Firefox. It is the only thing keeping Google from total internet domination
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.
This a million times over!
uBlock Origin, it’s not even close!
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.
Shout out to Firefox and Librewolf
Shout-out to Vivaldi for forking before mv3 happens. It is chromium based but they are very openly anti-google. It’s the OG Chrome devs as far as I understand.
Unfortunately vivaldi is proprietary and actively hostile to the software freedom movement, but if it weren’t I’d consider it as a daily driver.
Vivaldi is 95% open source, and I understand that may not be enough for some but I think that’s a lot better than most alternatives. It also works great.
https://vivaldi.com/blog/technology/why-isnt-vivaldi-browser-open-source/
The “only 5%” is what distinguishes it from Chromium, so it very much matters. And, that blog post is what I meant when I said they are actively hostile to the FS movement. Basically, they say users do not deserve the freedom to fork because competitors and Bad Guys can use it - very ironic for a product that is itself supposedly “95% based” on a competitor!
The argument that users should not have the freedom to fork because bad guys can use it is very similar to the idea that users should not have privacy or anonymity on the internet because it will be abused by bad guys (the so-called four horsemen of the infopocalypse).
That’s definitely not what the article said about the bad guys. They said they’re trying to protect the look and feel because their business model relies on their brand staying consistent so they can keep business partnerships in place to pay the bills.
They also provide nearly as much code back to the community open-source as they do closed.
If 95% isn’t better than Chrome (which I switched from) idk what to tell ya. And Vivaldi is also the reason I know about the fediverse – they openly advertise it. So it got me off reddit too. I call that by FAR a net win.
OG Opera devs.
I love and use Bitwarden daily.
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.
Also the fact that if you use a shared machine at all to login, it’s best practice to intentionally log out of everything, and clear cookies/cache when you’re done.
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I auto wipe cookies all on every browser close so that gets more use.
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.
I knew about Bitwarden, but I thought how could a cloud based thing be truly open source, but they actually do have their backend on GitHub 🤯
I also love bitwarden daily ;)
I also love bitwarden daily ;)
uBlock Origin - the chaddest AdBlock of them all!
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 currently firing on all cylinders, it’s a real beauty
Blender is the model open source project :P
Krita for me!
Honestly, Blender was the first software that really “proved” open source software to me, and I’ve been an open source exclusive user to this day
Ill throw in some obscure ones I use daily.
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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.
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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.
omg, stemroller sounds amazing!
Stemroller sounds insane.
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!
Those I’ll need to check especially the vst host. Nice :)
These two links might single handedly change my life. Many thanks!!
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If i had to go with just one the linux
Or as I’ve recently taken to calling it gnu+linux
Blender, don’t even use it that much but I love it
I’m always blown away at the power I see available in Blender, it’s a real anomaly.
Came to find Blender. It’s amazing what that project achieves.
Git itself.
Which allowed this monstosity I contributed heavily to, to leave a hellscape of svn patches: https://github.com/LandSandBoat/server
So git earns the “favorite” designation hands down.
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.
Vim wouldn’t even have occurred to me if you hadn’t said it. I use Vim more than I talk to my family.
Exactly, text editors are such everyday staples and yet it’s easy to take for granted that they are open source. Vim is often the first package I install on new systems when not already present and, outside of my web browser, is certainly the program I use most.
On that note, I’ll add Markor to my favourites list. It’s absolutely the best Android markdown editor/viewer I’ve found to date, and it works beautifully with Syncthing folders.
Signal, Thunderbird and Bitwarden
Signal, Firefox and Eclipse.
Too bad Signal are dropping support for Windows 7 ;(
Kind of odd to use Signal (a privacy and security focused messenger) on Windows 7 (an EOL and thus highly unsecure operating system).
it is a development machine with highly specialised tools - Altium Designer, SolidWorks, IDA Pro, Altera Quartus, etc.
Upgrading the OS is not a trivial thing as would be on a phone or tablet. Also when upgrading the OS it would make sense to upgrade the HW as well, and that is a major investment. And Signal is just not important really to warrant that.
I would still use it on my phone though, but on the PC is just Viber unfortunately (whatsapp dropped as well).
I wouldn’t say upgrading the OS on a phone or tablet is trivial… Especially when compared to a PC. Upgrading the OS on a PC is much easier.
Both is trivial in my opinion. The problem is OP using ancient software that only runs on an ancient OS. In this case upgrading is not trivial. Even though upgrading is a major investment in this case, it only gets worse the later its done. Typical case of technical debt
Well, it depends on the phone and tablet of course, but given how many cannot be rooted anymore thee days, I’d say it’s no longer trivial.
I didn’t know thunderbird was open source!
Yup, it’s the nephew, so to speak, of Firefox!
that’s cool that others also love open source. these three right here are 🔥
I think I’ll go with GIMP: it’s such a well made tool and for 99% of use cases is a valid alternative to professional photo editing suites
for 99% of use cases
Brave thing to say online about Gimp 😄
Exactly … I’d say more 80 percent of everything you ever want to do with an image … the other 20 percent is probably stuff that isn’t worth doing anyway … I use GIMP all the time and it’s the image editor I use the most often
GIMP is pretty good, but I think the expectation that it should fully replace Photoshop for professionals is wrong anyway. Use whatever you feel is the best tool in the toolbox for the job.
gimps ui is just less intuitive. I have no doubt it can do everything photoshop does for people who use it regularly, but as someone who just wants to edit some images occasionally, its challenging to learn (and relearn) its quirks everytime. all of that could be fixed by just changing the UI though.
Yeah I know, being realist always backfires
Right now it’s Proton. The work that has been done to makengaming possible on Linux is astounding!
Just got a steam deck and have been learning how incredible proton is
The progress it has made is incredible too! I want future games.to target native Linux releases, but there are so many that probably lack the expertise to do so, and Proton is a great way to get them to work.
