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.
Lemmy seems like the right place to ask this. Personally I've really enjoyed Gurgle, which is a FOSS Wordle clone app.
Ublock Origin. The amount of people going through life exposing themselves to ads is tragic. It's so unhealthy and most people aren't aware that there is a simple and free way of protecting yourself from the psychological warfare that corpos use against society
I don't understand how people do not get blood red angry at advertising more often. Its the root of a lot of our problems with censorship and they flat out just exploit what little free time we all get.
By the time I get home I got 3 hours to chill. Then these ads take up 1/3 of that selling me shit I never asked for. They indirectly forced every platform I ever enjoyed to become these homogenous boring vanilla time sinks. That's because they pay one content safe creator and then the rest start to copy them. Now if I want to avoid ads, I have to pay extra fees which fuck it, the content creators circumvent by putting ads directly into the media.
We should all be more hostile to any encroachment of ads into our lives. Its weird that instead I see people embracing it like it isn't a cancer. We've lost the freedoms we had on thr internet to these ads and nobody seems to care.
Given that there is a lot of effort put into research into making advertisements more ‘effective’, I wouldn't be surprised if there is also some research put into influencing people to accept advertisements as a normal part of life, justifying it as a necessary evil, or even embracing it as an essential part of what makes the free market ‘work’.
Reminder that the FBI recommends people to use ad blocking
Krita 🎨🖌️
It's literally FOSS Adobe Illustrator, why do people don't use it??
I thought Inkscape was FOSS Illustrator
Probably should add darktable in here as FOSS Photoshop Lightroom Classic.
edit: and Scribus as FOSS Adobe InDesign
I’m sitting here asking myself how I have not tried darktable before. Definitely checking it out, and already verified the support for my camera.
Darktable is definitely my favorite RAW photo editor. There are a lot of great tutorials online including YouTube
I have to admit that I only found that one myself because I was curious what "premium apps" were included in Zorin OS Pro, and eventually found this list they provide of alternatives:
https://help.zorin.com/docs/apps-games/alternatives-to-windows-apps/
Thankfully almost everything on that list is cross-platform. RawTherapee is another on the list you may want to check out.
And also FOSS Photoshop. Without the annoying subscription model and AI scraping. And way more comfortable to use than GIMP.
I would say GIMP (+ extensions) is still the FOSS version of Photoshop.
Of course, i would love to have a fully fledged program without such a steep learning curve.
But i think Krita is fine as it is.
So i wished there was another just as good program that filled that void.
https://www.photopea.com/ could be an option, depending on your needs.
Photopea is excellent, but FOSS it is not.
Any extensions you would suggest for GIMP?
Unfortunately my knowledge only goes for the base program. But i've heard many saying that with the right time and extensions GIMP does replace Photoshop.
I remember the first time I tried Krita and clearly thinking "Wait, is this a community project?!?"
You mean a FOSS Clip Studio Paint or maybe Paint Tool SAI? IIRC Adobe Illustrator is a vector-based program
Here is Krita usage in a timelapse of editing a webcomic(CC-by) by David Revoy. (My current selection for GOAT comic artist)
Huh. Just noticed, there's so much details the novice takes for granted.
This is what I use if I can't use Illustrator - it's also got some terrific conversion tools. Currently the only app i know that can open and convert old Fireworks files.
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!
Also OSM usually beats Apple and Google by a mile when it comes to route planning for bicycles. I think it's one part techbros being eternally car brained and one part if you're a cyclist the chance you're the kind of crank to contribute to things like OSM is exponentially increased.
For hiking too osm is a godsend
I love OSM, I try to put notes to fix things when I see them (for example, one-way streets that aren't properly set up, or left turns that aren't allowed). One day I'll hopefully have the confidence to fix things myself.
I use Osmand mostly, as it allows me to easily have everything offline. (Plus I can sideload/back up the maps on android)
There is a fun app called StreetComplete than makes it easy to complete missing info and I suppose fix it too.
Additionally, if you're into mapping, give QGIS a try.
It's an open source geospatial data management application, which is available cross-platform.
It neatly integrates many processing tools into a relatively intuitive GUI, and having even some basic skill can lead to some job opportunities.
You can even import OSM data through plugins or download services, which you can use for all kinds of fancy things.
There is a (somewhat) active community here too: !openstreetmap@lemmy.ml
And if you want a maps app that uses OSM, I recommend Organic Maps
I once saw a comment about an app that made it easier to contribute to OSM. Do you know which one that might be?
