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.
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If anyone’s interested and using KDE, there’s Yakuake, which is also a Quake-style terminal that fits in nicely with that environment
I’m also going to push forward Tilda, which has been my preferred one for a while due to how minimal the UI is.
Although I’m not really terminal-heavy user, I use Yakuake multiple times a day. It’s awesome to have it ready all the time with one on keypress…
Ya Quake-style terminals are super convenient!
A good kit IMO, in order of priority:
- Cherrytree; nominally for making hierarchical lists but you can basically use it as a wiki for your entire life. You can theme it yourself too, if you think it looks too retro out of the box.
- Syncthing, for keeping files synced between devices without having to use a server.
- Qbittorrent, for getting files you need. Remember to install search plugins.
- KeepassXC. Password manager (local, not on a server, use in combination with Syncthing).
- Convertall, for unit conversions.
- Calibre, for managing an ebook library, converting formats, removing DRM, transferring to ereader etc.
- Rhythmbox, for music library, podcasts, internet radio.
- Shotwell, for photo and video library. Easy to use, supports tags (metadata written to image files).
- GIMP, for image manipulation. It’s extremely versatile, comprehensive and versatile. 3.0 is due out soon and will include non-destructive layer effects. Heavyweight piece of software, so expect a learning curve.
- Ardour, for music production. Heavyweight, steep learning curve.
- Flowblade for video production. Lightweight, easy to learn.
- Libreoffice, desktop publishing.
- Librewolf; privacy-focussed web browser.
- Thunderbird; highly organisable email client.
- Freetube, for watching youtube videos without all the ads and tracking. Local subscriptions and playlists, which you can export to use with Newpipe on Android. Also lets you download video and audio.
If you like the terminal also add:
- ranger; file manager
- newsboat; RSS feed reader
- yt-dl; download videos from youtube and many other sites ;)
- w3m; command line web browser. I like to use this in combination with newsboat.
Enjoy!
I would suggest yazi in place of ranger. Both are good, yazi just feels faster and has more features.
OK thanks, will check it out :)
Not exactly unheard of:
Terminal:
Vim or Neovim, Tmux or Zillij.
Web browser:
Firefox or a fork, but personally I’m fine with the standard Mozilla offering with a couple of extensions.
Photos:
Big fan of darktable as a lightroom replacement.
- LibreWolf as my browser (it’s a more secure and private version of Firefox, comes with a pre-installed adblocker and removes all the unnecessary junk) (Flatpak) with some of the following extensions:
- LibRedirect for redirecting privacy-invasive websites to private frontends
- ff2mpv
- Read Aloud (text-to-speech)
- Buster for solving CAPTCHAs
- Dark Reader
- Violentmonkey for userscripts like Lemmy Universal Link Switcher (it’s really useful)
- DownThemAll
- Search by Image
- Server-Status (GitHub) shows information about a web server like country/region (via local GeoIP database lookup), SSL certificate information and more. Good open source alternative to Flagfox.
- Thunderbird for emails (Flatpak)
- Proton Mail Bridge (Flatpak)
- Merkuro Calendar
- Ptyxis (Flatpak) as my terminal. It’s optimized for containers (e.g. distrobox). foot is a pretty good alternative if you want something more minimalistic and don’t care about containers. There are countless other good options like Kitty, Alacritty, Konsole, WezTerm and many others.
- Emacs as my IDE
- KWrite, Kate or NotepadQQ for quickly editing text documents. There’s also Apostrophe for GNOME.
- QOwnNotes for local/Nextcloud-synced notes (Iotas for GNOME) There are other good options like Trilium Notes or Joplin.
- Speech Note speech-to-text note-taking (https://piped.video/watch?v=zlLVgTB42Bo)
- Akregator as my RSS client (Newsflash for GNOME)
- Strawberry as my music player (Amberol or Rhythmbox if you’re on GNOME)
- Spot for Spotify (Flatpak)
- Cider for Apple Music (unfortunately not FOSS anymore)
- Feishin for connecting to my self-hosted Navidrome music server
- rescrobbled for saving my music listening history to Last.fm. Also works with self-hosted ListenBrainz.
