What's A Piece Of Software You Could Never Do Without?

uBlock origin

And sponsorblock!
- And DeArrow!
  
  A must for actually knowing the content of LMG videos past the click-bait headlines/thumbnails.

Firefox. I hate how inflexible other browser are.

Speaking of which, user scripts. So useful at un-enshittifying the web. Or just personalizing it to scratch those little design itches that annoy you.
- any good ones you can recommend?
The fact, that you can install plugins on a mobile browser
head blown gif
- Kiwi Browser is Android Chrome with desktop extension compatibility.
Others browsers, plural?

I guess Lynx exists...
Have you tried out LibreWolf? By default its a bit hard to use since it doesnt save passwords or history or cookies or anything, but you can turn all that on. Its a fork of firefox meant to be more privacy focused. You can still use your firefox account and everything im pretty sure.
- Use IceRaven for Firefox with full extension compatibility.

Bitwarden. Otherwise I won’t be able to log on to any of my accounts.

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
Someone always beats me to the funniest response!
- Oh, don't worry. The guy who answered vmlinuz beat me to the joke in general :)

Android. As bad as it is, if I had to use iOS or Linux phones it would be even worse, at least with the current state of Linux phones.

But actually, maybe if Android didn't exist, the FOSS community would focus more on Linux phones and they would be an actually good option. Maybe Android shouldn't exist?

For me it’s iOS, funnily enough. I use Windows for all of our video game machines and Linux for everything else, but I don’t use any Google products or services. After messing around on my computers all the time, I don’t want to even have to THINK about doing things to my phone to make it go. My current phone is six years old and the only reason I’m upgrading this year is to get a 120hz screen, USB-C, and for better low light pictures of cats. And a terabyte would be nice.
- Google is a bad company, and Apple isn't any better. Probably the best option for you would be GrapheneOS on one of the latest pixels, they have intuitive software, 120hz screens, have had USB-C for years, a good camera, lots of storage, and most importantly GrapheneOS doesn't use Google or Apple, it's FOSS.
Maybe just a feature phone and tether it to a laptop?

On Android, it's probably a little utility software called Quick Cursor (it's not FOSS). It's incredibly convenient being able to spawn a cursor on your phone from thin air that you can use to reach the "unreachable" portions of your screen, especially if you are holding your phone with one hand. Besides being a "phone touchpad" it has a bunch of ways of triggering actions/shortcuts, for example: volume or brightness control, launching an app (I use it for launching a floating calculator, notes...), opening notification shade, copying text (it can copy any text that is under the cursor, even if it's not selectable)...

It's not that I couldn't go without it, but it changed the way I use my phone and it would feel really weird without it. It feels like it should be a part of the OS.

Used this for all of 10 seconds and fell in love.
wow this will legitimately improve my life daily, thanks for sharing
That seems like a wonderful function. Considering android support external mouse with cursors. I hope someone can make a FOSS version and put it in F-droid.
That may be the single most intuitive, and intuitively useful, app I have used in years.

Wow, instant default install.
This is a nice share. I have used Edge Gestures for years (made by the same dev who created Square Launcher, which was my daily driver coming off Windows Phone) and this is a nice augmentation to that.

I am curious about the usefulness of the functionality behind the paywall. It looks like some of the app launching features could replace what I use edge gestures for, but without a trial to test it I can't be certain.

If you use the pro version, can you let me know if there is a way to pick from multiple applications to launch?

Here's an example of the application shortcuts in Edge Gestures:
- So, there are 2 main places for shortcuts/actions: tracker actions and edge actions.
  
  These are my tracker actions
  
  I set it so it activates when I tap and hold the tracker, it shows up those shortcuts. If I slide my finger towards one of the shortcuts, it activates it.
  
  These are my edge actions
  
  These are actions/shortcuts that you trigger by pushing the cursor to the edge of the screen.
  
  You can pick any app from your phone or any of the actions available in the app, there are a lot... Like system controls (volume, brightness control, media playback buttons, screen lock, screen rotation, etc.) and you can also make a shortcut for Tasker/MacroDroid/Automate action. So basically, you can make a shortcut for almost anything you can think of.
Downloaded and enjoyed. Thanks for the recommendation.
Legend!
You can just connect a Bluetooth mouse if you have one and a cursor will appear natively.
- I think you are missing the point of the app. The cursor part of it is more of a gesture, or you can think of it as a "thumb extension". The point is to help you avoid the inconvenience and save time by allowing you to reach farther parts of your screen without repositioning your hand. I called it a "phone touchpad" just because, when you activate it, a part of the screen is acting like a touchpad. You are not using it for a specific purpose of having a cursor on your phone, the cursor is basically just the tip of your "virtual extended thumb". So it's a utility/accessibility software.
  Using a physical mouse would be the opposite of what this app is trying to achieve.
That's stupid, so good. How haven't I heard of this before?
no F-droid?

