this post was submitted on 30 May 2024
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Trying to discover new/unheard Linux desktop programs (Sorry for the confusion).

Edit: I apologise for confusing a lot of people. I meant Linux desktop “programs” coming from Windows/Mac. I'm used to calling them “apps”.

Edit: 🙌 I’m overwhelmed with the great “programs” people have recommended in the comment section. Thank you guys.

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[–] [email protected] 54 points 6 months ago (10 children)

Logseq.

What is Logseq?
It's a non-linear note taking app that allows smart linking and is made as a second brain.

It makes use of the Zettelkasten system, where, in theory, you make notes of everything and categorize it. Over time, you offload your brain and make it free for more productive stuff.

Logseq is often considered as a FOSS alternative to Obsidian.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I tried it and really wanted to like it, but the Android client's UI is just unusable for me. as much as I prefer going FOSS whenever I can, I tried Obsidian and stuck with it. it's electron on desktop and definitely not native UI on mobile, but feels much more polished.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (5 children)

I was never able to fully get into Logseq, might give it another try at some point.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Have you tried QOwnNotes? I think it's pretty good

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Do you feel like offloading stuff into your notes helps your cognition?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (4 children)

Yeah, definitely, especially at work.
It really helped me to switch off my "work brain", because I know, that everything I did today is written down, and I don't have to keep things in my mind anymore after work. Doing that was a blessing for my stress level and mental health.

It also gives me the edge above my colleagues that I "remember" everything I did in the last months, which is nice when my boss wants to know details of a project I did a year ago.

I basically can't even remember what I did 5 minutes ago (ADHD says hello), but I know exactly where I can find that knowledge. This frees up my working memory (psychological term, not related to work) immensely. It's basically like transfering more tasks onto your hard drive instead of keeping it in the RAM.

It's also great to give me an graphical overview of all I think and work on all day, and unveals connections I never thought of between different topics.

For private use, it's also great as a journal, though I gave up on that because I'm too busy for it and it cost too much time in my everyday life. But I still use it daily for normal note taking, e.g. results of some experiments at home, hobbies, thoughts, and much more.

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 6 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (6 children)

If you like gaming:

For the CLI:

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (5 children)

Because you asked about "apps", people are replying with mobile apps. I think you wanted to write "programs" considering the community. Maybe you should edit this

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago (1 children)

True but isn’t it safe to assume the OP meant desktop (considering the community)? There aren’t that many people using Linux phones.

I suppose since more than one response is related to mobile apps, it’s not a safe assumption that the OP intended for desktop apps/programs.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Considering the community, that's what should happen. However sometimes people don't realize which community they are in and they just look at the title. If the first person who replied started with mobile apps, others possibly didn't notice because of them and continued adding up.

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 6 months ago (5 children)

I don't know about you specifically, but I'm surprised how many people haven't heard of Krita, a FOSS image editing app with an optional AI Image Generation plugin.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Huh, didn't know Krita had a plugin for that. Is it for Stable Diffusion?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago

It uses Stable Diffusion, yes (specifically comfy UI for the backend), but it has a much better in app UI that any stable diffusion web UI I've tried.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

EDIT: realized this was for desktop, so removed the original list of mostly android apps. Here's my go to desktop apps:

Lollypop - music player
Invoiceninja - open source invoicing service
Meld - file/folder comparison
Librewolf - hardened Firefox
Joplin - notes
QEMU/Virt-Manager - virtualization for that one windows app you still need
KeepassXC - password management
Element-desktop - Matrix client
Gparted - no fuss partition management
Lutris - game launcher that works with epic games (among many others)
PDFarranger - best PDF management I've found on Linux Soundconverter - easy to use file converter
Restic - backups
Fdupes - duplicate file finder
Freetube - privacy respecting YouTube client
Paperless-ngx - very well built electronic document storage. Must be run as a server.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (10 children)
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[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 months ago (4 children)

Linux, system:

  • KDE Plasma (Dolphin, Kate, Kfind, Merkuro, shell, Spectacle)
  • Librewolf / hardened Firefox (system app because of user namespaces, which Flatpaks cant create)

Linux, Flatpak:

  • syncthingy
  • thunderbird
  • libreoffice
  • KDE: Okular, Gwenview, maybe soon digiKam
  • Qt: qBittorrent, Keepassxc
  • GNOME/Circle: Celluloid, PDF Arranger, Carburetor, Decoder, G4music, Railway, SimpleScan (or Skanlite), Impression, GIMP
  • GTK: localsend, GPU Screen recorder
  • Electron: Freetube, Signal, Cryptomator, Nextcloud
  • Podman: StirlingPDF

Android:

  • Fossify Gallery, Calendar
  • Material Files
  • Markor
  • Antennapod
  • Florisboard (or maybe Futo, but I dont need the fancy stuff yet)
  • Shelter
  • localsend
  • Obtainium
  • dict.cc
  • Grayjay
  • k9mail
  • soundbound (spotify), seal (ytdl)
  • öffi, kleine Wettervorschau
  • SaveTo...
  • mjpdf
[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago (4 children)
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[–] [email protected] 19 points 6 months ago (5 children)

Syncthing and KeepassXC for syncing 2FA between devices. (I use Bitwarden for passwords)

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (9 children)

Emacs.

