What app is so useful, you can’t believe it’s free?

VLC! No ads ever, that's insane!

But does it whip the llama's ass?
I think not.
this is a really old Winamp reference for you younger folks.
- VLC isn’t a WinAmp replacement? Though.
  Foobar2000 is!
To piggyback off of this, consider donating to VLC.
- Donated!

Bitwarden is one I use several times a day. They do have a support plan for like $10 a year that gives a couple extra features like TOTP support, but the base level is incredibly robust. It’s open source, too. I know a lot of folks also host their own servers with Vaultwarden, but that’s a little beyond my skill level.

I pay for it just because it's cheap and to support them
- Same, the free tier is so good that I'm paying to make sure it stays free.
- I pay for it just because it's cheap and to support them
  I did this too when it first came out, and then the product became robust enough that I recommended we implement it at work because secrets management was non-existent. We have a bunch of licenses on the Enterprise plan now and it just keeps getting better each update.
  My only complaint is that migrating the data to a new server is a pain in the ass and never works correctly, even when following the migration instructions to the letter. Always have to open a ticket with them for that. Not enough of a pain to move to another product, though.
  I also still pay for my personal plan. It really is a fantastic product.
- Great I do the same too!
- It’s so cheap! The value for the price is astounding.
- Oh wow, is it really cheap?! Good much money can I invest right away?!? 11?!1111!
I just recently started using their totp function and I can't believe I didn't switch sooner. Just the fact alone that it automatically copies the code to your clipboard is such a Time saver not having to open up a separate app.
- It's a wild time saver. I can’t believe other folks go to a whole separate app for their codes! Hitting Ctrl+L to autofill passwords and user names then Ctrl+V for TOTP feels like a hack when I watch other people struggle with their other solutions.
FYI, This product is 100% marketed on Lemmy for a profit. I've seen astroturfed threads multiple times now.
- Free app marketed for profit... There might be something wrong with you
- I kinda thought that too, but it’s free and open-source… so that would be weird.
  Looking into password managers, though, it does really seem like the best choice. Lastpass had breach lately, KeePass requires self-hosting, and other offerings cost more (and aren’t open-source.)

I've never thought about it, how do they make money? I've never seen an ad or sent them money.
- They make a large amount from Google paying them to be the default search engine. Also they have been making additional projects that can be subscribed to as add-ons for Firefox (like a VPN and an email forwarding service that allows you to make fake email addresses or phone numbers to use on sites that will forward the messages to your real inbox/phone). You can use a limited version of the email thing without paying though so it is easy to try out. And they are always ready to take donations of any size and can be reoccurring. I personally pay .99/month for the email service even though I don't use it often. As it is nice to have if I need it, and it is basically a donation at that point. lol.
  Here are links to those products if you care to read more about them or at least see pricing.
  https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/products/vpn/
  https://relay.firefox.com/
  But even just making a point to donate some one-offs here and there does help in small ways to keep a real option in browsers that isn't just another Chromium-based project.
  https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/
  Everyone hated when IE was the only browser that sites were coded for, and we are seeing more and more Chromium only sites. Which means a bad vulnerability in Chromium will impact all the browsers based on it. Also privacy add-ons for Firefox tend to work better and block ads well.
- Mozilla seems to be pretty transparent. You can see their financial statement at State of Mozilla.
- Donations
  Getting payed by google to make it their default search engine.
- I donate every. single. month.
- Mainly a non profit
This but in the Fennec flavor

7-zip

Yes, I totally paid for WinRar.
- It's said that when Jesus comes back, you get to go to heaven if you paid for it.
Microsoft is adding extensive archive format support (using libarchive) to Windows 11. I'd like to thank 7-zip for its service over the decades, though.

Bitwarden and firefox

I don't use it but blender is another one

What is blender for? I would Google it but I imagine it would mainly be kitchen accessories
- Blender is an open source 3D art/graphics program, on-par with what companies charge hundreds of dollars per month for. Unlike some things where people say "Use GIMP instead of Photoshop!", Blender is actually industry standard everywhere I've worked
- 3D modelling
For the self-hosters out there, there's VaultWarden, which works seamlessly with all Bitwarden plugins and apps.
It's very lightweight and easy to setup and run. It has support for multiple accounts, so you can use it for your family, or business, or whatever!

Linux

Not an "app" but close enough :) I agree anyway
I came here to post that!
On this note it's crazy there are people who will spend over $100 on a Windows license, when all they do is use a web browser or simple productivity apps like spreadsheets or word.
I can get if you're using some adobe products, or some game that hasn't been updated to the Linux compatible EAC, but for the vast majority of people paying over $100 (or having that cost passed onto you from the manufacturer if Windows is preinstalled) is crazy.

Linux.

The world would be a very different place if linux didn't exist.
- No Android phones, insanely outdated internet, software development confined to what corporations allowed.. Yea things could have been a lot worse
- Insofar as BSD is very different. Linux emerged while BSD's legal status was in serious doubt, and had already gathered considerable inertia by the time the court case ended, but the court case ended favorably for the BSD community, so we'd have ended up on that if not for Linux.
/thread
This is it.