Linux, seriously, it's in my phone, my router, my desktop, my ISP and nearly the entire infrastructure of the internet upon which I rely uses it.

Firefox, uBlock Origin, uBlacklist KDE, Dolphin, Kate, LibreOffice, CherryTree Kid3, Flacon, LosslesCut, qBittorrent, VLC Musicolet, Simplenote, F-Droid, AuroraStore

I agree with everything and also with Musicolet, like no other mp3 player felt right until this one, it has everything I like, I listen to downloaded audio books, and can effortlessly change audio speed and pitch, sleep timers, and folder directories.
- I desperately want a Linux desktop version of this.

A compiler. I mean, yeah, I guess I could go back to writing asm, but I really don’t want to.

asm? ha! back in my day we were hammering ones and zeros into clay tablets.
- You had clay? You lucky. We used stones and put mammoths on the wall.

Going back to a "normal" text editor after using Vim for a few years would be horrible

Life without qBittorrent would also be pretty difficult, hell no, I'm not paying for DRM content that requires proprietary software to watch

I really like qbittorrents built in search feature.
- Yeah the search is pretty nice, but I prefer my selfhosted instance of bitmagnet
After 20 years on vi/m, I recently moved to vscode with vim plugin and I have to admit.. I really like it.
- You sinner
- Check out zed or lapce. Both are open source but native editors as opposed to chromium with near first class vim support. Much faster but less stable as neither are 1.0 yet. Additionally they have great LSP features.
  
  That being said I just can't give up my vim and terminal workflow but I'm actively following both projects.

Python

Python is underappreciated

7zip

firefox

Yt-dlp. It's basically the only way I download music nowadays.

Someday, when I'm not balls-to-the-wall poor I'll actually support the artists. Until then, it's not illegal for personal use, and morally it's that or just no music.
Speaking of, is there a known way to get around the "sign in" blocking? It's not working anymore.
- It's fixed in the development versions. If you installed yt-dlp using pip, update with the prerelease flag: pip install --upgrade --pre yt-dlp. If you manually installed it, run yt-dlp --update-to nightly or grab the latest dev from their nightly repo.

vmlinuz

The entire world would shut down if this disappeared overnight.
- I'd be out of a job too
- There's always BSD, Hurd, Darwin... or NT 🤮

KeepassXC + KeepassDX

KeepassXC + Keepass2Android with the Inputstick plugin to let me type passwords into other devices using my phone.
- Nice, someone else with an InputStick.

Leisure Suit Larry

I'm bored so I'm just going to make a list:

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.)
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.)
Bitwarden (finally caved and got a password manager-- could not be happier)
CHIRP (the best for programming handheld, mobile and base station radios)
CrystalDiskInfo (great for checking the health of SSDs and HDDs)
DaVinci Resolve (love using this for video editing-- pirated copy was easy to find)
Deluge (great for torrenting)
foobar2000 (I love it for music)
Greenshot (useful screencapture software)
inSSIDer (great for wifi analysis)
IrfanView (very good for photo management)
MusicBrainz Picard (amaaaaaaaaazing god tier music management software to get all the correct metadata/album art)
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.)
WizTree (SSD/HDD visualization tool that is useful for figuring out what's taking up too much space on your drive)

Three stages of a passwort manager

Stage 1: I do not need a passwort manager
Stage 2: Maybe I need a password manager
Stage: Why didnt I setup one way earlier???
Why pirate Resolve? The non studio version is free (but not OSS)
- Hardware decoding was my reason for upgrading
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.
- Just familiarity for me.

git, vim/nvim

Obsidian.

Since the Internet in general is getting harder to find genuine information, it is becoming increasingly important to save anything important to you. One day it could just disappear without warning. Obsidian can be used for an offline knowledge base. Design it however you like. I do recommend NOT watching YouTube Obsidian “gurus”, their system works for them not you.

What's the premise?
- Personally for me, it allows me to dump stuff out of my noggin good or bad. That way I can stop thinking about it and move on. A form of self reflection. I have a bad habit to hold onto thoughts and go down a rabbit hole with them in an unhealthy fashion. Basically journaling but I can store things I have learned long term.
  
