this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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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! sankara-salute

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Here's some creative software that replace the functionalities of Adobe software & more.

  • photo editing: GIMP
  • vector images: Inkscape
  • drawing/painting: Krita (GIMP also fine for this)
  • video editing: kdenlive
  • 3d modelling, animating, etc.: Blender
  • audio editing: Tenacity (Audacity fork made after the buyout without telemetry)
  • DAW: LMMS
  • media player: VLC or mpv

if there's any other specific software you're looking for a FOSS alternative to, don't hesitate to ask. You always have more options on Linux than you'd think.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

For DAW, you may also want to check out Zrythm and Ardour.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

thank you! i appreciate it!

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (5 children)

BONUS: here's some command-line toys that are not useful or necessary, but are just real fun to take a look at especially if you're new to linux:

  • cmatrix (does the matrix code rain thing)
  • cowsay (ascii cow with speech bubble)
  • sl (steam locomotive in your terminal)
  • cbonsai (generate bonsai tree)
  • neofetch (this one is actually very useful and will print system information in an aesthetically pleasing way)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

wow, neofetch is really cool! thank you!

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago

It's mandatory for online boasting.

[–] dbx12 3 points 1 year ago

You forgot the package hollywood.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Thanks for this!

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

KeePassXC (there's a Firefox extension too) and Syncthing are the first things I add to a new install.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Another nice-to-have is KDE Connect, it connects your desktop with your phone to sync notifications, send files, control media playback, use as remote input, share clipboard, send commands, and more

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago
  • Calibre - eBook manager/reader
  • Gparted - disk tool
  • Keepass - password manager
  • VLC - the greatest video/music player
  • Waydroid - run android apps
[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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 :).

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

MPV, although you could also have used it on windows already. Also freetube, you can also combine those two with a little bit of internet search.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Logseq is a pretty nice FOSS alternative to Obsidian I came across recently. Tmux is absolutely necessary for any terminal work. Wezterm is my favorite terminal emulator because you can easily disable all of the shortcuts except very few you want (tmux handles most of terminal stuff for me). Some new alternatives to old command line utilities:

  • bat is cat but 1000 times better. I love it so much!
    fun factI also recently learned that it's safer, because you can have a file that has some bad command, then the backspace character several times, and cat doesn't display the characters "deleted" by the backspaces (but it still executes). Bat doesn't do that.
  • fd is better find
  • rg (ripgrep) is better grep
  • zoxide is better cd
  • dust is better du
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)
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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Bottles makes using Wine real simple.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Flatpak for all *possible installs of user apps. But if there's an app I respect most, it has to be MPV.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

For me it's (outside of the usual stack):

https://github.com/sezanzeb/input-remapper (Input-Remapper, if you have annoying proprietary thing you want to re-bind this is an amazing way to handle that)

This project made Linux viable for me, and I have not looked back at all.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

KiCAD for PCB design.
PulseView for USB logic analyzers.
DSRemote for remote control of Rigol oscilloscopes.
FreeCAD for 3D CAD.
SDR++ and SDRangel for SDR.
Fldigi, wsjtx & QSSTV for ham radio digital modes.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I haven touched my hackRF for years. Got to give SDRangel a try.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
  • syncthing - Sync files across internet, works very well
  • netdata - Very comprehensive monitoring software for servers
  • Firefox
  • wine - Without it (including proton) I couldn't make the switch, it's kind of a necessary evil but it's not wine that's the evil.
  • KDE Desktop - My personal preference, I used Ubuntu and Pop OS, gnome doesn't suit me.
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Inkscape for drawing vector images.

Loads of command line tools to process PDF files, like extracting images or text.

All those tools for automated processing of data, including script languages like perl.

The MediaWiki engine that allows me to run a local wiki at home for my hobby.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  • helix (vim like text editor)
  • kate (kde text editor)
  • dolphin (kde file manager)
  • supertuxcart (most modern linux game)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I would recommend Xonotic Its like unreal tournament and its fantastic. Smooth as butter no lags.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I always start with Syncthing, which is a cross-platform p2p syncing client I use to share documents between devices

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Welcome on board!

You revealed in your previous post to be a gamer. Therefore, I'd like to focus on software that might help with that (in alpabetical order):

For a one-stop-solution for all your problems related to package X not being available in the repos of distro Y; consider the more than excellent Distrobox.


  1. You should probably start with this one as the others might be less intuitive to you at the moment. Furthermore, their use-cases and thus why one might prefer the others over Lutris in the first place might not be clear currently and not even be stuff you worry about in the first place.
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

LibreSprite is cool for creating and animating 2d pixel stuff.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I always keep GIMP and VLC player installed. If you get comfortable using command line. Tmux and Neovim are a great duo.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I'm surprises no one has mentioned the ones I use most days.

  • git (version control software development)
  • openssh (for ssh connections to other devices)
  • handbrake (video transcoding)
  • Element (matrix client)
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[–] starman 4 points 1 year ago

Helix editor

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Neovim too!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm loving these suggestions, definitely saving the post for later!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Depends what device you run, but Xournal++ is useful. Otherwise pdftk.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
  • Xmoto
  • Supertuxkart
  • a development environment to learn programming
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Welcome! As for the basics: Bleachbit (system cleaner) Flatseal (Flatpak permission managed) Elisa (music player) GTKHash (GUI way to verify checksums) FreeTube (YouTube front end) Okular (PDF viewer & editor)

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