Hi everyone! So I’ve recently switched to Linux and I’m having a lot of fun downloading software and replacing my old stuff with it. I’m wondering what you all use?
My switched softwares:
Obsidian -> Logseq - Obsidian is great and all but I think Logseq is also competent in its own way even without plugins. I am currently exploring templates to create my own daily journal/habit tracker like I did in Obsidian.
Word/Notepad -> LibreOffice - Seems to have a lot of options. Currently using the writer software for quick notes.
Canva -> Inkscape - I am aware that Canva is a website/android app, but I decided to switch from it to Inkscape by utilizing open source illustrations such as Undraw for graphics needs. I still need to look up tutorials on how to use it properly, though!
Clip Studio Paint -> Krita - I actually made this switch a month or two ago, but I’m really enjoying Krita a lot more than I ever did Clip Studio Paint. Less things to get distracted by, giving you more chances to learn how to utilize the essentials.
Things I’d like to explore in more detail:
- Thunderbird as a calendar/email/task software
- Whether or not I should stick with Calibre for book management
- Kdenlive as a video creating program. I haven’t created videos before, but it seems fun.
How about you? What do you enjoy?
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)
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!
- 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?
I ended up switching to Pop OS! It’s cute and I like it and its probably the one I’m most familiar with as I tried it out a few times.
I was thinking of switching from Calibre because of the outdated design, but In another comment @hayden just informed me about Calibre-web which looks…a lot better than the actual Calibre software, so I guess I’ll just stick with that!
I’ll install Zathura right now and see what the experience is like.
Calibre-web is my favorite library management software, but it doesn’t completely replace Calibre for me. Calibre-web is only related to Calibre in that it uses the same library format and uses Calibre’s ebook conversion tool.
Calibre is nice to have with Calibre-web if only to repair a corrupted library. Calibre also has a lot of tools to fix problems within ebook files, plus a good plugin ecosystem.
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.
I might give this a try. I want to explore something else besides emacs.
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.
Is Insomnia like Postman? If so, could you post a link please?
It’s like postman, yes.
Thanks for the link!
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)
I use Dendron with VS Code rather than Obsidian, but is there any particular reason why I might want to use Logseq instead?
Interesting, I didn’t know about Dendron!
I’m actually switching from Logseq to Zim Wiki (might take a peek Dendron, though!) because I found out something about logseq I Don’t quite like: each journal entry seems to be part of an infinite scroll. So you’d have day 1 of using it, then at the top would be day 2, and then it’d become day 3…
I did however like the fact that it has flashcard capabilities and whiteboard capabilities without having to install plugins. I think Logseq might be best used for a daily journal that you can scroll through from present day to past day. It also apparently has good citation features but I didn’t get to explore it very well.
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 ->
ObsidianJoplin + 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:
It took me a few seconds to figure out what the heck just popped up on the side of my screen, haha! Thank you for the potatoes.
Out of curiosity do you find that neocities is easy to set up for a beginner? I’d like to get into blogging that I don’t have to worry about getting comments on. Something where I can just ramble on a bit about how things went that day, what I learned, and then post and never touch it unless I want to reread that day’s entry.
- Edge -> LibreWolf,
I recommend https://alternativeto.net/ since you just type in the software name and it will show alternatives rated by popularity. You can filter by many things including “open source”.
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!
One of my favorite is fsearch, basically a one-to-one copy of Everything that is written in GTK
At work we use Creo Parametric. I have a cracked copy of it at home, but I still prefer modeling in FreeCAD.
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!
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.
GIMP is great but the little things like where certain tools are located in the menus can be frustrating for a Photoshop user. Sometimes the one thing Photoshop has that GIMP doesn’t is exactly what you need.
