I want to know what kind of apps/programs y’all recommend to people or just use personally. This is just in general, could be anything from a game to a media codec. I personally use Linux but stuff for other operating systems is welcome too.
Scoop is my favourite package manager on Windows. I’m also familiar with Winget and Chocolatey, but something has always felt off with them.
AltSnap is something that lets you drag and/or resize a window by holding the Win key and then clicking anywhere on the window instead of having to reach for the edges or the titlebar.
ClickMonitorDDC is my go-to for controlling brightness of desktop monitors. Also, on my work laptop I’ve set it to sync the laptop display brightness with the brightness of the external monitors. In combination with a macropad/keyboard with rotary encoders it is pretty good. Sadly, it’s practically abandonware at this point - the original site is down and there are only a few mirrors - but it still works fine for the most part.
Clink + Clink completions + oh-my-posh + fzf is my favourite combo for the command line. The cool thing about oh-my-posh is that it’s multiplatform and that its configuration is portable, so I can also install it on top of bash/zsh and have the same prompt I’m used to.
FanControl is something that I can’t believe exists as a free app. It’s so much better than motherboard vendor software for the same purpose - not only works reliably, but also lets you do things that the motherboard software usually does not - e.g. linking a case fan curve to the GPU temp. Last time I used GNU/Linux I had to manually write configs for lm-sensors, which works, but is a tedious process. I just found out about CoolerControl - looks promising, but haven’t tried it myself.
+1 for scoop. I’ve got a windows PC that I keep around for certain programs I can’t use with wine and scoop makes it bearable.
LocalSend. File transfer between any devices with (almost) any OS over LAN. No account required. The best file transfer app I’ve ever encountered by far.
StreetComplete. Get motivated to go outside with quests to help complete OpenStreetMaps. Surprisingly addictive. Requires an OpenStreetMaps account.
f.lux. Remove the blue light from your computer monitor in the evening to help you fall asleep more easily. Redshift. As above. Not quite as good, but works on some OS/System configurations that f.lux can’t handle.
Pulsar. A community version of the discontinued Atom text editor. Highly extendable and configurable. Great for small programming tasks or opening text files with an obscure syntax. Has most of the packages built for Atom.
Home Assistant. For automating your house and more (controlling smart lights and appliances, monitoring solar panel output, weather forecasts, printer diagnostics, delivery tracking…). A dedicated device (Raspberry Pi, old laptop) is highly recommended. A bit of a learning curve, but hard to live without after using it.
Will put a disclaimer here that it’s not going to be for everyone but I use emacs for pretty much everything.
It’s a competent code editor with a lot of plugins similar to vscode. It has email, web browsing and IRC built-in out of the box. One of the best of the bundled packages is org-mode which is a fully featured note taking application that can export to HTML and latex. Then there are a wide ecosystem of packages like music players (emms) and visual git interfaces (magit) you can install too. It can even work as a WM!
Before we get into a text editor holy war I still use vim for quick edits.
Here’s a mixture of applications, some for Linux, some for Android, some for both. And some of them might work on other platforms as well, but I’m not sure.
Borg for making backups. For the first glance it could look overwhelming, but after reading through the quick start guide, it’s really easy to use.
VeraCrypt for encryption of removable media.
Megalodon as a Mastodon client.
Voyager as a Lemmy client. It has a very weird and unintuitive UI, but there are no ads and the content is well readable, well presented.
OsmAnd for offline navigation. It’s especially great for cycling and hiking, as even the most insignificant trails are on the map. It isn’t free, but it’s cheap.
Thunderbird for emails. Until recently I just used the online interface for my emails, but ever since I got a Proton subscription and multiple aliases with it, I started to use Thunderbird so I can see everything in one place, and also it has advanced filtering capabilities (the best of any email client I’ve ever used).
Proton Calendar, just for the sake of not to use Google.
Firefox with uBlock Origin. These two together is the bare minimum nowadays if you are thinking about browsing the internet.
VS Code for smaller stuff. Not gonna list my extensions here, but there are a few less known ones that I always install.
Zed is in early development, but if it gets as mature as VS Code, I’ll consider using this instead.
JetBrains IDEs for software development. It makes me cry every year when I spend a buttload of money on renewing my license, but for me it’s worth it. No other IDE ever made it so easy for me to set up and work with projects.
Dia for UML or database schema diagrams, and bunch of others. Sadly it’s a bit outdated, but it’s simple and easy to use.
Krita (without any kind of unnecessary unsupported and unofficial AI plugins btw). It’s one of the few free programs that I like so much I paid for them.
I’ve also been getting a lot of mileage out of Tiny Media Manager.
Would you say that Krita is suitable for a beginner, especially with a little knowledge of traditional drawing?
I wouldn’t recommend learning to draw from scratch digitally no matter what software, but if you’re not a complete beginner and you’re willing to experiment with its functions, I don’t see why not. There’s a large helpful community and lots of tutorials too.
I have a few to recommend…
Firefox - Stop giving an ad network all of your data on a silver platter.
Affinity Photo - Good photo editing software with perpetual licensing.
digiKam - FOSS photo organizing software
Strawberry Music Player - A fork of a fork of amaroK, good music player!
VLC - Watch any video file.
Kodi - Consume your media library, in style!
OpenRA - Play the original Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert as well as Dune 2000 on modern hardware/software for free.
Unreal Tournament 2004 - I have bought this game three times, the original CD release on 6 discs, Steam and GOG. This is to my mind the best arena shooter ever, the original CD release even came with an official Linux installer.
I hope you don’t mean stock firefox.
What is wrong with stock Firefox?
I hope you are not calling it worse than Chrome, because that would be insane.
Hmm yeah. Not as bad as chrome but not that better. At this point, I use Librewolf because it allows uBo and has mozilla spyware removed. Mozilla pretends to be privacy-friendly. They aren’t your friend.
telemetry is not spyware.
Google collects data because their business model depends on them knowing as much about you as possible. Mozilla collects the data they need to fix bugs.
Mozilla collects the data they need to fix bugs
Funny
You should look at their privacy policy. You’ll be shocked at how privacy invasive they really are.
i have. which part do you find objectionable?
Well then, you should know that they aren’t any better. They track and spy on users, and also put ads into the browser itself.
Newpipe, KDEconnect, Vlc, KeepassXC, Syncthing, convert (CLI program for converting files eg jpg to PNG ), Yakuake (a dropdown terminal)
A couple of years ago I made a table when switching from OSX to Linux, the table is still quite up to date: https://jeena.net/why-i-switchedfrom-osx-to-linux
foobar2000 is an awesome music player
Wish it was on Linux
Do you mean on phones? Windows? Macs? Watches?
I like Merlin on iOS cos it identifies birds by their calls.
Android users can use ‘BirdNET’ it’s FOSS and works most of the time.
Merlin is also on Android too for anybody looking for it
Anyone have a good alternative to photopea for Windows/Linux? Please don’t say gimp :(
I love photopea but the subscription model is lame. It turns it into another Photoshop.
I need something to do occasional art in that will survive my slow Linux transition.
I quite like Krita
