Switch to these open-source apps...on Windows, macOS or Linux!

ladies and gents welcome back to the channel uh today is could be possibly one of the crowning achievements of this channel uh infinitely galactic has been around for as a project for over 10 years and the whole point of this channel has always been to showcase alternatives in in technology and in open source software especially now the beauty of open source software and what it is done for thousands if not millions of people around the world is it's given them an opportunity to pursue a creative expression to pursue all kinds of amazing things that you can do with a computer without being limited by finances or being limited by access or being limited by what kind of hardware you're running and how powerful it is so you might be thinking of switching to linux because you like the idea of everything on the computer being owned and and being managed by you you're not a product of advertising you're not a product to the whims of a particular company all your information is private there's a lot of appeals now linux obviously is a king in the server space it is gaining ground on the desktop but the biggest problem that we always come across when anyone tries to switch to linux is the programs that you run the applications that you run one of the goals of this channel is to try and help you with that switch now what i'm going to show you today is over 25 apps that you need on your computer right now and it doesn't matter if you run windows mac or linux the list of apps that i'm going to give you today represent some of the best that the open source software world can offer you now for those of us who are already part of the open source world and we love our linux and our open source apps this will kind of be a tour through the hall of fame for a lot of the open source projects out there so come along for the ride i'm going to try and group these with the time stamps down below by what kind of category i'm talking about these are the apps you need to install right now on your computer once you have installed these apps you will feel the gateway drug of open source software and if you can switch your workflow over to these apps chances are you're not too far away from installing linux alright let's jump into it [Music] so where do we even begin well ladies and gentlemen it's 2021 and so we can't go any further without mentioning the web browser the web browser of choice needs to be firefox and while there are plenty of other alternatives out there that are both free and open source i think firefox offers the most features cross-platform syncing the richest add-on ecosystem and upholding privacy is uh is one of their main goals so firefox go and get it no matter which platform you're on let's talk about email emailing is something that all of us still have to do and a lot of us are still doing it through a web browser because we use gmail or outlook or something like that well can i encourage you if you want desktop level features akin to what you can find on outlook for example then you need to go and check out mail spring now mail spring a lot of people in the open source bubble that i live in were under the impression that mail spring was a dead project but i can confirm that they actually had a release only about two weeks ago from the time of the recording of this video the open source development of male spring marches on now i will preface it by saying this that true open source purists will know that the mail spring email engine itself is not entirely free and open source in that the mail in order to activate some of the features that this email program offers goes through a a particular mail server now if you're not comfortable with that don't you worry i have an alternative for you but what this allows is some of the best email features that i have seen on desktop email period mac linux windows go and check out mail spring and download it thunderbird is your backup in that thunderbird has been around for a long long time and it will hopefully be around for a long long time to come and it has pretty much every feature that you can imagine under the sun whether it's encryption whether it is calendar integration all of those things can be done in thunderbird the reason that it's not my prime pick is that it's not as modern and it doesn't look as nice as something like male spring so for me personally i do prefer to use male spring but at the moment i am on a thunderbird spree i love what the thunderbird project is what they represent and they're loosely associated with firefox so they share a lot of the code base there again mac windows and linux go get it let's talk about gaming gaming on the open source side of things is kind of similar to what it is on windows mac you guys don't get many options anyway so if you are looking at gaming on linux eventually steam library is a great place to start steam is not open source obviously and there are plenty of open source games that you can go get but an open source tool that can help you with your games is luteress lutrus is only relevant once you have made the switch to linux but it can help iron out a lot of the kinks of getting some of the most popular games in the world installed and running under linux so from that i'm just going to recommend steam and lutrus and that's about all i can do here there are a lot of excellent games my personal pick right now is a real-time strategy game called zero a d it's like age of empires with a few more features so definitely go check that out i'll see if i can pull it up here really quick but zero ad is a lot of fun and it just i don't know it's better than age of empires in almost every way and it's just ticking away under slow development as we go here but it's a beautiful example of an open source game okay we need to get back to the list so let's talk about communications signal if you're not using signal at this point you need to ditch whatsapp you need to ditch facebook messenger you need to ditch imessage or whatever it is that you're using you need to go and get signal go get it on everything that you have your phone mac windows linux your ipad for crying out loud i don't know and if you're not into signal or if you're looking for online communities that you can hang out with and chat with then telegram usually has a community for you and both of these apps share the same end-to-end or a very similar end-to-end encryption engine which is once again open source let's talk about media players in the past i would have recommended vlc media player the little road cone it's been around for a long time what i've found is that although that app is great and it's very versatile it has a lot of features when it comes to just playing media i've found that mpv is quicker and more efficient and smoother than what vlc offers 9 times out of 10. once again windows mac and linux go get mpv and you'll have a simple really effective and very performant media player for all of your media needs if you want to do a bit of transcoding you need to check out handbrake handbrake is a wonderful tool that can transcode pretty much