It seems evident that the effort put into a comment would mirror one's investment in the topic. With these bare minimum answers I always assume the quality of the recommendation matches.
- With a catch: If it's something absurdly popular, then no. Something like Google Maps, you really don't have to say why it's both surprising and unsurprising that it manages to be ad free. The whole conversation is self-evident and no more words are needed.
Have you considered asking the question yourself and explaining in your post that you are seeking for actual recommendations instead of expecting them in a post with a one-line random question like this one? Maybe?
Most "ITT people" love to help with "ITT" matters, but also enjoy throwing quick answers in posts like this. Just a heads-up.
- I mean, when asked for something like this and the quick answer was Everything, you'd wonder if the OP meant the voidtools' file search software 'Everything' or just... everything. At least provide a quick explanation of the usage, 1 sentence is usually enough.

Firefox, ppsspp, termux, VLC, Tachiyomi(SY), and KeypassXC/DX are coming to my mind. Probably there are a lot more. These are for android. Although they do apply to desktop except termux and Tachiyomi.

Edit: I haven't added the various FOSS tools as they don't really come in "App" Category. Some of them:

Linux kernel
git
gcc

+1 for Firefox and VLC. Always amazes me that such good programs are available for free. Remember to donate to FOSS projects, people!
Thanks for the reminder about VLC. I don't use it much any more, but back in the wild west days of audio/video codecs (some of which were paid), VLC would play everything.
- VLC is still one of the most powerful video/audio player in existence.
- VLC + autohotkey = game changer. I use it every day
I'd replace PPSSPP with RetroArch

Blender

Genuinely free? VSCode

Freemium: Discord

You pay with your data: Google Maps

If there's one service that I'm okay giving my data over for, it's Google maps.
Without that, we wouldn't have traffic data or how busy a business is. Crowd sourcing information is the only way to get a service as good as google maps. It's actually amazing to me that it's free given all of the satellite and street imaging done.
- I used to contribute to google maps. I had the same vision you do. But then I learned about their dark way of stealing people's data. All your contributions to google maps are now property of google. You are giving away your efforts so one of the richest world companies becomes richer. And keep abusing their users. So now I use openstreetmap.org
Yeah why the fuck is that? VSCode has no business being as good as it is. It's developed by Microsoft, after all. Are they planning to take it away from us and charge money for it in a few years? Why does it work on Linux so easily? Is it a government conspiracy to fill our brains with subliminal messages somehow? Wtf is the catch?
My best educated guess is that's it's a ploy of some kind. If Microsoft makes a free code editor that's really good, maybe no one will make a free open source one that's as good so that they will have control over the 1 most viable code editor? There are other things similar to VSCode but they cost money and are too big a pain to pirate because VSCode is better than them anyway.
- It's not only VSCode, it's also Github and C# and TypeScript to a lesser extent as well, probably. They want to have control over the "coding" ecosystem. And look at what they already did with github, they trained AI on all projects on it, and they then sell access to that AI.
- Here might lie the answer to your question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace%2C_extend%2C_and_extinguish
- https://codeium.com/blog/why-did-microsoft-build-vscode-github-copilot
- They learned their lesson with the old Visual Studio. Spending all of that money to maintain an IDE where the core 90% of it was no better than any open source or shareware alternative.
  The only reasons people needed VS specifically were all features that could easily be turned into self-contained plugins.
  And with everything turning into cloud services, there’s pretty much no point in trying to sell installable local apps that are impossible to fully DRM and have no justifiable subscription fees.
  And when an enterprise goes to pick a cloud repo service, cloud code workspace, cloud hosting, devops system, AI development assistant, etc… Who are they gonna pick? Maybe the one from the same company that makes “that one app all our devs rave about”?
I feel like the Google maps algorithm has gotten worse over the last year or so. Maybe it's the Android auto interfacing with my car, but it sends me on weird routes sometimes even with a similar eta. I think it might be related to the eco settings but man is it annoying.
Discord also makes you pay with your data.
- Their privacy policy says they don’t sell your data.
  Not that you should automatically trust any communication platform (present Lemmies excluded), but exchange of data for services is at least not the business model on paper.
  In a sense, you still “are the product”, because people won’t buy Nitro if there’s noone to talk to.
  But that’s different from like… tracking micro-motions of your mouse to categorize your personality traits and increase ad conversions.
I thought Discord was pretty data hungry?

Jellyfin, it's literally free Netflix if you own even just an old computer and some storage. Also open source that is another huge plus

I fucking love my Jellyfin server, it's so seamless
One thing I like about Plex is that there's literally an app for every device I own. What's the Jellyfin support there?
- Here's a list of all the official and third party Jellyfin apps
- There's an app on f-Droid, there's an app on the Linux app store (Pls don't get mad at the name, i switched to Linux less than a month ago) that's as much as I need, I don't own a "smart" TV, I don't own a car with an iPad, my fridge is dumb so the only screens I need supported are the Linux pc and the phone, and those screens are supported.
I gave Jellyfin a full year, and at the end of that year, the problematic Chromecast support did me in. Back to Plex I went.

LibreOffice for word processing and spreadsheets.

Honestly the open source office suites are pretty amazing now. It's what put me off Linux initially all those years ago, how Word/Excel just felt way better than LibreOffice, but now even the browser based stuff is on par.
- I've only ever used Google Drive suite for my office work so that was super easy on Linux. I've heard people who crunch huge datasets in Excel don't have an alternative though

Home Assistant. It is an incredibly powerful smart home solution that is far more capable than any other solution one needs to pay for.

