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!

  • Crozekiel
    link
    fedilink
    331 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

  • @thru_dangers_untold@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    25
    edit-2
    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
    • KDE 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
    link
    fedilink
    23
    edit-2
    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

  • @GreenMario@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    21
    edit-2
    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
      link
      fedilink
      51 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++

      • Cass.Forest
        link
        fedilink
        61 year ago

        Vs code

        I would actually recommend VSCodium; it’s the same product but without the Microsoft telemetry.

      • @GreenMario@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        11 year ago

        Yeah VS Code definitely if ya doing programming. I’m just editing config/ini files once in a while so N++ is just right for me.

    • @hogofwar@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      41 year ago

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

      • jjakc
        link
        fedilink
        English
        21 year ago

        I just use Powershell, much easier imo

  • Otter
    link
    fedilink
    English
    191 year ago

    Some of these are cross platform but:

    7zip

    Autohotkey

    Bitwarden

    Calibre

    Draw.io

    Handbrake

    Speedcrunch

    WinHTTrack

    WinSCP

    • Virual
      link
      fedilink
      English
      6
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      I prefer nanazip to 7zip because it’s just forked 7zip that’s been updated for modern windows. They’re working on a dark mode too.

  • @vim_b@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    17
    edit-2
    1 year ago

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

    • AnonStoleMyPants
      link
      fedilink
      51 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.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      31 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).

      • @Redo11@szmer.info
        link
        fedilink
        11 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
          link
          fedilink
          1
          edit-2
          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
            link
            fedilink
            11 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.

      • 520
        link
        fedilink
        11 year ago

        dd works very well if it’s a Linux ISO and you’re using the USB solely as a livecd.

        It can also byte-clone discs and partitions, including ripping CDs and DVDs.

  • thejevans
    link
    fedilink
    111 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

    • @VelociCatTurd@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      71 year ago

      In my experience, windirstat is inferior to other similar software. It’s mostly fine but it can be very, very slow to get you results. Though honestly I don’t know if the alternatives like space sniffer or Wiztree are open source.

      • thejevans
        link
        fedilink
        31 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/

  • @albert@lemmy.sysctl.io
    link
    fedilink
    English
    101 year ago

    For package management I’ve been really liking scoop.sh

    Not everything in there is FOSS but scoop itself is! And you can install neovim, vscodium, bitwarden, Firefox, etc very easily.

      • @meiko60
        link
        English
        41 year ago

        it doesn’t trigger UAC because the installation directory is different

        • @albert@lemmy.sysctl.io
          link
          fedilink
          English
          21 year ago

          Some items trigger UAC (installing tailscale, for example)

          I love that everying lives in ~/scoop. It’s well organized and somewhat portable (until you import the nonportable bucket)

    • @zeemyst@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      31 year ago

      One great thing about scoop is that downgrading an app is very easy. You can also manage multiple versions of a runtime, for example, you can install multiple Node.js versions and switch between them with scoop reset command.

    • @Xirup@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
      link
      fedilink
      1
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      It definitely looks like the first program that should be installed when doing a clean install of Windows!

      I recently found out about winget, how is winget different from scoop? Apart from of course, the number of packages and that anyone can contribute to it.

      • @ebits21@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        3
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Winget is from Microsoft for one (and already installed with Windows). It basically just downloads the regular windows installer and installs it like usual without the need to click user feedback prompts. Scoop is more of a package manager.

        With winget, one nice thing is you can even update packages not installed with winget originally. You can see which apps on your computer have updates available with a single command.

        It’s great when you’re updating someone else’s computer they haven’t updated random things in years (typical windows users).

        Scoop essentially uses portable apps and everything is in your scoop folder which is great.

        I use both. Scoop first and winget for everything else. I use winget to update Libreoffice on all our work computers (because the devs won’t work on auto updates).

      • @albert@lemmy.sysctl.io
        link
        fedilink
        English
        11 year ago

        I felt like winget was too limited. When I last used it it didn’t support installing multiple apps at the same time. scoop feels much more like traditional *nix package management to me, which I like.

  • @d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz
    link
    fedilink
    101 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
      link
      fedilink
      21 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
      link
      fedilink
      11 year ago

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

      • @d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz
        link
        fedilink
        31 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.

  • @Nioxic@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    9
    edit-2
    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

  • Captain Beyond
    link
    fedilink
    81 year ago

    Mostly same list as for GNU/Linux:

    • Kate editor (Notepad++ and VSCodium are good here too)
    • KeePassXC or KeePass 2 password manager
    • Firefox or firefox derivative
    • Unison file synchronizer
    • Dolphin or Explorer++ file manager
    • VLC for audio/video
    • 7zip file (un)archiver
    • Chocolatey package manager (would like to try alternatives)
    • Dizzy Devil Ducky
      link
      fedilink
      English
      21 year ago

      Hearing and finding out Dolphin is available for windows is great. Totally downloading it to replace file explorer as we speak.

      • Captain Beyond
        link
        fedilink
        11 year ago

        Just started trying out Scoop recently and I’m finding it fits my taste more than chocolatey so far. I appreciate the fact that it keeps apps isolated in a standard user directory, doesn’t require admin, and uses plain git repos with json manifests instead of whatever chocolatey uses. In some ways it’s similar to some things guix does, although obviously they are extremely different in concept.

  • @AccurstDemon@sopuli.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    8
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    FreeFileSync a FOSS backup and folder synchronizer, a must have.

    FreeFileSync is a folder comparison and synchronization software that creates and manages backup copies of all your important files. Instead of copying every file every time, FreeFileSync determines the differences between a source and a target folder and transfers only the minimum amount of data needed. FreeFileSync is Open Source software, available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

    • Nix
      link
      fedilink
      English
      21 year ago

      Is this different than syncthing in an important ways?

      • @AccurstDemon@sopuli.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        4
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Yes, Syncthing needs 2 diferents devices to sync, FreeFileSync syncronize whatever you want within 1 device, for example between 2 Disks or from a network disk to your computer disk.

        Syncthing works great if there are 2 devices turned on and connected to a LAN or Internet, and FreeFileSync is totally disconected from the internet and only needs 1 device on (the one that execute it)

        I use both, Syncthing to autosync all my devices and FreeFileSync to backup all those files to various disconected hard drives

        • Nix
          link
          fedilink
          English
          11 year ago

          Oh nice thats really useful ill try it thanks