And why do you use them?
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Steam probably.
I won’t say it’s “best”, as I just want to run a game without friendlists and other bloat, so I really hate the fact Steam is nessesary for so many games.
But I would call it “essentiall”.
Yup, as time went on, I simply felt less need to have proprietary software on my system. Steam remains as an exception; simply by virtue of having no F(L)OSS alternative (AFAIK).
Steam itself isn’t that special and things like Heroic exist but where Steam wins is the ecosystem. Also Valve sponsor developments of Linux desktop technologies, so even if Steam itself is proprietary, some of the money ends up advancing open source.
Valve has put a lot of work into helping WINE & Linux. Even if it was a selfish play to break free from Microsoft & other app stores to lock those into their marketplace fee, I can’t help but be grateful for the better ecosystem & uptick in users. Since they are privately held too, they aren’t in the same business of chasing quartely profits or making the experience worse & worse by selling your data & slapping ads everywhere.
Although I don’t use them, the Jetbrains products should be near the top of the list.
Was going to say this. Pycharm is probably the only paid software I use. With that being said, students don’t need to pay for it, so I don’t have to worry about that.
DaVinci Resolve is THE video editor on Linux. Unfortunately the libre apps for it don’t get even close, to the point that even with all the limitations in the free and paid versions, it still is the best option.
Also shout out to Bitwig Studio, although I don’t use it.
KDEndlive is pretty solid, imho
It is, but when it comes to more complex needs, it falls short. It is really good for simpler editing needs and it is getting better fast.
If you haven’t done it yet, please consider contributing by writing down what you believe is currently missing, either as your own blogpost or via https://community.kde.org/Kdenlive#Contact
Honestly IMO it’s not even a comparison whatsoever. Kdenlive cannot be used professionally for any real work, it will just crash on you before you even find out it can’t even do what you want. I’ve tried it off and on for many years and it’s always a massive disappointment compared to pro solutions.
In the past 5 years stability has improved significantly, like I haven’t had a crash in the past year of casual use. ymmv but I would recommend it to new users at this point.
I had to switch from kdenlive to DaVinci Resolve recently and it breaks my heart. I’m by no means a professional, but I am a heavy user who is frequently sifting throughout footage. Unfortunately, crashes are still very common for a power user. After encountering a memory corruption bug for the second time that resulted in lost project work (despite saving to disk!!!), I had to switch to something better.
it will just crash on you before you even find out
Older versions may have had issues with that, but I haven’t encountered any crashing in over 2 years. (And I i do 6 youtube videos per month with it)
I just tried to make some subtitles with the most recent version and it still crashes on me.
Still a complete nonstarter for me, sorry
Save often.
I see it has two different products for two different use cases. Kdenlive is for those who missed Windows Movie maker or iMovie. Something to stitch together videos, or split apart videos.
DaVinci Resolve is for those who need stable professional software like adobe.
Not saying that kdenlive can’t be used professionally but I found its stability lacking, its tools unpolished and its functionality limited. The only benefit is that it can handle aac audio, and export it too thanks to ffmpeg.
KDEnLive is a good “editor” for simpler projects, but not a good video editing “suite”. It comes nowhere near Resolve’s color grading ability, or even audio editing ability these days. And it has no compositing ability at all. In fact, except Natron on Linux (that gets updated once every 2-3 years with just bug fixes and not many features), there’s nothing about compositing. Blender’s compositing is unusable btw.
Is it really too hard to import audio tracks after editing in audacity. I’m glad kdenlive doesn’t waste time trying to be an audio editor.
You misunderstand the word “editing” in this case. It’s not a matter of adding a few plugins and cutting audio. It’s a matter of having the tools to normalize human voice in a way that it’s expected in a movie, or to have automation about it, or envelopes that tracks the volume and fixes it for you. That’s the stuff that neither audacity nor kdenlive has, because they’re very specific to the movie industry. They have more generic plugins instead.
Where can I learn more about how human voice is normalized for movies? I’ve noticed a big difference in the audio of old movies and some shows, and modern high-budget movies. But I can never pinpoint the difference
That’s mostly due to the difference in recording equipment rather than editing.
Solid? I’m a casual user for occasionally editing video and it crashes all the time. It’s easily the least stable Linux application I ever use.
I personally use Shotcut but i only do basic editing.
Steam
vibeogames
Reaper. Great usability and decent Linux support out of the box (looking at you, davinci resolve). Generous free trial and a cheap one-time payment for a license. LMMS has served me well and is fine for basic stuff, but reaper is a whole other level, both in features and usability. I’ve heard good things about ardour too but have yet to give it a try.
Reaper is awesome.
Would you mind linking it?
Half-life: Alyx, Baldur’s Gate 3, Elden Ring, … you get the idea. It’s not so much those apps per se, and I’d prefer them to be FLOSS too, rather it’s the amazing content and in such rare cases, I’m happy to financially support the creators.
