Kagi search. It made cutting Google out of my life easy. I’d rather not pay for search but none of the free alternatives really worked like I needed. I tried out Kagi on a whim and haven’t looked back.
this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2026
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I just wish I could disable the Google search box on my Google Pixel home page and replace it with a Kagi search bar (that opens in my default browser though; not like Qwant does, that forces you to use their own browser).
now i just went to try it out, and I will, but the AI and pricing tiers screams "business and profit first" to me
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Immich https://immich.app/
Absolutely amazing and it's technically free, but please donate if you can, they fucking deserve it.
Being able to host your own photos and have ai to help identify faces WITHOUT internet or giving your private photos to the tech giants is worth every penny.
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Yes. This. 100%.
Even if it wasn’t the most reasonable to license, it’d still be the most flexible and “hackable”.
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Gimp.
Tap for spoiler
P.S. This is a joke and I am very proud of it.
Your joke made me laugh, and I'm proud of you for making it.
Linux, KDE, Firefox, etc... we are ALL supposed to "pay" somehow for it, whatever our means and however we can.
When we consider free and open source software NOT paid software, we are sabotaging the very things we love.
Hard disagree. Please tell me where Linus said he expects normal users to "pay" (or whatver you meant with the quotes.) The thing that makes these revolutionary is that they are free in a world where everyone is always trying to get something from you.
There is literally no expectation of money or commits or anything. Don't shame people for using FOSS the way FOSS was intended. If you are well off and want to support them do it! Authors will appreciate it, but dont try to turn FOSS into yet another guilt trip.
just adding: foss is what is supposed to happen in a world where the increased productivity through automation benefits everyone vs the 'bottom line'. foss has always been my tiny island of space communism :)
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Balatro on me iPhone
mullvad vpn
Bitwarden. It's free and open source, but you can pay for a subscription ~~if you don't want to self host for synchronisation between devices. It's very cheap and no doubt worth it.~~
Also Aseprite, for pixel art and custom format exports.
Edit: looks like both these programs are just straight up fully featured and freely available now.
Sync between devices doesnt require a subscription?
I use it on my desktop, laptop and phone, no issue
Never paid a dime
For real, I had been using Bitwarden for a couple of years for free and it never once had to show an ad to ask me to buy it's subscription. I just realized that it was giving me tons of value, and that prompted me to buy the (fairly priced) subscription. That's a gold standard imo.
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Wip3out 2097
Photoshop used to be worth the money. The move to subscription based comes at a time when alternatives are starting to catch up though, so that time (of being worth it) may be coming to an end.
There's no reason to pay for Photoshop now if you're just starting. Affinity is free (as in beer) and full-featured.
In the world of music production Reaper is an insanely good deal with a fantastically refreshing licensing system.
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DaVinci Resolve.
The software is free but not FOSS and on Linux paying for the h.264 support is nice.
Keen live is a good alternative but it feels like an advanced form of movie maker to me and lacks polish. If you learn it KDEN Live can be powerful.
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TeraCopy if you move lots of data around.
However, even with a pro license, I still got an ad notification in my task area recently pushing their other software. Fucking hate advertisements that go out of their way to interrupt you.
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BuzzKill for Android.
PocketCasts used to be, before they went subscription.
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BeyondCompare. I've used it for all my Windows text comparison needs for decades. It also handles comparing spreadsheets and directory structures.
I'm sure BeyondCompare is much more powerful, but have a look at WinMerge if you don't know it yet. I keep being impressed by it for being free and OSS.
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This is an outbound application firewall for MacOS that allows you to block applications from phoning home. It blocks outgoing traffic rather than incoming traffic, which can be toggled within the firewall settings. It has a time-limited trial period, but I did the one-time-purchase for 9 $ and it served me well since I bought it in - I think it was in 2021 - originally to keep a not-so-legally-obtained Photoshop Suite from connecting to their servers. The app is not intrusive, no annoying pop ups or the like. The app launches automatically at system start up. Occaional updates (bug fixes or to match with the latest OS version) are included with the licence.
Today I use it to block a pirated version of SketchUp (the only remaining software I have installed that has been pirated) from calling home, als well as Affinity 2 (and, probably in the future) the now free Affinity 3 (since it was aquired by Canva).
I consider this app worth its money.
Have you ever used Little Snitch? It’s another great MacOS app that has an outbound firewall. It’s been updated to include a DNS ad-blocker too.
I’ve been very happy with it for many years, but I’m always open to trying out alternatives. Thanks for sharing!
I did once. It was back in the days when all of my software was pirated - even Little Snitch (where you had to add Little Snitch itself to its blocking rules, to prevent it from phoning home). As far as I can remember, it was too expensive to buy - at least for a permanently broke student at that time. Later I discovered Radio Silence. I wrote that I had RS from 2021 onward, but I think I already had it in 2018. Not 100% sure.
Divemate, better than keeping logs in different apps if you change computers. Android only, sorry. If you chew the fruit you gotta find something else.
Plex Media Sever used to be great and well worth the lifetime pass. With the recent UI changes I would drop kick it if I could. Sadly the other options just don't work right with large libraries.
Torque pro is nice especially if you have a turbo charged vehicle. Free is fine if you just need to check codes.
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There are games I pay for, but only on Nintendo consoles. Aside from that, it's strictly write it myself or go without.
I definitely should donate to more FOSS projects, though.
The only software I would buy again instantly is Tasker (Android).
I've been using tasker for 16 years now and am always surprised that it hasn't started to suck or had a lot of functions blocked over the years
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nzb360 that I got a perpetual license for at 10eur. It's so easy and convenient to torrent stuff for my Jellyfin.
Niagara launcher is free but I paid for the perpetual license. It's a third party launcher that I really like.
I'm also a Jetbrains fan depending on the language, they have so much support for everything just out of the box and are on Linux.
Also games, but I guess people don't want to hear those here. Factorio was definitely worth.
+1 for the Niagara Launcher. Cleanest launcher I've found during 4 years of Android usage.
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