We all love open-source software, but there are so many amazing projects out there that often go unnoticed. Let’s change that! Share your favorite open-source software that you think more people should know about. Here’s how you can contribute:
- Single Option Per Comment: Mention one open-source software per comment to be able to easily find the most popular software.
- No Duplicates: Avoid duplicating software that has already been mentioned to ensure a wide variety of options.
- Upvote What You Love: If you see a software that you also appreciate, upvote it to help others discover it more easily.
Check out last year’s post for more inspiration: Last Year’s Post
Let’s create a comprehensive list of open-source software that everyone should know about!
tag studio It’s a file manager designed to use tags instead of files because tags are a much better system. It’s still in alpha and I haven’t actually tested it yet but I plan to use it instead of regular file managers once it becomes stable and well supported.
SherpaOnnx TTS for Android. There are many different voices to pick from that sound very life like and are totally worth using with GPS apps like CoMaps.
Also, just found out about Medicat recently but haven’t used it yet. It looks fantastic though: Medicat is a toolkit that helps compile a selection of the latest computer diagnostic and recovery tools into an easy to use toolkit.
Ventoy is a software you put on a USB stick to make it so you can load as many bootable ISOs as you want on it at the same time and still use the leftover space for normal file storage.
FMD (FindMyDevice) - An absolute necessity, especially if you aren’t using Google services.
It allows you to use any device/contact you’ve approved to send commands to enable/disable various settings on your devices, like bluetooth, do not disturb, camera, GPS, etc. via SMS, a FMD server (self-host optional) or from notifications (i.e. use Signal to send commands). So if you’ve simply lost your phone in your house you could make it ring no matter what, or if it got stolen you could lock it, use GPS, or factory reset it entirely.
The dev made it after he lost a phone that didn’t have Find My Device activated.
VLC (VideoLAN media player): play media files, DVDs, network streams and more. Just works,
LibreOffice - simply the best office suite there is (IMHO). I was a MS-office user for years, but since I switched, I haven’t looked back…
Inkscape - the best vector graphics program out there. So easy to use, and so powerful.
GIMP - unlike Krita - which is made for drawing - this is made for photo-editing. It’s like Photoshop. The learning curve is a bit steep, but it is really powerful.
Firefox - the original private webbrowser. Even though some people don’t like the options in it (like those that let you stream Netflix and other DRM content). If people care about privacy, they use this browser, or one that is made from it…
Krita is a fantastic program for drawing. It’s made for making beautiful paintings and animations.
Syncthing: Continuous, private, and encrypted file synchronization across multiple devices without using the cloud.
Absolutely LOVE syncthing. I recently had to go on an emergency trip and was glad I set up syncthing on my phone but hated that I didn’t set it up properly on my laptop.
I love syncthing, but never managed to get permissions to work right on any of my android phones. I chalk that up to phone vendor fuckery though.
I use Syncthing-Fork on my android phone, which seems to work fine.
I’ll have to try it the next time I have time, but I’m also trying to switch to a real linux phone. Right now, I have to wait for a friend to travel to the EU to be there while Pine64 has what I’m looking for in stock.
Pine64 is 2× more expensive in the EU
And doesn’t ship PinePhone Pro motherboards to the US at all.
I didn’t get into details because it wasn’t important, but they’re always be someone going “wELL AKTsHUally”. I already own a PinePhone, but it died. The easiest solution would be to get a new MB and swap it in.
You should know that there is no longer an official syncthing app and a clone has taken its place. It’s buggy but it works.
Permissions are a bit tricky to set up but I believe the clone app does it correctly by asking for full file browsing permissions.
Just to be clear, there is no official app for Android (and, I assume iPhone). If you are using SyncThing on desktop or laptop computers, there are downloads at the official syncthing.net site. On Linux, it should be available from your distribution.
Syncthing has been a wonder to discover. Basically replaced any desire for me to rely on the cloud.
Does it backup photos on iOS yet?
I’d love to use this but I just mostly don’t use multiple devices at the same time, so I don’t see how the sync would ever happen.
I have an instance on my phone running 24/7 which does the bridge. But i dont use much storage, i mainly work with text files, so the pc at work syncs with my phone, and when i get home my own pc gets the files from my phone immediatly. Its been working really well for years for me.
Yea my big problem is also that I need way more storage than what I have on my phone.
qBittorrent: only for your legal torrenting needs from e.g. archive.org :>
alternativeto.net is great for finding these
librewolf a privacy-focused fork of the latest stable firefox (win,linux,mac)
Calibre: great e-book manager
KDE Connect: An app for iOS, android, pretty much every flavor of linux, windows, etc. that lets you connect any devices together to share files, show notifications of other devices, use your phone as an input device(keyboard, mouse), control multimedia applications(start, play, stop, etc.), trigger commands, and everything else if you make a plugin for it.
The craziest thing I discovered when I started using it was when I noticed that because my desktop was now connected to my phone and my phone was connected to my watch, I could completely control the media on both from my watch and the integration felt natural - but also something I haven’t seen work that well in the proprietary world.
For me it was, that the video i was watching paused when i got a call and repeated the moment i hung up. FUTURE (or apple ecosystem, i suppose.)
Yea! I forgot it did that as well, but when that happened I had that same reaction of “holy crap, anything proprietary isn’t even close to being this good”.
KDE Connect Link
For some reason, I just can’t get my Kubuntu desktop and Android phone to talk to each other with this. It does weirdly connect just fine on Arch/EndeavourOS, though.
Maybe kubuntu has some weird firewall default settings. When i tried using opensuse some years ago, it took me quite some time to figure out that it was its firewall that wasnt letting me use my printer and some other stuff i cant remember
That could be it! I haven’t tried messing with firewall settings in detail.
I also have problems with one machine, it just refuses to see the others. It might have something to do with the firewall or SElinux, but I’m not sure.
This might read as a stupid question but ; Do you have to use KDE Plasma as a DE for it to work ?
no! there is GSConnect which is a gnome extension that provides the protocol as well
Ty !
I use it on Fedora with GNOME. Its available as a GNOME extension
Nice !
I have it running on my i3wm
No, it works on other setups too! I have used the regular kde connect app with enlightenment DE for example.
It even works on windows
I wish I could send a whole folder of files at once with this, mine seems to only work one file at a time.
You can also share access to your phones entire filesystem with kde connect, so you can browse you phones storage from dolphin as if ot was connected through usb and copy entire folders to/from you phone.
Unfortunately I think my phone’s USB is only good for charging these days, but it’s a pixel 6A so it’s on the way out anyways. I’ll have to take a look at that I didn’t see it, thanks!
On the 3 dots menu, theres “configure plugins” (or smthing like that), then you have to enable something like “expose filesystem” (dont know the exact wording because mine is not in english).
workaround: zip the folder?
i know it’s a little annoying, but it does make it into “one file” ;)
I recently found out that with Termux you can use rsync between Linux and Android devices.
The next level i kinda wish it had (because it already has about everything else) would be to have the phone screen shown in the desktop.
You should be able to achieve that with scrcpy (at least with Android). Never got around to test it myself, so I can’t vouch for how well it works though. My usecase for it died with installing a mini-PC in my living room, and now it would only be a curiosity for me.
Works quite well. Scrcpy is some great “just works” piece of software. I use it for all kinds of stuff, from typing with my PCs screen and keyboard in android apps, to remotely connecting to phones hooked up in a lab (using adb over SSH port forwarding, plus reverse forwarding whatevet 27… port scrcpy uses)
