Free and Open Source Software

Linux, to replace Windows :p

Thunderbird is brilliant and I highly recommend it. As someone who maintains an IMAP server used by a dozen or so people, I can attest that the Thunderbird users never seem to call me up and complain that things are breaking. Outlook, on the other hand...

Similarly, Firefox is a great web browser. I'm not a fan of how they handle money, but just the same I'm not about to go back to a chromium browser.

Kdenlive takes a bit of getting used to, but it's very powerful, and once you've wrapped your head around it, it becomes quite intuitive. It runs well even on 10 year old hardware. You'll want to learn ffmpeg while you're at it, though. That's a godsend.

I don't understand the hate for libre Office. Many complain that it's good, but not at the level of Microsoft Office. I disagree - I've used it exclusively for over three years, and always completed reports, spreadsheets, presentations, etc. to at least the same if not better calibre than my peers.

Edit: I can't believe I never mentioned Xournalpp! It's basically a clone of the old Windows Journal (precursor to OneNote) and I use it daily for drawing on PDFs, note-taking, etc.. Very handy for tablet computing.

Calibre is very powerful for book management, you should stick with it.

My last experience with Win10 vs now:

(FOSS in bold)

• Edge -> LibreWolf, Brave
• Windows Mail & Calendar -> Thunderbird, Tutanota
• Windows Explorer -> Thunar, PCManFM
• Todoist/iCal -> fruux + Thunderbird
• NCH VideoPad -> Kdenlive
• iTunes, Spotify -> CDs, Audacious, DeaDBeeF, Bandcamp
• VLC -> mpv, Parole
• OneNote -> ~~Obsidian~~ Joplin + Backblaze B2
• Firefox Lockwise -> Bitwarden
• WPS Office -> LibreOffice, ONLYOFFICE
• VSCode -> Micro
• Visual Studio -> Micro + GCC + Glade
• Finale -> MuseScore
• NT -> Linux (obviously)
• Windows 10 -> Debian, Arch Linux

And now, the online services:

• Ecosia -> LibreX
• YouTube -> CloudTube
• Twitter -> Mastodon
• Reddit -> Libreddit, Lemmy
• Dropbox, Google Drive -> MEGA, Filen, USB sticks
• Blogger -> Neocities, Flounder (gemini protocol)

Sorry for the long post. Here are some potatoes:

I think most of them I'd be using on windows as well. Like blender, gimp, krita, librewolf, libreoffice, thunderbird, virtualbox, etc.. etc.. etc.. Although it was 15 years ago I had switched to mostly open source applications in the years prior to eventually switching to linux entirely.

I've personally been using AlternativeTo for many years to find alternative software, especially when I first began using Linux.

Not a replacement per se, but I am just amazed by how much better some common FOSS apps feel in Linux compared to Windows. Apps like VLC, Calibre, FreeCAD, Libreoffice, hell even Firefox are so much smoother in a UNIX system, almost like THIS is their real home!

I've been using thunderbird for so long now I can't remember not using it. I'm very comfortable with how it is, but look forward to the upcoming changes.

(EDIT: Re: Kdenlive) I do a small amount of video editing, usually quick stuff to censor/cut a screen capture for posting to github or something, and every time I'm amazed at how well it works and easy it is to use. I'm sure it has it's limits if you have a complex task, but I'm not sure even an intermediate user would run into any of them.

My favorite is FreeCAD though. I know the windows equivalents are probably "better" but I like the project's persistence and the constant improvements they are making. Now that I've put the time into learning it I like it a lot.

As a side note, in my opinion ffmpeg is a massively impressive piece of software and what kdenlive and many others use in the background for a lot of tasks.

EDIT: Hit post too early.

Whenever I use Windows I can't get over how utterly terrible the basic file explorer is. I swear that it was better back in the XP days. On linux I use Dolphin and have found it to be excellent. Tabs, Split screens, everything is so usable.

I've used Thunderbird since it was released almost 20 years ago. It has some annoying bugs around setting up accounts (get your password right or it clears the whole form), but you do it once and it works wonderfully.

Been using Gimp for over a decade over Paint/Photoshop.

Kdenlive is pretty nice.

• Inkscape as well for all of the Adobe stuff
• Pandoc and Pympress for all my presentations
• Claws Email
• Khard + Khal + todoman + vdirsyncer for the rest of the PIM stuff
• Zathura is my PDF reader
• Syncthing replaced GDrive more or less
• qutebrowser

I switched to Linux in 2006.

Calibre is excellent for ebook management. If you are just using it to sync with your ereader you might be able to do without. I have a Kobo and use Calibre but will likely stop doing that because there are now tools that are a lot lighter to convert epub to kepub and add covers, etc.

I keep a list of software I like to use, I need to update it.

What distro did you choose?

LibreOffice (and not OpenOffice) is a must.

I have tried really hard to make the switch to GIMP, but Photoshop is too engraved within me.

I will probably keep using Photopea instead.

Calibre is great for book management. I use Thunderbird for my email/calendar since I'm on Linux and have never even though of changing. Works like a charm and it does everything I need it to.

