Really good free open source software

[Bhazor]

Not just "good for free" or "it'll do for paupers" but something that can compare to top level paid software.

I'd been using Corel Essentials 5 the $40 art software for a few months when I started seeing adverts for the new version. Looking it up and how it compared to the version I had I ended up finding about free open source art studio Crita. Which I've tried this week and was blown away by. It's made me appreciate how insane some of Painter Essentials is. Like how it has these really impressive features like simulating thick oil paints, in depth lighting and so on all included. Yet it doesn't let you change color sets or save colors. Perhaps the single most obvious and necessary feature in digital painting software. Yet with Corel. The only way to get is to upgrade to the full painter suite for $400. Meanwhile Krita does everything Painter Essentials does and it even lets you save color sets. Amazing! Presumably because it's a program made by humans rather than a sack of crap. It also includes a ton of Photoshop features that I know pretty much fuck all about so can't really comment on. All for nowt. If nothing else it shits on GIMP.

Any other recommendations for free open source software?

[Sebastian Cobb]

Darktable is a good lightroom clone.

[olliebean]

The software mentioned in the OP is Krita, btw. Had trouble finding it with Google because Crita is a character from He-Man, and not an art program.

[Bhazor]

Yeah? Well fuck I guess.

https://krita.org/en/features/highlights/

Would though.

[Twed]

I hope people don't judge open source software on how well it clones commercial packages. That's its weakest area.

[Bhazor]

Well for me the best part of open source is the interface. Having software made by people who use it generally means it actually focuses on doing what you want to do. Krita for example has a fantastic interface. The Krita radial menu alone is enough to make me give up on Corel. It certainly hasn't fucked me over like Photoshop constantly did where pressing one button suddenly means colours don't match what you click and every line gets saved to a seperate layer.

[Zetetic]

SyncThing is a neat tool to keep folders in realtime sync across multiple computers (and phones for that matter). Useful for photos and music collections, for one thing.

[Puffin Chunks]

In terms of go to, day to day software I use, would rate as excellent and wouldn't think of going to a paid alternative:

VLC
Firefox
Kodi
TVHeadend (PVR)
Handbrake
FFMPEG
Audacity
OpenVPN
Linux (choose your flavour, although I do also run Windows... needs must.)
KVM/QEMU (Bare metal virtualisation)
7Zip

I'd love to move fully open source and ditch MS Office, but 20 years of muscle memory for keyboard shortcuts has made this next to impossible. Similarly for Photoshop, I would need to relearn everything again.

[Eis Nein]

Second all those.

Also

AIMP
GIMP
Everything
MusicBee
MusicBrainz Picard
Notepad++
ShareX
VirtualBox
WinDirStat

All managed with ChocolateyGUI

If you have more than a couple of drives, Everything is splendid.

[Sebastian Cobb]

In terms of go to, day to day software I use, would rate as excellent and wouldn't think of going to a paid alternative:

VLC
Firefox
Kodi
TVHeadend (PVR)
Handbrake
FFMPEG
Audacity
OpenVPN
Linux (choose your flavour, although I do also run Windows... needs must.)
KVM/QEMU (Bare metal virtualisation)
7Zip

I'd love to move fully open source and ditch MS Office, but 20 years of muscle memory for keyboard shortcuts has made this next to impossible. Similarly for Photoshop, I would need to relearn everything again.

Alright it's not open source but we've started using Google docs for everything and it's a breath of fresh air. My last place was all Ms office and share point complete with corporate templates that were originally made decades ago and rejigged hundreds of times and none of it worked and you couldn't find anything.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Vim
Ditto (Windows clipboard manager)
Clipit (Linux clipboard manager)

[Bhazor]

I'm such a gay for Krita I've donated the $40 I would have paid to Corel to them. Making them only the second donation I've ever made to a freeware developer. The other being Dwarf Fortress about two years ago.

[Bhazor]

Just found out about free open flight sim Flightgear a game in the news because of some cunts trying to flog the free game on Steam. Which is of course one of the main reasons most developers don't do free open source models.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/03/09/dont-buy-proflightsimulator/#more-524273

Now I know nothing about Flight Sims and I know there are some incredibly expensive hobbyist and training flight sims out there. So I can't tell you if it really compares to the $300 equivalent or the thousands you can spend on DLC for them. But still over its 20 years of development it has accrued a massive amount of optional content, monthly updates and a sizeable community.

http://home.flightgear.org/

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I hope people don't judge open source software on how well it clones commercial packages. That's its weakest area.

