Here’s how you actually free space on your computer in a way that matters without installing some malware “fix-it” program or need a computer divining rod to find every random file:
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WizTree: Scan your entire computer hards drive(s) in a matter of seconds and display a very useful graph and data about where your space it being taken up. It’s eons faster and easier to use than the leading competitor WinDirStat to the point where I can’t imagine why anyone would use something that isnt WizTree.
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BCUninstaller: It helps uninstall as many apps and programs off of your computer automatically with little to no user interaction needed beyond hitting the “start” button
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BleachBit: It deletes all the temporary and nonessential stuff that gets accumulated over time. It won’t clear as much as BCUninstaller or deleting stuff with WizTree and a lot of apps will generate most temporary files again anyways but I do typically see a decrease of around a gigabyte or two. Worth a shot in any case.
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Winget: While not a software in the general sense, Winget is a package manager built into Windows 10/11 itself that lets you automatically download, configure, and install a ton of programs in one command via command prompt or PowerShell.
Every single program I’ve listed here are available on Winget.
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If you can’t believe it, you need to learn more about FOSS software. In other words, what you’re describing is PEBCAK.
So much software is so necessary that I cannot believe it is NOT free.
That doesn’t make any sense. Necessity is the driving factor for it to cost money
Except for basic human rights
sir this is a capitalism
I believe that the only basic human right is the right to participate and function in your local society (whatever that means to your individual situation). In other words, you dont really have the innate right to anything, but you absolutely have the right to participate and receive the amount of benefit from others that you provide to them. For better or worse (and im not going to argue about it) the way we do that today, in this society, is currency.
Except any job should be paid.
If you like to listen online radios, Open Radio is a nice one!
As a Mechanic. Ampol Netlube, from lawn mowers and passenger vehicle to motorcycles and heavy mining/industrial equipment, I can find how much lubricant it take, what viscosity and specifications.
Your simple, every day, web browser. It doesn’t matter which one. They’re all free and they all are the main, basic way of accessing the internet.
I’d have used “the internet” itself, but most people still have to pay to get connected to it.
DaVinci Resolve
Krita. I don’t use it at a professional level so I don’t know if it’s missing important features, but as far as I know it’s also used by skilled artists. Also, the documentation is great.
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]
GNU!
Just had to give a shout out to Stallman & GNU. I’ve seen a lot of mentions of thanks to Linux on here, but Richard will never let us forget that Linux ain’t shit w/o GNU software to interact with it.
Just think of the number of GNU programs you’ve used, just in a typical day on the terminal.
My hat is off to you, Richard.
Weawow is a completly (also ad-)free weather forecast app run basically solo by a Japanese guy. I was surprised when I found this app that it was so good in every aspect that I had to donate the guy. It has has more than half a Mio. reviews on google play with an average of 4.9 . Idk of any free app with that many reviews having this kind of rating, well deserved.
Further honorable mentions:
- Vivaldi browser
- Joplin notes app
- nextcloud
- wikipedia (obviously)
- Öffi
- Signal
- keepass
- rif for reddit (R.I.P)
QGIS (https://qgis.org/en/site/). A Free and Open Source Geographic Information System. There are also free basemaps available - I use the same basemaps as I use at work in ArcGIS Pro.
total commander (file manager + ftp/sftp client) for android,
openvpn
I used OpenVPN for years and deployed it across numerous places I worked and at home, amazing project. I feel a bit guilty for switching to wireguard a couple years back but it really is amazingly fast.
Never knew bout wireguard before.thanks, it looks interesting
I still run Total Commander v3.31, before Google made them gimp some of the features.
The Portable Apps Platform - free portable software meta app. It’s there, every day, like the Windows start button is there.
Oh man, there’s something I haven’t seen in a long time. Saved my ass at school so many times when the school’s software was garbage
Still there, still growing, it’s the gateway to 450+ apps. More, if you like the betas.
No use to me anymore, is why I stopped using it. Been a long time since I’ve had to do anything significant on a Windows machine
Not a Wine user?
Firefox. I couldn’t imagine using the internet without it.
This but in the Fennec flavor
Fennec is only for Android, because the desktop Firefox doesn’t have have weird app-store shennanigans to begin with, so there’s no point of maintaining Fennec for desktop.
And I do use Fennec for Android, just to keep the Google-Play shennanigans out of my browser.
I’m on Fennec on Android and LibreWolf on desktop.
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.
They get paid by Google to feature their search engine as the default primary search engine. In Fennec, the non-google-play version of mobile browser Firefox, Duckduckgo is set as default, even though both versions are maintained by Mozilla, the non-profit organization behind Firefox.
Mozilla seems to be pretty transparent. You can see their financial statement at State of Mozilla.
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Donations
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Getting payed by google to make it their default search engine.
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Mainly a non profit
I adore Firefox but several years ago, Google Suite (Docs, Sheets, Forms, etc) decided to change their font system in some bizarre way that they’re never formatted right on Firefox and cause spacing issues. It sucks because I use Docs and Sheets so frequently that I end up needing to keep two browsers installed and switch whenever I want to work on some of my projects.
