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.
There something I don't understand. How does one use Bitwarden daily? It generates, remembers and autofill passwords, right? I rarely enter a password anywhere. What am I missing? Please educate me.
There are certain sites which terminate your sessions after a while. For example, banking sites or most government portals. In such situations, the auto fill function is very handy.
Like the other commenter said, I use it for sites that tend to sign me out after a few hours. I also use it for work things that sign out every session.
Way way late to this, but I'll also say: Firefox and other privacy-focused browsers have an option to delete all of your browsing history and cookies when you close the browser, which also logs you out of anything you were using. It's a good practice if you're being mindful of how much tracking data you are letting be collected from you.
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.
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.
Just downloaded and tried StemRoller. Definitely impressed, I'd say it works marginally better than any of the "free" (aka trial version, need to pay for full features) stem separators I've tried online, so very happy to find this!
Both of these sound interesting, though I can't really think of a use for running vsts without a DAW. For a moment I thought it would be nice to play synth without opening a daw, but if I decide to record something I played I have to set it all up again.
I use Ampsims nearly exclusively. When I'm practising or just noodling I don't have any intention to record. Carla has a much smaller footprint than a standard DAW, and therefore less energy usage.
Keep in mind I'm a string instrument player primarily. I don't play with synths or anything like that.
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.
By a huuuge mile indeed. Blender devs are great at listening and communicating with the community.
The standardization of hotkeys and features across the software is fantastic. The UI is snappy and filled to the brim with intuitive QoL features I wish were standard for my OS.
I have irreconcilable grievances with a lot of open source software, VLC, VSCode, etc, and find development slow and heading non optimal for others like Sharex and Firefox... but Blender, that's green on all fronts.
Firefox, Thunder, LibreOffice, Kdenlive, Audacity on GNU+Linux .... (I'm no pro which is why I'm on Ubuntu but even still, I haven't paid for software in years)
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!
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 :)
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.
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.
Has Blender become industry standard yet? Last time I looked (a couple of years ago?) the big commercial ones, at least Maya and Houdini, were still the industry standard. Not to take anything away from Blender though. It's an amazing piece of software, gaining ground quickly, and would be my choice for doing 3D. However, I'm not in industry, and I had read back then from industry folks that Blender was still lacking in some areas. Some of it may have just been inertia on the part of large organizations that used the commercial software though.
I'd say it is still more in the 'Firefox v. Chrome' ground, used to a degree where it is aknowledged, but still not the most used by a good chunk. It keeps gaining ground tho, so the future looks bright :D
Can you do voice activation with this? I am using google home it works pretty well, but I'd like to move to a more custom setup. But I need voice activation. It's so nice just talking.
You can actually still use google Home if you want to - it integrates well with Google Home and Alexa but is currently massively expanding their own voice assistant option.
Home Assistant is more a "background" integrator - it links up all you different smart home options, makes them thereby smarter and adds external data (e.g. weather, traffic,etc.) whenever you want. And of course enables you to easily add your own visualisation and your own automations.
It is on one side incredibly easy to "start".
And on the other side incredibly powerful.
I’m currently using Home Assistant as my integration platform to talk to everything, and as an automation engine to make things happen.
Home Assistant can then expose your devices to other platforms like Apple HomeKit and Google Home.
For controlling things manually, I mostly use the Apple Home app, and Siri and Google Assistant for voice control.
This year the Home Assistant developers are focusing heavily on building out native and local voice control. There will be an announcement in a week on their progress. It looks like they will be announcing the ability to use wake works to activate voice commands (like Google/Siri/Alexa but all done without compromising your privacy).
7Zip. It's clean and has a lot of convenient features.
Bitwarden. I have too many accounts these days. It's a life saver and it's on all my devices!
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.
WinRAR is simply obsoleted by 7zip.