Taking the opportunity to get on my soapbox and remind everyone that free software still requires someone's time and effort to maintain. If you've been using a free app for a while and you and you enjoy it (and you have the means to do so), consider sending a donation to the developers/maintainers! It's a good way to help ensure that the great, free app you enjoy stays great and free.

Or, if you don't pay for the product, you are the product.
If I might add to your excellent reminder, that if you're lacking on funds but have some coding skills, most projects are in need of some help. Stick your head into the dev forum and try a low-hanging bug.
If you can't code, MANY projects need help with documentation, translation, marketing, fund raising, etc.
Writing a comprehensive positive review on an app store or review site can have an impact.
If you do have a few bucks but need more for them than a donation can offer, buying their products (when available) - even just stickers and mugs helps to spread the word around while also supporting the developers.
Totally agree. I donate to projects already but I need to do it more.

Krita

Oh god yes. Like GiMP, but like, usable.

Weawow is a completly (also ad-)free weather forecast app run basically solo by a Japanese guy. I was surprised when I found this app that it was so good in every aspect that I had to donate the guy. It has has more than half a Mio. reviews on google play with an average of 4.9 . Idk of any free app with that many reviews having this kind of rating, well deserved.

Further honorable mentions:

Vivaldi browser
Joplin notes app
nextcloud
wikipedia (obviously)
Öffi
Signal
keepass
rif for reddit (R.I.P)

Just downloaded Weawow - one of the more impressive things for me is that it's only 144kb.
I love weawow! Agreed about making a regular donation to the Weawow dev... or it'll face the curse of other top, rated free apps - the developer has tons of users, dealing with all their support requests, and can't make a living from it, then rightly sells up to some sh!tty company who then turns the app to shite. Yes, that's the story of the legendary Quickpic app.
- yeah you can see all donation transparently on the donations section (unless u opted for anonymous) and fortunately it's looking like it's going quite well. I assume the creator actually has some more employees now or at least professional help for all the translations of the app as it seems to be available in a lot of languages.
Nice find, I just downloaded it and it looks amazing, thank you!
Vivaldi is same as Chrome you pay with your user information.
- I don't think thats true, Vivaldi is more like Chromium is you want to do that comparison. Well anyway they are way different thant the google user profile tracking you get with all the google servies. They mostly makeoney with partner deals in pre-set bookmarks and search engines. They explicitly say they don't collecr user data: https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-business-model/
  But yeah I get your point. They are still not a "non-profit" like the signal foundation or wiki etc. Still the whole company and the team behind them relies om a lot of work by voluntaries im they forums an big collection and I totally would pay for Vivaldi or donate for them if they ever want to change their business model to become donation driven.

Syncthing, Joplin, and Libreoffice are programs I use on a daily basis.

What do they do?

I was blown away the first time I stumbled upon KDEConnect. It just... Worked. Completely, easily, and with an incredible feature set compared for free software
- When I first got KDEConnect on my desktop, it didn't work all too well until I uninstalled and was forced to get the windows store version. It's been working just fine since then, but I couldn't tell you why the standalone version wasn't.
  Still, it's such a great tool.
- and it works on Mac and Windows too !

ffmpeg

I genuinely want to use it but I have no idea how or even how to start. Any advice?
- Ask Google what you're trying to do and you'll find your answer, or ask ChatGPT.

I use KeePass every single day

How is it compared to Bitwarden?
- This article might help answer that question for you.
- As a recent convert, Bitwarden feels so modern. I'm not 100% comfortable not having my keyfile locally, but I've kept an old copy that I'll maintain with some of the more crucial passwords.
Same. Love it so much

Syncthing. I get so much use out of it yet it's probably the least naggy thing on my computer.

Krita. I don't use it at a professional level so I don't know if it's missing important features, but as far as I know it's also used by skilled artists. Also, the documentation is great.

Krita really is exceptional for free software, started doing digital art in it just for fun and it's crazy how many tools are avaialble
Any mentions of Krita on the internet come attached with one of two conversations.
How good it is, for how more obscure it is versus other art. Often put alongside Paint Tool SAI in the tier list. With 90% of the onlookers claiming to not have ever used either of course.
A weird, borderline unhealthy obsession with discussing the necessity of software mascot characters.
And the latter is then split absolute evenly between nerds who for some reason really dislike Libre Office's mascot and want to shit on all software mascots. And between people who want to fuck her and also fuck anything ever designed by Tyson Tan. And I gotta say, you freaking degenerates, I WANTED to play Freedom Planet 2 but every time I think of that game I also think of this shit and how one of you made this gigantic copypasta about the bat girl and....
What was I talking about?
- LibreOffice has a mascot?!
  Krita is good, intuitive wise on the same level as Photoshop for me 😵‍💫
- I don't use Krita for art either. I use it as a PaintdotNET replacement and it blows it 20km out of the water
I was looking for alternatives for Photoshop Touch (A great photo editing android app) as my new phone does not support 32bit apps. Found this and it even have an Android app. 10/10 rn

99% of open source apps and tools

Basically, yeah. I mean: Linux.
Blender. Gimp.
Countless others
- Gimp could've been actually used personally as a photo manipulation program... If they just didn't name the damn thing GIMP

Others have mentioned most of my favorite tools. One thing I'd like to add is SageMath. It's a mathematical software that's comparable/better than commercial offerings like Mathematica and MatLab. I've rarely seen anyone in the academia using anything else these days. If someone does use something else, it's just because they're more used to it. SageMath is by far the best tool for most things math.