- Jellyfin Desktop for connecting to my self-hosted Jellyfin media server
- mpv as my video player (Celluloid on GNOME)
- FreeTube for watching YouTube videos
- This modded YouTube Music client that has an adblocker and many other cool features: https://th-ch.github.io/youtube-music/
- Kasts for listening to podcasts (also has the ability to sync with gpodder.net or self-hosted GPodder on Nextcloud)
- LibreOffice (Flatpak) There’s also OnlyOffice.
- Skanpage for scanning documents
- GNUcash for accounting
- Notesnook or Standard Notes for end-to-end encrypted note-taking
- Anki Flashcards (Flatpak)
- Logseq (FOSS Obsidian alternative)
- Flameshot for screenshots (GitHub, Flatpak)
- Kdenlive for video editing
- GIMP, Krita and Inkscape for graphics stuff
- Blender for animation stuff
- Natron for VFX
- LMMS and Ardour for music production
- Virtual Machine Manager for creating/managing KVM/QEMU VMs (Boxes for GNOME)
- Nextcloud Desktop for connecting to my home server
- Signal Desktop (Flatpak) There’s also Flare for GNOME, which uses GTK instead of Electron and feels more native (Flatpak)
- Element (or NeoChat if you use KDE, Fractal for GNOME) for Matrix
- WebCord for Discord. There are some native GTK clients like Abaddon and Dissent.
- Paper Planes (Native GTK Telegram client)
- Konversation or HexChat for IRC (Polari on GNOME)
- Tokodon as my Mastodon client
- qBittorrent for downloading torrent content. (You can use KTorrent on KDE and Fragments on GNOME)
- Pika Backup for taking backups (There’s a pretty good video about it: https://piped.video/watch?v=W30wzKVwCHo)
- Timeshift for btrfs snapshots
- Gradience to customize GTK4 appearance
- Bitwarden for syncing my password database with my self-hosted Vaultwarden server (also works with their public cloud syncing option). Use KeePassXC if you prefer something entirely local.
- LocalSend for sharing files on the local network (basically works like AirDrop) (also works over NetBird or Tailscale btw)
- NetBird for creating a flat VPN network between my devices
- KDE Connect for better integration with my phone. Also works over NetBird btw. Check out GSConnect if you’re on GNOME.
- KRunner for quickly finding files or applications (Ulauncher for other desktops, rofi for window managers)
- Safing Portmaster (Firewall and DNS blocking solution. Check out OpenSnitch if you just need a firewall)
- LACT for controlling AMD GPUs
- Flatseal for managing Flatpak permissions (On KDE this is integrated in the system settings)
- Bottles for managing Wine prefixes (Flatpak)
If you like gaming:
- Lutris for managing my games
- Heroic for Epic Games and GOG
- Prism Launcher for Minecraft
- Dolphin for emulating Wii and GameCube
- Ryujinx for emulating the Switch
- RPCS3 for PS3 emulation
- Vita3K for PSVita emulation
- PPSSPP for PSP
- Cemu for Wii U emulation
For the CLI:
Abaddon is light weight gtk discord app. Also has voice support.
Added it to the list.
This is fantastic! Thank you for taking the time to write all that down.
Brilliant list! Starred this to go through it in detail later.
EDIT: A good deal of overlap with me on the type of applications I already use, so looking forward to discovering other hidden gems I haven’t yet found.
I also like lutris. But it being “for games” doesn’t do it justice I think. It is basically just a wine environment manager. It advertises as being for games but it should work with just about any windows executable.
Amazing list, thanks for sharing.
- LibreWolf as my browser (it’s a more secure and private version of Firefox, comes with a pre-installed adblocker and removes all the unnecessary junk) (Flatpak) with some of the following extensions:
Syncthing and KeepassXC for syncing 2FA between devices. (I use Bitwarden for passwords)
Do you want to have 2fa keys on all your devices? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose?
Do you want to have 2fa keys on all your devices?
Yes
Doesn’t that defeat the purpose?
I use different password between KeepassXC and Bitwarden. (On my phone one of them is unlocked by fingerprint because I am lazy but not both)
And I don’t store KeepassXC password in Bitwarden.
