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I made it to Linux! What is your must-have FOSS or Free Software for linux?

Thank you so much, comrades! I am feeling pretty comfortable with linux mint, and now would like some suggestions for some absolutely necessary FOSS or free license software for the OS. So far I have the standard, Firefox, ThunderBird, LibreOffice, yada yada. Thank you again to everyone on the linux comm!

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  • Welcome! Some of my must-have FOSS software for GNU/Linux are:

    • ONLYOFFICE: Similar functionality to that of MS Office, but free and open-source, very nice compatibility with .docx documents and all the excel formulas I use are still there.
    • Boxes: If you like or need virtual machines, Boxes is one of the best FOSS solutions out there, I have made Windows, BSD and Linux virtual machines using Boxes and they work flawlessly, and the drag-drop feature to send files from the host to the guest machines is absolutely nice.
    • Konversation: In my opinion the best graphical IRC client, with HexChat also worth noting.
    • Kdenlive: I have used many video editors in my life, both FOSS and proprietary, but Kdenlive is the one who made me stay. I have even remastered old 80s Betamax videos using only Kdenlive.
    • TeXstudio: If you like LaTeX, this editor is absolutely wonderful and it works out of the box.
    • Prism Launcher: If you like Minecraft, this is the only launcher that actually worked on my Fedora installation, and it's so easy to install mods, resource packs, shaders, etc. that I already consider it to be the best FOSS launcher for both premium and non-premium instances.
    • HandBrake: I just love this open-source video transcoder so much.
    • fre:ac: I have used this FOSS audio encoder since I was a kid when I wanted to convert mp3 music to a format that my DSi could read. Nowadays I still use it to convert from and to any type of audio and it just never fails.
    • RaccoonLock: A modern-looking and private password manager that is wonderful if you just want to store your passwords locally in your PC and you do not care about syncing them with other devices (although such feature is partially possible through the creation of backups).

    It's also worth mentioning other FOSS software like VLC, VS Code (though it's not entirely FOSS, with Codium being an actual FOSS version), OBS Studio, GParted, PDF Mix Tool and FreeTube. Welcome to the GNU/Linux world! I hope you enjoy it and you find these utilities useful :).

  • random suggestion but do you play guitar? take a look at guitarix if so, you won't be disappointed

  • I personally recommend LibreWolf over Firefox. It is a fork of Firefox, but it includes some additional settings for better privacy.

    Flameshot is a pretty useful screenshot tool that functions similar to the Snip tool on Windows.

    If you're going to be installing apps via Flatpak, I recently learned of an app called Warehouse that allows you to view all the Flatpak apps you installed, the user data associated with each app, and their file location.

    If you want another option for LibreOffice, you can try OnlyOffice, but I personally prefer LibreOffice.

    If you're looking for a text editor that's like Notepad++, I recommend checking out NotepadQQ.

    Finally, if you want a notebook app similar to Microsoft OneNote, I'd like to recommend Joplin.

    • For Flatpak apps, along with Warehouse, Flatseal allows you to view and edit permissions for each app, which is not only useful but sometimes mandatory when an app has misconfigured permissions

      • Oh yes, Flatseal is also a good tool to have! Thanks for adding that!

  • Blender: If you're interested in 3D modeling or Animation
    Inkscape: If you have any need for a vector graphics program thats a bit like Adobe Illustrator
    OBS: If you need to do any screen recording or livestreaming
    Haruna Video Player: It plays videos and can also play youtube videos if you paste in a link. (This also pulls in yt-dlp as a dependency, which allows you to download youtube videos and the like from a terminal)
    btop: A nice looking system resource monitor that runs in a terminal

  • ncdu

    • for a bit more context, ncdu is a Disk Usage analyzer that runs in the terminal. If you've ever used WizTree on windows, its kinda like that. Really useful to see whats taking up space on your disk

  • ProtonUp-Qt is an easy way to install and manage different Proton versions for gaming.

71 comments