching my head trying to figure out why the built-in firewall is undesirable. It isn't that I can't speculate on some possible reasons, I just didn't realize there were so many 3rd party alternatives.

I think they both use the built in firewall, they just have a sane interface over it. And notifications

I advocate for ImageGlass, a very good image viewer and editor. Mpc or vlc for videos.

I'll check it out. How does it compare to Irfan viewer?

Can anyone recommend me something that falls somewhere between Paint and GIMP?

<3

On Windows, Paint(dot)net. On Linux, Pinta!

PhotoDemon is close to what you're asking for. It has the basic functionality the average user needs yet is still lightweight and fast to start.

CudaText for text editing/programming
MPV for playing videos
7-zip
Firefox + uBlock Origin + Bitwarden

Disclaimer, haven't used Windows in years, but back in the day when I did, I swore by cygwin to give me a sane environment to interact in. That and Firefox + GIMP + Libreoffice usually gave me a pretty happy day to day interaction.

Nowadays I would swap out cygwin for WSL; the latter gives you a full Linux environment.

Git Bash also works quite well without WSL (but I think it just uses Cygwin under the hood)

Bash also has a native Windows port these days, but it is far from a full posix environment.

Greenshot (GPLv3) is a powerful screenshot tool with its own basic image editor.

Qclip

Bulk crap uninstaller

Vlc

Irfanview (is it proprietary?)

Gimp, Krita, Inkscape, KDEnLive, Blender, OBS

Nonfree: XNViewMP, Startisback++,

Irfanview is proprietary yes

Damn, it blew my mind that both Irfanview and XNView are proprietary, so there seems to be no actually maintained FOSS image viewer and light editor especially for Linux. Gwenview is a mediocre alternative but really smooth, maybe it should get all the features and replace these programs.

@Pantherina @db0 i was going to say https://www.darktable.org/about/ but i think this thread is about Windoze programs. Upppsss, sorry.

Darktable doesnt run on Winbloats? Also its a raw editing tool right?

@Pantherina

This might be of more help...

https://www.darktable.org/about/features/

or

https://docs.darktable.org/usermanual/4.0/en/darktable\_user\_manual.pdf

Nice links, thanks! But Darktable is for raw. Maybe thats some crazy lossless rabbithole I have to go in, but I was talking about plain old JPEG editing, conversion, color adaption, quick cutting etc.

Tried Darktable and that other one and both were very unintuitive.

Plus, XNView also works as an Image viewer. XNConvert is also great for batch processing.

1 more...

Lite xl (ide) KDE connect (file transfaring) KDEnlive (video editing software) Mpv (media player) Librewolf(better out of the box experience than Firefox ) I don't care about cookies add-on (Firefox addon) Gimp or paint.net Obs(video capture) libreoffice(office stuff) Nomacs(image viewer) BC uninstaller Alt drag (moving winows)

What I honestly miss the most is my window manager/compositor hyprland

Adding to all the awesome software already mentioned here, WinCompose! You can have a compose key, for typing accented characters wothout changin your keyboard layout, for example.

chocolatey to actually install things almost well.

Shouldn't winget be the first choice, given it's from Microsoft itself?

If the same people whose shitty apps gave us email viruses and pop-ups want to drag out the crayons and make a packager, that'd be cool. This one isn't sound or complete yet, from what I hear on the inside.

What about scoop?

scoop

Scoop looks cute, but if I'm reading it right the manifest (where the pre-install and hash is) isn't itself signed. It presents some neat-o attack space in addition to the supply-chain attack (always, always cringe whenever installers go out and automatically find dependencies for you without you firmly specifying source) make me think this one has some work to do yet. By comparison, prior art for both of those existed in Linux land for about 2 decades, along with simple local repo caching.

I see there's talk of merging or feeding into either choco or winget already, despite the loss of superior layout it has over choco or the superior packaging and management it has over winget .

Scoop is neat, but it could look to its counterparts for improvement potential.

puTTY, my favourite terminal program for windows.

I've been enjoying wezterm as a terminal emulator replacement for windows terminal. It offers nerdy fine grained customizability and an emoji/nerd font character picker. For most purposes WT seems to be fine though.