Software Recommendations
There’s a lot of software out there looking to nickel and dime you, trying to nab all the data they can on you, and in the end providing a poor user experience. This page is a compilation of good software I have found over the years and use. To find alternatives to poor quality software you may be using, I recommend giving alternativeto.net a shot.
Some of this software I would only recommend to people who are good with computers. Some of it is only for Linux.
Operating System
-
Works fine for my needs. I replaced the default desktop environment with KDE plasma; I find it looks better than the default. Previously I had used Windows 10, but after seeing the announcement for microsoft’s Windows 11, I decided to switch to something better. At first the switch was rough while I was relearning the basics, but I have grown to like it better than Windows.
Web Browsing
-
Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox are both very capable browsers but they both fail in one aspect. Both browsers pester you to use features like sync and bookmarking which require an account for and my data to be sent off to the company’s servers. LibreWolf is a fork of Firefox which removes most all of the unnecessary external connections
-
More than just an advertisement blocker. This browser extension also lets you block specific elements of webpages out. very handy for removing obnoxious/unnecessary parts of a page.
-
Browser extension that skips youtube video sponsorships and other intermissions. This extension will save you plenty of time and annoyance. So far, I’ve skipped 27 hours of junk.
Email Client
Media Viewing and Playback
-
Nice and clean image viewer. Started using this to get away from Window’s inbuilt photos application.
-
Plays most everything. Has hundreds of features that you will never use, but they don’t get in the way.
-
When I switched to Linux, I needed to find a competent music player. I tried almost every other gui player but all were somewhat disappointing in various ways. For some reason I had not tried Rhythmbox despite it being the default shipped with Ubuntu. Out of all the players I tried, this is the best.
Media Editing
-
Very good piece of image editing software. It has all the features I need. Extensible with plenty of plugins.
-
Simple yet capable video editor. I don’t do much with video editing, but so far this has been satisfactory.
-
Audio editing tool that is not overly complex, but offers all the features you may want for general audio editing.
-
Sheet music authoring software. Lately I’ve been using MuseScore as a sort of midi sequencer. I’m familiar with musical notation and find it more intuitive and useful than say a piano roll editor. I wouldn’t recommend anything past version three as I have not been able to get sound working on it.
Text Editing
-
A free software fork of microsoft’s popular VScode editor. I had previously used Atom as my text editor but microsoft axed that. I primarily use Codium to edit code. For basic text editing, I use vim.
-
The classic terminal text editor. I mainly use it to edit config files on my machine and on remote servers. Don’t let the terminal interface scare you, Vim can be very fun and powerful to use.
-
Very competent word processor, spreadsheet editor, and presentation maker. Supports
DOCX,XLSX,PPTXand most other document formats. Can be used as a drop in replacement for Microsoft Office in most ways. The LibreOffice suite is clunky in some ways, but then again, the Office suite is clunky in its own way.
Misc
-
KeePassXC The password manager I recommend. Stores passwords in an encrypted local database meaning that your passwords aren’t synced with some remote server. Easy to use and reliable.
-
Cowsay
_____
< moo >
-----
\ ^__^
\ (oo)\_______
(__)\ )\/\
||----w |
|| ||