What aren’t you happy to financially support creators of open source software you like?
My formulation wasn’t clear, I meant to say I’m happy to support creators in general that make quality content, software or not, but I would always prefer to support open source, open hardware, remixable content, etc rather than closed and proprietary alternatives. I listed games as very rare examples where I’m still happy to support them even if I still wish that the software itself would be made open, even if delayed as Quake or Doom for examples have been. Does it make more sense now?
Does it count as paid if I donated what I think is a reasonable price?
Cause then it’s KDE, Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice and Gimp. I’d prefer those programs even if their proprietary counterparts were free.Came here to say this too… I contribute a few €/£/$ per month to various projects…
I won’t get all righteous here, but just because you don’t have to pay, doesn’t mean you to say you can’t support the developer(s)…
I like Sublime Text and Sublime Merge and use both daily.
I would never willingly use proprietary software. I don’t mind paying if I also have access to source code that is licensed foss.
That’s nice. Some of us have work to get done though.
I’d love to see a complete CAD package that feels more in line with Inventor. Ondsel is definitely getting there, but it’s PDM (like git, but for parametric CAD) is still closed source and not self-hostable. Their git repo is also a bit confusing. Apparently part of their patchset on the “flavor” branch they ship isn’t open to the public? Still, nice to see a (partially) FOSS solution.
have you checked out freecad?
for the pricetag ($0) i’m pretty impressed
Use work machines for work. Compartmentalized when you can.
Yes, and what does it change for the purpose of this post? The question wasn’t what’s the best software you use in your leisure time for non-work purposes.
I while I understand the sentiment, I have found that paid software is more polished than foss software… most of the time. And when I need to get work done, I want to ensure that my software is stable and I will pay to do so.
That said, I feel software is like a bell curve, and the older the type of software is, the more it should be FOSS. Like word processors, 3D modelling, or image manipulation should be foss, while video editing and 3D scanning software is OK to be paid.
What I feel everyone should agree with is not being forced to use a subscription service to use the software. I will boycott software if it forces that upon their customers, looking at you Adobe, Autodesk and Microsoft.
I wish that was possible, but it’s not feasible to get a lot done on a 15 year old ThinkPad or whatever, that doesn’t have any proprietary firmware.
You can at least use foss apps and keep the binaries to a minimum
Agree, I just wouldn’t call that “never willingly using proprietary software”.
Pycharm professional and Steam are pretty dope
It’s so odd how proprietary software is frowned upon so much in this community, but no one cares when it comes to gaming.
Even Stallman said games are an unfortunate, but reasonable exception. Of he can see it, anyone can.
It is a bit different. Have you invested thousands of hours developing skills with a piece of productivity software, and locked your data into their proprietary data format? Has that vendor looked at your investment, and found that they have plenty of leverage to turn the screws on you?
With a game, you invest tens of hours developing skills, lock your “master sword” in a proprietary save format, and then you save the princess. After that, you’re done. It is an ephemeral experience, give or take wanting to replay a few really good games. The game vendor doesn’t have that much hold over you, and their grip doesn’t get stronger the more you use it. I can replace your game with hundreds of other games, and I don’t really lose anything by doing so.
I absolutely agree with you, but look at launchers and such. Steam is very much proprietary and commercial. I find it a little odd that those who might do anything to avoid proprietary software, willingly use it for gaming.
Those are just my thoughts.
I have some hobby projects in Python but I’ve never needed the pro features, I do pay for Clion though
I paid for Vuescan. There are a ton of Linux scanning apps, but pretty much all of them require editing all pictures to some extent after the scan. Vuescan applies a useful set of defaults that work for most pictures, speeding up the work flow. I had over 4,000 pictures to scan so anything to simplify that was worth it.
Vuescan is great, and near as I can tell it’s one guy. Totally worth it.
Yeah, I think you’re right. I forgot to add that there’s no mucking about with drivers and all of that, it really just works. Older scanners usually aren’t a problem with Linux, but Vuescan almost certainly supports them as well.
Lightburn for controlling laser engravers.
It’s pretty much the only choice on Linux (though it is cross platform). Free 30 day trial, then ~$80 lifetime licence.
The other choice is LaserGRBL, which is open source, but doesn’t seem to have a Linux port for some reason. And it has a lot fewer features, with a more complex workflow.
Dungeondraft, Wonderdraft, FoundryVTT. Battle map making, world map making, and virtual table top respectively
I know you can’t make battle maps with it but have you hear of azgaar ? It’s an awesome open source world map maping web app !
I’ll check it out, thanks!
Does Unraid count as paid Linux itself, not just a Linux utility?
gitkraken has a lot of features that I never use. But showing the various branches and their connections as a color-coded tree is worth paying money for.