FOSS Alternatives
I got into FOSS recently and have been researching replacements for common proprietary software. Along with reddit (r/privacytoolsio) I have used alternativeto.net & privacytools.io. I would love to make a list on Tildes for anyone that is also interested in this stuff.
Telegram -> Signal: signal.org
Discord -> Riot: riot.im (surprised this isn't as popular)
Google -> FindX: findx.com (there are many others but this is my favorite)
.................searX: searx.me
Reddit -> Tildes: tildes.net (obviously)
Chrome -> Firefox: mozilla.org (there are many others but this is my favorite)
LastPass -> Bitwarden: bitwarden.com (my personal favorite but there are others)
Photoshop -> GIMP: gimp.org
FireAlpaca -> Krita: krita.org
Microsoft Office -> LibreOffice: libreoffice.org
Windows Media Player -> VLC: videolan.org (Best FOSS ever)
uTorrent -> qBittorrent: qbittorrent.org
...................Deluge: deluge-torrent.org
Adobe Illustrator -> Inkscape: inkscape.org
Adobe Premiere Pro -> Blender: blender.org (mainly 3d stuff but can be used as animation)
Windows -> Linux: ubuntu.com (ubuntu is just one distro, there are so many)
Adobe Audition -> Audacity: audacityteam.org
..............................Ardour: ardour.org
Github -> Gitlab: gitlab.com
Trello -> Taiga: taiga.io
Fraps -> OBS: obsproject.com
Gmail -> ProtonMail: protonmail.com
Youtube Client -> NewPipe: newpipe.schabi.org
Outlook -> Thunderbird: thunderbird.net
Adblock+ -> uBlock Origin: (you can get it in your browser's addon store)
Unity -> Godot Engine: godotengine.org
USD -> Bitcoin: bitcoin.org (I would suggest an altcoin like Stellar though)
... anything else? any programs you don't know a FOSS alternative to that I can find?
All things 3D creation -> Blender
Blender is the software that does it all really. Incredibly powerful, one of my favourite FOSS projects
I've played with it a bit over the years, and I've been meaning to learn it properly. Definitely a great project with an extraordinary range of capabilities.
On Android I'd definitely recommend NewPipe for YouTube. Lightweight, no ads, gesture controls, background play, picture in picture, video downloading, livestream support, etc.
NewPipe is an amazing piece of software. Another great thing it does that can relate to the whole "FOSS movement", is the ability to cast to Kodi. For someone who is trying to remove Google from their life, Kodi + NewPipe is a great replacement for Chromecast + YouTube. (e.g. Raspberrypi running Kodi hooked up to a TV via HDMI)
What would NewPipe be replacing? I thought it was just a client for youtube.
Presumably the official Youtube app, like how RedReader replaces the official app.
Does NewPipe allow you to login to your Google account to access your subscriptions? I currently use YouTube Vanced but would switch to NewPipe if this isn't a limitation.
You can't login, but there are local subscriptions built into the app. You can import and export subscriptions as well.
If it's possible I haven't found a way to do it. But I use MicroG so maybe it depends on gapps to hook into your Google account.
Android:
I use LineageOS on my android tablet as an alternative operating system.
F-Droid instead of Google Play Store (or Yalp Store if I must get something that is only on the play store).
K-9 Mail
Lightning for web browsing
Windows (i have games that do not run on linux):
I prefer Pale Moon for web browsing since Mozilla has made some design/privacy decisions i can't stand as well as being politically weird lately.
QuiteRSS for RSS news aggregator.
HexChat for IRC.
Deluge for bittorrent.
KeePassX for password management
ZeroBrane Studio for Lua programming.
I'd suggest moving to KeepassXC, as it is actively maintained. It looks as though KeePassX hasn't had a release in 2 years
Thanks! Didn't know about that one. :)
Inkscape is such a good project. It is a must have to create SVGs.
These might not all be completely open source, but here are my additions:
-DuckDuckGo instead of Google search
-Protonmail instead of Gmail
-Deluge instead of Utorrent
It's weird how people still cling to utorrent even after all of the ways it has screwed over its users. Sure, most people use an old version. But why not look up an alternative?
Yup, the tracker I'm on just banned it a few weeks ago.
qbittorrent is the one
Transmission is the classic bittorrent client on Linux. It's extremely powerful and full-featured.
Plex > Emby
Esxi > ProxMox
Windows > linux
Plex is partially opensource (the host), it's only the client side software which is closed source... but Kodi (formerly XBMC) is fully opensource.
I so wish plex was fully open source, then it would be a one-stop shop!
Premiere -> Davinci Resolve
It has an awesome free version. Really amazing for color, NLE is similar to premiere but I honestly like the layout loads better. And they recently released a beta that integrates their node based 3d package, Fusion, as well as updated the audio editing suite, Silverlight, and made it really useable out of box.
That it asks you what you usually use and offers a similar layout is great too. Hardest part about leaving adobe can be learning new interfaces.
Resolve (as well as other Black Magic stuff) is a game changer. So much can be done in that software. It’s about as good as you can get in an all-in-one, particularly for something that you can get without paying money. I feel like the NL editing side will only get more robust. I love what Black Magic has been up to for the last 5+ years with high quality but inexpensive products for media people.
It definitely has some quirks to it, but then so does Adobe. I'm totally new to editing, other than some basic tutorials I did a few years ago. But I've been driving head first into establishing my workflow, and I honestly feel like resolve is better designed around the type of workflow that feels intuitive to me.