Also, while typing about Sage, I was reminded of how great of a tool LaTeX is. If you want to write anything that'll be more than a single page, LaTeX is probably the best way to do it.

Maps. Gives me accurate directions,live traffic data and anything else I need on the road e.g restaurants,hotels,petrol stations etc.

Well, you pay with your data so there's that...
- Fwiw, OpenStreetMap is pretty amazing
- Yep but honestly live traffic and occupancy for buildings, as well as my own location history for me personally is just too useful. I can find out where I was for essentially any point in time since ~2016 data that would've been lost to me several times if I were to have kept the data myself.
Seriously it has sort of changed the world. I know I'm just handing all my location data to Google but the way it works and the features it offers are amazing and I cannot imagine a world anymore in which I might get lost if I just take a wrong turn somewhere. That combined with the free messaging has made "finding" anything location related a non issue. I can send people a location to meet, I can look up an address someone gave me, I can send my spouse my live location while I'm on my way home to let her know how far I'm out, I can find a hardware store in a town I've never been to because I need to tape to fix my bag or whatever, people write helpful comments about where to park or whatever. Maps will suggest different routes for pedestrians, cyclists, drivers or find you a public transportation route if you wish, including (usually) the exact time your train or bus or whatever leaves. It's fantastic
- Look into OpenStreetMaps site for desktop PCs, and pick one of many android apps for the mobile phones that use OSM (i prefer osmAnd, it has a free premium version on F-droid software store) and you won't be needing to send all your location data to Google ever again.

🔥🦊

OpenStreetMap

OpenStreetMap is a free, editable map of the world, created and maintained by millions of volunteers. It includes data about roads, buildings, shops, points of interest, and more.

Many of the benefits of Google Maps without all its spying and advertising.

Bonus in line with this: OsmAnd.

OsmAnd. Navigated me through numerous countries on holiday. Found us places to eat. So useful it persuaded me to start updating the map locally to help any fellow travelers
Joplin notes. Use this every day without fail
Nextcloud. Self hosted cloud that Ive come to rely on

Obsidian - fantastic Markdown editor with rich base functionality and a huge garden of plugins.

So I just tried this, on Android. Yes it is pretty nice. Wish it would do plain .txt files too. Or even source code and syntaxes highlighting for different file types. Limited to just MD files sucks. Not really interested in the whole "canvas" thing. UI is a bit clunky on Android, but not terrible.
Currently using Acode front F-Droid for Android, which addresses the issues named above. And it's FOSS, which Obsidian is not.
- Obsidian isn't meant to be a general purpose text editor, it's a personal wiki; None of the things you mentioned are its goals, though it can highlight source code in code blocks.
  It's meant to be a second brain, with interlinking between notes and ideas a la the Zettelkasten method. I use it for keeping everything from DND notes to local documentation on my home lab, to meeting notes... Think Notion or the like, if you're familiar.
  Here's a great overview by one of my favorite YouTube channels: https://youtu.be/DbsAQSIKQXk
  For general purpose editing, I personally use Neovim in Termux.
- Markdown has code blocks with syntax highlighting.
  https://www.markdownguide.org/extended-syntax/#syntax-highlighting
- While Obsidian does work on mobile, I find it really shines on a bigger screen with keyboard and mouse.
- I think syntax highlighting may be a core plugin that comes deactivated. If it's not that then there's definitely a community plugin for it.

Darktable photo editing software. It has an awesome suite of features and functionality and supports almost every digital camera raw format.

Nice to see another darktable user! I also learnt so much about photo processing thanks to their tutorials. It's very technical stuff that went ober my head mostly but it was fun to read.
I gave a shot. The UX was downright hostile.
- Sadly it's the case for a lot of open source softwares I feel. I've had the same feed back on GIMP.
  But honestly once you get used to it, it has some really great tools that actually make it just as powerful (if not more depending on who you ask) than its direct competitor: Adobe Lightroom.
  It's a little rough to get into it, but imo it's worth the investment.

DaVinci Resolve was the last app to really surprise me. It's a fantastic app for video editing with a ton of functionality. Most of the paid functions seem like composite fuctions of the free functions or overly professional tools, but for getting started with simple 2D- or 3D-animations or short film editing, it's beyond amazing.

Audacity.

Is the source code still tainted or did they remove the telemetry after the backlash?
- As far as I know it never even made it to the program, it was just something they were planning - and subsequently cancelled due to the backlash.

Signal and Telegram

I'm pretty sure they're selling the data
- Signal is certainly not. It's open source, and verifiably end-to-end encrypted. The only information that they have about you is your phone number, when your account was created, and when you last connected to the service.
  Telegram is not so privacy friendly, with a major problem being that it's not end-to-end encrypted by default.

Limiting myself to free as in freedom (no ads, not free to use because you are the product): KeePass/KeePassXC, GnuCash, Firefox, LibreOffice, digiKam, GIMP.

Digikam runs on my old thinkpad and handles hundreds of photos a session without batting the proverbial eye. It really is fantastic.

Blender. The leap from 2.79 to 2.8 and beyond was astonishing

Can't agree more. Blender is very solid 3D editor software with a lot of features for creating 3D models and scenes, whereas other software of such level of functionality is very expensive. I'm no way a professional 3D modeller, but I am very grateful for enthusiasts behind Blender to make it possible for random people to even touch the world of 3D modelling, not even speaking about to create quality assets for their pet projects.