While my solution isn’t perfect (if someone key logged my computer I am very screwed), I think it’s better than (1) have a much higher chance of losing my 2FA tokens altogether (2) put all hope on Bitwarden being not compromised
Everyone needs to make their own choices about this but IMO it’s fine.
Pretty much everyone saves recovery codes in their password manager anyway, which is the same thing.
No, 2FA stops someone from getting into your account if they have the password.
oxipng, pngquant and svgcleaner for optimizing images
auto-editor for removing silent portions from video recordings
I prefer Scour for SVGs, but as long as we can agree that svgo is trash, we can be friends.
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I use XSane and TheGimp to scan and edit my paintings, Firefox with privacy extensions to browse, VLC to play videos, Gnome Mahjongg to waste time playing. I used to use Resolve to edit videos, I’ll soon start using Kdenlive. As a visual artist I have a thing for film emulation that Kdenlive can’t do, but it’s something I’ll have to leave behind.
What do you mean with film emulation that Kdenlive can’t do?
On Resolve there various helper for-film-emulation plugins, and also third parties like Dehancer and Cineprint (which are exceptional), that do near-perfect film emulation. These things don’t exist on Linux video editors. They barely exist for Premiere/FinalCut. It’s a Resolve-first ability.
I think I didn’t expressed myself correctly, what do you mean with film emulation?
Film emulation is a whole “sub-genre” of photography and video, where creators are trying to emulate the look and feel of various types of films, like kodachrome, fujifilm, etc. In fact, most movies and music videos have a layer of such emulation during their color grading process. I also treat my videos that way for a more cinematic look.
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No way! i thought it was open-source.
It is
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I’ve been trying to figure out a way to use vanilla Firefox instead but also have a web panel like Floorp. Being able to open and close a webpage on the side like that is pretty handy. Vivaldi has the same feature but I don’t want to use that.
Would it be impractical to open another window and align the window somehow?
For the most part, that works fine. It’s more of a convenience feature since I can quite easily switch between different sites I have saved in the panel.
I also use Floorp! Firefox is my favourite mobile browser, with the address bar at the bottom for easy access, and also easy-access, reliable tab sync, with Floorp on the desktop for its workspaces feature + the ability to use the old Firefox style (with minimal tabs) with a simple toggle.
The only browser that could measure up to it (meaning it has the same feature set for both desktop and mobile) is Vivaldi (Correction: Last time I used it, Vivaldi was missing a crucial feature: the ability to only show bookmarks on a new tab) but that often feels too complicated and takes too long to set up. If Vivaldi had the ability to, say, sync up all your settings and customisations, as well as tabs, I’d probably be using it right now, or at least consider it. I mean, neither is fully open source, but I’m more likely to trust the Vivaldi team than Ablaze (the company behind Floorp).
I agree with pretty much everything you’ve said. My biggest reason for not using Vivaldi is due to it being based on chromium. I’m trying to do my best to reduce the market share of chromium based browsers
I get it. For me, that’s just a nice-to-have.
Thunderbird
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
Add KDE connect
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
When it works (which mostly, it does not) it’s awesome
Damn it worked for me in both kde aswell as cinnamon.
I didn’t know you could install the Nextcloud Client as an Electron app
The client
That’s the one I meant
I mostly use terminal unironically. Duf (to check system storage) Youtube-tui (written in rust tui for youtube) Btop (for system management) Iftop (see where my pc is calling to) Tuptime (has full system uptime from install to now. It just for fun to see how long my system has been alive)
Ive also gotten into atuin to find command i used and cant remember the command.
Also obligatory Megalist of terminal apps
YouTube-tui is so good but it crashes in kitty and it’s image protocols are not that good. There’s a rewrite going on. Wish it would fix it.
If you build from github it works in kitty and crashes if you scroll to fast. It kinda works, hope they rewrite it
yeah I know. It’s super irritating, cause kitty image protocol is one of the best but the author hasnt properly acknowledged the issue yet.
tuptime: I’ve been looking for something like this
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
- 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)
Firefox. Syncthing. KeepassXC. (g)vim. ssh. git. htop. less.
Gvim is the worse of both worlds
Let’s agree to disagree. It does what I need.
I love it. But I configured away all the gui features (menus, graphical tab & scroll bars, etc)