That was very likely Street Complete which is self explanatory and a great way to start. You are adding all kinds of useful information about any kind of object or building with this.
There's also Vespucci which allows to alter the whole map (ie edit streets, POIs and so on) but takes a lot more to get familiar with.
You can also try the webapp https://mapcomplete.org
Is there a decent option for using OSM with Android Auto? I want to move away from Google as much as possible, but Mapfactor's routing is... well, terrible.
Give OsmAnd a try. Organic Maps are also working on the integration, but its not yet there and fully refined, though it is my preferred map for navigation while driving.
Hmmm, I'm using osmand from Fdroid and it does not support it. It looks like you need to use the subscription version which is a bit much but I'll take a look.
Magic Earth uses OSM and has Android Auto capability. It also has traffic data. It's not open source, but they have a great privacy policy.
I love OSM and use it through OsmAnd. I also contributed in the past, creating the first mapping for the area I lived in back then. I want to contribute again. But I find that wherever I go, everything is already mapped to the finest detail. A good problem to have, I think.
I've been using this as my main map app for years. Ive never contributed though, and will do that next!
You can start light, just by verifying that the data is up to date or adding some information eg. wheelchairs facilities or payment methods accepted. I use a tool called Every Door (Android) and it makes this surveying really simple and quick.
Nice! Every door was on fdroid (Foss) so its now installed!
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.
Literally, and I mean literally, just downloaded this yesterday because I was tired of using Syncthing to pass media files back and forth between my phone and my NAS.
Plex is a shit show, charging you to view remote files.
Got any recommendations on where to put together a decent setup? The documentation seems a bit sparse.
The "best" setup (simplest to maintain, not to set up), is using docker to host jellyfin, sonarr, radarr, lidarr, transmission with wireguard VPN, and prowlarr for all of your media needs. Jellyfin plays stuff, sonarr manages shows, radarr: movies, lidarr: music, prowlarr: your sources for said media. Transmission + wireguard VPN for the downloading.
But then you are getting into self hosting stuff which opens up a whole good, but time consuming rabbit hole
https://perfectmediaserver.com/
I posted a different link earlier. But this one is more educational.
For self hosting I recommend Yunohost. It allows you to install a lot of stuff with just one click but you can still install things manually if you want.
I run Jellyfin in Docker on a Pi4 and it works great. The only problem are x265 files, because Jellyfin tries to transcode them and the Pi cannot handle that.
You can disable that, I did that too. I don't have any issue playing h.265 or even AVI on any of my devices.
How did you disable it? I would love to just have a direct stream, but I can't find an option for that anywhere.
Do you use the flatpak version on Linux? I'm a bit of a noob but I think due to flatpak sandboxing it can't access your home folder or something, so I had this problem where it could only access my /media/ external HDD.
Aside from that, I just make folders named something unambiguous like "jellyfin documentaries", make a jellyfin directory from the control panel, name it something like "documentaries" link the two and then add the documentaries and then scan the libraries. (i may have misunderstood your question lol sry, English is my 2nd Lang)
https://swizzin.ltd/
https://perfectmediaserver.com/ Check that out, one of the guys who is a main personality of the self-hosted podcast made that website. It's all about setting up automations to download movies and TV shows automatically and stuff.
I love how Jellyfin is like "nah we don't want any donations. If you wanna donate, just volunteer and contribute"
Lmao didn't even know that. I guess my contribution will be spreading the word, since I can't code to save my life
They have non code contributions (like translations)
I tried to use Emby and Plex since both were available bydefault on my NAS, good lord they both suck ass and charge for the most basic functions. Switched to Jellyfin, so much smoother and completely free.
Wow, I've just downloaded and set up Jellyfin based on your post. It took literally 20 minutes and looks like it will immediately replace the awkward DLNA Serviio setup I had running. Amazing
Well nice to know (^_-)
Just so you know, there are custom CSS themes aviable on some official page I don't remember, but if you look up "jellyfin custom CSS" an official jellyfin page should come up, they look so much better.
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.
One of the best things about HASS is the counterweight it applies to the home automation industry.
When everyone is trying to lock people in to proprietary systems, the hass community is keen to find alternatives.
