I am and all my life have been a Linux user, I have nothing against Windows or MacOS, I just like Linux, and lately I have been experimenting with Windows in a virtual machine and I don’t really know much open source software there apart from the one that is cross-platform like Firefox or Joplin.
At the moment I know:
Flow Launcher: It’s a typical rofi style launcher, although I’m not a TWM user I like to just press super and type the first letters of the program I’m looking for to open it.
Lively Wallpaper: A program to have animated wallpapers, in the style of Wallpaper Engine.
Edit: I want to clarify that I read all the comments, I only respond to some because many times I have nothing to contribute to many of them because I don’t know what to comment. Thanks to all of you for providing your lists of programs, I will be sure to try as many as I can because they are great, at least I know what to install if I use Windows one day!
Wild, you are like from the alternate universe where Linux is dominant and nerds play around in windows. Are things better where you are from? :P
Of course! In this universe everybody uses linux phones and they are actually usable (and repairable)!
- Firefox: best web browser out there
- Bitwarden: password manager
- ShareX: screenshot utility. Greenshot is also good, but I prefer ShareX
- WinDirStat: disk usage utility
- KDE Connect: connect Android phone to PC
- Image Glass: image viewer
- OBS: video & audio capture
- Blender: 3D modeling, animation, video editing
- Handbrake: video conversion
- VLC: video/audio playback
- Audacity: audio editing
- SpeedCrunch: calculator
- Notepad++: text editor
- Spyder (via Anaconda): Python IDE
If you liked windirstat i warmly recommend wiztree ( not sure if open source tho).it’s the same but faster. like FASTER faster
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GIMP (Image editor)
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putty (Secure shell/terminal emulator)
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WinSCP (Secure FTP client)
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QBittorrent (guess.)
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7zip (All in one compressed archive manager)
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Firefox
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Notepad++ (text editor with syntax highlights)
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Handbrake (Video transcoder)
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VLC (all in one video player)
These are my top must have installed. There are others but they’re situational
Let’s not forget the various console emulators that are open source as well. All the good ones are.
That’s a good list!
I use the same, except I use LibreWolf (privacy focused fork of FF) and VS Code instead of Firefox and Notepad++
Vs code
I would actually recommend VSCodium; it’s the same product but without the Microsoft telemetry.
Does it lose any MS connected features? Other than surveillance.
VSCodium can’t use the official Microsoft extension marketplace, but there is an alternative. You can also install extensions manually.
Yeah VS Code definitely if ya doing programming. I’m just editing config/ini files once in a while so N++ is just right for me.
I use Kitty instead of Putty recently, though I don’t know if the difference is worth it.
I just use Powershell, much easier imo
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PowerToys: productivity utilities like window pinning, window management, accented character typing assistant, color picker, text extractor, etc.
You forgot the best thing. Window management, aka Fanzy Zones. You can set areas to your monitor and snap windows to those instead of just left / right side of monitor. Completely customizable.
Seconding this. It has every feature you know Windows needs but it still doesn’t have (likely because of the need for testing or being aimed at power users).
Some of these are cross platform but:
7zip
Autohotkey
Bitwarden
Calibre
Handbrake
Speedcrunch
WinHTTrack
WinSCP
I prefer nanazip to 7zip because it’s just forked 7zip that’s been updated for modern windows. They’re working on a dark mode too.
Good to know!
Seconding AHK, Bitwarden, and Calibre
I have to say it, Rufus.
To install linux
Ventoy is the easier answer these days IMO. Just drop ISOs on your Ventoy’d usb key and choose them from a menu at boot time.
Ventoy is easy, but not perfect. I tried multum of unique images and it struggled hard. From openwrt to freedos to reboot of Hiren’s boot cd, it just couldn’t load them correctly.
Not to be argumentative, but in case you’re interested:
According to the ventoy site it supports those images, though openwrt requires a plugin and freedos seems to require using memdisk mode, though I’m less clear on the limitations there.
Oh, I didn’t know that, but still, I don’t expect to be truly universal. But as long as you are dealing with ISOs of LX server/desktop or WIN, it’s an amazing tool.