When I was getting started, I first tried premiere (coming from familiarity with sound forge/acid/vegas, but also very comfortable in Photoshop). I couldn't stand the default layout, and too many things were squirreled away and hidden. I spent so much time just figuring out why things weren't working only to discover it was because of some obscure option. It seems like the sort of thing that happens with industry standard type stuff when they continuously pile on features without having to consider usability for first time users. Not the most horrible thing in the world by any means, it just makes the learning curve steeper than necessary.
Resolve seems to me to have struck a really nice balance in maintaining legacy systems for long time users (which seems to be mostly color graders), adding in new features, and still keeping the interface incredibly intuitive. As a side note, I absolutely love the default layout for dual screen mode with full screen timeline. Only takes a couple minor tweaks to make it ideal for my workflow.
And their cameras are looking really impressive for the price points! Canon and Sony are going to really have to step up their video in response. But for my purposes, Canon's dpaf is a dream come true. I use an 80d and love most things about it, but Blackmagic's dynamic range in log is looking pretty damn sweet. I don't remember, do they also use a raw codec? I could definitely think of some uses I would have for that, even without any autofocus.
Adblock/Adblock+ -> uBlock Origin
Oh I never knew uBlock Origin was FOSS
Have you tried privacytools.io? Lot’s of alternatives to services.
r/privacy also has an ongoing Google Cleanse megathread for Google alternatives.
Chrome—> Brave Browser, which is technically Chrome, but still FOSS.
Thank you for reminding me! yes I have been there and also have been r/privacytoolsio
Why use Brave over Chromium?
Has anyone had much experience with taiga.io? What are the pros/cons vs other similar offerings such as Trello?
Oh these are the kind of topics that really shows the need for that "bookmark" feature.
Awesome list, thank you!
No problem! and sorry it isn't formatted in a fancy way, I don't know how to do that
I don't think I've heard of Findx yet. How would you rate your experience? It seems like it creates its own index instead of using Google or another search engine? I haven't done much research yet on the types of search engines and how they function and what not, but I'm planning on reading up after this post! I've been using StartPage for a while since it uses Google. It was an easy transition. But I'm always open to switching! I'm ok with a small loss of quality if I'll be supporting a decent FOSS application.
Yes it does create its own index! I have to admit it isn't great because it is such an early stage of development, but I really like how transparent they are and that they don't rely on google or yahoo or bing.
It does look very nice and simple, which I like. I think I might give it a shot.
Is it similar to SearX at all? Do you prefer Findx for any particular reason?
Well I think it also has to do with the fact that the creator is on reddit and replies to most people, kinda like tildes
Discord or teamspeak -> mumble
It's lighter and and has less latency
The less latency thing has largely been debunked, it's only 1ms faster than Discord now. Not to say I don't love Mumble, just Discord has really caught up to it. Mumble uses significantly less RAM though, that's more the angle to go for with it.
Well for me the angle is that it's FOSS :P I'd still use it even if Discord somehow made their electron client more lightweight than it.
Like mentioned in the OP, Matrix is more comparable to Discord IMO. The official client, Riot, looks sort of similar to Discord, and it's getting a redesign very soon which looks much closer to Discord. Matrix is fully federated, and the protocol supports end to end encryption across instances as well as voice over VoIP.
Mumble is quite good, though.
Yes I've heard great things about it.
The UI for bitwarden is more friendly but some say that keepass feels more secure. I personally fell that bitwarden is very secure and I feel happy with it
Go with KeepassXC, as it is actively maintained. Keepass itself has been abandoned AFAIK, and KeepassX hasn't had a release in 2 years. Last KeepassXC release was a couple weeks ago.
Oh, you're right. Keepass2's last release was about a month and a half ago
You were thinking of KeePassX, the GNU/Linux C++ version of KeePass. If you're using ubuntu, I would recommend using their ppa, as the latest version has some nice features like the ability to import csv files.
ungoogled chromium is another nice alternative to chrome, some sites seem to be optimized for chrome over Firefox. Unfortunately you have to jump through some hoops to install extensions.
Brave has also been pleasant on both mobile and desktop for me.
I'm holding out for Brave 1.0, which moves the browser to Chromium instead of Muon, before giving it another shot. I tried it a few months ago and I quite liked the browser, but extensions are a must for me.
Falkon is another neat browser that has the same problem (lack of extensions), but it does have GreaseMonkey built in which helps quite a bit.
Woohoo another riot lover!
Have you seen Riot's redesign? It's a definite improvement.
The reason I put signal is because there are some privacy concerns with wire
I'm sorry I couldn't find what I was talking about but it is still no problem for you to use it :D
Pixelfed is in alpha right now, basically trying its best to act as an open source alternative to Instagram. I would assume they'll be bringing in all the Snapchat-like features of Instagram soon, but I can't confirm that.
Sadly, snapchat is unique in that aspect.
Signal could easily do it with their disappearing messages function. Maybe one day.
I don't know how Snapchat works exactly, but in Signal you can set a timer to 5 seconds if you want and the message will get deleted also on the receiver's phone 5 seconds after they opened it.
That's pretty close to how Snapchat does it, although it also lets you replay sent Snaps a second time.
Snaps sent to your Story can be viewed an infinite amount of times for 24 hours.
Thats what I was thinking
I prefer searx. It is self-hostable, and its main principle is privacy. There's a list of public searx instances here
added!
I switched to Waterfox when Firefox went to Quantum. Quantum's performance is great, but I personally haven't liked the direction that Mozilla is taking Firefox in general for a while; nor some of the newer features like Pocket and the cluttered about:home page. Waterfox is a drop-in replacement for pre-Quantum Firefox, and is compatible with all of the addons that Quantum ended support for.
there's switching.social for a partial list as well, which might interest you. consider making this part of the wiki that's being built?