I find it quite hard to find open source software for windows. In time i might switch to linux, but for now i am stuck with windows 10.
Is there some reliable place where you can search for open source software?
Or is it that devs usually just don’t bother with windows?
EDIT: everyone, thank you so much for your input! I will check it all out. Yes, of course windows is evil, and i hope/expect to switch to linux before windows 11 comes around, but i still need it for a few programs, unfortunately. Once these come with a linux version - which is in the works - i can make the switch. Degoogling/demicrosofting is a process and i’m working on it.
Have a great weekend and thank you for the time to answer my question.
You may want to check out Chocolatey, https://chocolatey.org/ it’s a package manager for windows. Install chocolatey gui to geat an easy way to work with it. It works fine via powershell, you just need to learn the commands. They have tons of info on there sight. Good luck and enjoy
Note that while chocolatey is a package manager in some sense, unlike “proper” package managers, it relies on the individual apps’ Windows installers to execute the actual installation functions.
It also contains tonnes of unfree software; it’s just a repository for installers afterall.
This is a good response and worthy of being the top answer, however I feel the need to point out that it isn’t actually what OP is asking for.
F-Droid specifically only hosts open source software, in fact it builds that software itself, it is t just another store or package repository.
Chocolatey does not build the applications it deploys and in fact contains plenty of closed source, proprietary and paid for software. It’s a fantastic tool and I use it a lot myself, but I wanted to be explicit that it’s not analogous to F-Droid at all.
WingetUI. Uses Scoop, Chocolatey, and Winget sources.
This is absolutely brilliant!
Ninite is awesome
Looks interesting! But you forgot a link https://ninite.com/
Been using ninite when doing a fresh windows install for years now!
I still use it on nearly every new Windows install (including when helping others setup). Although Ninite itself is not FOSS, it has many of the best open source Windows software in its curated list.
Maybe opensourcealternative.to
Wow. I love alternativeto. This is a cool tool if it’s good!
I’m guessing that is similar in function to osalt.com?
Choco is pretty good but it does have less packages than say, brew.
As someone who has packaged for Mac’s with brew and RPMs and debs on Linux, packaging for windows is a total pain. Choco uses nuget 2 for self hosted repos which means you need to run a server for your packages, which there are things like the PPAs for Linux and Brew uses GitHub releases so you don’t need to host anything yourself to provide binaries.
This is also on top of windows needing extra work to develop for, because windows filesystem works differently enough to need code specially for windows. All of this means that windows users suffer on the open source software front.
I feel like everyone moved from chocolatey to winget now that Windows has an official package manager.
no choco works better
How so?
is it that surprising that a third party does something better than microsoft?
A little bit, because you won’t explain HOW it works better…
It wouldn’t necessarily be surprising, but I’ve used both and I honestly couldn’t say which one I prefer. That’s why I hoped you would elaborate.
Not really, but it would still be more helpful to explain how it’s better.
Yeah, I liked Scoop more than Chocolatey.
What do you like more in Scoop vs choco? I use Choco assuming it would have more packages and would be updated more often since its more popular.
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Winget… literally just acts as an installer downloader. Scoop and Chocolatey actually maintain repositories.
Not to mention Scoop offers a lot more Unix tools that winget won’t. Also it stores everything cleanly in a single folder in your %userprofile% and never requires admin privileges.
Also, winget serves more proprietary software than FOSS, which is something OP cares about.
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For me, Scoop feels faster and I also don’t have to remember/find the package name of what I want to install.
If I want to install Everything, I just type
scoop install everything. I wanted Everything, it installs Everything. Easy. If I trywinget install everything, no. I have to remember the author as well and typewinget install voidtools.Everything. It’s just a bit annoying.Plus, I know where all my software is with Scoop. Windows installers love flinging files all over your system, but with Scoop they’re all in the apps folder. It’s not always the case, but I trust Scoop apps to stay where they are more than Windows installers.
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Is there a reason you use Scoop instead of Chocolately?
No installers unless absolutely necessary.
Backups are simple, all user data in a single folder.
Quicker checks for updates.
I tried Chocolatey first, but ended up using Scoop after a while. It’s been years so I can’t remember why, but there was something about it that annoyed me enough to make the switch.
Scoop
ReactOS Application Manager (RAPPS) https://reactos.org/wiki/RAPPS
Windows users generally don’t care as much about using open source software, so there isn’t really an audience for such a place.
There are a ton of great FOSS for Windows. Even before I moved to Linux as my primary OS, I used many of these because they were often just better than the proprietary alternatives.
Mine as well just @ blender for this lmao
Oh, for sure. I do like using FOSS and Windows is my primary OS (for game compatibility reasons), but I’m saying that the number of Windows users who care enough about FOSS to seek out an F-Droid equivalent is very low, which is likely why nobody has bothered to build one yet.
Windows has billions of users, I guarantee you more than a few care about FOSS.
Also FOSS repos for Windows do exist, as explained in other comments here.
I feel like a lot of people might like Foss, but still use FOSS. Sometimes you might need it for work/school but still want as many FOSS apps as you can get.
Analogy: A lot of people that use FOSS apps on Android aren’t running GrapheneOS
If it was easier to find FOSS stuff on windows, I think more people would use it and care about it.
Maybe not your typical users, but a lot of open sourced software us Linux users enjoy have Windows versions easily available.
That was what i feared, yes
F-Droid does a lot of vetting to help users avoid anti-features and other abuse.
Windows has anti-features built right into the OS, so on that platform such vetting is kinda pointless.
So, no, not really.
android has anti-features too, not ppintless
Android with play services*. Degoogled phones are dumb as rocks and some people like em that way
If by dumb as rocks, you mean not wasting obscene amounts of battery to tell Google all the details of my existence, yes, I do like that.
Linux
Seriously, if you care about foss - fuck windows off.
