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

At the moment I know:

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

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

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

  • thru_dangers_untold@lemmy.mlEnglish
    17·
    1 year ago
    • Firefox: best web browser out there
    • Bitwarden: password manager
    • ShareX: screenshot utility. Greenshot is also good, but I prefer ShareX
    • WinDirStat: disk usage utility
    • KCE Connect: connect Android phone to PC
    • Image Glass: image viewer
    • OBS: video & audio capture
    • Blender: 3D modeling, animation, video editing
    • Handbrake: video conversion
    • VLC: video/audio playback
    • Audacity: audio editing
    • SpeedCrunch: calculator
    • Notepad++: text editor
    • Spyder (via Anaconda): Python IDE
  • gornius@lemmy.world
    16·
    1 year ago

    although I’m not a TWM user I like to just press super and type the first letters of the program I’m looking for to open it.

    It will never stop to amaze me how many people don’t know it’s a feature in every major DE and every Windows starting from Vista.

    Even on Windows 10/11, just tap windows key and start typing without clicking anywhere.

    My list of FOSS I use everywhere (these work in Win and Linux):

    • Open Tablet Driver - if you’ve got the drawing tablet it probably supports it. You can customize everything and has even built-in plugin manager.

    • Krita - GIMP alternative with non-destructive editing capabilities.

    • yt-dlp - download videos from almost any video sharing service, even TikTok, Instagram etc.

    • neovim - for quick file edits

    • vscode/vscodium with vim plugin - my IDE for everything

    • ffmpeg - forget handbrake - you can do even basic video editing here. Join two videos together? Done. Add audio to video? Done. Crop part of the video without reencoding it? Done. Loop a video to 10 hours without reencoding it? Done in matters of seconds.

    • kdenlive - an actual video editor that is 100% FOSS, doesn’t suck and works on Windows and Linux.

    • imagemagick - ffmpeg for images

      • gornius@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 year ago

        I used to, but I need to get my job done, not play with configuring it for hours just to achieve what VSCode does out of the box. Plus settings sync is great.

    • Obi@sopuli.xyz
      1·
      1 year ago

      It recently stopped working for me (windows key search) and it’s super debilitating once you got used to it.

  • Crozekiel@kbin.social
    15·
    1 year ago

    Wild, you are like from the alternate universe where Linux is dominant and nerds play around in windows. Are things better where you are from? :P

    • Xirup@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
      10·
      1 year ago

      Of course! In this universe everybody uses linux phones and they are actually usable (and repairable)!

    • Transient Punk@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      Being around the Steam Deck forums when it initially launched felt otherworldly. A super popular device launched with Linux as a first class citizen, and Windows users were desperate for drivers that improved unstable usability. It was surreal.

  • GreenMario@lemm.ee
    14·
    1 year ago

    1. GIMP (Image editor)

    2. putty (Secure shell/terminal emulator)

    3. WinSCP (Secure FTP client)

    4. QBittorrent (guess.)

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

    6. Firefox

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

    8. Handbrake (Video transcoder)

    9. VLC (all in one video player)

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

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

    • grandel@lemmy.ml
      5·
      1 year ago

      That’s a good list!

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

    • hogofwar@lemm.ee
      2·
      1 year ago

      I use Kitty instead of Putty recently, though I don’t know if the difference is worth it.

    • 1993_toyota_camry@beehaw.org
      2·
      1 year ago

      Ventoy is the easier answer these days IMO. Just drop ISOs on your Ventoy’d usb key and choose them from a menu at boot time.

      • Redo11@szmer.info
        0·
        1 year ago

        Ventoy is easy, but not perfect. I tried multum of unique images and it struggled hard. From openwrt to freedos to reboot of Hiren’s boot cd, it just couldn’t load them correctly.

        • 1993_toyota_camry@beehaw.org
          1·
          1 year ago

          Not to be argumentative, but in case you’re interested:

          According to the ventoy site it supports those images, though openwrt requires a plugin and freedos seems to require using memdisk mode, though I’m less clear on the limitations there.

          • Redo11@szmer.info
            1·
            1 year ago

            Oh, I didn’t know that, but still, I don’t expect to be truly universal. But as long as you are dealing with ISOs of LX server/desktop or WIN, it’s an amazing tool.

