For me, it was perhaps simple-scan, a very simple and efficient GUI to scan documents. I used it with my Brother printer / scanner and it works like a charm. Especially since I do not scan stuff often, so a program with more complex UI would have the effect that I forget how to use it until the next time.
Vuescan.
Kdenlive. I used Adobe Premiere professionally and Kdenlive completely replaced it for me.
Used to be Skype but MS just killed that so…
I was really surprised by some libre games with really good graphics for free software, like Xonotic or Unvainquished. And also very cool projects like Speed-Dreams, that is not as beautiful but is really promising
Otherwise, very cool stuff like Kdenlive, Ardour, LMMS, Puredata, … This is a long list! 😅
Bitwig and Reaper. Two of the best music DAWs on the market and they each have a Linux native version.
EDIT: I forgot to include Renoise, the music tracker DAW.
Yeah, Reaper is surprising! It’s in the Arch repos and Flathub.
I would have been happy if I had to build it from source or download a random deb from their website. But, damn. It’s on Linux and easily installable!
As a guitarist ToneLib and Carla are also up there for me.
I have been experimenting with Reaper a bit, but I am a sort of DAW noob, so it’s kind of hard to get in to. I’ve done a tiny bit using Lmms though, but I am missing synthesizer stuff in Reaper. I’ve tried installing plugins by putting them into the proper folders and let Reaper attempt to resolve it, but it doesn’t really work as expected.
Any tips? Especially for Linux of course. Many of the tutorials are Windows oriented.
Reaper is like the Arch Linux of DAWs. It’s power is in its flexibility and customization. That said, I found it to be uninspiring in its complexity out of the box. That said, the Reaper community is amazing. If you want to mod and customize it into your ideal DAW,y recommendation is to hit the community forums, Discord, etc.
Personally, I bounced from Reaper almost instantly in favor of Bitwig and Renoise on Linux.
I would start from the docs. There is pretty good reaper manual available from its homepage, covers everything from basic “how does one creates the prohect?” to relatively advanced topics.
Most of the plugins I encountered have no native Linux version, but yabridge deals with most of them quite good. I personaly use it paired with Play on Linux to logically separate different groups of plugins and everything works like a charm.
There is a free VST (or clap, etc) synth called TAL Noise Maker (I think) that has Linux support. Good for getting started. Then there is the LSP plugging suite, which is designed for Linux. Lastly, airwindows is native to Linux as well, and is literally one of the best — and 100% free! — plugin suites ever. All of there can be moved (just copy paste) in ~/.vst, ~/.vst3, or ~/.clap.
Links (FYI, clap is always easier than VST, so prefer it; you may have to enable it in settings or something though):
- https://tal-software.com/products/tal-noisemaker (great presets too)
- https://lsp-plug.in/ (also often included in repos)
- https://www.airwindows.com/ (download the consolidated plugin, and then order by “quality (Dave)” to get recommendations and such).
You can of course also use external stuff like Pure Data and Orca through MIDI, OSC, UDP, or even loopback.
Bash. It has enabled me to automatize a lot of sh*t I wouldn’t do just because it would take me a lot of time/efford to do. There’s a LOT you can do with a few simple scripts, a few examples:
- Remove files I don’t need (images, rip/conversion logs, empty folders…).
- Compress and optimize folders of photos recursively.
- Apply watermarks to photos recursively.
- Convert filetypes (flac2mp3, pdf2cbr, webm2mp3,web2jpg…).
- Configure input devices (keyboards, mouse, graphic tablets).
- Autorename files (spaces to _, . to _, _ to spaces…).
- Remove audio from videos recursively.
- Remove audio/subtitle tracks from videos.
- Download images/videos/audio from websites.
- Update appimages automatically.
- Update/cleanup system/repos.
- Use different theming for different applications.
- Mount iso/bin… images.
- Extract zip|rar|tar.gz|… files automatically.
- Modify pdfs.
- Get the weather for my location.
- Get stats from my PCs to be shown in panel applet.
- Alias program names to ones of my choosing.
- Open CUPS config in firefox.
- Refresh font caches and other management tools I don’t care to remember.
- Fix permissions.
- Make a backup.
