¶ Free and Open-Source Software Packages
Learning free and open software today helps to avoid unnecessary costs for corporate software in the future:
- GNU Linux - operating system
- LibreOffice - word processor, spreadsheet and slide presentation
- Firefox - web browser
- LibreWolf - Firefox-based web-browser with hardened privacy and security
- Helium - Chromium-based privacy and security focused web-browser
- Brave - web browser
- Chromium - the FOSS base for Brave, Google Chrome and many other browsers, managed by The Chromium Project
- Thunderbird - email and RSS client
- Signal - messaging, audio/video calls
- Matrix - popular federated messaging protocol
- Zim - notepad
- Freemind - mindmapping
- Nextcloud - cloud service, task management and shared working environment
- Vaultwarden - password manager
- Bitwarden - password manager
- GIMP - photo and bitmap editing
- Darktable - RAW photo editing
- Inkscape - vector image editing
- Krita - digital painting and 2D animation
- Blender - 3D modeling, animation and video editing
- Kdenlive - video editing
- FreeCad - CAD designing, 3D and technical drawing
- KiCad - electronic circuits and board design
- Scilab - advanced mathematics processor
- Audacity - linear audio recording and editing
- Ardour/Zrythm - digital audio workstation
- Surge XT - wavetable synth
- Mixxx - live DJ mixer
- Jellyfin - self-hosted movie streaming
- Immich - self-hosted photo streaming
- Navidrome - self-hosted audio (music) streaming
- audiobookshelf - self-hosted audiobook and podcast server
- Lutris - game library management (itch.io, GOG, EA, Ubisoft etc.)
- MusicBrainz Picard - metadata editor for music files
- VLC - video and media player with extensive support
- Zettlr - Markdown note-taking with great TeX rendering and plaintext storage
- Joplin - feature-rich cross-platform Markdown note-taking with SQLite storage and WebDAV / Nextcloud sync
- VSCodium - the VSCode IDE, but FOSS and without telemetry collection
- qBitTorrent - BitTorrent client
- SearXNG - self-hosted metasearch engine without tracking
- PDF Arranger - small GUI program for combining, splitting, rotating and otherwise manipulating PDFs locally
- Mousepad - simple text editor, similar to Notepad
- Anki - flashcard program, useful for learning
- OBS Studio - powerful screen recording and live streaming software
- Zotero - reference manager for bibliographic data
- GNU Units - a CLI converter tool for converting from nearly anything to nearly anything
- Bottles - GUI program for Windows environments in Linux for incompatible software
- KeePassXC - local password manager with strong browser integration
- CoMaps - cross-platform offline-first navigation and map software with OpenStreetMaps data
Many of these application are compatible with different operating systems and can be used with Windows PC, Linux and Mac. Check the compatibility and look for online tutorials for installing and using these applications in your computer.