  The beauty of it is Obsidian (or really any other writing app) allows you to develop a system of writing for you. I’m not the typical writer but Obsidian allows me to write without worrying about the organization so much.
Yep, today I'd say obsidian and syncthing, they're the bread and butter of my life right now. Although it feels sad and weird to see the small app I discovered 2 years ago starting to enter the «selling template» and «enhance your experience» that notion also took a few years ago «althought it's a completly different company culture»
I do recommend NOT watching YouTube Obsidian “gurus”, their system works for them not you.

One of these is actually what got me started with it. I do not rigidly adhere to their system but it was a nice starting point I have since adapted to my own style. If I had gone into it blind I would have made a lot less progress because I'm kind of dumb when I have nothing to go off.

Vi/Vim - had it on every computer I've owned or used since about 1991.

Vi for me too. Mostly because I'm trapped and cannot exit it.
- Just head down to the basement, find the circuit breakers for your building and flip them all to off for 10 seconds. That usually gets you out of Vi.

Notepad++

I thought so too, yet here I am on arch linux now.

I guess I could run it under wine or something if I really needed it.
- I feel like the text editors we get by default do all the things I ever wanted notepad++ for anyway.
- There is notepadqq, if I remember correctly.

Termux on Android.

I've got some videos on my phone I might want to watch on random computers, so I serve them up with NGINX. I've got wget-created mirrors of some old websites on my phone, so I serve them up with NGINX. Other files I may want to move out from my phone to untrusted computers on the network can too be served up simply by NGINX.
I've got the full Wikipedia zim file from Kiwix on my Micro SD card, so I run kiwix-serve (behind NGINX).
I've got all the music on my phone, naturally the phone is then running my Navidrome server (behind NGINX).
Of course, I may want to manage this from a computer, so it's running SSH server.
My phone is always connected to VPN and uses NextDNS, naturally I may want to use this with other computers, but I can't install software to computers I don't own (I mean, I can, but ... it would be disliked), naturally it is then running Tiniproxy HTTP proxy server.
Some desktop GUI apps can be useful on a phone too. noaa-apt, Kid3, Audacity, desktop Firefox, Handbrake because I am too dumb for ffmpeg, so I run XFCE DE on it. Naturally, I can access it from a computer (I know) too, after all it's accessed via a VNC server.
Am I stupid enough to expose something using HTTP protocol running on my phone to the internet? Of course I am! I can use cloudflared.
Do I want to encrypt a file? I can use GPG.
Do I want to create a compressed archive? I've got TAr and GZip.
Do I want to browse Gopher? I've got Lynx.
SSH or telnet somewhere? The clients are there.

Christ on a bike, this comment reads like I'm having a stroke
- Do I want to download a car? I have PoterZebie on LilypaD for 3gb and a portable SD kaZoo
Why on earth do you run this all on your phone as opposed to on a home server?
- Because... I can.
  
  And it's portable.
Thanks for giving me many hours of something to do
I code nearly exclusively over termux+ssh.
- You ssh into your phone? Or you use Termux on your phone to ssh into another machine?
nginx

why not just python -m http.server 1234 ?
- I feel like NGINX is simplest to configure. And it's in the repos already, so I don't see the advantage here.
  
  Easy to do redirects, directory listings, serving a static website, setting mime types of specific files, basic user authentication, using HTTPS, using it as reverse proxy, limiting request types, limiting bandwidth, and making the directory listings far nicer with fancyindex module. That's all I need and it's pretty simple to do with NGINX. I don't know what the Python HTTP server does, nor how to use.

qBitorrent, undoubtably

100% agreed

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.

On Windows: EarTrumpet

Being able to quickly change audio outputs is awesome, I am always bouncing between headset and speakers. Also the pop up volume mixer is better than the built in one. Been using ET for years and years, can pry it from my cold dead hands.

What does it do that the standard windows soundmixer doesn't do? You can change inputs in 2 clicks or ctrl+windows×v
- Ctrl+Win+V doesn't do anything for me. The best part about Eartrumpet for me is that you can manage all audio outputs on your system individually. Since I use a virtual mixer, this makes it easy to adjust everything without being to open the mixer, as well as making sure each program is outputting audio to the right place.
I programmed my headset macro keys to do this with nircmd.
Having a bind that just instantly toggles between speakers/headphones is one of the major reasons I'm now stuck with Linux whether I like it or not

Was one of the big things that got me hooked in general because audio config is such a pain on windows
+1 for EarTrumpet

It's probably the most useful program I have on my Win10 machine.

bash

libreoffice, particularly calc. I keep all my finances and planning in spreadsheets I migrated from excel years ago.

