Gonna go with Firefox as both my most-used piece of open-source software, and the software I see as most important to its ecosystem. If Firefox fails then we’ve just got Chromium-based browsers and, I guess, Safari.
uBlock Origin, it’s not even close!
Firefox. It is the only thing keeping Google from total internet domination
im worried about Mozillas ability to keep growing Firefox. They laid off a lot of their firefox team a few years ago and have been dipping into more commercial interests… we really need Mozilla to be the FOSS counter to big tech.
Signal, Thunderbird and Bitwarden
Signal, Firefox and Eclipse.
Too bad Signal are dropping support for Windows 7 ;(
Kind of odd to use Signal (a privacy and security focused messenger) on Windows 7 (an EOL and thus highly unsecure operating system).
it is a development machine with highly specialised tools - Altium Designer, SolidWorks, IDA Pro, Altera Quartus, etc.
Upgrading the OS is not a trivial thing as would be on a phone or tablet. Also when upgrading the OS it would make sense to upgrade the HW as well, and that is a major investment. And Signal is just not important really to warrant that.
I would still use it on my phone though, but on the PC is just Viber unfortunately (whatsapp dropped as well).
I wouldn’t say upgrading the OS on a phone or tablet is trivial… Especially when compared to a PC. Upgrading the OS on a PC is much easier.
Both is trivial in my opinion. The problem is OP using ancient software that only runs on an ancient OS. In this case upgrading is not trivial. Even though upgrading is a major investment in this case, it only gets worse the later its done. Typical case of technical debt
I didn’t know thunderbird was open source!
Yup, it’s the nephew, so to speak, of Firefox!
Blender by a huge mile. Yes, there’s tons of other software like Linux, of course, but Blender is such a powerful, well managed, economically viable and healthy (community) project that it should be shown as an example of how Open Source should be.
My biggest hurdle with other projects is the fanboys, because many times they’re quite toxic, insulting everybody who doesn’t adore the project and don’t accept constructive criticism.
If i had to go with just one the linux
Firefox and its derivatives. They’re the last free bastion preventing a Chromium monopoly on the browser market, which is hugely important - especially these days with Google’s push for Mv3.
Shout-out to Vivaldi for forking before mv3 happens. It is chromium based but they are very openly anti-google. It’s the OG Chrome devs as far as I understand.
I love and use Bitwarden daily.
There something I don’t understand. How does one use Bitwarden daily? It generates, remembers and autofill passwords, right? I rarely enter a password anywhere. What am I missing? Please educate me.
There are certain sites which terminate your sessions after a while. For example, banking sites or most government portals. In such situations, the auto fill function is very handy.
Git itself.
Which allowed this monstosity I contributed heavily to, to leave a hellscape of svn patches: https://github.com/LandSandBoat/server
So git earns the “favorite” designation hands down.
uBlock Origin - the chaddest AdBlock of them all!
So many to choose from…Linux, Syncthing, Vim, Firefox and Thunderbird/K-9 Mail, Keepass and derivatives, GrapheneOS, Inkscape, VLC/mpv, yt-dlp…there are just too many daily drivers to name them all.
Vim wouldn’t even have occurred to me if you hadn’t said it. I use Vim more than I talk to my family.
Exactly, text editors are such everyday staples and yet it’s easy to take for granted that they are open source. Vim is often the first package I install on new systems when not already present and, outside of my web browser, is certainly the program I use most.
On that note, I’ll add Markor to my favourites list. It’s absolutely the best Android markdown editor/viewer I’ve found to date, and it works beautifully with Syncthing folders.
I’d go with either Firefox or Thunderbird. Both are immensely useful pieces of software that I use on a daily basis, and have evolved (mostly) nicely over time.
Not to give Mozilla too much credit, Nextcloud is also pretty slick!
LibreOffice is equal to any office software out there, and has been much more stable than OpenOffice, and works without an internet connection unlike Google Docs.
Everyone should use LibreOffice … unless you work in a very specific office or school environment that specifically requires it, go install Microsoft Office, and even then, get your school or business to pay for it
Otherwise, for day to day document writing, letter writing or anything you have to do for yourself at home … LibreOffice is more than enough.
About five or six years ago, I was buying a new laptop at Bestbuy and I found myself a great deal and specifically asked for a system that didn’t have an OS with it or any software … they got an old returned unit, wiped the drive and sold it to me for about $200 at the time. While I waited, I listened as a salesman sold a new laptop to a clueless mother buying a unit for her son in high school … they got her to buy a $600 laptop, all sots of extras and MS Office and topped her off at about $1000 for a shitty laptop that was no more powerful than what I was getting
GNU+Linux
Not entirely software, but the MiSTer FPGA project. Having accurate zero-lag hardware accurate versions of almost every console, many arcade games, PCs (Amiga, Commodore etc), and handheld up to and including the PlayStation in a box the size of a game boy is unreal.
Majority of the project is open source, and has been used for ports to the analogue pocket handheld, which I also have and use often