Or does everything WinRAR does and more. In my case, I particularly use their context menu shortcut for checking sha256 file hash
They can all serve the same purpose. The advantages of 7zip are the following:
It is totally free (as both in free beer and free speach)
The 7z compression format is superior to rar because it can compress either more or faster (not both though)
The rar format is proprietary. You are free to decompress but not to compress. In a business setting, you could theoretically get in trouble if you don't have a license. In some countries, e.g. USA, even outside a business setting.
But if you have been using winrar forever, I can't see you changing your ways anytime soon! :)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Definitely GIMP .... for any kind of simple quick photoshopping once you get accustomed to GIMP, it just works for about 80 percent of everything you want to do with an image ... yes there is a bit of a learning curve but its the image editor I use the most often
Openscad is all text based. Freecad is more like conventional cad software like fusion 360. Honestly I don't even know how people can use Openscad lol.
It's hard for me to bitch when it's free. I am very grateful for their efforts. That being said the learning curve is steep. But I'd assume not as steep a openscad.
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.
On that note there's a teeny tiny bash script called vimv, which enables you to rename a list of files in vim!
It's absolutely glorious, but don't switch lines around or delete them, it's really simple, comes with the full power of vim and doesn't protect you from yourself ;)
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.
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
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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.
This guy has a full run you can watch,(or not, that's LOOONG)
For me, I think it was just a combination of watching people play and banging my head against it until things start to sort of make sense. Kind of like dwarf fortress lol.
LibreWolf is the way. I have it on everything. I have it on Windows, Mac, and Linux. I have it on my Linux phone. It's nice to have Firefox without the adware and with extra privacy.
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).
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!)
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.
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
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 !
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
Yeah I just use a HDD. On the whole its pretty stable though through tinkering Ive managed to crash my setup a few times. Sometimes restarting the Nextcloud Docker container is enough (Portainer makes it simple), when i really break it i start from scratch. I use a simple script to automaticacally back up all my data to another drive weekly
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
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.
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.
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.
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!
Looks interesting, but is it open source?
Looking at the jobs page it looks like a great place to work, but it blows my mind that still only offer 2 weeks off.
They say it’s open source on their main page and link to their Github. I haven’t personally vetted that fact, but I’ve yet to hear anything to the contrary so I believe it.
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.
Ditto ffmpeg gstreamer obs Firefox & addons Thunderbird greenshot everythingtoolbar 7zip Lemmy jerboa and so many more OpenWRT simply a must, eartrumpet gajim conversations
PayPal works for me. Maybe you can find a solution here: https://librewolf.net/docs/faq/ The easiest solution would probably be to use Firefox + uBlockOrigin for banking and LibreWolf for everything else. Otherwise you can find user-made "about:config" files to harden Firefox' security and privacy.
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.
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
Very different. I haven't used FreeCAD much but it is far more visual and full-featured (I believe it even has some simulation features for moving parts) where OpenSCAD is really just primitive shapes and scripting but for my workflows (mostly creating 3D printed parts) it works well
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).
Unfortunately, FanControl is not open source. It uses librehardwaremonitor which is, but the FanControl project does not have source code posted and is not under a FOSS license.
I'm a darktable guy myself. I have tried Rawtherapee and was even an exclusive user of Art (RT fork) for a while, but darktable has everything I need in one package.
I’ve only just discovered Darktable, so I was a bit reticent to call it one of my favourites, but for the relatively minimal editing I actually do, it does seem to be pretty ideal.
I only use Digikam for organisational stuff really - do you find that Darktable’s filing/cataloguing ability is good enough that you only use the one program?
Anuto TD (found a few days ago, isn't super feature rich but still fun to kill time)
Mindustry (never played a game like it before, ended up supporting by buying it on Steam)
Supertuxkart (I love how many custom add-on karts and tracks I have)
For non-games:
Termux (allows me to get apk files and install Revancify for add free yt)
VLC (I don't mind slow updates and have yet to switch mostly because I can't find anything better that isn't more complicated than it needs to be and/or is closed source)
KDE Connect (I have almost always had problems with moving files from and to my desktop via cord)
I'd include something like Linux, but I personally feel that's kinda cheating because of how large it is compared to the others.