For both professional and personal use, I can list 2 that you likely haven't heard of:

https://github.com/meowtec/Imagine Imagine PNG/JPEG optimization - it basically compresses images and photos so you can email lots of stuff back and forth without using the likes of WeTransfer.

https://ditto-cp.sourceforge.io/ Ditto Clipboard Manager - a multi clipboard for Windows. Ever try to paste something, only to realise you've already copied over it? Its use and helpfulness is so ubiquitous, I just could never live without it anymore.

Windows has a clipboard feature like that built in now. Press Win+V to enable it.
- From what I've seen, it's not nearly as customizable as Ditto.
- That's a far cry from what Ditto can do.
I love Ditto, I use it daily!
FileOptimizer collects these sorts of apps and tries out each on your files to get the best compression. I use it every day, particularly for work.
- Looks interesting, I'll give it a go!

FreeCAD. All the CAD you need without the subscription and blocked off features.

I can believe it's free, coming from professional cad software it's basically un-usable.
- Agreed. Using free CAD feels so substantially worse than literally any other option.
  I believe SketchUp is also free for most users, and I'd much rather use it if I don't want to pay. It's not FOSS, but FOSS ≠ good
- I also agree. Use audodesk inventor for work and fusion 360 for personal use. I tried freecad and could not do it.
It's FOSS!

Visual Studio Code

Cura

Blender

WINAMP + GOLDWAVE!!!!!

Unfortunately with vsc you (us) are the product
- I'm checking out vscodium this week, thanks to another lemee thread, and so far it's great, without the MS surveillance.
- I'm usually really against that sort of stuff, but I'm okay with it in this case since it has become somewhat of a circular loop. They pump that data into ChatGPT, which gets consumed by GitHub Copilot, which gets pumped into VS code, which gets consumed by me.
The fact that they release Cura for free, make it available on all platforms (Mac/Windows/Linux), continuously improve and update it, and have incorporated the setup of basically every 3D printer you can buy is amazing.
Also, octoprint is free and open source and is incredible as well.
- Oh yeah! Octoprint is rad too, and Klipper!

ReadEra is a great freemium ebook reader that got me back into reading again.

ReadEra was the only App that was able to load my huge book collection and search it, after trying over a dozen other apps. It's very well programmed.
Koreader which is also mentioned in this thread couldn't handle it.
So good I paid for it.
- Same.

GNU!

Just had to give a shout out to Stallman & GNU. I've seen a lot of mentions of thanks to Linux on here, but Richard will never let us forget that Linux ain't shit w/o GNU software to interact with it.

Just think of the number of GNU programs you've used, just in a typical day on the terminal.

My hat is off to you, Richard.

It's really a shame Stallman and many of the other free software pioneers are absolutely creeps to women.
- Yeah I respect the all the important work he's done but I hate him for how shit of a human he is
A lot of GNU software has some other FOSS equivalent that it can be replaced with. GCC, however, was basically the only production-worthy FOSS C/C++ compiler for a long time, until Clang came along.
Very yes. But GPL license, while inteded to make IT world better, still makes life harder for common developers.
- how
- how so?

Obsidian

Too complicated. I prefer upnote
The plugins for obsidian are staggering in their scope and possibility. I haven't even had occasion to look at how to develop a plugin, because every need I could possibly have is met already.

Ffmpeg, VLC

I can't believe Photopea (https://www.photopea.com/) is free. It has nearly all the same features as Photoshop and works in just the same way. But it runs in the browser! Super quick, regularly updated, and free. Amazing.

As a Mechanic. Ampol Netlube, from lawn mowers and passenger vehicle to motorcycles and heavy mining/industrial equipment, I can find how much lubricant it take, what viscosity and specifications.

Proxmox and OPNsense. Blows me away that I can get that level of functionality completely open source.

Proxmox is so good it's hard to believe. It's VMware levels of features and convenience, while also supporting LXC containers, no license shenanigans, no enshitification, and the full flexibility of Debian under the hood
The recent-ish addition of Proxmox Backup Server is the cherry on top, with de-duplicated , incremental system image level backups with support for individual file restore

Tailscale's free tier is unbelievable.

Tailscale is a zero config VPN for building secure networks. Install on any device in minutes. Remote access from any network or physical location.
I second this, incredible product all around. Even better, they recently changed the free tier from allowing 20 devices to 100. An upgraded free tier is not something you see often.
- Thanks for the HU, that just got them my business!

So much software is so necessary that I cannot believe it is NOT free.

That doesn't make any sense. Necessity is the driving factor for it to cost money
- Except for basic human rights

https://heldercorreia.bitbucket.io/speedcrunch/

The only calculator you need! It has custom units, functions, it's quick, light, stays on top.
I used speedcrunch for a long time but ended up switching to Qalc and haven't turned back.
- Yes both!
  I use Qalc for unit conversions (I often need to convert measuring units without acces to internet) and SpeedCrunch for everything else

ViMusic and Firefox. Both are open source

I've been using ViMusic daily when I drive. For what I can't find I use NewPipe

Definitely R/R Studio if you're in data analysis. Runs circles around commercial Software in terms of scope and customization. A little harder to get into of course, but once you get the hang of it, there's little you can't get done with it.

Youtube easily hands down. Youtube is the best dad, best teacher, biggest information hub, and arguably the best meme generator in existence. The fact i can dive into any type of video content and come out feeling like i gained so much is incredible.

