I am and all my life have been a Linux user, I have nothing against Windows or MacOS, I just like Linux, and lately I have been experimenting with Windows in a virtual machine and I don’t really know much open source software there apart from the one that is cross-platform like Firefox or Joplin.

At the moment I know:

Flow Launcher: It’s a typical rofi style launcher, although I’m not a TWM user I like to just press super and type the first letters of the program I’m looking for to open it.

Lively Wallpaper: A program to have animated wallpapers, in the style of Wallpaper Engine.

Edit: I want to clarify that I read all the comments, I only respond to some because many times I have nothing to contribute to many of them because I don’t know what to comment. Thanks to all of you for providing your lists of programs, I will be sure to try as many as I can because they are great, at least I know what to install if I use Windows one day!

    • @[email protected]
      1•2 years ago

      For Edge it helps using BCU and then also removing the exe using a good OS like Linux and pluggin in the drive.

  • OtterEnglish
    19•2 years ago

    Some of these are cross platform but:

    7zip

    Autohotkey

    Bitwarden

    Calibre

    Draw.io

    Handbrake

    Speedcrunch

    WinHTTrack

    WinSCP

    • VirualEnglish
      6•2 years ago

      I prefer nanazip to 7zip because it’s just forked 7zip that’s been updated for modern windows. They’re working on a dark mode too.

  • @[email protected]English
    10•2 years ago

    For package management I’ve been really liking scoop.sh

    Not everything in there is FOSS but scoop itself is! And you can install neovim, vscodium, bitwarden, Firefox, etc very easily.

    • @[email protected]OP
      1•2 years ago

      It definitely looks like the first program that should be installed when doing a clean install of Windows!

      I recently found out about winget, how is winget different from scoop? Apart from of course, the number of packages and that anyone can contribute to it.

      • @[email protected]English
        3•2 years ago

        Winget is from Microsoft for one (and already installed with Windows). It basically just downloads the regular windows installer and installs it like usual without the need to click user feedback prompts. Scoop is more of a package manager.

        With winget, one nice thing is you can even update packages not installed with winget originally. You can see which apps on your computer have updates available with a single command.

        It’s great when you’re updating someone else’s computer they haven’t updated random things in years (typical windows users).

        Scoop essentially uses portable apps and everything is in your scoop folder which is great.

        I use both. Scoop first and winget for everything else. I use winget to update Libreoffice on all our work computers (because the devs won’t work on auto updates).

      • @[email protected]English
        1•2 years ago

        I felt like winget was too limited. When I last used it it didn’t support installing multiple apps at the same time. scoop feels much more like traditional *nix package management to me, which I like.

    • @[email protected]
      3•2 years ago

      One great thing about scoop is that downgrading an app is very easy. You can also manage multiple versions of a runtime, for example, you can install multiple Node.js versions and switch between them with scoop reset command.

        • @[email protected]English
          2•2 years ago

          Some items trigger UAC (installing tailscale, for example)

          I love that everying lives in ~/scoop. It’s well organized and somewhat portable (until you import the nonportable bucket)

  • @[email protected]
    3•2 years ago

    Qclip

    Bulk crap uninstaller

    Vlc

    Irfanview (is it proprietary?)

    Gimp, Krita, Inkscape, KDEnLive, Blender, OBS

    Nonfree: XNViewMP, Startisback++,

  • @[email protected]
    8•2 years ago

    FreeFileSync a FOSS backup and folder synchronizer, a must have.

    FreeFileSync is a folder comparison and synchronization software that creates and manages backup copies of all your important files. Instead of copying every file every time, FreeFileSync determines the differences between a source and a target folder and transfers only the minimum amount of data needed. FreeFileSync is Open Source software, available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

    • NixEnglish
      2•2 years ago

      Is this different than syncthing in an important ways?

      • @[email protected]
        4•2 years ago

        Yes, Syncthing needs 2 diferents devices to sync, FreeFileSync syncronize whatever you want within 1 device, for example between 2 Disks or from a network disk to your computer disk.

        Syncthing works great if there are 2 devices turned on and connected to a LAN or Internet, and FreeFileSync is totally disconected from the internet and only needs 1 device on (the one that execute it)

        I use both, Syncthing to autosync all my devices and FreeFileSync to backup all those files to various disconected hard drives

        • NixEnglish
          1•2 years ago

          Oh nice thats really useful ill try it thanks

  • @[email protected]
    2•2 years ago

    I’ve been enjoying wezterm as a terminal emulator replacement for windows terminal. It offers nerdy fine grained customizability and an emoji/nerd font character picker. For most purposes WT seems to be fine though.

  • @[email protected]
    5•2 years ago

    On most of my fresh installs, i usually install Tinywall, 7zip, and then a different browser like Firefox and chromium based browsers (like mull/brave)

  • @[email protected]
    22•2 years ago

    1. GIMP (Image editor)

    2. putty (Secure shell/terminal emulator)

    3. WinSCP (Secure FTP client)

    4. QBittorrent (guess.)

    5. 7zip (All in one compressed archive manager)

    6. Firefox

    7. Notepad++ (text editor with syntax highlights)

    8. Handbrake (Video transcoder)

    9. VLC (all in one video player)

    These are my top must have installed. There are others but they’re situational

    Let’s not forget the various console emulators that are open source as well. All the good ones are.

    • grandel
      5•2 years ago

      That’s a good list!

      I use the same, except I use LibreWolf (privacy focused fork of FF) and VS Code instead of Firefox and Notepad++

      • @[email protected]
        1•2 years ago

        Yeah VS Code definitely if ya doing programming. I’m just editing config/ini files once in a while so N++ is just right for me.

      • Cass.Forest
        6•2 years ago

        Vs code

        I would actually recommend VSCodium; it’s the same product but without the Microsoft telemetry.

          • Captain Beyond
            3•2 years ago

            VSCodium can’t use the official Microsoft extension marketplace, but there is an alternative. You can also install extensions manually.

      • jjakcEnglish
        2•2 years ago

        I just use Powershell, much easier imo

  • Never_Sm1leEnglish
    4•2 years ago

    I advocate for ImageGlass, a very good image viewer and editor. Mpc or vlc for videos.

  • @[email protected]English
    25•2 years ago
    • Firefox: best web browser out there
    • Bitwarden: password manager
    • ShareX: screenshot utility. Greenshot is also good, but I prefer ShareX
    • WinDirStat: disk usage utility
    • KDE Connect: connect Android phone to PC
    • Image Glass: image viewer
    • OBS: video & audio capture
    • Blender: 3D modeling, animation, video editing
    • Handbrake: video conversion
    • VLC: video/audio playback
    • Audacity: audio editing
    • SpeedCrunch: calculator
    • Notepad++: text editor
    • Spyder (via Anaconda): Python IDE