No Stupid Questions

The Apache Web Server

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.

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.

Over the last few years I've been drawing stuff on Clip Studio Paint. Wonderful app, very powerful, the asset marketplace rules.

But it has a bunch of really weird jank too. It's as if it has all of the power in the world but you need to spend extra time digging through the app to do stuff.

Krita, which I finally tried a few months back, feels really excellent. Stuff is configurable as hell. All of the stuff is easy to discover. I'm working much faster.

Now, Krita doesn't have all of CSP's niceties, and I guess I have to see how to wishlist them.

Similarly CSP's 3D mockup tools are great, but nowhere as smooth and powerful to use as Blender's. Which is weird because CSP isn't a modeling program - you'd think they'd stick to what they actually do and at least polish the camera/pose controls and such. No dice. I wish I could just stick CSP assets in Blender, but they use a proprietary model format.

Pdftk

Microsoft Terminal vs the default Command Prompt haha. VS Code vs Visual Studio.

In general software is one of the rare thing where ordinary people can "mass produce" things that compete with commercial offerings.

Molly for signal if that counts

I'm really sorry but Joplin is not and will not ever be "objectively" better than Obsidian. SilverBullet is subjectively better than Obsidian though. Note taking is such a heavily opinionated matter that there's no scope for objectivity there.

I think DarkTable is as powerful if not moreso than Lightroom but Lightroom has AI image processing tools that will get things done quicker.

The whole of software dev is dominated with open source softtware. So like PostgreSQL, text editors like Lapce or Zed, KVM/QEMU/Virt-Manager, torrent programs like qBitorrent, VPN like OpenVPN or Wireguard. Pretty much all the video game console emulators. For a while you would get Linux game ports that would use proprietary wrappers but eventually WINE would become better anyways. Don't know if there's a proprietary software better than QGIS for that. I love Distrobox and Boxbuddy. Git.

Web browsers based off Chromium or Firefox, OBS, Handbrake, VLC, ffmpeg, image magick. Krita and Blender are competitive with proprietary software. I think the latest Pinta is solid as a paint.net analogue. Audacity is super popular. Ardour for more complex things. Kdenlive isn't as good but solid enough for the vast majority of people in my opinion.

Topaz Gigapixel is top but Upscayl is good. I always liked Windows Task Manager but on Linux I think Mission Center is just as good. None of the open source stuff competes against Topaz Video AI in my experience

KeepassXC password manager. At some point I stopped using winrar and was all in on 7-Zip and Peazip if not just using the Linux file roller software that the distro came with. I'm happy with Jellyfin over Plex. There's Kodi. Over the years I always see people use draw.io

Blender has to be the best at being a swiss army tool, the other software require using other software for what they are missing while blender can do it all, its objectively better at being the singular tool for the job if you want to not leave one software

My paint and Krita are great, I use them daily

Dnscrypt-proxy has no comparison, IMO. DNS encryption, caching, IP & domain blocking, local DoH. It's so useful.

Krita is a fantastic image editor with a customizable UI that’s very powerful but easy to use.

Pixelmator is a waste of $70 when you get more (you can resize the toolbar buttons!) for free with Krita.

Breezy weather for Android. It works exactly the same, and doesn't have any of the privacy bullshit strings attached.

all fossify apps in android. I find most android apps for basic tasks heavily overbloated, even the ones directly from google.

Okular for pdf viewing on pc

emacs