Steam. It is one of the few company's that still has principles
this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
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Steam.
A linux client that works, and actually gets fixes, improvements, and features, that is a lot.
Davinci Resolve
Really good video editor, and also, has Linux client.
Reaper is an excellent Digital Audio Workstation with full Linux support
I would be really interested in more information about this. Thanks for bringing it to my attention to look into!
Spotify is the only subscription I ever pay, even though I'm an avid pirate and I don't have any qualms about pirating music, I love the Spotify algorithm so much, it introduces me to new music all the time which is something I love
Paying for it helps me pirate even more efficiently. I often leave 20+ hour playlists on ripping the music I want whilst off doing other things.
I have compared the 320 mp3s I get from it with 320's that I have bought using spek and they were literally identical and whilst having a flac is nice having money to pay my bills is nicer and the difference in sound quality really isn't that noticeable without a proper system to play them through.
Well, then you could just use xManager to get pirated Spotify premium. It just doesn't let you download stuff but if you pirate them separately anyways, then this should work for you. Or are you literally directly ripping the music from Spotify??
I pay for premium for my sister and niece on a family plan thing anyway so it isn't like I would save any money by not using it as it is there and paid for regardless. I'm literally ripping the music from Spotify using soggfy.
I use soulseek as well which is fine but a lot of idiots on there lock their files away which goes against the very nature of piracy imo, using this Spotify method is often easier to get some of the things I want and then I can tag them using my desired naming convention too rather than having to clean up other peoples messy as fuck tags.
Ah OK, interesting! Well, if you have access to a family subscription this seems like the way to go :)
I mostly use bandcamp + yt-dl to get music (or I actually buy it as well). But it is a bit tedious to import the files into my library...
I am also an avid band camp user and will buy as much as I can afford times being what they are though that is less and less so I have to prioritise what I want to pay for.
The music I am into also releases a lot of things as vinyl only which is utter bullshit IMO so I will pirate the shit out of any of that I can get my hands on as I won't pay for a giant piece of obsolete media that I then have no way to actually use xD
Bandcamp is really my favorite site to buy or download music. I love just what you said about it, that I can prioritize what I want to pay for :)
Obsidian. Silver Bullet is a FOSS alternative, but I’m not sure if they do toggles or something that works like it. And I really like my toggle-like functionality. I happily use callouts to simulate toggles in Obsidian.
Scrivener is still the absolute best word processor for ginormous writing projects. There are FOSS projects that do some parts of it right, but fall far behind in the others. It's particularly frustrating because my usual FOSS approach would be to use other tools that make up for the inadequacies, but Scrivener pretty much nails the "what to include and what to leave out" equation. It's a great combo of a word processor, project management tool and a research/notes tool, all rolled into one.
I don't have much experience with Scrivener, but it came up when I was looking for writing software, and clearly it's very popular.
The reasons I ended up rejecting it were, mainly, lack of Android and Chromebook/Linux support and lacking sync capabilities (looks like there's Dropbox and iTunes sync support now). The pricetag seems reasonable, though.
After a lot of searching, I ended up with Obsidian, and love it to bits. It syncs flawlessly from my Mac desktop to my Android phone and my Chromebook, it has a superb plugin development community, and seems to be able to do almost everything Scrivener does, but for free.
@renard_roux @foss Do you know if it can output in Shun mamuscript format with a plugin?
I'm not sure about direct Shunn / Standard Manuscript Format export, but essayist Jamie Todd Rubin has a great serie of articles about going paperless with Obsidian , and episode 25 has a workflow specifically for this (using Pandoc externally to compile).
Wanting to make money from your app doesn't prevent you from making it foss, therefore I have no favourite proprietary apps
I’m happy with Affinity Photo as a cheaper, non-subscription Photoshop clone.
Never managed with GIMP :(
Sublime Text!
Sublime Merge for me.
Davinci Resolve is mind bogglingly good video editing software and the free (beer) version is all 90% of people need.
People have mentioned most of the good ones (Scrivener, Resolve, Steam, Discord), but I must grudgingly nod to OneNote.
There are competitors in the note-taking space, yes, but none of them get handwriting down like OneNote has for 15+ years, now.
Autodesk Fusion 360. There's just not really a free competitor imo when it comes to CAD/CAM software, it's all Fusion or Solidworks.
Renoise is an excellent tracker-based DAW with Linux support (you still have to find Linux-compatible VSTs though). It changed the way I write music.
EDIT: I know there are FOSS trackers like MilkyTracker. If you want an alternative, I can recommend it, even though it doesn't offer the same amount of features as Renoise (e.g. VST or effect support).
Workflowy and Teuxdeux are two web apps where I spend an embarrassingly large amount of my time online. I wish there were FOSS alternatives because I would happily contribute features and fixes to the issues I bump into in my daily usage.
- Sesame Shortcuts. I know there are launcher with similar tools included, but I also use Nova Launcher and paid for it. I've been thinking to migrate to alternatives, but I haven't done it yet.
- Microsoft To Do. The alternatives are incomplete, ugly or don't have the same capabilities. I'd gladly pay for any FOSS and Privacy respectful To Do app, but I guess setting up sync servers may be hard. I'll give a try for tasks.org again in some days.
I'm glad I don't get to say Notion anymore, Anytype.io is missing some features, but I can manage to live without them and Notion was getting worse with time.
Have you tried Obsidian? It’s not FOSS either unfortunately, but the sync service is astoundingly good and E2EE. Also, plenty of community plugins :)
Yeah, I use it for course notes and so, but it's kind of expensive for where I live, so I use it in pair with pCloud and a backup in other cloud.
Btw, if you say it for the to do apps, I've tried, but it just doesn't work for me as a to do hehe
I'm going to take "favourite" at face value, i.e. that I actually like, not just that I am forced to use because the alternative doesn't exist (e.g. my bank's app or the post-office's app) or isn't viable (PDF editors on Android).
Libby, the lending library app. I could avoid it and stick to physical media and piracy, but it's a well-designed app with a decent catalogue and given that it's a library and not me purchasing DRMed files, I found the ethical proposition there tolerable.
On Android, Google Maps, Google Docs et al., Snapchat and the various plant identication apps.
JetBrains Rider
Garmin GPS appliance. I refuse to use Google anything, and the other options do not work on GrapheneOS when interfacing with my car. So I bit the bullet and got a Garmin
I have an iPhone. While VLC is good, foobar2000 Mobile is really the only free music player that works the way I want.
iTunes no-longer runs under Wine, so the official Music app is not an option.
EDIT: Clarified that I meant the Apple Music app, not the streaming service.
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Topaz photo software and Mendeley Desktop
At least topaz fulfills one of the aspects of foss by being very easy to pirate /s
I really love PowerPoint. I feel like the automatic snapping features and general polish allow me to make very pretty slides 
with a high level of control, and it feels way better to use than e.g. web-based alternatives. Admittedly, I haven't tried a foss alternative in years.
Czech maps from Seznam, I talked with marketing boss (don't know his exact position but it is high) and he told me that they don't make money from it.
If any one is interested mapy.cz it is must have app for travel in Czech.
Sleep as Android and Duolingo
@AHYN018 Letterboxd and TheStoryGraph that I maintain as diaries of what i am watching and reading.
Are they ethical though? (Serious question as I'm uninformed)
Both are directly tracking what you watch/read so I would worry that they might sell this data to others.
Listonic for shopping lists etc. KDE Connect Proton - Mail, Calendar, VPN, Pass, Drive AdGuard Songs Wavelet Pulsar+ NHS app Radio Paradise
elsa speak.