VLC! No ads ever, that’s insane!
But does it whip the llama’s ass?
I think not.
- this is a really old Winamp reference for you younger folks.
VLC isn’t a WinAmp replacement? Though.
Foobar2000 is!
Foobar themes and customisation was and still is absolutely amazing.
I love my minimalist black version, but now I’m curious! Do you have any examples of cool themes/customizations?
To piggyback off of this, consider donating to VLC.
Donated!
Enjoy your high res images of the traffic cone haha.
Firefox. I couldn’t imagine using the internet without it.
I’ve never thought about it, how do they make money? I’ve never seen an ad or sent them money.
They make a large amount from Google paying them to be the default search engine. Also they have been making additional projects that can be subscribed to as add-ons for Firefox (like a VPN and an email forwarding service that allows you to make fake email addresses or phone numbers to use on sites that will forward the messages to your real inbox/phone). You can use a limited version of the email thing without paying though so it is easy to try out. And they are always ready to take donations of any size and can be reoccurring. I personally pay .99/month for the email service even though I don’t use it often. As it is nice to have if I need it, and it is basically a donation at that point. lol.
Here are links to those products if you care to read more about them or at least see pricing.
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/products/vpn/But even just making a point to donate some one-offs here and there does help in small ways to keep a real option in browsers that isn’t just another Chromium-based project.
https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/Everyone hated when IE was the only browser that sites were coded for, and we are seeing more and more Chromium only sites. Which means a bad vulnerability in Chromium will impact all the browsers based on it. Also privacy add-ons for Firefox tend to work better and block ads well.
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Donations
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Getting payed by google to make it their default search engine.
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They get paid by Google to feature their search engine as the default primary search engine. In Fennec, the non-google-play version of mobile browser Firefox, Duckduckgo is set as default, even though both versions are maintained by Mozilla, the non-profit organization behind Firefox.
I donate every. single. month.
Mainly a non profit
Mozilla seems to be pretty transparent. You can see their financial statement at State of Mozilla.
I adore Firefox but several years ago, Google Suite (Docs, Sheets, Forms, etc) decided to change their font system in some bizarre way that they’re never formatted right on Firefox and cause spacing issues. It sucks because I use Docs and Sheets so frequently that I end up needing to keep two browsers installed and switch whenever I want to work on some of my projects.
This but in the Fennec flavor
Fennec is only for Android, because the desktop Firefox doesn’t have have weird app-store shennanigans to begin with, so there’s no point of maintaining Fennec for desktop.
And I do use Fennec for Android, just to keep the Google-Play shennanigans out of my browser.
I’m on Fennec on Android and LibreWolf on desktop.
7-zip
Yes, I totally paid for WinRar.
It’s said that when Jesus comes back, you get to go to heaven if you paid for it.
Microsoft is adding extensive archive format support (using libarchive) to Windows 11. I’d like to thank 7-zip for its service over the decades, though.
The way Msoft are going with right click options I’m doubtful it’ll complete.
If you’re talking about the more limited set of options you get when you right click a file in Windows 11, just hold shift while right clicking to get the original options. You’ve actually been able to hold shift to get additional options going way back, I think to windows XP.
There’s a lot of extra useful options in there too like opening command prompts to the current folder and copying file paths to the clipboard.
Removed by mod
Bitwarden and firefox
I don’t use it but blender is another one
What is blender for? I would Google it but I imagine it would mainly be kitchen accessories
Blender is an open source 3D art/graphics program, on-par with what companies charge hundreds of dollars per month for. Unlike some things where people say “Use GIMP instead of Photoshop!”, Blender is actually industry standard everywhere I’ve worked
For the self-hosters out there, there’s VaultWarden, which works seamlessly with all Bitwarden plugins and apps.
It’s very lightweight and easy to setup and run. It has support for multiple accounts, so you can use it for your family, or business, or whatever!
Firefox, ppsspp, termux, VLC, Tachiyomi(SY), and KeypassXC/DX are coming to my mind. Probably there are a lot more. These are for android. Although they do apply to desktop except termux and Tachiyomi.
Edit: I haven’t added the various FOSS tools as they don’t really come in “App” Category. Some of them:
- Linux kernel
- git
- gcc
+1 for Firefox and VLC. Always amazes me that such good programs are available for free. Remember to donate to FOSS projects, people!
