OPEN SOURCE alternatives to the MOST POPULAR productivity apps!

replace photoshop with or Microsoft's office with LibreOffice we have all heard or in some cases said these words and they are good recommendations but they are a bit overplayed but what about a lot of other very popular proprietary apps like obsidian notion Microsoft teams or slack acrobat editor vs code Trello and more well I do have some good open source Alternatives that I want to recommend in this video and if you have other Alternatives don't hesitate to share them down in the comment in the comment section below so everyone can benefit and speaking of Open Source tools how about our sponsor this video is sponsored by Thunderbird most of you probably know about it but for those who don't it's an all-in-one Suite that handles email calendar contacts tasks RSS feeds and chats Thunderbird recently received a giant update with a full redesign of the app that makes it easier than ever to set up your accounts and to be productive the interface is very customizable with multiple choices for interface density view modes panels and the ability to place any button you need in the top bar after this update Thunderbird is now my email and calendar client of choice also it's fully open source it's free of charge and it's available for any Linux distribution Windows and Mac OS so whether you used Thunderbird in the past or not click the link in the description below and give the new release a try you will not regret it so one app that everyone talked about for a while is Obsidian and it's great it offers the ability to link notes together bi-directionally so links go both ways it uses markdown and plain text to store your notes it has a plug-in ecosystem and the visual Knowledge Graph that lets you explore topics and the relationships between your notes is awesome but it's proprietary so if you prefer your apps to be free software then let's look at logsack this one is published under the new age GPL and it does everything obsidian does it takes notes as markdown files it has more than 150 plugins and a bunch of themes it has mobile apps it's private and it does have the same linking features and Knowledge Graph it even lets you create queries to generate tables with all the information you need based on the links and the data you entered in your notes what this means is that like obsidian it can be used for simple note-taking or for Ultra evolved workflows research projects and knowledge bases something that if you're like me you always wanted to do but never took the time or never really actually had a use for now logsack even offers their own thinking solution if you want that although since notes are stored as plain text files you can also just sync them using whatever cloud storage solution you prefer they also have a new whiteboard feature to let you place your thoughts on a canvas and organize things before writing a fully detailed note it's available for Linux as an app image and for Mac OS Windows IOS and Android and of course logsack isn't a complete drop-in replacement for obsidian as some of their features don't work in the same way and obsidian still has more plugins so some use cases probably won't be covered entirely but I can confidently say that most obsidian users should be able to move to logsack without too much trouble well apart from actually migrating your obsidian Vault of nodes to logsack which might take a little bit of time another really powerful app is notion in a way it sort of feels the same role as obsidian but in a more visual way you can create notes to-do lists Stables boards wikis and anything in between with a lot of templates and while it's free of charge it's proprietary and doesn't have an official Linux version now granted it's a web app so you can always use it in your web browser but again if you're like me using an app in a web browser just doesn't cut it it just doesn't feel right the closest thing you can find in the open source world will be either app flowy or any type app flowy is really close but it's not as feature complete just yet it's open source it's available for Linux from Flat Hub you can create your own structure with pages and sub pages and you have a few page types like calendars boards tables or documents you can also mix these types on the same page like having board with cards that you can also present in a table or on a calendar but you won't get as many templates as what notion offers your text notes can have a lot of formatting with headers images checkboxes lists quotes code blocks and equations tables can use a large variety of column types like dates selectors URLs check boxes and more and Boards handle statuses dates and all the properties you can add in a table as well it also lets you use open AI if you want to write drafts that you can edit later yay more AI stuff so cool but app flowy also doesn't have mobile apps yet they're being worked on and it doesn't quite let you build wikis although you can link page with one another if you want if you want a more full featured app there's any type instead it's also open source and it has a Linux client and mobile apps but the interface is a bit more involved and less clear to start with than app flowing they have a very solid road map for what's coming in 2024 as well and it already supports everything that app flowy does and a bit more now app flowy lets you work completely locally without an account and doesn't have native sync capabilities while any type lets you work offline or sync online using encrypted peer-to-peer syncing basically if you use notion for very simple single type pages that app flowy is probably good enough and simple enough if you use notion in very involved ways then any type is probably going to to work better for you also their website uses the old Apple font which for some old Nerd Like Me is actually pretty fun not that it has any bearing on the quality of the app itself anyways now for this one you might not have as much control over because generally a company or a project will impose slack or Microsoft teams on you and you can't really change that but if you have all the power to make the decisions then you might want to take a look at matter most it's a fully open source slack slash Microsoft teams alternative that you can self-host easily using Docker or any other method you prefer it lets you create channels and chat with side threads it has file sharing screen sharing and audio calls it can be integrated with a bunch of developer tools to automate things you can format messages with markdown or code Snippets and all messages can be archived with full history search if you don't want to self-host they also have plans you can pay for as well with added professional support and a few more advanced Enterprise features the only thing it lacks really is video calls you will have to plug something else in like jitsi or big blue button but there are Integrations available to make that transition completely seamless while you use matter most now if all you need to organize yourself or your project is a board you might choose Trello and this one is pretty easy to replace you can just use focal board you can either self-host it if you want to let multiple people access the