We all love open-source software, but there are so many amazing projects out there that often go unnoticed. Let’s change that! Share your favorite open-source software that you think more people should know about. Here’s how you can contribute:
- Single Option Per Comment: Mention one open-source software per comment to be able to easily find the most popular software.
- No Duplicates: Avoid duplicating software that has already been mentioned to ensure a wide variety of options.
- Upvote What You Love: If you see a software that you also appreciate, upvote it to help others discover it more easily.
Check out last year’s post for more inspiration: Last Year’s Post
Let’s create a comprehensive list of open-source software that everyone should know about!
Vassal - an open-source (LGPL-2.1) boardgame engine. basically, people build different modules for each game they want to play, then they can play that game over the internet or solo. Mostly focused on “chit-and-hex” style wargames.
krename is another excellent, but not as well known as it should be, KDE app.
krename can rename files and directories, and directories recursively, to almost anything. You can rename:
- using information from the files or about the files (image info, date / time info, etc)
- with templates (like #### for incrementing 0001, 0002, 0003, etc)
- by adding parts of the original file name (first three characters then the last 4 characters, for example)
- using find and replace (spaces to underscore, remove special characters, etc), including regular expressions
- by changing case
or with a mix of everything.
krename has a simple mode and an advanced mode for renaming, so you don’t have to jump into the deep end with the features.
You do have to be careful with some of the file info functions - it will happily try to rename a movie or a pdf with (non-existent) image EXIF info, for example. That would result in a file with a name you did not intend.
librewolf a privacy-focused fork of the latest stable firefox (win,linux,mac)
NotallyX. Basically free, open source Google Keep, for anyone that enjoys that app.
qBittorrent: only for your legal torrenting needs from e.g. archive.org :>
and lastly, Tor Browser: anonymous web browser to evade state censorship and surveillance
krusader is a dual-paned file manager for KDE. It runs on Linux (of course), MS Windows, and Mac OSX.
Folder sync is what makes krusader outstanding, even if you don’t care about dual-pane file management. Open the two folders you want to sync in the panes and go to Tools > Synchronize Folders. You can synchronize both ways, exclude files, delete lone files, etc. Very powerful.
Being a KDE app, krusader does not skimp on features, so there are lots of other things that krusader can do.
link: https://krusader.org/
Calibre: great e-book manager
Also has a great deDRM tool I used to remove kobo DRM!
gitolite for when a shared git folder is not enough but you don’t want a full gitlab. Provides SSH-based access management for a bunch of git repos.
FanControl: superb PC fan manager with custom temperature/fan speed curves and the options to combine sensors whatever way you like
Open Hardware Monitor: track and visualise CPU/GPU/HDD/etc. performance over time
(I’ve been using the original repo that I see hasn’t been updated in some years, this is a more active fork.)
MusicBrainz Picard: superb mp3 tagger with online metadata lookup feature and audio track fingerprinting
freac: free audio converter :)
GEDKeeper: genealogy software with many functions
(disclaimer: I contributed to this project :) )
Tox is easy-to-use software that connects you with friends and family without anyone else listening in. While other big-name services require you to pay for features, Tox is completely free and comes without advertising. Chat, P2P serverless, screen/file sharing, voice, video, groups, encrypted.