"To use this temperature sensor, you must use our hub and app"
2 days later: 'Good news everyone, it's manchester coding on 433Mhz, and I've written a direct integration for rtl_433'
Wait a minute, is FLOSS home automation really this robust? Having avoided most wifi enabled gadgets, I'm pretty out of the loop here
It's pretty good, honestly!
I also avoid wifi gadgets where possible, I try to go for Zigbee, Z-wave, or 433MHz stuff.
For things that "have" to be IP, I put them on a separate vlan, then interface through them using hass.
You can check what it supports. Though there are some stuff that people have created support for that aren't on there yet as well
https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/
I was searching for some nice way to keep my KeePass files in sync across my phone + pc. Tried Syncthing as soon as I saw your comment and it's a life saver :D Thanks so much!
Wait, does this mean I don't need a VPN to sync remotely? That has been the doubt I have had since I heard about such software.
Yeah, you don't need a VPN as their is also a relay component that forms a sorta sync thing network. While the data is always encrypted, with the relaying you are using external servers to route the traffic. The relaying also isn't required, but ensures data can be synced even when a direct connection isn't possible (e.g. You arent home and aren't on your VPN).
Yes, you can sync between two on devices anywhere in the world as long as a connection path can be found.
The downside of this is that both devices have to be on. If not on the LAN it may go though some unknown gateways too which makes me nervous (though it should be all encrypted). It can take some time too for the devices to find each other and then do the transfer (even on the LAN).
Some people place syncthing on their NAS so it is the always on device. Also if you do not want your connection to go through other peoples bridges then you can disable that feature (and loose the global WAN transfer capability), or you can put up your own bridge in a VPS on the WAN.
I am no expert on this. For me I use syncthing only sometimes and only on my LAN. Mostly I use SSH, Nextcloud, or Bitwarden Send myself. I'd like to play more with some of the other options though. Seafile or placing Send on my VPS for example seems interesting to me.
I've been seeing Home Assistant mentioned a lot lately.
Can it control smart plugs and switches that are made for Tuya/Smart Life?
https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/tuya/
(I only own older Tuya devices that I flashed with Tasmota before setting them up with Home-Assistant. But I think what they sell nowadays can't be flashed with a free and open-source firmware. So the Tuya integration should work. But I haven't tried it.)
It does work although breaks occasionally and you seem to need a (free) token from tuya to get it running now. That said it let’s me use my tuya devices through homekit now which is pretty handy.
Yeah I saw that. It doesn't help me in trying to break free from those cloud services if I still have to integrate them into my setup.
Unfortunately with the smart home stuff, you're often stuck with some vendor and their decisions. You have to pay close attention before buying devices. There is a chance your Tuya devices are supported by something like the mentioned Tasmota. They have a long list. But flashing a new firmware on some lightbulb is a bit cumbersome and you can brick the devices easily. It's probably not something you want to do unless this is your hobby.
I can recommend buying Zigbee devices and a supported gateway, or something alike. That works without some cloud service.
I have a zigbee gateway. I use it for physical buttons that control other smart devices using the scenes in the Smart Life app.
The zigbee stuff has been the devices to give me the most trouble, plus they cost more.
Most of the affordable plugs and sockets are all compatible with Smart Life (which is just Tuya with another brand label). Quite a number of real cheap devices that have their own apps are also just copies of Tuya so they all end up working with Smart Life.
I am going to start looking into flashing firmwares. There's SO MANY devices running hardware for those platforms, it would be great to break them free of the cloud apps.
https://templates.blakadder.com/
Unfortunately things once have been easier. The first Tuya devices contained ESP8266 microcontrollers and had a vulnerability that allowed users to just upload a different firmware. But at some point they started using some cheaper microcontrollers that aren't as easy to program. So there is no custom firmware available for many/most of the recent devices. Beware if the supported devices repository says "soldering required" or "module needs to be replaced". I don't know why they do this, but it requires a hot air soldering station and proper soldering skills.
Regarding Zigbee: I bought some Ikea stuff. The lightbulbs work fine. But I also had issues with the buttons.
Proton.
I know it might not be in the spirit of the thread because it's not something you download and use as it's own thing but it has allowed me to exclusively run Linux on my gaming PC. I think more folks should try it to slowly tip the scales more on Linux.
Do you mean, using it without Steam? I do use Proton with Steam. AC Valhalla runs so great.
Using it with steam or without. I personally use it with steam as well, it's amazing. Hopefully we reach a point where publishers are incentivised to make sure their games run smoothly on Linux at launch through proton.