same boards or you can just use it as a personal app with a Mac OS windows and Linux application focalboard has plenty of templates for projects for Content planning for road maps for meetings and more and it supports real-time collaboration with comments on cards mentions and permissions it is fully open source of course and you can present things as boards lists calendars or galleries it lets you create an unlimited number of boards for free you can have your own custom attributes in each board it supports backup And archiving and file sharing in cards as well so you could theoretically use it as a replacement for notion as well if you use notion with boards and tables mostly but but I personally always saw it more as a Trello replacement focal boards does lack a few things compared to Trello notably mobile apps Integrations with other services and apps and it also has less templates but if you don't mind creating your own boards from scratch and you don't care about Integrations and mobile focalboard is probably the best thing out there apart from the fact that I'm probably pronouncing this name wrong all the time and it sounds like something else entirely but I also don't know how to say it any other way now if you need to create and edit PDF documents you might use Acrobat Pro from Adobe and if all you need is to create PDFs then you do not need a dedicated app just for that make your document in whatever app you're comfortable with and Export it as a PDF but if you need to modify PDF documents then you might be starved for high quality apps you can always open them in in inkscape or Library office draw but these tend to either open a single page or break the documents formatting LibreOffice draw does a great job if you have all the fonts used in the PDF that are also installed on your system but editing text is generally handled in a line per line basis instead of recognizing things as paragraphs which can be a pain to deal with and of course PDF is not a format that you're supposed to edit so in most cases your best bet is to actually edit the original version of the document if you created it or to ask the person who sent it to you to send you an editable format but in some cases that's just not an option now Visual Studio codes code is licensed under the MIT license so it is an open source slash free software project but the binary you can get from Microsoft isn't open source and it includes some Telemetry and some tracking the alternative this is easy it's vs kodia it's built on the open source parts of vs code but it removes all the tracking the Telemetry and the proprietary components it's compatible with vs code's plugins and extensions and it has the exact same interface and features but in a nice open source format it's available for Windows for Mac OS and for Linux as a Dev and RPM or on flat Hub it does have a few restrictions compared to vs code notably for specific Microsoft extensions that cannot run outside of vs code itself it also uses another extension store that isn't the one Microsoft uses since this one is proprietary but you should be able to find most of what you would actually want to use in there unless you work with specific Microsoft Technologies you'll find the exact same interface and the exact same plugins but in open source format it's a no-brainer and now for a few other recommendations for nice open source apps and services to replace your proprietary software with to begin with there's the good old next Cloud it's your fully open source replacement for stuff like Office 365 or Google workspace it handles file storage and sharing collaboration chat and video calls it can integrate with open source office suites like collabora online and only office and it has a ton of additional apps that you can add to it it is what I use every day to run this Channel and accomplish all the work related to actually publishing these videos it's great it receives updates really often and it's super modular I can't recommend it enough which you might have noticed since I talk about it in almost every video If you use outlook for email take a look at Thunderbird the new interface is now wonderful and it handles tasks calendars and emails really really well and if you need to plug into an exchange server there's a plugin for that as well out just like for virtually anything you would want to do in the app like sticky notes adding links to next cloud files templates and more yes they are this video sponsor but they're also my email client of choice that I use every day the new version is really really good if you have other cool alternatives to all these apps or to other proprietary apps that a lot of people use don't hesitate to let us know down there in the comments so everyone can benefit and in the meantime I will let you know about our sponsor if you're a Linux user and you're planning to upgrade your computer to something new stop buying devices that ship with Windows print style then crossing your fingers so that your favorite Linux distro just runs on your new thing buy something that supports Linux out of the box from tuxedo our sponsor they sell laptops and desktops that ship with Linux out of the box all the hardware that they pack is specifically picked because it runs Linux really well and they actually submit patches Upstream to fix all the little problems and compatible ability issues that you might encounter they have a big range of devices that should cover every need and every price point whether you're looking for a laptop a Nook a giant Tower something for gaming something for productivity you can select the components you want you can also select the keyboard layout you want on your laptop have your own logo or your company's logo engraved on the lid you decide everything all the laptops are also openable repairable and upgradable including the ram the SSD and the battery and sometimes even the wireless car so if you need a new computer don't buy something that runs Windows buy something that runs Linux from the link in the description below from tuxedo so thanks everyone for watching the video I hope you enjoyed it if you did don't hesitate to like to subscribe to turn on notifications or to write a comment and if you didn't like the video I don't really see why but you can always let me know down there and click that thumbs down button as well and if you really enjoyed the channel and you want pay PayPal patreon YouTube memberships YouTube things whatever you know how this works so thanks everyone for watching and I guess you will see me in the next one bye [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: The Linux Experiment

Views: 1,001,968

Keywords: linux, open source, linux help, linux tutorial, linux 2023, opensource, linux tips, linux for beginners 2023, linux tutorial 2023, linux vs windows, open source apps 2023, open source apps linux, open source apps for windows, open source apps for mac, open source apps github, open source apps for windows github, alternative to obsidian, obsidian replacement, logseq, appflowy, focalboard, mattermost, vscodium, anytype review, anytype tutorials, anytype guide, obsidian

Id: P8accXNcwjs

Length: 15min 36sec (936 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 22 2023