Gonna go with Firefox as both my most-used piece of open-source software, and the software I see as most important to its ecosystem. If Firefox fails then we’ve just got Chromium-based browsers and, I guess, Safari.
I love and use Bitwarden daily.
There something I don’t understand. How does one use Bitwarden daily? It generates, remembers and autofill passwords, right? I rarely enter a password anywhere. What am I missing? Please educate me.
There are certain sites which terminate your sessions after a while. For example, banking sites or most government portals. In such situations, the auto fill function is very handy.
Also the fact that if you use a shared machine at all to login, it’s best practice to intentionally log out of everything, and clear cookies/cache when you’re done.
Like the other commenter said, I use it for sites that tend to sign me out after a few hours. I also use it for work things that sign out every session.
What?? I’m in disbelief that you don’t comprehend using a password manager daily. Personally I’m constantly logging in to stuff and I wouldn’t dare use the same password twice these days.
I auto wipe cookies all on every browser close so that gets more use.
I knew about Bitwarden, but I thought how could a cloud based thing be truly open source, but they actually do have their backend on GitHub 🤯
Signal, Thunderbird and Bitwarden
Signal, Firefox and Eclipse.
Too bad Signal are dropping support for Windows 7 ;(
Kind of odd to use Signal (a privacy and security focused messenger) on Windows 7 (an EOL and thus highly unsecure operating system).
it is a development machine with highly specialised tools - Altium Designer, SolidWorks, IDA Pro, Altera Quartus, etc.
Upgrading the OS is not a trivial thing as would be on a phone or tablet. Also when upgrading the OS it would make sense to upgrade the HW as well, and that is a major investment. And Signal is just not important really to warrant that.
I would still use it on my phone though, but on the PC is just Viber unfortunately (whatsapp dropped as well).
I wouldn’t say upgrading the OS on a phone or tablet is trivial… Especially when compared to a PC. Upgrading the OS on a PC is much easier.
Both is trivial in my opinion. The problem is OP using ancient software that only runs on an ancient OS. In this case upgrading is not trivial. Even though upgrading is a major investment in this case, it only gets worse the later its done. Typical case of technical debt
that’s cool that others also love open source. these three right here are 🔥
I didn’t know thunderbird was open source!
Yup, it’s the nephew, so to speak, of Firefox!
Firefox and its derivatives. They’re the last free bastion preventing a Chromium monopoly on the browser market, which is hugely important - especially these days with Google’s push for Mv3.
Shout-out to Vivaldi for forking before mv3 happens. It is chromium based but they are very openly anti-google. It’s the OG Chrome devs as far as I understand.
OG Opera devs.
Unfortunately vivaldi is proprietary and actively hostile to the software freedom movement, but if it weren’t I’d consider it as a daily driver.
Vivaldi is 95% open source, and I understand that may not be enough for some but I think that’s a lot better than most alternatives. It also works great.
https://vivaldi.com/blog/technology/why-isnt-vivaldi-browser-open-source/
The “only 5%” is what distinguishes it from Chromium, so it very much matters. And, that blog post is what I meant when I said they are actively hostile to the FS movement. Basically, they say users do not deserve the freedom to fork because competitors and Bad Guys can use it - very ironic for a product that is itself supposedly “95% based” on a competitor!
The argument that users should not have the freedom to fork because bad guys can use it is very similar to the idea that users should not have privacy or anonymity on the internet because it will be abused by bad guys (the so-called four horsemen of the infopocalypse).
That’s definitely not what the article said about the bad guys. They said they’re trying to protect the look and feel because their business model relies on their brand staying consistent so they can keep business partnerships in place to pay the bills.
They also provide nearly as much code back to the community open-source as they do closed.
If 95% isn’t better than Chrome (which I switched from) idk what to tell ya. And Vivaldi is also the reason I know about the fediverse – they openly advertise it. So it got me off reddit too. I call that by FAR a net win.
Shout out to Firefox and Librewolf
Firefox. It is the only thing keeping Google from total internet domination
uBlock Origin, it’s not even close!
Firefox and Bitwarden
Blender by a huge mile. Yes, there’s tons of other software like Linux, of course, but Blender is such a powerful, well managed, economically viable and healthy (community) project that it should be shown as an example of how Open Source should be.
My biggest hurdle with other projects is the fanboys, because many times they’re quite toxic, insulting everybody who doesn’t adore the project and don’t accept constructive criticism.
By a huuuge mile indeed. Blender devs are great at listening and communicating with the community.
The standardization of hotkeys and features across the software is fantastic. The UI is snappy and filled to the brim with intuitive QoL features I wish were standard for my OS.