Blender is my favorite open source tool I wish I knew how to use :)
I’d love to use it for creating my own designs and took several attempts at learning it. But I always end up giving up on it due to lack of time and energy.
Did you use the youtube tutorials from the doughnut guy?
I tried to learn blender by just using it and googling the issues but gave up several times. Then I bit the bullet and went trough a proper video tutorial. Most of them run at increments of 10-20 minutes and each one reaches enough to be useful on its own.
Another tip is to do lots of tiny things you can reasonably make in a weekend before doing big things.
I prefer to use tutorials I can read and reference. But I’m willing to give videos a try if you say it’s a good one for a total beginner.
Could you give me a link?
I'm absolute with you on prefering written tutorials and documentation, however when it comes to beginner tutorials for Blender, there's simply nothing better than the doughnut tutorial from Blenderguru. It's not a "do this then do this" video - he's actually explaining what he does and why, so when you're finished, you actually have ideas of what to do with your own projects.
3D art is a complex thing - but you can actually get a long way following the doughnut tutorial, and after that, you may be open to try other video tutorials or have a look at other channels.
Link to the doughnut series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIoXOplUvAw&list=PLjEaoINr3zgFX8ZsChQVQsuDSjEqdWMAD
Another favorite of mine to mostly just watch is Grant Abbitt: https://www.youtube.com/@grabbitt/featured
Thank you for the information! I just need to put some dedicated time aside to learn this, but it looks like a good place to get started.
Take it a little at a time. The blenderguru videos are short and arr perfect for doing 30 mins today, 30 mins the next day - you don’t need to do it all in one sitting.
Yeah, Absolutely. https://youtu.be/nIoXOplUvAw?si=NsMPxjkNfcCfuf6I This guy. I haven't done the most recent tutorial he has made because he actually goes back and redoes the beginners tutorial to keep up with the most recent version but the earlier versions of this was great for me.
Blender has one of the hardest learning curves I have experienced so far. It simply does so much and there is so much to remember. It's worth it, but man, it's intense.
Same
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!
Zotero is such a lifesaver. I started using it to allow for easier citations and reference lists but I've loved being able to keep my sources organized and saved in one place while doing research. The browser extensions are also super convenient to save everything to sort later on.
I guess, i love you The PDF annotation part always bothered me. Will give it a try
I… love you too?
How does it compare to LaTeX?
LibreOffice?
It’s basically Microsoft office, I don’t know if anything even remotely like LaTeX.
PC:
Android:
Thanks for spreading the good word on OpenData mapping solutions! In case you find Osmand's interface confusing, check out Organic Maps as well. FOSS and offline features are naturally part of the offering.
Good list I make use of a lot of these too. Keep both LibreOffice and OnlyOffice around depending on how I feel that day but been leaning towards LO quite a bit recently.
I will say I had Caprine for a while but my god it uses so much memory, it has an absolutely massive footprint on my laptop. I find a nice compromise is using messenger.com as that way I can still send and read messages without delving into the horrors of FB, plus can keep it in a container.
Question about zotero, I just started using it and I can't seem to find a way to direct it to PDFs I have already downloaded? Is there a way to do that or does it only have the PDF finding feature? The citation thing is pretty cool though, it's gonna make my writing class easier and I won't have to use mybib anymore. Also, is there a way to make it always use the classic interface when adding a citation? I keep having to click "show classic interface" or whatever the button is, and it's a tad annoying.
You can also enable tabs, like in MS office, in LibreOffice. I find that easier to use than how it is by default.
but only tabs for functions, right? not tabs for documents like Onlyoffice
Kdenlive video editor
Coming from some video editing as a hobby from Windows Movie Maker over pirated Sony Vegas, OpenShot and Shotcut to Kdenlive it's an incredible piece of kit. It has fucking working motion tracking! For free! And it works very well! Insane to me!
Open source Adobe Premiere. Fucking brilliant.
Every other classic board game should have a game client as good as lichess.
But, speaking of games, Simon Tatham's puzzle collection.
inkscape. awesome vector drawing program
Except CMYK 😔
Hopefully next year
:(
OBS for screen recording.
recordscreen.io is also great, if you want to record directly from the browser.
But NOT streamlabs
Lemmy
Blender. Maybe not everyone needs to try it but it it's great if you like 3D.
I can suggest everyone to try Bitwarden if they don't have a password manager yet. I use Pass now (because UNIX^TM^) but was a Bitwarden fan before.
