Apparently people still believe that floorp is proprietary. That’s not true, some of it’s components went closed-source for a while to switch licenses. Now it’s back to being open-source
Someone already mentioned Logseq, but I’m really enjoying Obsidian for my note taking needs. It’s similar, but I have found Obsidian to be very nice. Not FOSS, but I really like what the devs are doing.
Yeah I’ve tried One Note, Evernote and notion before coming across Logseq and Obsidian. I’m really enjoying it. I haven’t given Excalidraw much use in obsidian but I may do so in the future.
It’s a game changer for me. Obsidian plugin allows previewing these drawings in notes, and we can also link notes in the drawings. The built in canvas feature is simply bad. All it needs to do is center the text inside boxes. Wish the devs made it open source and this problem could get fixed but apparently they don’t believe in it.
craft and a few others, but I keep coming back to obsidian. Currently self-hosting it using one of the plugins, that helps me easily sync between pc, MacBook, android and iOS.
Nextcloud and Janitor plugin. In my opinion, obsidian sync is not worth it. You have many ways to sync your data across different devices. Even using GitHub or Sorj.
Edit: For my usecase, Janitor plugin works the best. You could try it.
Any flavor of vi, Gnu Screen, lrzsz, bash with the usual cli tools (awk, sed, grep, tail, head, rev, cat, tac, and recently jq and yq). Also openssh client. Some flavor of netcat is also crazy useful too. This is a good home for me to do my thing.
There’s no doubt there are a great variety of Linux packages in use.
Recently I did a CD install of Debian 12 (Bookworm) desktop with Gnome, which loads a bunch of stuff over the Net. Here are extra packages that I installed manually. The first set is used by and with an automated configuration script that I wrote, so they have to come in to begin with.
Title
Description
Purpose
info
Gnu info processor
"Config"
curl
Command line tool for transferring data with URL syntax
"Config"
dbus-x11
Simple interprocess messaging system (X11 deps)
"Config"
emacs
Editor
"Config"
gconf2
GNOME configuration database system (support tools)
“Config"
mc
Midnight Commander - a powerful file manager
"Config"
python3-iniparse
Access and modify configuration data in INI files
"Config"
python-lxml-doc
Python XML documentation
"Config"
python3-lxml
Pythonic binding for the libxml2 and libxslt libraries
"Config"
sakura
Simple but powerful libvte-based terminal emulator
"Config"
Title
Description
Purpose
"apcupsd”
“APC UPS Power Management”
“Monitor”
“artha”
“Handy off-line thesaurus based on WordNet”
“Utils”
“backintime”
“Simple backup/snapshot system”
“Utils”
“brasero”
“CD/DVD burning application for GNOME”
“Utils”
“bwm-ng”
“Small and simple console-based bandwidth monitor”
“Monitor”
“ccze”
“Robust, modular log coloriser”
“Utils”
“certbot”
"Automatically configure HTTPS using Let’s Encrypt "
“Utils”
“claws-mail-dillo-viewer”
“HTML viewer plugin for Claws Mail using Dillo”
“Mail”
“claws-mail-feeds-reader”
“Feeds (RSS/atom) reader plugin for claws mail”
“Mail”
“claws-mail-plugins”
“Claws mail”
“Mail”
“claws-mail-spam-report”
“Spam reporting plugin for claws mail”
“Mail”
“cmake”
“Cross-platform, open-source make system”
“Retroshare”
“conky-all”
“Highly configurable system monitor”
“Monitor”
“copyq”
“Advanced clipboard manager with editing and scripting features”
“Utils”
“cups”
"Common UNIX Printing System™ - PPD/driver support, web interface "
“Utils”
“dcraw”
“Decode raw digital camera images”
“Photo”
“devilspie”
“Automatically resize windows”
“Utils”
“dict”
“Dictionary client/server and a selection of dictionaries, too”
“Utils”
“dictd”
“Dictionary server”
“Utils”
“diction”
“Utilities to help with style and diction”
“Utils”
"exiv2"
“EXIF/IPTC photo metadata manipulation tool”
“Photo”
“festival”
“General multi-lingual speech synthesis system”
“Utils”
“ftp”
“Classical file transfer client”
“Utils”
“gedit”
“Popular text editor for the GNOME desktop environment”
“Editor”
“gimp”
“GNU Image Manipulation Program”
“Photo”
“git”
“Fast, scalable, distributed revision control system”
“Utils”
“gnome-audio”
“Audio files for GNOME”
“Utils”
“gnome-extra-icons”
“Optional gnome icons”
“Utils”
“gnucash”
“Personal bookkeeping and finance”
“App”
“golang”
“Go programming language compiler”
“yamn”
“hplip”
“HP Linux Printing and Imaging System (HPLIP)”
“Utils”
“hplip-gui”
“HP Linux Printing and Imaging - GUI utilities (Qt-based)”
“Graphical frontend for Scanner Access Now Easy (SANE)”
“Photo”
“zbar-tools”
“Bar Code Scanner and Decoder”
“Photo”
“zip”
“Archiver for .zip files”
“Utils”
Here are third-party packages I admire. These are not available in Debian repositories although some provide Debian-compatible repositories of their own.