Probably an OS

Bah, real power users only need a magnet and a pin.
- Oh look at you with your fancy magnet!

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.

How does one use flashcards?

Emacs, of course!!!

I can not imagine trying to get stuff done without it.

It makes organizing, programming, writing, just everything so much easier.

Joplin App

Obsidian

Windows: PowerToys. First thing I get approval to install on a work machine. PowerToys Run (Launchy on roids) saves me from the built in Windows search, a quick calculator, etc. PowerRename gets used more frequently than I care to admit. Video Conference mute is a second nature key combination. Can't remember the name of the window manager module but it is a key part of my workflow.

Android: As I've mentioned in a reply, Edge Gestures has been on my phone for years (first installed on a Pixel 3). Having 10+ apps accessible (especially 2FA, password vault, home assistant) from any screen, plus gestures for quick controls (flashlight, brightness slider) is incredibly handy. And unlike the notification shade, the edges of the phone can actually be reached with your thumb.

Linux: Docker. It's been an instrumental part of building out my home server which allowed me to kill my Microsoft 365 & Google One subscriptions. For me it has been the gateway drug in to learning more and more about self hosting - to Proxmox, LXCs & VMs, pihole and unbound, etc.

I think vim (and other text editors with vim bindings). I've gotten so accustomed to the vim way of doing things that I can't go back

KDE. My brain is hard-wired for Windows, so KDE is intuitive and just gets out of the way.

Python, Jupyter, Freetube

We used Jupyter Notebook in school, we'd have assignments where each again was broken out by block and then we'd have to solve it. I don't see much of a use outside of an education setting

What is your use from it?
- Jupyter is great for data analysis.
- I'm a data scientist, so I use it daily for machine learning tasks. Value imputation, model training, ad hoc analytics, and s lot more
- The jupyter console is just a better version of the interactive shell. Great for just trying out some lines of code.
  
  I also use notebooks at work to try out some APIs, to skip the tedium of the initial setup or some other routines.

Firefox, emacs, restic backup, bitwarden, linux/bsd

Joplin because I struggled for years with a consistent way to keep and refer to notes that I could find easily at a moment's notice and access from any device, anywhere.

(Please don't tell me about how you use a text editor and markdown in your home directory Like GH* INTENDED because I tried that FOR A DECADE and it didn't work for me. I'm old and cranky. Get off my lawn! :)

Newpipe

NAND gate

What's that?
- It's just a joke. NAND isn't a software, it's a bit operation (Not And) so 1001 NAND 1010 = 0111
  
  It's technically a "piece" of a software and is necessary for any addition and more.

KDE. Been using it since v3, tried various other systems like Gnome, Enlightenment, XFCE etc. and I've always been coming back to it. KDE just feels very intuitive and easy to use.

At this point Everything Search is goated.

For any Linux users, ANGRYsearch and Fsearch are pretty good alternatives to Everything, fd is great for the command line
Everything+Freecommander makes Windows so much more tolerable.

I've gotten very used to this little free app called Audio Switcher that makes it way easier to switch back and forth between speakers and my headphones.

This is going to be very handy, thanks for the rec

Browser, I guess? Without one you'd be back to early 1990s home computing.

Shove-it, an ancient Windows utility by Phord Software that shoves any half-offscreen windows back onto the monitor so that you can get to all the gadgets. Phenomenally useful. First thing I install on any new build.

Sounds like you need to try a tiling window manager. I find floating windows annoying as fuck, and they make you like super slow and unproductive by allowing windows to overlap or go off the screen. A tiler solves all of these problems, there are many fantastic options on GlazeWM, komorebi, FancyWM or the built-in tiling functionality of Seelen-UI on Windows.

Web browser

Which one do you use?
- Firefox

Irfanview. Quick easy very low fuss image viewer / low level editor

Advanced renamer.

My first thought is that my work requires office365 mail and my discovery that davmail exists has been a godsend. I'm not going to install outlook on my linux pc, so being able to check those emails using any client (claws in my case) is a massive convenience upgrade from relying on firefox to login.

Git

OpenSSH

Or OpenBSD in general. I've used it on my desktop for about 25 years.

Twenty, even fifteen years ago I would've said Windows Notepad / vim. Now I rarely use basic text editors.

I don't think there's any technology that can never be superseded.

Currently, Notesnook and Proton Pass.

For my work, Bluebeam.