- Restore a backup.
- Copy files safely (rsync).
- Change volume level.
- Install all the packages and configs I need to make the OS/apps behave/look the way I like.
…you name it…
…in most cases just by typing one word in the terminal. It was kind of a mindblow coming from the crappy window$ crappysystem eons ago.
Which program is the one that surprised you most that it is available on Linux?
Bash.
I find that the least surprising, but ok…
Wine/Proton, made my switch to Linux way easier
Surprised? IE/Edge. Like, why?
It’s useful for webdev.
I use Edge as my “work” browser. Works well with Teams and Office. Works well with corporate sites. Allows me to be logged in with work accounts. Keeps a work bookmarks separate. I can change the browser agent to say I am on Windows for compatibility. And I am ok if Microsoft spies on my work stuff.
And, to be fair, it is a pretty decent browser.
My work mandates Edge as a browser on the company PC. With Edge on Linux I can have a “work” browser on my private PC with bookmark sync etc.
Microsoft Defender.
I convinced my work to let me use linux on their laptop. They sent me instructions for setup. One of them was to install Microsoft Defender, had a link to the Ubuntu package and everything. Blew my mind.
How did you manage to convince them?
Wasn’t too difficult as they already offered Linux as a supported option. But I had to justify it. I was already using a linux VM for all my actual work. So I complained about all the buggy behavior I had experienced. Didn’t have to exagerate too much. I was properly modivated after IT sent out an email announcing the forced migration to Win11.
This right here, if I can do the same to my work desktop I would be in my glory.
I bet it has to do with Microsoft azure
TIL. Nothing will ever surprise me in life anymore. 😂
What the fuq??
If it enables the use of Linux at work I would install it, too. And use Edge for corporate ressources as well.
Yup! Here’s a helpful link in case you feel like spreading the joy.
https://www.maketecheasier.com/install-use-microsoft-defender-linux/
But, why?
I don’t know, but my guess is it might still be able to detect some cross-platform malware signs and detect malware intended for Windows on Linux machines (e.g. I can download a PDF or .docx that is harmless on my machine, but if I reupload and a Windows user downloads it, I’ve spread malware regardless). IIRC ClamAV is sometimes used to scan attachments on an email server, often looking for Windows exploits being sent through the server.
That kinda makes sense
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We’ve got to install Microsoft Defender, Edge, and PowerShell on Ububtu so that the device will be flagged as compliant in Intune.
Only works on Ubuntu though last I heard (and not even downstream distros), which is somewhat unfortunate
You’re right. But I’d rather have limited Linux options than no option at all.
The one that surprised me the most was Steam, honestly.
Neverball.
So gaming on Linux is obviously amazing now, but back in 2006 or so when I started using it, it was less than great. I probably tried every single game in the Ubuntu repos and Neverball entertained the hell out of me.
I spent hours rolling this shiny ball around. I loved Marble Madness on NES as a kid, so it was a natural fit.
A close second was Freeciv, as I had also grown up with a copy of Civilization.
Honorable mentions to Nesticle and Snes9x.
LocalSend.
No more USBs ever (outside of install media). So so simple, fast, and works on all devices and FOSS.
It is really the best UX of any file sharing app I have experienced (outside of airdrop I guess, but obvious problems there)
Okular is also a favorite of mine.
I really like LocalSend as well, but it’s very inconsistent with me. I think it has to do with one device being on a VPN, but I’m not totally sure. Basically I have some “one way” connections where one device can see and send to the one connected to a VPN but not the other way around. Is there some way I can specify LocalSend connections to ignore the VPN? I’m on NixOS and installed LocalSend in my user package declarations in my Nix config.
I had the same thing on Bazzite just with the local network, not a VPN.
I believe it has to do with the firewall. You have to open the port both incoming and outgoing for 53317.
But you literally have to be on the same network, so for example if both devices are on the same local network (hence local in the name) and your phone is on a VPN but your computer is not on a VPN, then it won’t work.
It should work if you VPN into your local network remotely so that both devices are on the same LAN, however, then that won’t work anyway because you have to have physical access to the device to accept the transfer (you could probably use a remote desktop to do that, but then it is getting complicated)
Microsoft Edge was a recent surprise. It’s surprising both that Microsoft would create it and that any Linux users would run it. Since its Chromium based, there should be no need for developers to test Edge separately.