Tor Browser Bundle: Anonymizing Network Browser
This is available from dist.torproject.org/torbrowser/ as a tarball. This should be unpacked and the whole tor-browser_en-US directory moved to the ~user folder. This is so that the browser can auto-update at user authority as the need arises.
RetroShare: Secure Communications with Friends
This has its own Debian-compatible repository.
metar: A Package to Parse METAR Coded Weather Reports
weeWX: Open source software for backyard weather stations.
From weewx.com/docs/debian.htm. Although a Debian package exists, doing any development practically requires that all the code be in user-space, so don’t install the package. Download it instead.
OpenBSD user, in no particular order, definitely missing some stuff: pdksh (OpenBSD) or oksh (Linux/MacOS), su, unix/posix utils (man (most important), find (second most important), apropos, awk, grep, df, du, dd, ed, etc), mg, openssh, got, heirloom-doctools/troff, bc-gh (bc calculator with a bunch of extensions), xclip, xdotool, xeyes (very important), yt-dlp (youtube-dl seems dead these days), some C compiler (clang/gcc), httpd, opensmtp, ffmpeg, libressl/openssl, pf, tmux (I prefer to use my window manager, but if I’m in tty or need to retain a shell session, tmux is useful), ping, ifconfig, traceroute, netstat, nc/netcat, unwind (or other dns server like unbound)
LibreWolf as my browser (it’s a more secure and private version of Firefox, comes with a pre-installed adblocker and removes all the unnecessary junk) (Flatpak) with some of the following extensions:
Server-Status (GitHub) shows information about a web server like country/region (via local GeoIP database lookup), SSL certificate information and more. Good open source alternative to Flagfox.
Ptyxis (Flatpak) as my terminal. It’s optimized for containers (e.g. distrobox). foot is a pretty good alternative if you want something more minimalistic and don’t care about containers. There are countless other good options like Kitty, Alacritty, Konsole, WezTerm and many others.
Bitwarden for syncing my password database with my self-hosted Vaultwarden server (also works with their public cloud syncing option). Use KeePassXC if you prefer something entirely local.
LocalSend for sharing files on the local network (basically works like AirDrop) (also works over NetBird or Tailscale btw)
NetBird for creating a flat VPN network between my devices
KDE Connect for better integration with my phone. Also works over NetBird btw. Check out GSConnect if you’re on GNOME.
KRunner for quickly finding files or applications (Ulauncher for other desktops, rofi for window managers)
Brilliant list! Starred this to go through it in detail later.
EDIT: A good deal of overlap with me on the type of applications I already use, so looking forward to discovering other hidden gems I haven’t yet found.
I also like lutris. But it being “for games” doesn’t do it justice I think. It is basically just a wine environment manager. It advertises as being for games but it should work with just about any windows executable.
Cherrytree; nominally for making hierarchical lists but you can basically use it as a wiki for your entire life. You can theme it yourself too, if you think it looks too retro out of the box.
Syncthing, for keeping files synced between devices without having to use a server.
Qbittorrent, for getting files you need. Remember to install search plugins.
KeepassXC. Password manager (local, not on a server, use in combination with Syncthing).
Convertall, for unit conversions.
Calibre, for managing an ebook library, converting formats, removing DRM, transferring to ereader etc.
Rhythmbox, for music library, podcasts, internet radio.
Shotwell, for photo and video library. Easy to use, supports tags (metadata written to image files).
GIMP, for image manipulation. It’s extremely versatile, comprehensive and versatile. 3.0 is due out soon and will include non-destructive layer effects. Heavyweight piece of software, so expect a learning curve.
Ardour, for music production. Heavyweight, steep learning curve.
Flowblade for video production. Lightweight, easy to learn.
Libreoffice, desktop publishing.
Librewolf; privacy-focussed web browser.
Thunderbird; highly organisable email client.
Freetube, for watching youtube videos without all the ads and tracking. Local subscriptions and playlists, which you can export to use with Newpipe on Android. Also lets you download video and audio.
If you like the terminal also add:
ranger; file manager
newsboat; RSS feed reader
yt-dl; download videos from youtube and many other sites ;)
w3m; command line web browser. I like to use this in combination with newsboat.
Yes, I’ve tried pretty much everything. Strawberry is pretty good but it doesn’t have a grid view for albums, it also shows the contents in a way that is not very intuitive imo (I want albums in publication order with original release date). I sincerely expect something new from the next Amarok in terms of intuitiveness of use, I hope the good man who is bringing it back wants to innovate something in this sense.
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