I want to know what kind of apps/programs y’all recommend to people or just use personally. This is just in general, could be anything from a game to a media codec. I personally use Linux but stuff for other operating systems is welcome too.
A couple of years ago I made a table when switching from OSX to Linux, the table is still quite up to date: https://jeena.net/why-i-switchedfrom-osx-to-linux
Krita (without any kind of unnecessary unsupported and unofficial AI plugins btw). It’s one of the few free programs that I like so much I paid for them.
I’ve also been getting a lot of mileage out of Tiny Media Manager.
Would you say that Krita is suitable for a beginner, especially with a little knowledge of traditional drawing?
I wouldn’t recommend learning to draw from scratch digitally no matter what software, but if you’re not a complete beginner and you’re willing to experiment with its functions, I don’t see why not. There’s a large helpful community and lots of tutorials too.
Scoop is my favourite package manager on Windows. I’m also familiar with Winget and Chocolatey, but something has always felt off with them.
AltSnap is something that lets you drag and/or resize a window by holding the Win key and then clicking anywhere on the window instead of having to reach for the edges or the titlebar.
ClickMonitorDDC is my go-to for controlling brightness of desktop monitors. Also, on my work laptop I’ve set it to sync the laptop display brightness with the brightness of the external monitors. In combination with a macropad/keyboard with rotary encoders it is pretty good. Sadly, it’s practically abandonware at this point - the original site is down and there are only a few mirrors - but it still works fine for the most part.
Clink + Clink completions + oh-my-posh + fzf is my favourite combo for the command line. The cool thing about oh-my-posh is that it’s multiplatform and that its configuration is portable, so I can also install it on top of bash/zsh and have the same prompt I’m used to.
FanControl is something that I can’t believe exists as a free app. It’s so much better than motherboard vendor software for the same purpose - not only works reliably, but also lets you do things that the motherboard software usually does not - e.g. linking a case fan curve to the GPU temp. Last time I used GNU/Linux I had to manually write configs for lm-sensors, which works, but is a tedious process. I just found out about CoolerControl - looks promising, but haven’t tried it myself.
+1 for scoop. I’ve got a windows PC that I keep around for certain programs I can’t use with wine and scoop makes it bearable.
Newpipe, KDEconnect, Vlc, KeepassXC, Syncthing, convert (CLI program for converting files eg jpg to PNG ), Yakuake (a dropdown terminal)
Will put a disclaimer here that it’s not going to be for everyone but I use emacs for pretty much everything.
It’s a competent code editor with a lot of plugins similar to vscode. It has email, web browsing and IRC built-in out of the box. One of the best of the bundled packages is org-mode which is a fully featured note taking application that can export to HTML and latex. Then there are a wide ecosystem of packages like music players (emms) and visual git interfaces (magit) you can install too. It can even work as a WM!
Before we get into a text editor holy war I still use vim for quick edits.
Do you mean on phones? Windows? Macs? Watches?
I like Merlin on iOS cos it identifies birds by their calls.
Android users can use ‘BirdNET’ it’s FOSS and works most of the time.
Merlin is also on Android too for anybody looking for it
foobar2000 is an awesome music player
Wish it was on Linux
i settled with Quod Libet after the switch to linux and searching for foobar replacement.
