No Stupid Questions

Keepass. ill skip the obvious and just mention the really neat features that other server/cloud based password managers dont or cant have.

• on desktop, you dont need any browser extension to fill in passwords since the "autotype" feature in keepassXC handles that. this means your browser has no to access your database at all. any password manager thats connected to your browser in any way is a huge security risk imo.
  (i would recommend this extension that changes the window title though)

• you can have 2 databases open at the same time (in keepassXC and keepassDX at least), which means you can have important logins in one and everything else in the other one. if you ever get annoyed having to unlock your vault using a really long master password just so you can autofill some crappy forum password then you might get why 2 databases is a good idea!

• you can fill in login details for desktop programs. (maybe others do this now but they didnt when i switched to keepass years ago)

Aegis authenticator. its been years since ive used google's authenticator app so maybe its improved now, but it used to be very spartan. it showed you your OTP codes and thats about it.

Aegis lets you add an icon to each entry and the different sized text makes things a lot easier to read. the visual timer is much clearer as well and the text turns red when its close to running out.

you can also backup your codes so if you lose your phone its no big deal. you can unlock the app with your fingerprint. you can tap on a code and then have it add that to the clipboard and then go back to the previous app

KDE Connect was rock solid when I was testing it out with an S24u. The only real issue I had with it was that it was missing RCS (RCS is locked down to only proprietary google messages/iMessage systems) and a seamless way to go from desktop notification to SCRCPY/screen mirroring.

on Notion: aren't the desktop clients just electron apps anyway? The website is really solid from my useage.

PCSX2: better resolution than PS2, has save states, and you can use reshade in some games to make them look better.

Jellyfin vs Plex

Plex is terminal with the enshitification virus

VLC

Linux, hands down and tied behind its back. Both for servers AND desktop OS.

The OpenStreetMap ecosystem (e.g. Organic Maps as an Android Client) is better than Google Maps.

Tusky is better than any proprietary Twitter client.

F-Droid and Flathub are both better than Google Play.

Thunderbird is better than GMail

Real open Podcasting (e.g. Antennapod) is better than Spotify.

OpenDesk is better than M365.

Signal and Matrix are both better than the chat tools from Meta, Apple, Google.

(It's about ecosystems/platforms, because most software doesn't work in isolation)

Blender for 3D modeling, sculpting, animation, rendering and (simple) video editing.

Several movies were either made (almost) entirely with Blender (Flow, Next Gen), or in parts (e.g., Captain America: The Winter Soldier, SpiderMan 2, The Midnight Sky).

It is also used by many (indie) game devs.

Speaking of games: Godot is an awesome 2D/3D game engine, which gained a lot more momentum after the Unity fuck-up. It's licensed under the MIT license. Among a plethora of smaller indie games it has been used for financially successful and/or popular titles by indie and non-indie devs alike such as Brotato, Cassette Beasts, RPG in a Box, Endoparasitic, Dome Keeper, Sonic Colors: Ultimate, and several more.

Give it a try if you're into game development!

Syncthing.

Supports LAN Syncing and no limits other then the hardware you host yourself.

Lets not forget about games!

Hedgewars is better than most "Worms" games.

Warzone 2100 is more fun than many proprietary RTS games.

Kdenlive is really really good. This isn't an expert opinon. I don't do a ton of video editing but it feels both easy to learn (for a layman like me) and powerful enough to do anything I need it to do

As a proffessional, krita shits on photoshop (f tier) and clip (a tier) when it comes to painting.

I just want to comment that this is one of the most helpful and full of good info posts I’ve seen on Lemmy in a long while.

Well, Thunderbird, for one. Outlook makes me sad.

fre:ac is way, way better than Exact Audio Copy. Audiophiles like to suck the dick of EAC and don't trust any other software to rip CD's. fre:ac literally has all the same features and more. There's a Windows and Mac version as well but they refuse to even acknowledge it. I'm a Linux audiophile btw.

Inkscape is really good and I prefer it over Adobe Illustrator. It's a bit worse in some regards but its really stable and does everything very reliably and can be molded into svg production machine.

Kdenlive is the best simple video editor out there. Sure other editors are better but kdenlive really hits that sweet spot of being simple but powerful.

Digikam is the best photo management suite I know off. Everything else seems to be missing one thing or another and Digikam just does everything and does it pretty well.

Ansel (fork of Darktable) is often better than Adobe Lightroom for casual photography as it comes with very strong opinionated defaults. I generall just follow the default pipeline and have amazing shots. Light room could probably get me a bit further but Ansels hits the sweet spot between too basic and too clunky.

Then as a developer foss libraries are basically uncontested to the point where proprietary libraries and programming languages basically do not exist anymore.

A lot of non-graphical utilities

basically the *NIX coreutils, plus stuff like rsync, ssh, compression/archival tools (tar, gzip, bzip2, etc.), grep, and the like. Git also comes to mind.

I think part of this is that the UNIX philosophy is "developer friendly"

tell a good dev they need to make a compression utility that follows this protocol, and they will make a compression utility that follows the protocol.

QGIS for geographic/geospatial data. Built on shoulders of FOSS giants, embracing latest highly interoperable standards, it is amazing !

Libre Office.

Firefox is the best browser (uBlock). Linux is the best OS for a growing number of things. Android is terrible but still the best mobile OS. Lemmy is the best social media platform.

Honourable mention to Luanti which most people wouldn't say is better than Minecraft yet but it's absolutely getting there.

OBS for streaming is amazing.

Ardour is a pretty amazing DAW that can compete with proprietary ones. There're also loads of FOSS plugins out there that don't have to hide behind the commercial ones. My favorites are the Calf Plugins and the Luftikus EQ for mastering. Helm and Yoshimi are great synths. Pure Data is lightweight and can compete with MaxMSP.

Krita has already been mentioned.

But, I think what strikes me most is that there's a lot of FLOSS software out there that just doesn't have direct proprietary counterpart. Small command-line tools like FFMPEG or ImageMagick. Linux as an customizable OS. Programming Languages to make music like SuperCollider. I never learned how to use proprietary CAD software but recently got into OpenSCAD to model some things and it's really fun once you get the hang of it. I don't do this professionally so there's no need for me to learn Fusion360.

Some have a bit of a learning curve but are all the more satisfying to use once you get into them. People are just too stuck in their "industry standard" (which really just means "the most common product that has been around the longest"), but if you're not bound to that, there's just a huge number of programs out there that allow you to do amazing things. That to me is the beauty of FLOSS.

The Apache Web Server

I haven't checked to see if someone's mentioned it yet (it's a long thread!) but I want to put in a word for a piece of software I'm always touting: Simon Tatham's Puzzle Collection!

It's a wonder! 40 different kinds of randomly-generated puzzles, all free, all open source, and available for practically every platform. You can play it on Windows, Mac (if you compile it), Linux, iOS, Android, Java and Javascript in a web browser. It should rightfully be high up on the iOS and Android stores, but it's completely free, has no ads, doesn't track you and has no one paying to promote it. No one has a financial incentive to show it to you, so they don't. But you should know about it.

Stepmania, the way better free DDR for PC!