Thanks for the reminder about VLC. I don’t use it much any more, but back in the wild west days of audio/video codecs (some of which were paid), VLC would play everything.
VLC is still one of the most powerful video/audio player in existence.
Saved us from media player market bloat (ui, market, microsoft, etc)
VLC + autohotkey = game changer. I use it every day
I’d replace PPSSPP with RetroArch
Linux.
The world would be a very different place if linux didn’t exist.
No Android phones, insanely outdated internet, software development confined to what corporations allowed… Yea things could have been a lot worse
Insofar as BSD is very different. Linux emerged while BSD’s legal status was in serious doubt, and had already gathered considerable inertia by the time the court case ended, but the court case ended favorably for the BSD community, so we’d have ended up on that if not for Linux.
Genuinely free? VSCode
Freemium: Discord
You pay with your data: Google Maps
If there’s one service that I’m okay giving my data over for, it’s Google maps.
Without that, we wouldn’t have traffic data or how busy a business is. Crowd sourcing information is the only way to get a service as good as google maps. It’s actually amazing to me that it’s free given all of the satellite and street imaging done.
I used to contribute to google maps. I had the same vision you do. But then I learned about their dark way of stealing people’s data. All your contributions to google maps are now property of google. You are giving away your efforts so one of the richest world companies becomes richer. And keep abusing their users. So now I use openstreetmap.org
I remember when I tried OSM maps for navigate my city a lot of years ago, awful experience. Today is almost perfect and changes in roads are updated so fast. I love OpenStreetMap.
I had the same experience with OSM maps years ago, but you’ve convinced me to give it another chance. I’m looking forward to seeing if it handles public transport in Vancouver as well as Google Maps does.
Yeah why the fuck is that? VSCode has no business being as good as it is. It’s developed by Microsoft, after all. Are they planning to take it away from us and charge money for it in a few years? Why does it work on Linux so easily? Is it a government conspiracy to fill our brains with subliminal messages somehow? Wtf is the catch?
My best educated guess is that’s it’s a ploy of some kind. If Microsoft makes a free code editor that’s really good, maybe no one will make a free open source one that’s as good so that they will have control over the 1 most viable code editor? There are other things similar to VSCode but they cost money and are too big a pain to pirate because VSCode is better than them anyway.
It’s not only VSCode, it’s also Github and C# and TypeScript to a lesser extent as well, probably. They want to have control over the “coding” ecosystem. And look at what they already did with github, they trained AI on all projects on it, and they then sell access to that AI.
How can we use C# in a responsible and FOSS way? A huge advantage of C# is that it can’t run into include order problems like C++ can. This makes it easier to make better object oriented games because the object structure can be more useful and you can get better results even if your object structure planning wasn’t as well thought-out.
Here might lie the answer to your question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace%2C_extend%2C_and_extinguish
They learned their lesson with the old Visual Studio. Spending all of that money to maintain an IDE where the core 90% of it was no better than any open source or shareware alternative.
The only reasons people needed VS specifically were all features that could easily be turned into self-contained plugins.
And with everything turning into cloud services, there’s pretty much no point in trying to sell installable local apps that are impossible to fully DRM and have no justifiable subscription fees.
And when an enterprise goes to pick a cloud repo service, cloud code workspace, cloud hosting, devops system, AI development assistant, etc… Who are they gonna pick? Maybe the one from the same company that makes “that one app all our devs rave about”?
I feel like the Google maps algorithm has gotten worse over the last year or so. Maybe it’s the Android auto interfacing with my car, but it sends me on weird routes sometimes even with a similar eta. I think it might be related to the eco settings but man is it annoying.
Discord also makes you pay with your data.
Their privacy policy says they don’t sell your data.
Not that you should automatically trust any communication platform (present Lemmies excluded), but exchange of data for services is at least not the business model on paper.
In a sense, you still “are the product”, because people won’t buy Nitro if there’s noone to talk to.
But that’s different from like… tracking micro-motions of your mouse to categorize your personality traits and increase ad conversions.
Please have a look at this about Discord Terms of Service:
Looks like that’s based on an outdated TOS. Even then, those terms are pretty tame except for the one about transferable license for uploaded content, which has thankfully been narrowed by a lot in the current TOS. (Now it just means: We’re allowed to store your images on S3, resize them, and show them to people you specifically selected to send them to.)
