tag studio It's a file manager designed to use tags instead of files because tags are a much better system. It's still in alpha and I haven't actually tested it yet but I plan to use it instead of regular file managers once it becomes stable and well supported.

FMD (FindMyDevice) - An absolute necessity, especially if you aren't using Google services.

It allows you to use any device/contact you've approved to send commands to enable/disable various settings on your devices, like bluetooth, do not disturb, camera, GPS, etc. via SMS, a FMD server (self-host optional) or from notifications (i.e. use Signal to send commands). So if you've simply lost your phone in your house you could make it ring no matter what, or if it got stolen you could lock it, use GPS, or factory reset it entirely.

The dev made it after he lost a phone that didn't have Find My Device activated.

SherpaOnnx TTS for Android. There are many different voices to pick from that sound very life like and are totally worth using with GPS apps like CoMaps.

Also, just found out about Medicat recently but haven't used it yet. It looks fantastic though: Medicat is a toolkit that helps compile a selection of the latest computer diagnostic and recovery tools into an easy to use toolkit.

Ventoy is a software you put on a USB stick to make it so you can load as many bootable ISOs as you want on it at the same time and still use the leftover space for normal file storage.

LibreOffice - simply the best office suite there is (IMHO). I was a MS-office user for years, but since I switched, I haven't looked back...

VLC (VideoLAN media player): play media files, DVDs, network streams and more. Just works,

Inkscape - the best vector graphics program out there. So easy to use, and so powerful.

Krita is a fantastic program for drawing. It's made for making beautiful paintings and animations.

GIMP - unlike Krita - which is made for drawing - this is made for photo-editing. It's like Photoshop. The learning curve is a bit steep, but it is really powerful.

Firefox - the original private webbrowser. Even though some people don't like the options in it (like those that let you stream Netflix and other DRM content). If people care about privacy, they use this browser, or one that is made from it...

qBittorrent: only for your legal torrenting needs from e.g. archive.org :>

librewolf a privacy-focused fork of the latest stable firefox (win,linux,mac)

Calibre: great e-book manager

alternativeto.net is great for finding these

Thunderbird - a brilliant e-mail program, which also handles contacts, newsfeeds, calender and more. It's available for multiple platforms, like Android, Windows, Linux and so forth...

Newpipe, an YouTube client, which is:

• ad free

• lightweight

• useful, it allows downloading videos, music, and playing them when screen is locked

• usable without account

• multi-platform, it can also serve as client for the PeerTube, Bandcamp, SoundCloud

strudel. From the website:

With Strudel, you can expressively write dynamic music pieces.

The best place to actually make music with Strudel is the Strudel REPL

It's really fun to make music in it, I recommend trying it out!

link to repo (codeberg)

NextCloud - Self hosted personal cloud solution that you can run on Docker or bare metal.

https://nextcloud.com/

Immich is a photo/video hosting solution à la Google photos

fzf fuzzy finder. Great tool to quickly find those files you were looking for.

Librera (android pdf+ reader).

I spend a lot of time reading pdfs on my phone, this has done an excellent job. Well featured, responsive, and seems respectful of the battery.

Ads or payment if you buy from the playstore, but free on F-droid and source code is here.

MusicBrainz Picard: superb mp3 tagger with online metadata lookup feature and audio track fingerprinting

Vassal - an open-source (LGPL-2.1) boardgame engine. basically, people build different modules for each game they want to play, then they can play that game over the internet or solo. Mostly focused on "chit-and-hex" style wargames.

• https://vassalengine.org/
• https://github.com/vassalengine/vassal

and lastly, Tor Browser: anonymous web browser to evade state censorship and surveillance

Tox is easy-to-use software that connects you with friends and family without anyone else listening in. While other big-name services require you to pay for features, Tox is completely free and comes without advertising. Chat, P2P serverless, screen/file sharing, voice, video, groups, encrypted.

https://tox.chat/

https://github.com/TokTok/c-toxcore

sgt-puzzles. Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle collection.

Contains a bunch of simple puzzles, of the minesweeper and sudoku style. Loopy is my favorite.

Available for Linux, Windows, MacOS, Android, and anything with a web browser and a mouse. Packaged in Debian and F-droid, and probably many other places.

I like it for time wasting in lines at the DMV, for a low-stakes game when anxious, and for falling asleep.

FanControl: superb PC fan manager with custom temperature/fan speed curves and the options to combine sensors whatever way you like

Learned about the mentos thing in 2006. Saw a list of things to flavor coke. This was #4 on the list and I decided to try it (yay mint coke) - at a dollar tree parking lot, in my car. Went off in my mouth and I maintained the pressure until I got the door open and my head out. Thankfully little mess on me or the car. Learned the internet can be full of sneaky assholes that day.

Logseq: note-taking and knowledge management application that supports Markdown and Org-mode syntax, featuring powerful linking, block-based organization, and full local data storage for privacy

MakeHuman is a 3D character creation software designed to simplify the creation of virtual humans through a graphical user interface. The software allows users to create realistic human characters by adjusting parameters like gender, age, height, weight, and ethnicity through slider controls. Characters can be customized with clothes, hair, poses, and materials from the built-in library and exported to 3D soft, like Blender.

https://static.makehumancommunity.org/makehuman.html

https://github.com/makehumancommunity/makehuman

aria2. From the website:

aria2 is a lightweight multi-protocol & multi-source command-line download utility. It supports HTTP/HTTPS, FTP, SFTP, BitTorrent and Metalink. aria2 can be manipulated via built-in JSON-RPC and XML-RPC interfaces.

Bookwyrm, a book tracker and review sharing plateform that is part of the fediverse allowing you to share your notes and review about books in the threadiverse as well as the twittoverse.

PairDrop like Localsend or Airdrop but working on anything that has an internet connection and a resonably new web Browser! You can share files even when on different networks, by pairing devices. Works like a charm.

krename is another excellent, but not as well known as it should be, KDE app.

krename can rename files and directories, and directories recursively, to almost anything. You can rename:

• using information from the files or about the files (image info, date / time info, etc)
• with templates (like #### for incrementing 0001, 0002, 0003, etc)
• by adding parts of the original file name (first three characters then the last 4 characters, for example)
• using find and replace (spaces to underscore, remove special characters, etc), including regular expressions
• by changing case

or with a mix of everything.

krename has a simple mode and an advanced mode for renaming, so you don't have to jump into the deep end with the features.

You do have to be careful with some of the file info functions - it will happily try to rename a movie or a pdf with (non-existent) image EXIF info, for example. That would result in a file with a name you did not intend.

Mihon Manga reader for android. Allows auto aggregation from web sources to make tracking and reading manga smooth and easy

Portmaster, nowadays mandatory, monitor the traffic of all installed apps and even from the OS itself, blocking with a simple click all unwanted traffic, Inbuild DNS crypt with dynamic filterlists (customizable) blocking ads, trackers and unwanted crap from big companies. Optional SPN service (paid). Windows and Linux.

https://safing.io/

https://github.com/safing/portmaster