Bitwarden is very good. And it is not getting hacked every year as Lastpass... (another free password manager).
I also saw that proton has launched proton pass as a password manager. Seems to also be free, but only the app, I think is open source, and not the server. It also works less well than bitwarden, being new it can be expected.
bitwarden is nice because you can selfhost it. i'm too lazy to do that so i use keepassxc
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.
How do you exit zim?
i had switched after losing a D&D campaign in onenote, then not long after switched from windows to linux (Zim being compatible with both helped with that a lot too). I have a memory problem (in my carbon, not my silicon) and I use Zim for to do lists, a journal, note taking of course and several other things. i had some issues a few times but overall it's what just works for me. i use it for worldbuilding D&D campaigns and i've started building/recording my actual real life world with it too. love it!
Yo zim is dope
A little different from many of the things mentioned, but...
Casual: Puzzles by Simon Tatham (the Android port is great)
And OpenRCT2 and OpenTTD, of course.
OpenTTD for life.
Lemmy
Never heard of it.
Sure you have, it's that guy from Mötorhead?
Oh, right. Thanks.
OMG, I loved you in Catch Me if You Can!
Pretty sure that's Amy Adams.
Only because CTRL+F had zero results: Krita. Everyone complains about GIMP having a bad name and Krita is actually good!!
But Krita is more of a digital painting software and less an image editor like Gimp is. Sure, both can to a certain extent do the other, but Krita's focus and Gimp's focus are very different and using one for the other isn't the most effective.
Gimp is awesome and people just need to use it with the understanding that it isn't Photoshop and it does things different ways.
I love Krita, but yeh any photo editing or even just using the lasso tool can be such pain.
Krita is amazing. The color-fill live layer is fantastic.
For what it's worth, there's several static site generators that use WordPress as a backend but generate static HTML files. You might be interested if some of those WordPress sites are client sites, as the clients could still use the WordPress admin panel but the actual site will be static.
Aegis is good but I personally prefer Authenticator Pro. It's also open source, and supports watches. It's so much more convenient getting 2FA codes on my Samsung watch. Aegis is very principled and refuse to use non-open-source libraries. I really appreciate that stance, but unfortunately some of Google's libraries for building WearOS apps are closed-source.
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)
As a (former?) developer of Mumble I'm delighted to see it mentioned.
MPV player. Super lightweight, minimalist, literally runs anything you throw at it, keyboard focused, hyper customizable, loads of plugins for anything you can think of, supports all the meme filters and best of all, multiple frontends available.
Can't emphasize how much i love it.
Obtainium - - app with which you can download & update apps (apk's) directly from github/gitlab/etc. (and even f-droid).
Absolutely awesome 👍
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.
I actually use Krita for all my image editing because I just find it more intuitive than GIMP
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.
Rad, but openboard doesn't swipe? Bummer... I've been meaning to learn how to tap, so I'll give it a go all the same.
Floris board has the best swipe amongst foss options Ive tried. And Ive tried a few. But unfortunately google/ samsung swipe keyboards were super convenient.
Actually keypass2android, my password managaer has a keyboard thats the best (but its really ugly) so I cant use that.
pretty sure you can swipe. i just never use it.
edit: nvm you can't
Amazing list, thank you!!
Syncthing was the way I ended up solving the problem of having the same playlists on mobile and desktop.
Playlists?
.m3u format is shared between most sound apps, and I was keeping music on the same relative path anyways between devices. So basically I can define playlists on PC and have them show up on the phone. Then on the phone I can track the number of times and the rating of each music and create dynamic lists, which I can send back to PC if I feel like moving things around.
Just downloaded openboard, seems pretty good. Have been growing dissatisfied with Swiftkey for a while now.
I have tried to use Openboard, but Gboard really spoiled me with the quick language auto detection... I have even tried using the iOS stock keyboard and it sucks balls compared to Gboard...
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.
I like inoreader, but I don't think it's even open source, let alone FOSS?
Thanks, I didn't know this.
I've never used inoreader, but Wikipedia lists it as "Freemium". It's not FOSS
From the top of my head, I would name Okular. No other FOSS pdf reader is as complete and easy to use.
I use okular as my primary image viewer as well. I love the middle mouse drag to zoom.
Inkscape and GIMP as alternatives to Illustrator and Photoshop.
Gimp really works for my use case. Love it.