Stump up some ideas then, that's essentially what the thread is for

[Famous Mortimer]

I use OpenOffice cos I got bored of finding Office on torrent sites, and it's absolutely fine. It's not like I do much more with it than I'd do on Wordpad, so I'm perhaps not the best judge, but it's absolutely very good at doing all the most basic things, and probably lots of other stuff besides. The spreadsheet part is fine too.

[Twed]

Stump up some ideas then, that's essentially what the thread is for

Go dictate some other conversation you absolute entitled shit smear cunt.

[madhair60]

Let's be honest, that was a bit harsh

[NoSleep]

Airwindows produce amazing DAW plugins and are literally giving them away. It's all the work of one guy - Chris Johnson - and he does have a Patreon account (and I subscribe to it) for those that wish to support his project, but his philosophy seems to be "if you're earning less than me then just download them for free".

They come in AU for Mac, VST for PC and he's just added Linux. Lots of amazing stuff that beats plugins costing hundreds of pounds (plus they go where commercial software wouldn't hazard to go for "marketing" reasons).

He doesn't design GUI's for them, either, as apparently, when plugins cause problems, it's a 90% chance it's the fancy graphics doing this. So you get generic interfaces (sliders or a field to enter a number for more accuracy). His collection of dithers are worth checking out for anyone trying to produce finished masters; especially NotJustAnotherDither (24-bit version, no controls, as are quite a few of the plugins if they just do one thing) and it's 16-bit counterpart NotJustAnotherCD. Airwindows is probably worth a thread all of its own, but Chris posts all of his plugins on Gearslutz and gets feedback from users there (sometime modifying a plugin or creating a brand new alternative in response). Somebody has even started a thread over there on how to use Airwindows plugins to create virtual circuit-bending.

He seems to have gone down the route of the least possible coding to produce the profoundest results (using digital how it wants to be used), which often means there little or no latency produced by operating with these (especially his "purest" range). The lack of fancy dials to look at, etc, makes you begin using your ears more keenly.

[madhair60]

What is Kodi for?

[Twed]

Let's be honest, that was a bit harsh

Cunt's fucking dead

https://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,54871.30.html lots of good open-source (and not open source) software listed by myself and others in this thread

Not that I need to qualify myself in this thread but Shoulder's meadfuckery reminded me of that one.

[Bhazor]

https://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,54871.30.html lots of good open-source (and not open source) software listed by myself and others in this thread

It's also two years old and a fucking cluster fuck of command prompts html code and shite. Fucking state of it.

Mate if you were free open source software I'd make a commit that replaced your face with a wanking gesture.

[Blumf]

Mate if you were free open source software I'd make a commit that replaced your face with a wanking gesture.

Get yer coat luv, you've made a pull request.

[Twed]

Nobody post any software that doesn't come with pretty pictures or it will confuse Bhazor.

[Z]

I finally caved and switched to using a command line tool to download youtube videos, youtube-dl, instead of a browser extension. Pretty impressed with it, you can specify both the video and audio quality that you'd like (or closest to it available) and it resumes downloads.

[Bhazor]

Nobody post any software that doesn't come with pretty pictures or it will confuse Bhazor.

Yes and if I need someone to tell me how to ctrl tab I'll know exactly who's thread to go to.

Ctrl+Tab only goes in one direction through tabs.  Using Ctrl+Page Up/Down you can go in either direction.

Hacks? Fucking fitting title that.

[Twed]

I finally caved and switched to using a command line tool to download youtube videos, youtube-dl, instead of a browser extension. Pretty impressed with it, you can specify both the video and audio quality that you'd like (or closest to it available) and it resumes downloads.

megadl (or is it megatools?) and get_iplayer are good command line download tools too. And of course wget for general web stuff.

[Blue Jam]

I must check out Krita, cheers. I already use GIMP but I don't find it as user-friendly as Photoshop.

For technical drawing and vector graphics I love Inkscape. It's best if you've got decent specs though- I used to think it was just buggy until I got a new laptop with a decent amount of RAM. It's a good free alternative to Adobe Illustrator and if makes me wonder how most of my colleagues still seem to be drawing diagrams and figures in fucking PowerPoint:

https://inkscape.org/

[Bhazor]

Krita is much better for drawing than Photoshop or GIMP. Just load canvas click the paintbrush and go. It still has the layers, masks, transform options and lighting effects but they're treated as tools rather than neccesities that will fuck you over with one wrong button press.

It's not great for vector work but this month's update is meant to improve both vector's and pixel art with a 3d grid and a new pixel by pixel mode.

https://krita.org/en/krita-4-0-release-notes/

[Twed]

Thanks for this. Python scriptable too, very nice.

[BlodwynPig]

OpenFOAM