any media into any target format you so desire with a lot of controls to boot they also do dvd transcoding so if you have dvds lying around and a dvd drive i don't know who does but you can do that also make mkv is an app that with the appropriate licensing tomfoolery you can also rip blu-rays into your digital media collection and then you can transcode them in handbrake so make mkv along with handbrake and you have pretty much all media transcoding done let's talk about audio audacity is one of the longest standing open source applications out there uh i don't know how long audacity has been around my only knock against audacity is the fact that it looks like it's been around for 100 years but i cannot knock the functionality of this piece of software i keep coming back to it for high quality recording situations and many podcasts around the world have cut their chops on audacity if you're into a digital audio workstation or creating music a la fl studio or something like that you need to check out lmms or linux linux multi-musical musical i can't even remember what it stands for lmms they kind of dropped the linux from explicitly being there so that they could show the fact acknowledge the fact that it runs on windows mac and linux not just linux great support for vst x plugins as well as l a d s p a plugins ladspa but if you're looking for a piano role instrument sample loop based music making app then lmms is the place to go if you're looking for something a little more advanced that has the audio recording prowess of audacity combined with some of the music creation features of lmms and you need to do mixing and mastering as well then ardua is a fantastic digital audio workstation that can help get you over the line there some of these tools are used by professionals these are not apps that that are made for high schoolers let's talk about design there's a few different apps i want to get through here free cad fantastic autocad kind of equivalent or cad software that can help make three-dimensional designs or two-dimensional sketches that are very geometric and mathematically based now i can't speak to just how advanced or how many features freecad has compared to its commercial competitors but it's a start chances are if your livelihood depends on doing cad work this might not work for you but if you're more of an amateur or if you do some light contracting on the side perhaps freecad could be worth uh investing in at least with a bit of time if it's going to save you a few thousand dollars a year moving on let's talk about photo and image manipulation along with graphic design uh the new image manipulation program better known as has been around for a long long time there are different versions of it available i was going to recommend a slightly tweaked version called glimpse but what i am going to do is recommend that if you are interested in using the new image manipulation program or as a photoshop alternative which it very well can stand in for although there are some features that are missing i would definitely recommend that you go download and install 2.10 whatever it is on whatever platform you're on mac windows or linux then jump onto github and find photogimp photogimp is an amazing plugin or extension to that effectively transforms it to look and feel and function very similarly to how photoshop does by default and uh this is a fantastic work of a i believe he's a either spanish speaking or portuguese speech speaking youtuber in the linux world called dio linux and uh anyway it's a fantastic plug-in and extension to help bridge the gap between what you might be used to in photoshop to using something like moving on critter i have seen critter used in so many circles outside of the usual linux open source space that i'm blown away so many aspiring digital artists swear by critter because of its feature set and because of its uh amazing ability to both manipulate images and also create them digital artwork style so it has fantastic support and pressure sensitivity for a lot of the popular digital styluses out there so definitely go and check out critter if vector graphics and web design is more your speed then you need to check out inkscape inkscape has been around for a long long time and unfortunately it is one of those apps that does look like it's been around for a long long time but vector graphics it has you covered almost every feature under the sun that you can think of is there now if you're looking for something more targeted towards user experience ui design then have a have a look at pencil pencil project i haven't seen any updates for this app come out in just a little while but what this app is designed to do is for uh graphical user interface prototyping so it's very similar to what's it called sketchup that might not even be right but it's essentially a tool that you can use to create a mock-up for web designs or app designs that kind of thing and it can run again on mac linux or windows go and check out what templates and stuff they have available see what kind of stuff it does i will also give an honorable mention to gravit designer a lot of ui ux and web designers love gravit designer while it is free you can definitely go and use this run it and install it on mac windows and linux it is not open source per se so i can't give it the full marks but if you are looking to make the switch to linux and all that's stopping you is ui ux design software then gravit designer should fill that void for you also keep a very close eye on this project known as akira akira is the linux design tool i don't know if there's plans to bring this over to mac o linux but this has this tool has a lot of potential it's under active development it's currently in alpha and uh we will see where this one goes but it it uh ins it aspires to be the ui ux design tool that a lot of open source enthusiasts have been waiting for now that brings us to a code editor it's honestly really hard to recommend anything else other than visual studio code now i personally do not code however i hear it i have it on fairly good authority that a lot of people use vs code already chances are if you're a developer in any sense of the word you've probably already heard of and if not are already using vs code but great support under linux and most other platforms as well that brings us on to video editing i should have put these with the video transcoding but it is what it is caden live caden live has been my video video editor of choice free and open source software available on windows mac and linux for better part of 10 years now it has consistently had features and more stability baked into it and how accessible this app is blows my mind so can't recommend caden live enough and if you're looking for some more advanced features as well as 3d modeling compositing and video editing in the same app you really can't look any further than blender blender is even if you were paying thousands of dollars for this software it still sits among the best with flagship 3d modeling and just video image manipulation in general whether it's compositing whether it's video editing animation