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.
To piggyback off of this, consider donating to VLC.
Donated!
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.
I donate every. single. month.
Bitwarden is one I use several times a day. They do have a support plan for like $10 a year that gives a couple extra features like TOTP support, but the base level is incredibly robust. It’s open source, too. I know a lot of folks also host their own servers with Vaultwarden, but that’s a little beyond my skill level.
I pay for it just because it’s cheap and to support them
I just recently started using their totp function and I can’t believe I didn’t switch sooner. Just the fact alone that it automatically copies the code to your clipboard is such a Time saver not having to open up a separate app.
It’s a wild time saver. I can’t believe other folks go to a whole separate app for their codes! Hitting Ctrl+L to autofill passwords and user names then Ctrl+V for TOTP feels like a hack when I watch other people struggle with their other solutions.
I use a separate app for my codes, if someone somehow gains access to my Bitwarden if they have TOTP as wellcthrn they have all my accounts. With my TOTP in another app they still can’t access them.
ITT people throwing out names of things with 0 mention of what they are or what they’re used for.
Like, I appreciate being to look at everyone’s recommendations, but man that’s a lot of googling
It seems evident that the effort put into a comment would mirror one’s investment in the topic. With these bare minimum answers I always assume the quality of the recommendation matches.
7-zip
LibreOffice for word processing and spreadsheets.
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.
Bitwarden and firefox
I don’t use it but blender is another one
I don’t know if this will show up or is already in the list, but: Rufus. I burn all my thumb drives for os installs with Rufus. It also lets me bypass a lot of the windows garbage that they’ve tracked on to the installer, like making you sign in to a Microsoft account to install. Also, Ventoy. It’s a multiple OS installer, so one big thumb drive lets me install any number of OSes from it.
While I’m setting up those OSes, ninite gets me my windows programs, and Snappy Driver Installer Origin gets me my drivers. No more laptops with pre-installed bloat for me!
Others have mentioned most of my favorite tools. One thing I’d like to add is SageMath. It’s a mathematical software that’s comparable/better than commercial offerings like Mathematica and MatLab. I’ve rarely seen anyone in the academia using anything else these days. If someone does use something else, it’s just because they’re more used to it. SageMath is by far the best tool for most things math.
Also, while typing about Sage, I was reminded of how great of a tool LaTeX is. If you want to write anything that’ll be more than a single page, LaTeX is probably the best way to do it.
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: [email protected]
Syncthing. I get so much use out of it yet it’s probably the least naggy thing on my computer.
Linux
Signal and Telegram
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.