Other software I use and recommend are:

• Web browser: Firefox
• Image and drawing: GIMP and Inkscapr
• Plain text editing and programming: Neovim
• PDF reader: Okular
• Media player: VLC
• Terminal: Alacritty (main terminal) and Yakuake (to have a terminal that I can easily access and then hide)

I've been a big fan of helix as a terminal text/code editor - while VS Code is open source, a lot of their language servers (for example, pylance) are closed source. Helix lets me integrate open source language servers out of the box without any setup needed (besides installing the language servers), and it has a UI that helps you explore new features and learn keyboard shortcuts. It doesn't have plugins yet, but I find that the built in features have implemented most things I'd want a plugin for; and it has different keybindings than vim/neovim, but I've found the new model for editing more intuitive and worth the relearning process.

Check out Calibre-Web. Improves the traditional Calibre experience a lot.

I love Notepad++. I use notepad apps way more than I should, but I really prefer the lightweight, no formatting text editing experience. It's lightweight and can be installed as a portable version and supports all kinds of languages and plugins.

This is a list of all the open source software I have come across and use frequently to semi frequently. There will likely be some overlap with stuff everyone has already posted.

Photography and Image manipulation

• Darktable → RAW photo processing
• GIMP→ Photoshop alternative
• Krita → Digital painting (have only used it a bit, but I hear it's good)
• Inkscape → Vector Graphics
• Automatic1111 → Diffusion model AI toolkit (mostly Stable Diffusion but also has extensions for other diffusion based models like OpenAI's Shap-E)

3D modeling and Printing

• Blender → 3D Modeling, sculpting, 2D animation, compositing all rolled together (simply one of the best examples of FOSS)
• Meshroom → Photogrammetry
• PrusaSlicer → 3D printing slicer based on Slic3r

Video editing and Processing

• Kdenlive → Genuinely good video editor
• FFMPEG → Command line media toolkit (very complex but also works on android through Termux)
• Instant NeRF → Neural Radiance Fields, think photoscan to a 3D representation (not meant to make 3D meshes unfortunately)

Misc

• Calibre → E-book management
• Serge → Self hosted Local LLM's made a bit easier to deal with
• Firefox → Web browser

FOSS I'm excited for

• DragGAN → Manipulate images by intuitively dragging, more on this here and here (official code being released this month but there are already projects based on the paper with working examples)
• CoDi → "Composable Diffusion" Any2Any conversion Txt2Vid, Vid2Audio, Audio+Txt2Img, whatever
• Neuralangelo → Promises to be NeRF's for 3D models (don't know if it will be FOSS but I'm hopeful)

CMUS as a music player. Clean interface, lightning fast and plays anything. I use it daily.

Check out KDE Connect / gsConnect for integration your phone to your computer. It can sync notifications, messages, share clipboard, media playback controls, use either device as mouse/keyboard for the other. Its really good on Android. For iOS the app is much newer and with limited features due to iOS limitations

If you're on KDE, something as 'basic' as the file manager Dolphin feels decades ahead of the Windows File Explorer

Zim Desktop wiki is really good for creating a personal wiki. Think building a personal knowledge base or notebook with interlinked articles

For 3D/2D -> Blender

Office stuff: LibreOffice

For programming -> Neovim, Insomnia (for testing out REST api's and whatnot)

Virtual Machines -> KVM/Qemu (Virtmanager, Boxes, etc) This one was a huge improvement for me

I use VLC for most of my multimedia needs

For game development (related somewhat to 3D/2D) -> Bevy and Godot

Plus a tonne of others I'm leaving out. It's really a nice feeling.

I've never heard of Logseq. But I use an obsidian alternative called trilium. I'll give logseq a shot.

I will say, despite how old and outdated calibre looks, it's an absolute beast and contains every feature you would need. I use it to tag all my pdfs with the correct book information (which calibre with find for you) and use it to export my books into a specific folder hierarchy for easy browsing using KOReader on my Kobo e-reader (which runs on linux!)

I find LibreOffice to be way too heavy for light notes (My current light text editor is FeatherPad), but it's a great alternative to Word!

I've started using Xournal++ in PopOS on my Surface (you need a custom kernel for linux to work) instead of OneNote, so much more stable, crazy amount of options, would be perfect if it picked up pen input a little better, but it's good enough to replace OneNote for me.

I use Dendron with VS Code rather than Obsidian, but is there any particular reason why I might want to use Logseq instead?

Firefox as a web browser.

I keep trying email clients, but end up going back to Thunderbird. It still looks clunky, but it works well, and the new UI is in beta, so it should look better soon!

I think Microsoft tried creating something like it on Windows, so I guess it can technically count as a replacement; KDE Connect

@Witch
A helpful browser extension tool is Privacy Redirect. It allows automatic link redirects from:

Reddit -> Libreddit
Youtube -> Invidious
Google -> Startpage (or other)
Maps -> OpenStreetMap

... and a few others.
It is very customizable for what instances or sites you need which is why I think it's great.

@Witch Linux :D fedora silverblue