But it's not free. You pay for it either with money (premium) or your eyeballs (ads). Not to mention the analytics data.
- Depending on how you look at it then yes its not free. Though you could use something like Libretube to prevent both ads and any form of analytical data from being collected.
  Though other alternatives like revanced manager prevent ads and give premium benefits. Not sure about the analytical instance of it though.
- You can use piped instead.
  https://piped.video/
  Its built on opensource. A youtube frontend without tracking, ads etc.
YouTube hardly classifies as free.
- I haven't paid a cent for YouTube in my life. Wouldn't that mean it's free?
You just have to curate the auto-suggestions. After a little while mine basically only suggests me educational/science videos and movie reviews/analysis.
You are right, but youtube does have premium if you want. Although piped can be used for less intrusive experience.

Bit of a different answer, but I enjoy Daylio. Very simple and easy to track your mood and activities to look back on. Not really super useful, but very interesting and fun!

Honestly I like Daylio so much I pay for premium.
The only thing I don't like (not sure if this feature is present on desktop) is that you can't extract and chart activity data over long periods of time. E.g. I want to see patterns of activity, but not relative to mood or other activities.
- I really should pay for premium, it's just that the free version does exactly what I wanted from it so I've never felt like I had to. But at this point I just want to support it!
I love it, paid for the premium version! Love the customization, the yearly view, and you can add photos and notes, it’s the best!
Oh thank you for this recommendation. I've been wanting something like this for ages but couldn't describe it properly to find it.
I used this for a bit as data collection to help me and my therapist to track my depression. There are a bunch of free CBT apps out there for they kind of thing too.

DaVinci Resolve

I was coming to comment this. I've used a lot of free video editing software over the years and most of them are ass. The ones that aren't usually have a catch like watermarking your output. Davinci resolve came out of nowhere for me and blew me away, it's everything you could want in a video editing program but free!

Jerboa

It's definitely the best Lemmy app I've tried so far.

Duplicati. It just works. Paired with Backblaze (not free) it's been our default home backup for a long time.

I don't know if this will show up or is already in the list, but: Rufus. I burn all my thumb drives for os installs with Rufus. It also lets me bypass a lot of the windows garbage that they've tracked on to the installer, like making you sign in to a Microsoft account to install. Also, Ventoy. It's a multiple OS installer, so one big thumb drive lets me install any number of OSes from it.

While I'm setting up those OSes, ninite gets me my windows programs, and Snappy Driver Installer Origin gets me my drivers. No more laptops with pre-installed bloat for me!

Libby, the ebook reader app that is synced with my library card! It works quite well, and though I technically pay for my public library via taxes, the app is free and fantastic!

Taking the opportunity to get on my soapbox and remind everyone that free software still requires someone's time and effort to maintain. If you've been using a free app for a while and you and you enjoy it (and you have the means to do so), consider sending a donation to the developers/maintainers! It's a good way to help ensure that the great, free app you enjoy stays great and free.

SmartTube for Android TV, avoid paying YouTube Premium with no ads and SponsorBlock.

It changed to smartube next

The Portable Apps Platform - free portable software meta app. It's there, every day, like the Windows start button is there.

Oh man, there's something I haven't seen in a long time. Saved my ass at school so many times when the school's software was garbage
- Still there, still growing, it's the gateway to 450+ apps. More, if you like the betas.

One I use every day is ShareX.

Couldn't believe how convenient it is the first time I used it. Fantastic app.

Any web browser

To think that Microsoft made the push for "free" internet browsers (as a way to beat Netscape and dominate the market)

GNU Texmacs.

I'm never, ever again wasting my time typing in sketchy and weird latex commands. Point and click. Easy and to the point.

I just got onto koreader earlier tonight! It's great, and works with my DRM and non-drm epubs.

ReVanced and SmartTube. Google would have been able to justify their premium subscription much easier if they had all of the features from both.

total commander (file manager + ftp/sftp client) for android,

openvpn

I used OpenVPN for years and deployed it across numerous places I worked and at home, amazing project. I feel a bit guilty for switching to wireguard a couple years back but it really is amazingly fast.
- Never knew bout wireguard before.thanks, it looks interesting
I still run Total Commander v3.31, before Google made them gimp some of the features.

Ghidra

Honestly... yeah. Its origin makes it all the more surprising.

If you like to listen online radios, Open Radio is a nice one!

I just downloaded Libretube from FDroid, which I also just downloaded haha, and I'm absolutely loving it!

So much better than YouTube.

ffmpeg, imagemagick, povray, supercollider, blender ...

I'd also say amule, qbittorrent, fopnu (freeware, but not free), retroshare.

There are likely many others. EDIT: ... I can't quickly remember.

Awesome list.
Would add TestDisk/ photorec
- Ah, yes, saved me the heaviest (and longest to make) povray scene I've ever made after accidentally deleting it.
How do you use retroshare? I recently discovered it because it could share on I2P but haven't figured how to use it (not that I spent too much time trying either...)

DMDE. I know they have free and paid version. Even with the free version I was able to recover 500gb of data 100% with all the folder structure intact. With the free version you will have to manually select each directories but it was worth the effort.

Also Mega. I have multiple legacy accounts that has permanent 50gb space.

Your simple, every day, web browser. It doesn't matter which one. They're all free and they all are the main, basic way of accessing the internet.

