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.
Firefox. It is the only thing keeping Google from total internet domination
uBlock Origin, it’s not even close!
the web would be miserable without it.
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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.
Blender is the model open source project :P
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).
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.
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.
Everyone should use LibreOffice … unless you work in a very specific office or school environment that specifically requires it, go install Microsoft Office, and even then, get your school or business to pay for it
Otherwise, for day to day document writing, letter writing or anything you have to do for yourself at home … LibreOffice is more than enough.
About five or six years ago, I was buying a new laptop at Bestbuy and I found myself a great deal and specifically asked for a system that didn’t have an OS with it or any software … they got an old returned unit, wiped the drive and sold it to me for about $200 at the time. While I waited, I listened as a salesman sold a new laptop to a clueless mother buying a unit for her son in high school … they got her to buy a $600 laptop, all sots of extras and MS Office and topped her off at about $1000 for a shitty laptop that was no more powerful than what I was getting
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!
I forgot Firefox was even open source
Wait for real? I feel like that’s their only marketing point sometimes 😂
These days, being an open-source browser that isn’t part of the Chromium monopoly is pretty much the only good thing they have left…
That is a good point, and in my experience Firefox has just kinda sucked less in the last couple of years. But of course that’s anecdotal so doesn’t really mean much lol
GNU+Linux
uBlock Origin - the chaddest AdBlock of them all!
Linux.
How could it be anything else?
How about GNU/Linux?
Richard Stallman spotted. :-)
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.
For those wanting to go further, checkout https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted
Blender, don’t even use it that much but I love it
Came to find Blender. It’s amazing what that project achieves.
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!
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!
These two links might single handedly change my life. Many thanks!!
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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 :)