  • vim_b@lemmy.mlEnglish
    9·
    1 year ago

    PowerToys: productivity utilities like window pinning, window management, accented character typing assistant, color picker, text extractor, etc.

    • AnonStoleMyPants@sopuli.xyz
      2·
      1 year ago

      You forgot the best thing. Window management, aka Fanzy Zones. You can set areas to your monitor and snap windows to those instead of just left / right side of monitor. Completely customizable.

    • thehellrocc@beehaw.orgEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Seconding this. It has every feature you know Windows needs but it still doesn’t have (likely because of the need for testing or being aimed at power users).

  • Otter@lemmy.caEnglish
    7·
    1 year ago

    Some of these are cross platform but:

    7zip

    Autohotkey

    Bitwarden

    Calibre

    Draw.io

    Handbrake

    Speedcrunch

    WinHTTrack

    WinSCP

  • Nioxic@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    4·
    1 year ago

    Playnite for launching games

    It will open up anything. Battlenet games, steam games, emulated games… you name it. Supports themes too!

    www.playnite.link

  • ChiefSinner@lemm.ee
    4·
    1 year ago

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

  • d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz
    3·
    1 year ago

    Xoblite: Blackbox/Fluxbox-style WM/shell for Windows.

    Open Shell: Brings back the classic start menu and other classic Explorer.exe features

    Notepad2e: A lightweight and portable alternative to Notepad++

    AutoHotkey: Probably the best GUI automation tool out there, this is the tool that I miss the most in the Linux world.

    • klangcola@reddthat.com
      2·
      1 year ago

      There’s also Kate, the KDE Advanced Text Editor. It’s available from the Windows store, and works amazingly well on Windows, fast snappy and (almost?) just as featurefull as on Linux. I use it side by side with Notepad++

    • peregus@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 year ago

      Notepad2e: A lightweight and portable alternative to Notepad++ Nice! Why do you prefer it at Notepad++?

      • d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz
        2·
        1 year ago

        Because it’s lightweight and portable. :)

        Notepad2e is just a small exe file which doesn’t require installation. This allows me to run it on my work PC or random work VMs without filling out any paperwork. And on my personal machines, I can replace the OG Notepad with this by renaming notepad.exe in the Windows folder, so when I press Win+R -> and type “notepad”, it fires up Notepad2e. It launches just as quickly as the original Notepad, and doesn’t use much RAM either, and provides most of the features that I’d commonly use in Notepad++, such as text transformations, syntax highlighting, large file support and live monitoring (which makes is handy for viewing logs). With this, I don’t really have a need for Notepad++ - if I want more features, say I’m working on a proper coding project or something, I’d use a proper IDE like VSCode, but otherwise, Notepad2e satisfies most of my text editing needs.

  • thejevans@lemmy.ml
    3·
    1 year ago

    BloatyNosy

    Universal Debloater and PC Manager for the most up-to-date version of the Redmond OS (Windows 11)

    https://github.com/builtbybel/BloatyNosy

    sleek

    an open-source (FOSS) todo manager based on the todo.txt syntax

    https://github.com/ransome1/sleek

    WinDirStat

    a disk usage statistics viewer and cleanup tool for various versions of Microsoft Windows

    https://github.com/windirstat/windirstat

    MacType

    Better font rendering for Windows

    https://github.com/snowie2000/mactype

      • thejevans@lemmy.ml
        1·
        1 year ago

        Yeah, the documentation is very sparse. I think it was originally all in Simplified Chinese, but some things have been translated to English. Basically it gives you tools to fix subpixel font rendering issues on windows. Using a rotated monitor? An OLED monitor? A TV? All of these are examples of screens that don’t have standard subpixel layouts, so fonts tend to have weird color fringing as a result. MacType allows for a lot of tweaks to how fonts are rendered, but I tend to just switch to grayscale rendering, which works well.

        This reddit thread walks through the process with some specific configs and they have pictures to show how it changes things.

        https://www.reddit.com/r/OLED_Gaming/comments/t30fi7/better_text_rendering_for_oled_displays_getting/