Xoblite: Blackbox/Fluxbox-style WM/shell for Windows.
Open Shell: Brings back the classic start menu and other classic Explorer.exe features
Notepad2e: A lightweight and portable alternative to Notepad++
AutoHotkey: Probably the best GUI automation tool out there, this is the tool that I miss the most in the Linux world.
There’s also Kate, the KDE Advanced Text Editor. It’s available from the Windows store, and works amazingly well on Windows, fast snappy and (almost?) just as featurefull as on Linux. I use it side by side with Notepad++
For package management I’ve been really liking scoop.sh
Not everything in there is FOSS but scoop itself is! And you can install neovim, vscodium, bitwarden, Firefox, etc very easily.
How does it compare to chocolatey? Thanks.
it doesn’t trigger UAC because the installation directory is different
Some items trigger UAC (installing tailscale, for example)
I love that everying lives in ~/scoop. It’s well organized and somewhat portable (until you import the nonportable bucket)
One great thing about scoop is that downgrading an app is very easy. You can also manage multiple versions of a runtime, for example, you can install multiple Node.js versions and switch between them with
scoop resetcommand.It definitely looks like the first program that should be installed when doing a clean install of Windows!
I recently found out about winget, how is winget different from scoop? Apart from of course, the number of packages and that anyone can contribute to it.
Winget is from Microsoft for one (and already installed with Windows). It basically just downloads the regular windows installer and installs it like usual without the need to click user feedback prompts. Scoop is more of a package manager.
With winget, one nice thing is you can even update packages not installed with winget originally. You can see which apps on your computer have updates available with a single command.
It’s great when you’re updating someone else’s computer they haven’t updated random things in years (typical windows users).
Scoop essentially uses portable apps and everything is in your scoop folder which is great.
I use both. Scoop first and winget for everything else. I use winget to update Libreoffice on all our work computers (because the devs won’t work on auto updates).
I felt like winget was too limited. When I last used it it didn’t support installing multiple apps at the same time. scoop feels much more like traditional *nix package management to me, which I like.
BalenaEtcher or Rufus for writing ISOs to usb.
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I dont get mactype there simply is no explanation what it does?
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Playnite for launching games
It will open up anything. Battlenet games, steam games, emulated games… you name it. Supports themes too!
www.playnite.link
Mostly same list as for GNU/Linux:
- Kate editor (Notepad++ and VSCodium are good here too)
- KeePassXC or KeePass 2 password manager
- Firefox or firefox derivative
- Unison file synchronizer
- Dolphin or Explorer++ file manager
- VLC for audio/video
- 7zip file (un)archiver
- Chocolatey package manager (would like to try alternatives)
have you tried the builtin “winget” as alternative to chocolatey?
Hearing and finding out Dolphin is available for windows is great. Totally downloading it to replace file explorer as we speak.
FreeFileSync a FOSS backup and folder synchronizer, a must have.
FreeFileSync is a folder comparison and synchronization software that creates and manages backup copies of all your important files. Instead of copying every file every time, FreeFileSync determines the differences between a source and a target folder and transfers only the minimum amount of data needed. FreeFileSync is Open Source software, available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Is this different than syncthing in an important ways?
Yes, Syncthing needs 2 diferents devices to sync, FreeFileSync syncronize whatever you want within 1 device, for example between 2 Disks or from a network disk to your computer disk.
Syncthing works great if there are 2 devices turned on and connected to a LAN or Internet, and FreeFileSync is totally disconected from the internet and only needs 1 device on (the one that execute it)
I use both, Syncthing to autosync all my devices and FreeFileSync to backup all those files to various disconected hard drives
Oh nice thats really useful ill try it thanks
VLC player, 7zip, translucent bar, greenshot, irfanview,
Check out https://github.com/auctors/free-lunch (list of free Windows software)
See also https://www.nirsoft.net/ (freeware, not open source)
See also https://www.nirsoft.net/ (freeware, not open source)
I’d say free(as in beer)ware