I have irreconcilable grievances with a lot of open source software, VLC, VSCode, etc, and find development slow and heading non optimal for others like Sharex and Firefox… but Blender, that’s green on all fronts.
Firefox currently firing on all cylinders, it’s a real beauty
Blender is the model open source project :P
Krita for me!
Honestly, Blender was the first software that really “proved” open source software to me, and I’ve been an open source exclusive user to this day
GNU+Linux
Firefox, Thunder, LibreOffice, Kdenlive, Audacity on GNU+Linux … (I’m no pro which is why I’m on Ubuntu but even still, I haven’t paid for software in years)
Ill throw in some obscure ones I use daily.
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StemRoller. It’s an AI-powered toolthat takes an mp3 and separates each instrument into its own file. Im a musician, and having access to stems like this is a game changer.
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Carla is a tool for hosting VST plugins without the need for a full DAW. I primarily use Amp Simulators, and this has become a mandatory tool on any computer I use. It’s also maintained by the creator of KXStudio.
Stemroller sounds insane.
omg, stemroller sounds amazing!
Just downloaded and tried StemRoller. Definitely impressed, I’d say it works marginally better than any of the “free” (aka trial version, need to pay for full features) stem separators I’ve tried online, so very happy to find this!
These two links might single handedly change my life. Many thanks!!
How does StemRoller compare to Serato?
I haven’t tried it so I can’t speak to the features/results you get, but I do know Serato is closed-source. I always go with FOSS if I can.
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Blender, don’t even use it that much but I love it
I’d go with either Firefox or Thunderbird. Both are immensely useful pieces of software that I use on a daily basis, and have evolved (mostly) nicely over time.
Not to give Mozilla too much credit, Nextcloud is also pretty slick!
I forgot Firefox was even open source
Wait for real? I feel like that’s their only marketing point sometimes 😂
These days, being an open-source browser that isn’t part of the Chromium monopoly is pretty much the only good thing they have left…
That is a good point, and in my experience Firefox has just kinda sucked less in the last couple of years. But of course that’s anecdotal so doesn’t really mean much lol
No, I did too and I love Firefox.
LibreOffice is equal to any office software out there, and has been much more stable than OpenOffice, and works without an internet connection unlike Google Docs.
I recently read an article about how the “Open XML” M$ format was artificially made super cumbersome and complex so that it makes open source software support it almost impossible.
The article was written by one of the Libre office collaborator who was saying that they are intentionally introduced bugs so that we never see a better adoption of it in open source tools.
The whole standardisation process was a sham: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open_XML
Everyone should use LibreOffice … unless you work in a very specific office or school environment that specifically requires it, go install Microsoft Office, and even then, get your school or business to pay for it
Otherwise, for day to day document writing, letter writing or anything you have to do for yourself at home … LibreOffice is more than enough.
About five or six years ago, I was buying a new laptop at Bestbuy and I found myself a great deal and specifically asked for a system that didn’t have an OS with it or any software … they got an old returned unit, wiped the drive and sold it to me for about $200 at the time. While I waited, I listened as a salesman sold a new laptop to a clueless mother buying a unit for her son in high school … they got her to buy a $600 laptop, all sots of extras and MS Office and topped her off at about $1000 for a shitty laptop that was no more powerful than what I was getting
Proxmox, opnsense, fdroid, and many more on r/selfhosted (now on lemmy also) .
sunshine, moonlight ( play my games anywhere in the world, games run on my pc at home)
Firefox (the best browser against google monopoly), thunderbird (best mail client)
LineageOS, microG, Mozilla Location services, Magisk, aurora store (let me use Android without any of google tracking)
Bitwarden, Proton mail/vpn, Nextcloud (finally no gmail tracking)
Jellyfin, kodi (lets me create my own Netflix)
GNU/Linux, GNOME, KDE and host of other Linux projects. No more windows tracking. Also if you want to really know how the OS works, you should start tinkering with Linux. I expanded my knowledge base by just using Linux as daily driver.
The list just goes on and on. I am so grateful for all the open source devs that put their time in developing these tools.
For those wanting to go further, checkout https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted
Firefox lets you use extensions on mobile too
LineageOS, microG, Mozilla Location services, Magisk, aurora store (let me use Android without any of google tracking)
Can you expand on this more? I’m getting more and more interested in cutting ties with Google altogether. I’ve been using bing for the last few years now. Not much better, but at least I get paid for the info they glean from my searches. I rooted my galaxy S4 way back and was happy to finally get rid of all the bloatware and I’d like to do that again with my current phone, but ridding myself of Google location services is also really appealing.
Firefox I think is actually the best browser totally independent of technological ethics issues. Started using it because I was on 2GB RAM at the time and Chrome was much more RAM-intensive (apparently this is reversed now,) and I’ve never looked back.