Inkscape and LaTeX are what I used throughout my undergrad for all documents. The quality always impresses people.
I adore VLC.
I've been using Linux Mint for almost a year and a half now: would recommend it to anyone ready to make a jump into Linux and away from Windows. It's quite friendly.
I'm also quite enjoying Sonarr to keep track of some older television shows that I enjoy.
I forget how incredible VLC is. It's been my primary video player for going on 7 years?
I honestly don't know if any other video player that just works.
mpv is what I used, but I switched to VLC because of the interface
MPC-HC https://github.com/clsid2/mpc-hc (the still maintained one).
For me VLC struggled on very high bitrate videos. While MPC-HC was smooth and used less resources.
However it is not available for Linux. So if it's a software for Linux, I guess VLC is the best choice.
Termux: A terminal emulator for Android.
I love a good terminal. But help me understand, why for Android?
Because why not! Easy way to SCP files over, run scripts. Repurpose old devices as always on, low power servers. It ties in nicely with Tasker so if you want to extend functionality it's easy.
I mostly use it to ssh into my raspberry pi at home
I can use the same tools/scripts on my phone that I use on desktop (using mostly terminal apps there, too)
LogSeq for taking notes.
It is a markdown editor and has a lot of features i didn't know I wanted. Like you can mark in PDFs and those marks will be made into notes with shortcuts to that place right into your other notes.
I use a lot of note apps partially for school partially for fun but man Logseq PDF annotation is incredible. That plus native Zotero integration is a game changer for anything academic.
Gonna have to check this out. I'm a sucker for good note taking apps and my current one is Notion - except it's not free and that annoys me.
Check this out...
https://youtu.be/XRpHIa-2XCE?si=ZbtPtphNHdQxEEZJ
Man.. what a deep dive that I did not need. Whew.
Gonna try out a few of these, but I have to admit I prefer the rich-text and database options that Notion provides. That said, the whole privacy thing they do and was mentioned in the start of the video concerns me. Time to do some testing! Thanks for the link!
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/XRpHIa-2XCE?si=ZbtPtphNHdQxEEZJ
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
KeePassXC, it is a client for KeePass password management, works great
Krita, KDE's awesome drawing program
blender's beginner friendly enough for me to universally recommend it at this point - you might bounce off, or you might, like me, be a half-decent visual artist 3 years later!
it's ridiculous how easy it is to use now once you get the basics down. im a bad artist in general, so i mostly use it for editing existing models, but i can also whip up a simple prototyping model pretty quick too. awesome stuff
I was a big fan of blender, but the support for rendering on AMD GPUs is completely abismal. Nowadays you have to get an expensive Nvidia card to get good results.
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.
Freetube = seriously good.
NewPipe as well!
If you spend a lot of time in the terminal zellij is a cool alternative to tmux.
Why do I want an alternative to tmux? Like what's your favorite thing it gives you?
Maybe they've fixed it now, but I remember tmux having weird issues with scrollback and mouse events (clicks etc).
I prefer using tabs in my terminal app, and would use tmux just to handle if the connection drops. I use Eternal Terminal for that these days.
I enjoy the discoverable UI, and the way it handles windows and panes. Overall I think its a cool project with a lot of potential.
Eternal Terminal is a good alternative to tmux too, it you're just using it to run stuff in the background / reconnect after losing connection. Things like scrollback work normally.
I thought you'd say
screenlolI'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.
I also love OSM, but I often heavily rely on Satellite imagery for orientation.
For example, when I explore an area, I‘m going to travel to, I almost exclusively look to the city‘s satellite imagery beforehand to identify landmarks and use them for orientation. Unfortunately that doesn’t work well with OSM.
Has anyone an OSM equivalent for satellite imagery?
I use OsmAnd on Android and it has a feature to overlay (or underlay) map tiles from multiple sources. I use the OSM tiles as my default and overlay Microsoft's satellite imagery over them, which I can turn on and off (or even adjust opacity with a slider).
Thank you for this one, it's desperately needed. Downloaded and subbed.
Python!
vmlinuz -> vmlinuz-6.2.0-32-generic
This makes me laugh
Bitwarden for sure! It is certainly the easiest way to increase security on all your accounts by making extremely secure passwords. Plus you can self host it if you want!
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.
What's sauerbraten? I feel like searching that up won't give me the results I want...