For a company that’s worried about 230 safe harbor, GDPR, CCPA, and wants to promote their first-party products at you, this is all standard.
Also:
This service does not sell your personal data
it’s still a proprietary centralised platform that depends on a single private entity that we trust. I don’t see why to choose that over libre decentralised ones.
I thought Discord was pretty data hungry?
Jellyfin, it’s literally free Netflix if you own even just an old computer and some storage. Also open source that is another huge plus
One thing I like about Plex is that there’s literally an app for every device I own. What’s the Jellyfin support there?
There’s an app on f-Droid, there’s an app on the Linux app store (Pls don’t get mad at the name, i switched to Linux less than a month ago) that’s as much as I need, I don’t own a “smart” TV, I don’t own a car with an iPad, my fridge is dumb so the only screens I need supported are the Linux pc and the phone, and those screens are supported.
I gave Jellyfin a full year, and at the end of that year, the problematic Chromecast support did me in. Back to Plex I went.
LibreOffice for word processing and spreadsheets.
Syncthing, Joplin, and Libreoffice are programs I use on a daily basis.
What do they do?
Syncthing allows you to sync directories between devices. I have different folders synced between by Windows desktop, Pi4, Android, tablet, and laptop.
Joplin is an open source note-taking app that I use with Windows and Android. I use Syncthing to sync the notes between my different devices.
Libreoffice is a replacement of MS Office.
Krita
OpenStreetMap is a free, editable map of the world, created and maintained by millions of volunteers. It includes data about roads, buildings, shops, points of interest, and more.
Many of the benefits of Google Maps without all its spying and advertising.
Bonus in line with this: OsmAnd.
Edit: a more lightweight, but fully FOSS OSM client: Organic Maps. Blazing fast and under constant development.
Edit 2: Here is a Lemmy community dedicated to OsmAnd: !osmand@lemmy.ml
Taking the opportunity to get on my soapbox and remind everyone that free software still requires someone’s time and effort to maintain. If you’ve been using a free app for a while and you and you enjoy it (and you have the means to do so), consider sending a donation to the developers/maintainers! It’s a good way to help ensure that the great, free app you enjoy stays great and free.
If I might add to your excellent reminder, that if you’re lacking on funds but have some coding skills, most projects are in need of some help. Stick your head into the dev forum and try a low-hanging bug.
If you can’t code, MANY projects need help with documentation, translation, marketing, fund raising, etc.
Writing a comprehensive positive review on an app store or review site can have an impact.
If you do have a few bucks but need more for them than a donation can offer, buying their products (when available) - even just stickers and mugs helps to spread the word around while also supporting the developers.
Totally agree. I donate to projects already but I need to do it more.
deleted by creator
I was blown away the first time I stumbled upon KDEConnect. It just… Worked. Completely, easily, and with an incredible feature set compared for free software
When I first got KDEConnect on my desktop, it didn’t work all too well until I uninstalled and was forced to get the windows store version. It’s been working just fine since then, but I couldn’t tell you why the standalone version wasn’t.
Still, it’s such a great tool.
and it works on Mac and Windows too !
Maps. Gives me accurate directions,live traffic data and anything else I need on the road e.g restaurants,hotels,petrol stations etc.
Seriously it has sort of changed the world. I know I’m just handing all my location data to Google but the way it works and the features it offers are amazing and I cannot imagine a world anymore in which I might get lost if I just take a wrong turn somewhere. That combined with the free messaging has made “finding” anything location related a non issue. I can send people a location to meet, I can look up an address someone gave me, I can send my spouse my live location while I’m on my way home to let her know how far I’m out, I can find a hardware store in a town I’ve never been to because I need to tape to fix my bag or whatever, people write helpful comments about where to park or whatever. Maps will suggest different routes for pedestrians, cyclists, drivers or find you a public transportation route if you wish, including (usually) the exact time your train or bus or whatever leaves. It’s fantastic
Look into OpenStreetMaps site for desktop PCs, and pick one of many android apps for the mobile phones that use OSM (i prefer osmAnd, it has a free premium version on F-droid software store) and you won’t be needing to send all your location data to Google ever again.
I tried OSM on F-Droid a few months back and it was terrible. It could never find any addresses that I input. Magic Earth is much better. And uses the same backend I believe.