Emacs is an app platform in and of itself, and the vanilla installation comes with dozens of its own apps pre-installed. Like how web apps are all programmed in JavaScript, Emacs apps are all programmed in Lisp. All Emacs apps are scriptable and composable in Lisp. Unlike on the web, Emacs encourages you to script your apps to automate things yourself.

Emacs apps are all text based, so they all work equally well in both the GUI and the terminal.

Emacs comes with the following apps pre-installed:

  • a text editor for both prose and computer code
  • note taking and organizer called Org-mode (sort of like Obsidian, or Logseq)
  • a file browser and batch file renamer called Dired
  • a CLI console and terminal emulator
  • a terminal multiplexer (sort-of like "Tmux")
  • a process manager (sort-of like "Htop")
  • a simple HTML-only web browser
  • man-page and info page browser
  • a wrapper around the Grep and Find CLI tools
  • a wrapper around SSH called "Tramp"
  • e-mail client
  • IRC client
  • revion control system, including a Git porcelain called "Magit"
  • a "diff" tool
  • ASCII art drawing program
  • keystroke recorder and playback

Some apps that I install into Emacs include:

  • "Mastodon.el" Mastodon client
  • "Elfeed" RSS feed reader
  • "consult" app launcher (sort-of like "Dmenu")
[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I'll stick with nano over Esc+Meta+Alt+Ctrl+Shift, thanks. I mean, it's an interesting operating system, but too bad its default text editor sucks.

(This from someone who used to use "pull the power plug to exit" vim...)

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

Was gonna recommend Emacs, myself, but looks like you got it covered! Emacs is an amazing tool and is worth the journey

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 6 months ago

Analogous to the Krita post, I am surprised nobody seems to know KolourPaint. It's similar to MS paint. I use it, when I need to make a quick sketch, whiteboard style, e.g. when sharing my screen with a coworker.

Otherwise, I really must have Dolphin and Okular.

I love dolphin's split mode (quickly toggled with F3) and its ability to seamlessly navigate all kinds of protocols for my NAS, webdav for nextcloud storage, MTP for the phone...

Okular has annotations which have been super useful to me. And it's so easy to switch between viewing single page, two-page and multi-page. Which is great for skimming text documents and presentations. The auto reload ability is great when iterating on a document (e.g. latex doc or matplotlib chart).

Otherwise, of course firefox and thunderbird, not much to say here Please don't use chrome. It's market share makes Google the de-facto owner of www technology. But I guess I'd be preaching to the choir here.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago (6 children)

I use CoreCtrl to fix my GPU's atrocious fan curve, which is a necessity since normally it overheats to high hell. With CoreCtrl, I have a nice fan curve that makes my GPU rarely, if ever, run hotter than 70°C.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Thrown away your current ssh client and get

https://xpipe.io/

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago (5 children)
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[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

edir to mass-rename

fd is more convenient than find

aria2 makes downloads go brr with parameters -x 10 -k 5M and is integrated with multiple tools like yt-tlp, yay

Oh, and pass for password-management

ssu makes root console tools password-less. That and rdo for gui-tools (both a bit over 100 loc) made me uninstall sudo.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago (1 children)

An web browser. 99 percent of my mobile activities are done in Firefox. I have Organic Maps for routing, a local mobile payment app and a local sharing electric sooter app.

This is pretty much all apps I use.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I think that the question is primarily about Desktop Apps, since this is the Linux community.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago

Syncthing, micro, fish, btop, podman

I distro hop so these are usually the first that get installed.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (4 children)

I mostly use terminal unironically. Duf (to check system storage) Youtube-tui (written in rust tui for youtube) Btop (for system management) Iftop (see where my pc is calling to) Tuptime (has full system uptime from install to now. It just for fun to see how long my system has been alive)

Ive also gotten into atuin to find command i used and cant remember the command.

Also obligatory Megalist of terminal apps

https://sh.itjust.works/post/11871260

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (2 children)

A good kit IMO, in order of priority:

  • 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.

Enjoy!

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (1 children)

oxipng, pngquant and svgcleaner for optimizing images

auto-editor for removing silent portions from video recordings

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

BleachBit is a must have and PhotoGIMP is pretty neat.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (5 children)

The first things I install on a fresh linux install are always htop (task manager) and micro (nano but better).

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Have you looked at btop by chance? More visually appealing to me,, but still in terminal.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

KDE Itinerary. To keep all your travel (rail tickets, hotel reservations...) documents and Infos in one place.

Tokodon/Tuba a great mastodon client for KDE and GNOME respectively

Lollypop a beautiful and useful Mediaplayer and Jukebox for GNOME.

Geary a great mail client by the same developer as Lollypop, also for GNOME.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (4 children)

I use XSane and TheGimp to scan and edit my paintings, Firefox with privacy extensions to browse, VLC to play videos, Gnome Mahjongg to waste time playing. I used to use Resolve to edit videos, I'll soon start using Kdenlive. As a visual artist I have a thing for film emulation that Kdenlive can't do, but it's something I'll have to leave behind.

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