A very unwelcome surprise, too.
Oi, I am planning on using edge when I switch to linux xD
I opened Edge on a fresh install a couple days ago. The amount of things flashing and spinning and popping up trying to grab my attention actually gave me nausea.
And I don’t mean (just) ads, I mean even the starting page with all the news, weather, random popups telling me things i can do with Edge, the dark patterns as soon as I searched for Firefox in Bing, and so on.
The thought that there’s even a single human in the process of developing and maintaining that browser is incredible to me.
But well, I suppose some people do enjoy it. Just beware it won’t be as fast on Linux as it is in Windows since it isn’t as thoroughly integrated into the OS.
I use Edge on my Ubuntu setup. Tried all the browsers that integrate with KeepassXC and Edge won. It’s the only browser that has a nice UI with tabs on a sidebar, decent performance, nice devtools and is not doing shady shit like Vivaldi.
What shady shit is Vivaldi doing? I’m out of the loop.
They add referral codes to your sessions on Amazon and a like. This way all your purchases are feeding their ref accounts.
It’s not that bad practice if they’d do it as opt-in. I never consented to this and only figured out once when I looked at networking tab.
I honestly like it due to ehat it offerd and how it looks. And it’s kinda optimized. Once V3 rolls in thiugh, I am aiming at Floorp.
Just switching to new OS and new browser seems kinda meh.
I’m pretty neutral about the mere existence of software I’m not interested in using.
But you’re missing out on all the hate! I feel sorry for you. ;)
I think MS assumes no one will use it. But having Linux builds of some of their software enhances their “MS loves Linux” marketing.
Teams is another example.
.
Fair – what I meant was more about the Teams binary kind of not being needed at all (you can use the web version without it). So having a Linux binary explicitly just seems a little weird, marketing aside.
The main reason for building it dedicated instead of as a browser tab is to easily identify it on my task bar as it’s own thing.
MS no longer produces an official Teams binary for Linux. (Correct me if they’ve started doing so again)
I have to build it from the AUR.
You can also get Teams on Linux
That’s a little less surprising to me. Organizations are likely to pick competing communication software if Teams is not available to everyone. Web browsers are generally interoperable after Microsoft lost the war to popularize one that wasn’t.
Really? All I’ve seen is a Flatpak that’s really just a wrapped web view. Is there now a native version of Teams for Linux?
The native windows version of teams is also only a glorified web view.
That’s not been my experience. It may be using a web view under the hood, but the functionality is quite different. Additional features, breaking the video call out of the primary pane, etc. To suggest that they’re essentially the same is not accurate.
I see literally no difference between the Windows, Mac, and Linux versions except 2 shortcomings on Linux:
- Camera support is abysmal and uses the lowest resolution
- No echo cancellation, so I need headphones.
Hmm, seems that you might be right. I haven’t tried but remember that there were both rpm and dep packages, however it looks like after Teams 2.0 came, the native packages are no longer a thing.
Both the Windows and Linux ones are wrapped web views.
about 10 years ago, i noticed steam was available for linux. for the longest time i had pretty much written off gaming on linux (apart from like tuxcart, nethack, emulators…). i hadn’t considered actually being able to play “real” games.
that was before proton, so there really wasn’t a ton of stuff i could play, but i found some good stuff like hotline miami, papers please, super win the game.
obviously now we have proton and linux can be argued as a superior gaming platform in many cases.
Back then CS:GO used to run better on Linux! That was why I switched (apart from a borked windows system I put Linux on just for shits and giggles): to get more frames, lol. Now I couldn’t live without Linux, even though I don’t even play CS:GO anymore.
Mixx is a cool free dj software, didn’t expect davinci resolve to have an official version, stremio also I didn’t think would have an app for whatever reason. I like inkscape for vector art, didn’t realize it was a thing til I swapped to linux. I use software and apps more in general because it’s stuff I’ve installed and its not hidden by bloat, even if there is more windows stuff out there, its way easier to discover actual useful software using linux through linux appstores compared to windows.