On my laptop/desktop, for now I'd say Strawberry Music Player because I like playing/listening to the audio files I've stored locally on them.

For my phone, it's currently Auxio for the same reason.

These are subject to change if I find something better.

PaintTool SAI 1 is my beloved, I don't care how old it is, I love it and it's just so comfy to me!

For those who may be wondering, PaintTool SAI is a lightweight drawing program developed by Systemax Software that was released in 2008. The "SAI" part of its name is unrelated to AI, and is an acronym for Systemax Advanced Illustrator. It was developed by one person, Koji Komatsu, and he runs Systemax all by himself. What a guy!

Oh nice, never knew about thia. It looks like old versions of photoshop (v5 iirc)

Jellyfin, NZB360, HortusFox, HomeAssistant (soon), Docker?

Tell me more about NZB360 and HortusFox, I've never heard of these before.
- NZB360 is an app for Android to manage the *arrs, sabnzbd/torrent client and whatever else you want. Quite useful.
  
  HortusFox is sort of you own wiki, inventory and diary for plants you have at home. Like keeping track of watering, fertilizing, communication between other parties (like your SO to not double water your plants)

Encryption.

Linux. Luckily we have such a great FLOSS kernel to free is from the Gates and the Jobs of this world.

Gvim. I even write documents in it and then paste them into Word for final formatting.

Little snitch

Nextcloud.

Does everything from GSuite that I need it to, but without looking through everything I upload, and analyzing it for advertising and other purposes that I wouldn't consent to.

Neutron Music Player for Android. Yes the UI is outdated, but the efficiency and feature set cannot be beat. It's so efficient on battery life compared to both streaming music services like Spotify, or any other local music player Android app. And the feature set is incredible. The full parametric equalizer, built in frequency response correction for almost any headphone model you can name, volume normalisation, EQ presets, direct USB access to USB DACs to bypass Android volume or format limitations, crossfeed for headphones, and that's just what I can think of now. I'm sure there are more features I haven't even used yet.

Ditto clipboard manager Xmbc Explorer patcher Moonlight sunshine Everything search Wiztree Altsnap Powertoys KiTTY

That's a long name

Emacs.

Emacs is a way of life
- Or simply life ^^

Paint.NET

Reeder RSS client.

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.

JPEGView It's a simple but powerful image viewer (don't be misled by the name, it can view most any standard image formats).

It feels weird to even have an opinion on such a simple piece of software, but this is the type of tool that reminds you of what software could be like. When you open an image, you see the image. No loading time. No unnecessary toolbars. No fucking pop-ups to update the software to get the latest AI tools.

Don't get me wrong, it's plenty powerful. It's got all the tools you'd expect: viewing EXIF data, cropping, rotating, brightness/color correction. It even has some more advanced tools: navigating collections of photos (including nested folders), viewing a collection as a slideshow or movie, perspective correction, batch-renaming... The impressive part is that it does all this without getting in the way of it's job: viewing images.

Unfortunately, the project has been abandoned, though it appears to have been forked here (I haven't actually used this version, but hopefully they haven't changed too much).

There are too many so I've compiled them here: Mostly excellent “free” software.

When obligated to pick one it'd be AutoKey: “a desktop automation utility for Linux and X11.” Relatively and subjectively speaking, without it I feel hampered like crazy while most other software is “just” convenient.

Why is ReVanced crossed out? Works fine for me
- It was broken for a while so I sought alternatives. I just now reinstalled it and updated the list. Thank you for the reminder.

Obsidian.

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.

Outlook. /s

Sadly, OneNote. (I have a stylus)
Well, Outlook Express was pretty good at the time.

Unfortunately, Excel. It’s the lingua franca of the business world. Absolute shyte program.

Vim, curl, git, python, bash

On windows it's grepWin - it is an excellent utility implementation.

Kate

glibc

voidtools everything

tried it once, never been without again

I can't live without fre:ac. It's an open source project aimed at being the best and most accurate CD ripping and audio converting software. It supports Linux, Windows, and I think Mac OS as well. It's very similar to Exact Audio Copy for Windows. I'm a big music fan who still rejects streaming so I need this.

PieDock

Blender.

The only reason I got into 3D is Blender. I wanted to make some models for my favorite game many years ago and the developer of that game used blender to make them. I follwed the famous Donut tutorial (the old 2.7 one) and it opened the eyes for me that blender was so much more than a modeling tool. I had used SFM before in small amounts to make tf2 wallpapers, so I guess I wasn't completely new to CG, but Blender kinda shaped in which direction I steered my life.