Linux, of course. But another one that I use all the time, and love to death, is SageMath. It's the perfect blend of mathematics and programming for me.
I have used a lot of stuff over the years but my favorite would have to be a little command line program called cowsay. It takes whatever text you feed it and puts it in a speech bubble above a cow, hence the name.
Media Player Classic (I'm unsure if the latest iterations are or even if the Home Cinema edition is open source), TOR, qbittorrent, firefox, thinderbird, obs to name a few that I use regularly.
Yup, love the project. One thing that has forever kept me bothered is there not being any auto-save and/or persistent undo/redo; however it's been a while since I've checked out what's new in the newer versions, so perhaps my issue is already resolved.
ReVanced. I love my ad-free, sponsor-blocking, Shorts-removing YouTube experience.
As a bonus, I also enjoy using Mp3tag. It's a program I can use to easily change and update the tags on all my music files, and it can even do it all in batches. It can also connect to various music services (Discogs, Musicbrainz, etc.) to get music tag info directly so you don't have to type it all in manually.
Uptime Kuma is a fantastic selfhosted status page system. You can use it to track and notify you of network outages or it can scrape a url for a key word and alert you when it's found. I've heard people using the keyword feature to find out when RPI go back in stock for example.
I use it at work to keep track of our systems and their uptime as well as cloud systems we use.
Posting before reading because activity. Godot Engine, hands down. I used Unity for years and years and now that Godot 4.x is out, I'll probably never use Unity again. Unless it's for a job or something like that. All personal projects tho... I could probably make a game in Godot while waiting for Unity to start up.
GCC, back in the days DJGPP in particular. As a child in the 1990s I could not afford the big name compilers like Watcom. And compared to DJGPP, all the “prized” Borland/Turbo stuff that my middle school pushed (with segmented real mode), were practically Fisher-Price and Mattel compilers.
I'll skip all the already mentioned ones and go for a less known one, EasyTag.
I used it to organise the tags in my music collection. Super useful as you can batch fill in tags based on file structure (like author/album/song) or do the reverse and sort files in a file structure based on tags.
How can it be one?
GNU/Linux, Firefox, EMACS, Ardour, Vitalium, SurgeXT, KX Studio (OK, this is repo), Carla, Gnome, Debian, MX Linux, XFCE, KDE Plasma, GIMP
I am absolutely sure I am missing more s/w packages that I love but don't come to mind.
would you recommend me to switch from Windows 11, if I mainly watch series on my laptop from large streaming providers? Are all streaming providers supported?
There's essentially an open standard for streaming video so it's not like the old days where you needed to download a platform-specific component to watch streaming video. I use Linux as my primary environment and I can't even remember the last time I had trouble with it; certainly not for several years at least. I've used Netflix, DisneyPlus, Amazon, Paramount+, and probably others.
Just as a heads up, though, if you are using Firefox then the first time you go to any of these sites it will prompt you as to whether you are fine with enable support for DRM video, and you need to click "Yes". This is a one-time thing, though. (It does this because if you are an open source purist then you might not want to do this so it likes to get your permission first; most browsers just assume that you don't care and enable it by default.)
I mean you can't do anything wrong with it, but you should be ready to troubleshoot and look into it.
I mean how are streaming sites suposed to not work? I don't know about desktop applications, but a browser does the job, so why use a desktop application that doesn't even support an adblocker.
TLDR: You'll be able to watch your shows, but if you want to use GNU/Linux you should look into it a bit.
EDIT: If you consider GNU/Linux I'd strongly recommend becoming familiar with the terminal (no matter which distro you choose).
Also you should ask for some beginners guide on [email protected] or [email protected]
Nah, I was reffering to Stallman's definition of 'open source'. He gets very mad when you reffer to FOSS as just 'open source' instead of 'free and open source', even tho almost everyone means FOSS when they say open source. And just for clarification: FOSS is defined by the FSF not by Stallman direct.