I'd have used "the internet" itself, but most people still have to pay to get connected to it.

Signal and Weawow. Although I have donated since they are wonderful apps IMO.

SwiftBackup! It helps me a lot every time I need to try a new custom ROM.

Pornhub ◖⁠⚆⁠ᴥ⁠⚆⁠◗

Tixati for downloading torrents

KiCad. A full suite of software for full PCB (printed circuit board) design and development. Super cool software.

Calculator.

Notepad.

- Considering how easy it is to not pay for Windows I'd saying paying is optional at this point.

Warpinator. Use it all the Time, easy file transfer without and fuss.

Want to transfer files between your PC and Phone? -No Problem

Want to send some Screenshots from your Steam-Deck to your PC? - You can do it too.

Nuke Studio

Umm... Lemmy.

lichess

Additive Manufacturing

FreeCAD Linkstage - RealThunder's fork of the FOSS CAD package is less buggy, has improved rendering, and is much easier to use.

PrusaSlicer - A snappy alternative to Cura for slicing 3D models for printing. A lot of awesome features and it's constantly under development.

Blender - I've done a little here and there with Blender, but Cycles works great for product renders. It's such a vast and amazing program that can accommodate so many different use-cases.

Music Production

LMMS - An FL Studio-like DAW with a simplified workflow and robust features. Lackluster plug-in support out of the box, but the addition of a VST host and waveform editor make it a fully-featured way to make music.

Element - Fully open-source VST host with support for VST3. Also works as a standalone application, which means you can create plug-in chains without touching your DAW. You can also save presets of those chains, and do crazy signal routing with the two-dimensional geometry nodes-esque UI.

Vital/Vitalium - It's literally FOSS Serum. You can follow Serum tutorials, and have them turn out. A wavetable synth that's so darn easy to use, you'll never want to use anything else. This is the quintessential FOSS future bass producer's synth.

Dexed - DX7 cartridge manager and emulator. It sounds like an awesome 80s FM synth; what can I say? Must-have for synthwave and noodling around with new sounds.

Sforzando/SFZ - An open standard and a free player for said open standard. Allows for what are essentially lossless, unzipped soundfonts.

VSCO/VSCL - A few decent symphonic instrument libraries based around SFZ. Both are CC0.

Freepats - A decent place to find more SFZ instruments. A few classics like a dry Tele and a few CC0 pianos live here.

Audacity- The only FOSS waveform editor worth using. It's extremely flexible, has a ton of useful built-in effects, and makes for a great companion to LMMS when you need to make more in-depth edits to samples.

Cardinal - FOSS fork of VCV as a VST, which enables you to create crazy virtual eurorack creations and play them with MIDI. You can also use it standalone, and the sheer number of built-in plug-ins basically guarantees your dream of automatic music generating machines are only a few clicks away.

MusicGen - A recent ML tool by Facebook that can be run locally; essentially SOTA on few-shot text-to-waveform music generation. If you have a somewhat-high-end GPU, it will probably work for you. A great tool for sampling into weird ambient tracks.

RVC - A recent tool that is fast to train and provides extremely realistic voice-to-voice conversion, especially for vocals. Ever see those AI SpongeBob singing memes? This is probably how they did it.

Photo Editing/Design

PhotoGIMP - While I'm still using Photoshop, PhotoGIMP is an add-on for GIMP that attempts to port the Photoshop UI to... GIMP. It's mildly successful, and potentially can ease the pains of transitioning to a new program. I'm honestly too lazy to switch at this point, but it looked promising when I peeked the last time.

Inkscape - I suck at vector anything, but this program proved to be useful on occasion. I believe it's a serious competitor to Illustrator if you bother to learn how to use it properly.

A1111's Web UI - Now totally FOSS, this absolutely insane piece of software integrates with so many different useful plug-ins to accomplish basically any conceivable image generation or AI-with-images task imaginable. You can literally do anything from normal text-to-image generation to upscaling or colorizing, and even img2img; it's multi-modal to no end.

EDA/PCB Design

KiCAD - Hands down the best EDA package I've used. Granted, it's the only one I've used. Still, this is how FOSS software for engineering purposes should be designed. I wish they would send their UX people over to help FreeCAD out. If you need to design a PCB for anything at all, use KiCAD, period.

Programming

NodeJS - The sole reason JavaScript is worth learning for more general computing tasks; with the sheer variety of packages on NPM, it feels like you can do anything.

VSCodium - All of what makes VSCode worth using, and none of the creepy MS telemetry.

General Computing

7zip - The one program to conquer all archive formats. It works, and it's absolutely tiny. I've even installed this on Windows 2000, and of course it worked fine.

LibreOffice - Occasionally buggy, but certainly the best FOSS office package currently available. LibreOffice Writer and Calc are especially usable and work great.

VLC - Is there anything this traffic cone can't play? Superb video and audio codec compatibility, although it won't play a MIDI unless you feed FluidSynth a soundfont to atone for your sins.

Strawberry - For when you want to listen to tons of music, but you hate the clunky nature of other audio managers. Strawberry basically doesn't use a DB, and instead edits metadata directly. It will also instantly update when you add new songs or change metadata, so you rarely have to restart it. It's the fastest way to manage tons of music I've found.

PCPartPicker - A website, but still worth mentioning. This is basically the only tolerable way to part out a PC, and it makes sharing specs of your recent projects trivial.