this this software does it all so if you're going to invest any time in learning any of the apps on this list for creativity blender is the one that i would recommend moving on i want to bolt another one to that recommendation and talk about natron nitron natron and natron is or natron i don't really know how you say it is uh compositing software so if you have 3d assets that you've created in blender and you want to mesh that in or composited it in with live action footage green screen blue screen that kind of thing this is like advanced level stuff we're talking then you need to check out natron it's very similar to adobe after effects or something like that now i will also give a shout out to fusion by blackmagic design they also run on mac windows and linux along with davinci resolve the video editor but those apps are not open source but they are free to use in some way or other but definitely a huge shout out to blender and natron for the immense amount of compositing power that they bring to the open source world let's talk about notes and productivity in general joplin if you have not tried out joplin by this point you need to go and get that done because joplin is a fantastic onenote evernote alternative and it has synchronization capabilities that are enabled by whatever cloud storage service you have so whether it's dropbox google drive uh your own next cloud instance whatever it might be you need to go and check out joplin hello joplin and cross-platform available on mobile as well and it has extensions for firefox and chrome if you're looking into getting some web clippings done i can't say enough good things about joplin if you do need something that's a little more simple and you don't need the immense cataloging capabilities that something like joplin has then go and check out simplenote i've been recommending this app for years if you just need some something to store text and you need it to be quick and simple and smart then simplenote is the way to get that done it's all tag based navigation again can't recommend it enough i use this every single day standard notes is another huge recommendation for note taking the only reason that it doesn't get the number one spot is because if you want typical web formatting with your text and images etc then you do need to pay a small amount to get the extensions added on standard notes values privacy and encryption above everything else so they don't rely on any source of income other than what they get from the ex selling the extensions pack so it's a very sustainable viable business model again if you value privacy in your notes standard notes would be the one i would be putting my money on let's talk about photo management and photo i guess development digicam if you have an immense photo collection and you want to be able to do things like tag by automatically tagged by face detection or be able to tag gps locations or just catalog a bunch of photos and and edit them in batch edits all of that fun stuff i'm not talking about like you know snapseed or instagram edits i'm talking about like proper photo management photo library management you need to check out digicam again available on all platforms this thing gives lightroom a huge run for its money if not in raw photo development it does in photo library management and when paired with something like dark table or even raw therapy you have a potent photo development workflow on your hands dark table is also arguably a complete photo management solution with photo library management with raw development about all of the data and tweaking and information you could possibly have when developing raw photos its user interface is a little bit spartan is pretty is pretty severe but the features that it gives you are arguably second to none let's talk about music library management this is one that's kind of gone the way of the dodo over the last few years as most of us have transitioned over to things like spotify and apple music and the rest of it but if you do have a huge audio collection of really high quality files and you want to be able to get things like automatic album art download you want to be able to sync these with an old school ipod or you just want to be able to have access to all of your playlists libraries albums uh wherever you uh wherever you have your files then you need to check out strawberry music player strawberry music player is a more recent fork of clementine and it has been around for a long time it has a lot of excellent features buried below it's very simple playlist driven interface all right let's talk about office suites first recommendation is libreoffice libreoffice is a a long-standing fork now of open office and it remains the flagship of one of the flagship apps of the open source community whether it is presentations spreadsheets documents and even a very sort of elementary graphic design libreoffice has you covered also worth noting that the libreoffice app draw that not many people know about this but the libre libreoffice app draw is actually a pretty capable pdf editor so if you're into if you need to change a few lines in a pdf or move some things around then libreoffice draw can be a in a pinch replacement for something like adobe acrobat the more you know another recommendation would be only office the only reason that this one doesn't get the full marks is just because i find it to be just a tad slower and sometimes a little bit clunky however this application in my opinion has better design and is more in step with modern expectations for office software their compatibility goes toe to toe with microsoft office especially around complex formatting so once again libreoffice and only office are fantastic office suites for all your productivity needs scribus or skrabis desktop publishing very similar to adobe indesign and once again if you are into uh if you are responsible for delivering the newsletter in your community or in your at your university or whatever you need to check out scribus immediately while this application has been around for a long long time it supports all of the printing standards that are necessary for mass publication of printed documents and magazines and newspapers etc and that ladies and gentlemen brings us to the end of the open source app list let me know if i missed out one of the golden nuggets in the comments below thank you so much for watching this long subscribe if you're interested in what happens next in the switching to linux series and i shall see you all in the very next video [Music] you

Channel: InfinitelyGalactic

Views: 193,682

Rating: 4.9158888 out of 5

Keywords: infinitelygalactic, technology, linux, open-source, free software, ubuntu, alternatives to windows, alternatives to macos, distro reviews, app reviews, free apps, best free software 2021, alternatives to ms office, alternatives to adobe cc

Id: j3koOJRUWCc

Length: 23min 17sec (1397 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 09 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/user01401]

This is awesome but I couldn't just find a list for the ones that can't watch a 23 min video (like at work)