And btw, you missspelled Ublock Origin
probably http://sauerbraten.org/
It's a FOSS FPS game
Thanks, corrected
sshfs
Seriously, it will change your life.
What is it?
Any cloud server, any linux server on your network, any virtual machine... is a network hard drive. No need to mess around with shares, permissions or server side settings (caveat: Your ssh user on the remote server DOES need to have the access you want to the files you want... but also duh). Want to edit config files on a remote server in your local text editor? You can. Want to mount your media server in your home directory on your Ubuntu laptop and watch your videos in VLC? You can. Want to just open Finder windows where one is your working directory on a cloud server and one is your home directory on your local machine and just drag files between them? You can. Want to share a hard drive between your Mac, your Windows machine and your Linux Mint laptop and just open the network share with one simple line in the terminal? You can.
The remote server just needs to be running SSH (that's it! You don't need ANY OTHER SERVER SIDE code) and you can mount ANY PART OF IT'S FILE SYSTEM like a network drive. It's file system agnostic on the server side as well. Implementations for Mac and Windows in addition to Linux. Although, admittedly, the non-Linux implementations are a bit janky... but I'm almost a pure Linux user, so that doesn't affect me... I DO have it running on my MacBook and my Mac Mini, but I barely use those.
mount a folder over ssh with a simple command
Some foss games I can recommend are Battle for Wesnoth and Endless Sky.
Battle for Wesnoth really needs more love. I know it's popular in the open source gaming community, but seriously, it's sooooo good. Mainstream gamers really ought to jump on board.
I don't know if you've heard of Unciv, but it's another really well done open source game that needs more love:
https://github.com/yairm210/Unciv
OpenTTD
have you tried simutrans?
Was thinking of that. I've sunked an unholy amount of time into it, but never got back into it for some reason.
Thanks a lot for your suggestion.
Navidrome, be your own spotify
+1 for Navidrome. I have just set it up in a docker for serving grateful dead shows. I may set up a second navidrome for other assorted music. I am experimenting with Clementine, also free, as a front end for playing the music.
i mostly use feishin for that, at least on pc.
LineageOS
@Sigmatank
Open source projects that are best-in-class, rather than imitators if commercial software
RStudio: 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.
Synfig, very capable animation software.
Qbittorrent and LibreOffice
Yeah I've been a uTorrent person for years, but I think two years ago or so I just went "fuck it!" Because the constant ads (and also horny af ads) were doing my head in. So highly recommend Qbittorrent.
Micromath plus is a great graphic calculator app for android.
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.
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.
Cherrytree note app, Desktop
https://www.giuspen.com/cherrytree/
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.
ShareX (windows). At first glance it looks like just a screenshot software, it just has so many features and options that it goes above and beyond
As some who has to do a lot of textwork and text research I really like:
It is a tool that lets you Index and keyword search large amounts of documents easily.
squaker for twitter since it helps me get info on calyx xmpp/jabber server
"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.
GNU/Linux and the PineTime
Why PT?
Its very cool and I love the minimalism. I love, that I have so many choices. I can choose what OS I want, I can choose which Watchface I wanna flash and so on.
GrapheneOS
Android
Android is hardly open source these days.
How come? Isn't that like saying Linux is not open source these days because RedHat keeps making their code more restrictive?
It would be like saying that if 99% of Linux users used RedHat.
AOSP is open source sure, but realistically basically everyone is using a closed source version that the OEM has messed with.
No, that's like saying RedHat isn't open source.
So that's like saying Google, Samsung is not open source. Not Android.
AOSP (Android Open Source Project) is separate from Google's. Similar to how RHEL and other related OSs are separate from Linux. Even though Google contributes to Android and Redhat contributes to Linux.
uhhhh.... I think? Android is built from linux, with a modified linux kernel, so linux can still be open source even when Android mostly isn't.
Android is also open source. Here's the source: https://github.com/aosp-mirror
There is no such thing as "hardly open source". Either the source is open or it isn't, and the source of Android definitely is. I think what you mean is "community driven", which is not the same thing. But open source always enables community driven forks and derivatives, which there are plenty of for Android.
OpenRA
PhotoPrism
LocalSend, it's FOSS airdrop available on all platforms
quick tip:
use apps like localsend/snapdrop/sharedrop/nearbyshare etc with 5ghz hotspot, you'll get at least 5-10 times more speed
thank you
Ah, I’ve been needing something to transfer between my windows desktop and iPhone. Just been using email / network drive