Rufus - Someone else mentioned this one, but it's basically the only tolerable way to create bootable installation media. Works well, and it's FOSS.

Operating Systems

Manjaro KDE - The closest you can get to SteamOS's desktop mode. Based on Arch, like SteamOS, and the same DE as SteamOS.

ZorinOS - Tolerable derivative of Ubuntu LTS, especially for Windows natives.

Games/Emulators

Quadrapassel - Best Linux Tetris clone ever conceived. It's in my Steam Deck library, for Pete's sake.

Yuzu - Pairs well with a PC handheld and a "screw Nintendo" attitude. The Switch emulator that is often marginally faster (and often slightly less accurate than) Ryujinx.

OpenRCT2 - RCT, especially the first two games by Chris Sawyer, are some of the best tycoon games ever created. OpenRCT2 is a faithful reimplantation that is going places.

Great list!
I'd definitely replace Manjaro KDE with EndeavorsOS nowadays, it's just way better without all the weird drama. And HoloISO if you want to go as close to SteamOS 3 as possible.
- Weird drama? It worked just fine when I tried it.
Rufus is pretty cool but there's a better alternative. Ventoy,it can store multiple ISOs and boot from any one of them at startup, pretty cool if you want to carry around more than one OS and don't want to have multiple drives or use something like rufus multiple times.

BOINC. If you're a scientist, you can use it to distribute massive computational workloads for free. And there are tons of computing volunteers who will gladly do the computation for you. If you love science, it's a great way to engage with some cutting edge research projects and know that you're "doing my part!". You can help research cancer, develop new open source drugs, map the galaxy, or just do some fun math stuff. Just install and pick your projects, no PhD required! There was even a projects for a while to reverse all the minecraft seeds that some people participated in. https://sopuli.xyz/c/boinc

ShareX. The ability to screenshot or record a video of practically anything onscreen with any shape or form, assign hotkeys to certain tasks, and the ability to automate all of that and attach to other applications/processes for a smoother workflow? For free? Count me in.

QGIS (https://qgis.org/en/site/). A Free and Open Source Geographic Information System. There are also free basemaps available - I use the same basemaps as I use at work in ArcGIS Pro.

Apollo for reddit

Rip

Voyager for Lemmy (previously wefwef)

Edit: But seriously, FreeFileSync is a godsend. The name is a bit meh, but the program is extremely powerful

Playnite for my games.

Google maps

Arguably not free, seeing as they're making a ton of money by selling our data.
- the API isn't free, corporation use for navigation paid huge amount to Google for their maps.
  and also from ::: spoiler spoiler selling our data :::
- Here is an alternative: Comment on OpenStreetMaps.

tachij2k, i use it for all my comic book, manga, and hentai needs. easy to use. access to a bunch of websites. I can download for offline uses. Amazing app.

For me, Reaper without a doubt. I've been doing audio work for the better part of a decade now it's become my main DAW of choice for the last 5 years. Technically a license costs you $60, but every feature is available in the "trial" version that never expires. SWS script support and the insane amount community skins/extensions makes it well worth the $60 if you plan on buying. I've replaced many ProTools with Reaper setups.....

no it's not, as someone could think what's in the title for something which is indeed floss. No need to try so hard being a loser BOFH...

Bitwarden - been using it for over 5 years, such an amazing utility.

Here's how you actually free space on your computer in a way that matters without installing some malware "fix-it" program or need a computer divining rod to find every random file:

WizTree: Scan your entire computer hards drive(s) in a matter of seconds and display a very useful graph and data about where your space it being taken up. It's eons faster and easier to use than the leading competitor WinDirStat to the point where I can't imagine why anyone would use something that isnt WizTree.
BCUninstaller: It helps uninstall as many apps and programs off of your computer automatically with little to no user interaction needed beyond hitting the "start" button
BleachBit: It deletes all the temporary and nonessential stuff that gets accumulated over time. It won't clear as much as BCUninstaller or deleting stuff with WizTree and a lot of apps will generate most temporary files again anyways but I do typically see a decrease of around a gigabyte or two. Worth a shot in any case.
Winget: While not a software in the general sense, Winget is a package manager built into Windows 10/11 itself that lets you automatically download, configure, and install a ton of programs in one command via command prompt or PowerShell.

Every single program I've listed here are available on Winget.

I still use windirstat because I hadn't heard of WizTree. How doe Winget compare to chocolatey (https://community.chocolatey.org/)?
edit: Found a few articles that compare winget to chocolatey (1: Make use of, 2: techcybersec).
tl;dr: They're both really good, but chocolatey is established with a lot more packages and better community support.

Rclone, Neat Downloader, VLC, FreeCommanderXE, LMMS, any Keepass program, Rufus, Gimp, Notepad++, 7zip, ffmpeg, yt-DLP

Notepad++ changed my life at work. I have my scripts posted in there for easy changing, I use it for regular notes, it's just beautiful.
- Yea it's beautiful to use for scripts. I made so many .bat and PowerShell scripts in there. And yes regular plain ol' notes as well.
Oh also forgot BRU (Bulk Rename Utility), RED (Remove Empty Directories), Everything, Sonarr, Jackett, Nextcloud, Voyager (web app), JDownloader2, and WFDownloader.
- Also autohotkey and localsend!!!

any web browser

Ah. A trap.

The joke was silly. The more serious answer for me is TinkerTool.