FOSS or otherwise
www.start.me launcher page. I have all my links on all devices in the same place. My first step when i install a browser.
Never heard of that, does it work offline? I’ve been using TiddlyWiki on a cloud drive as a bookmark homepage.
No offline, he typoed the url btw. I use it because I’m old and miss the old web portal days like igoogle before they ditched it. I made my own page that simulates an igoogle-like web portal, very customizable except you can’t, for some really strange reason, click the header of an RSS feed to get to that page’s home.
Would be sorta meh for me, except I made a sub-page with only 1 column that makes the best start page for a phone I’ve ever seen, because I made it myself with stuff I want to see all at once when I start my phone browser. That 1 feature makes it worthwhile.
The kernel. I can take or leave most things, but I’m not going back to the days of writing directly into memory-mapped registers.
But that’s my favorite part
Unfortunately, Excel. It’s the lingua franca of the business world. Absolute shyte program.
Python, Jupyter, Freetube
KeepassXC + KeepassDX
KDE. My brain is hard-wired for Windows, so KDE is intuitive and just gets out of the way.
bash
Yt-dlp. It’s basically the only way I download music nowadays.
I’m bored so I’m just going to make a list:
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Lightroom Classic (I’ve tried Darktable, just not for me. I take a lot of photos on my DSLR and I’ve been using Lightroom since 2015 so for me it’s worth eating the awful monthly subscription that I split with someone else.)
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Anki (flashcard app, very popular among med school students and folks trying to learn new languages. Open source and tons of useful decks available. I’ve aced plenty of exams thanks to Anki.)
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Bitwarden (finally caved and got a password manager-- could not be happier)
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CHIRP (the best for programming handheld, mobile and base station radios)
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CrystalDiskInfo (great for checking the health of SSDs and HDDs)
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DaVinci Resolve (love using this for video editing-- pirated copy was easy to find)
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Deluge (great for torrenting)
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foobar2000 (I love it for music)
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Greenshot (useful screencapture software)
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inSSIDer (great for wifi analysis)
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IrfanView (very good for photo management)
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MusicBrainz Picard (amaaaaaaaaazing god tier music management software to get all the correct metadata/album art)
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reWASD ($7 but it’s so good for no BS macro’ing of keyboard/mouse/gamepad shortcuts and profiles. I have two PCs and two mice + gamepad attached to my PC and this software is very helpful. I think the license is for life.)
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WizTree (SSD/HDD visualization tool that is useful for figuring out what’s taking up too much space on your drive)
Why pirate Resolve? The non studio version is free (but not OSS)
Is there a particular draw for foobar2000? I remember a while back I was looking for a music player and that kept coming up, but I found it underwhelming when trying it. I’ve been using MusicBee for a long while now, and have found it excellent, so I don’t plan on switching, just curious if there’s something I’m missing.
Back in the 90s, when Winamp was the only game in town, many of us got tired of messing with the interface to make it useable and efficient. Foobar pretty much was plain Jane vanilla, looked like any other window and had the basics so you could do other stuff and not fuss with the horrendous skin.
After all, you’re typically listening to it, not looking at it, which was the point for me. Winamp’s tiny buttons and such drove me mad.
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Python
Python is underappreciated
OpenSSH
My first instinct was to say GIMP or Firefox, but I could still use Krita or Chromium in those cases.
I’d say Anki then. I don’t know of any other FOSS flashcard app this good, and I have so much saved on it that losing it would be devastating.
On windows it’s grepWin - it is an excellent utility implementation.
On foss category KDE connect. I use my phone as keyboard and mouse to navigate my laptop/PC while sleeping on my beanbag. You could use wireless mouse or keyboard but i find KDE more convenient. Also i can control the media from there
For non foss believe it or not it was google lenses, i used to use Accessibility Button setting floating bubble just for lense easy access from google assistant. They removed it and change it to “Gemini AI” now you need to screenshot and open the separate app.
Before that you just open it from accessibility and just search the screen. Translate, searching products from your screen, copy paste text from image you can do it from there no need for screenshot.
Edit : Just found out that you can change the default assistant function from the assistant app. I can use the lens with accessibility setting again *Horay
Kagi has lenses.
LiGNUx, VLC, Firefox w/Ublock, KDE Connect, Dolphin, Kate, KDE. Vim, i3wm, Keepasses, yt-dlp, deluge, freecad, librecad, slic3r/cura. Some of these are clearly redundant or overlap. My use cases vary
Non-foss: Steam library.
I wouldn’t spend so much time on the PC if I had to pay a premium for every little thing much like I’ve experienced with my arts-related hobbies.
