Trying to discover new/unheard Linux desktop programs (Sorry for the confusion).
Edit: I apologise for confusing a lot of people. I meant Linux desktop “programs” coming from Windows/Mac. I’m used to calling them “apps”.
Edit: 🙌 I’m overwhelmed with the great “programs” people have recommended in the comment section. Thank you guys.
- Nvim with lazy-nvim
- Emacs (org mode)
- Krita
- Strawberry Music (can organize and transcode music)
- Easy Effects (for poorly balanced YouTube videos or voice chat)
- Calibre
- YARG (I like plastic guitar)
A lot of good stuff here. The three things that are most notable for me are:
Notepadqq
Fsearch
Librewolf
I am currently deciding wether to use librewolf or floorp, do you by chance have an opinion on that?
Floorp is better in my opinion. It has vertical tabs, pwa. These are such useful options for me.
LibreWolf is much better for privacy, it’s specifically optimized for that. It also ships much less bloat by default.
Librewolf is great. Secure and private by default. For compatibility it is nearly as good as Firefox.
Thunderbird
QuodLibet: I’m waiting for Amarok 3 to be ported but right now this is the best music collector/player in my experience.
Agreed
Have you tried Strawberry?
Yes, I’ve tried pretty much everything. Strawberry is pretty good but it doesn’t have a grid view for albums, it also shows the contents in a way that is not very intuitive imo (I want albums in publication order with original release date). I sincerely expect something new from the next Amarok in terms of intuitiveness of use, I hope the good man who is bringing it back wants to innovate something in this sense.
Localsend, distrobox+podman and ublock origin just to name a few
- sshfs. I use it for everything.
- autossh
- git. It always annoys me how Debian doesn’t come with it out of the box. Gets me every time I set up a new server.
- Signal desktop app.
- Obsidian - great markdown-based note app
- NewsFlash - fast and elegant RSS news reader
- Bottles - program to run Windows apps and managing them easily
- BreakTimer - a life-saver for me; it allows you to set a break after given amount of time
- LibreWolf - privacy-focused fork of Firefox
There are a lot of awesome programs on Linux, I recommend browsing Flathub to find them
Syncthing, micro, fish, btop, podman
I distro hop so these are usually the first that get installed.
Apparently people still believe that floorp is proprietary. That’s not true, some of it’s components went closed-source for a while to switch licenses. Now it’s back to being open-source
For terminal, the first thing I install is Midnight Commander - dual pane file manager. https://midnight-commander.org/
For all of my physical Linux machines - Cockpit and Cockpit-File Sharing plugin.
Desktop
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Thunderbird
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Firefox
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Vivaldi
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Gnome
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Chromium I use Firefox, wife uses Chromium and My WFH job I use Chrome. Vivaldi is a backup browser, I’ve been messing around with.
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QEMU/LibVirtd - So I can run a Windows VM for my old Canon Lide 60 scanner which scans clearly there, otherwise in Linux, it’s contrasted super grey for some reason.
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Kopia-UI - Backup system which supports NFS Shares - set and forget type of setup.
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VLC - Need I say more? Lol
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OnlyOffice - Better aesthetically IMHO than LibreOffice
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PDF Arranger - Works well to re-arrange pages or rotate them after scanning them in. (I self host Sterling PDF and will probably switch to that later)
And for some inspiration - the “Awesome Linux Software” list (Not mine) similar to the other Awesome lists you see around. https://github.com/luong-komorebi/Awesome-Linux-Software
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https://www.byobu.org/ can eschew both screen and tmux Mosh (the mobile SSH client, not linking here) if installing it on the remote server is an option
My nixpkgs list is something like
- Firefox
- Vim
- WezTerm
- Fzf
- Zoxide
- Starship
- Copyq
- mpv
- Obsidian
- Chromium
- Xbindkeys
- Xte
Someone already mentioned Logseq, but I’m really enjoying Obsidian for my note taking needs. It’s similar, but I have found Obsidian to be very nice. Not FOSS, but I really like what the devs are doing.
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Nice! Yeah you’ve definitely tried a bunch of apps.
What service are you using to self host obsidian? And is it cheaper than paying for obsidian sync?
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Cool thanks for the info! Ill check it out
Same I tried logsec but it needs a bit more polishing and most importantly the excalidraw plugin is not that good.
Yeah I’ve tried One Note, Evernote and notion before coming across Logseq and Obsidian. I’m really enjoying it. I haven’t given Excalidraw much use in obsidian but I may do so in the future.
It’s a game changer for me. Obsidian plugin allows previewing these drawings in notes, and we can also link notes in the drawings. The built in canvas feature is simply bad. All it needs to do is center the text inside boxes. Wish the devs made it open source and this problem could get fixed but apparently they don’t believe in it.
Linux, system:
- KDE Plasma (Dolphin, Kate, Kfind, Merkuro, shell, Spectacle)
- Librewolf / hardened Firefox (system app because of user namespaces, which Flatpaks cant create)
Linux, Flatpak:
- syncthingy
- thunderbird
- libreoffice
- KDE: Okular, Gwenview, maybe soon digiKam
- Qt: qBittorrent, Keepassxc
- GNOME/Circle: Celluloid, PDF Arranger, Carburetor, Decoder, G4music, Railway, SimpleScan (or Skanlite), Impression, GIMP
- GTK: localsend, GPU Screen recorder
- Electron: Freetube, Signal, Cryptomator, Nextcloud
- Podman: StirlingPDF
Android:
- Fossify Gallery, Calendar
- Material Files
- Markor
- Antennapod
- Florisboard (or maybe Futo, but I dont need the fancy stuff yet)
- Shelter
- localsend
- Obtainium
- dict.cc
- Grayjay
- k9mail
- soundbound (spotify), seal (ytdl)
- öffi, kleine Wettervorschau
- SaveTo…
- mjpdf
I didn’t know you could install the Nextcloud Client as an Electron app
The client
That’s the one I meant
Add KDE connect
When it works (which mostly, it does not) it’s awesome
Damn it worked for me in both kde aswell as cinnamon.
Doesnt work for me lol. But yes, totally.
Exactly that for me too, I’ve opened multiple bug reports over the years, and IIRC, even Worte with one of the devs. I think it needs a good amount of extra work on connectivity and user feedback to clearly system why something isn’t working
The first things I install on a fresh linux install are always
htop(task manager) andmicro(nano but better).Have you looked at btop by chance? More visually appealing to me, but still in terminal.
I find it really hard to read for getting the information I need quickly, too much going on with too much useless info.
That’s fair, there is more info and suffering font sizes. I usually minimize the disk use window myself.
I have used both, but have stuck with nano. Why do you personally choose micro over nano?
It has shortcuts that feel a little more natural to me and the ootb theming makes files more easy to navigate.
I know you can also theme nano but I’m lazyOh no judgment, purely curiosity here.
Never felt it as judgement :)
