Free and/or Open-source Alternatives to many Common Programs

[Dat Guy]

Except for its horrible  bloat.

[Guest]

For those that like a simple/easy to use music player there's a new open source player called dopamine that's pretty nice:

 

http://www.digimezzo.com/software/dopamine/

 

https://github.com/digimezzo/Dopamine

 

Still early in development, but the preview builds already have features like last.fm integration. 

 

really nice looking/clean interface

[PhantomCyborgNinga]

AVG was and is always my free antivirus of choice but when they forced the AVG Zen app into the install it became garbage. For me, after Zen was installed my PC took almost 2 mins to shutdown compared to a few secs before. So I did some searching and its pretty easy to install just the Antivirus without the garbage Zen App. Uninstall all of AVG first if you already got Zen installed. Unfortunately you cannot just remove Zen alone. Then you can find the offline "Antivirus only" installer in one of the AVG support threads regarding this issue. Here's one. Just download that an you're done.

[KCmetro]

On 11/30/2016 at 6:23 AM, PhantomCyborgNinga said:

AVG was and is always my free antivirus of choice but when they forced the AVG Zen app into the install it became garbage. For me, after Zen was installed my PC took almost 2 mins to shutdown compared to a few secs before. So I did some searching and its pretty easy to install just the Antivirus without the garbage Zen App. Uninstall all of AVG first if you already got Zen installed. Unfortunately you cannot just remove Zen alone. Then you can find the offline "Antivirus only" installer in one of the AVG support threads regarding this issue. Here's one. Just download that an you're done.

I gave up on AVG for Avast free av, it doesn't bother me, which is what I want, and it keeps the old computer safe. I'll probably also end up using avast on the new build.

[Guest]

I recently found a nice messaging app i'd lik to share with you, i hated that i couldn't access my various messaging sites in one place.

Its called Franz and it runs on Windows, Linux and Mac. It supports IMs like Slack, Fb messenger, Whatsapp, Telegram, Skype...

[Dedergio]

Thoughts on Speccy https://www.piriform.com/speccy 

and other Piriform Programs 

 

[CmHall9]

On 3/17/2017 at 3:44 AM, Dedergio said:

Thoughts on Speccy https://www.piriform.com/speccy 

and other Piriform Programs 

 

I use Speccy and CCleaner on my PC, and CCleaner on my Android. I've never had a problem and like the clean easy to read GUI on both.

[Mihle]

Davinci Resolve have a free version
Its a video editing software

Fusion 8 is like after effect

[tlink]

https://tox.chat/

Tox is an open source peer to peer anonymity focused chat client that doesn't use central servers and thus can't be raided or hacked. it can run on windows, android, ios, linux, FreeBSD, OSX. you can even run it from a terminal which makes it great for systems that don't use a GUI. it supports chat, file sharing, voice call, video call, screen sharing, contact lists. its not limited to 2 people, group chats support all of those functions too. open source under CC BY-SA 4.0 license.

http://openhardwaremonitor.org/
 

OpenHardwareMonitor is exactly what you would expect, it reads sensor data and makes it easy to read and access. it can place a gadget on your desktop on which you can place any sensor data you want which is pretty usefull. it allows you to rename every component and its sensors. it also allows to display any sensor data on your taskbar in any colour you like. it can host a web server to which it posts the info exactly like in the client so you can access it remotely, port is of course changeable to whatever you want. it doesn't report SMART data but it does report writes to flashcontroller and flash controller writes to NAND and the health of the SSD. i really like it. open source under MPL 2.0 and some other licenses due to library's used etc. (Aga.Controls License, WinRing0 License, jQuery License, Knockout License)

[tlink]

http://dev.deluge-torrent.org/

 

Deluge is an bittorrent client that has quite a lot of functions such as local machine streaming while downloading, webinterface, etc. the client can connect to any host, or start a local host. this makes it easy to run all your torrents from a single machine while still getting easy access to the controls without much of a hassle. i like it more than transmission, its still lightweight but has plugin functionality. stability wise its not the greatest on windows 7, but not as unstable as the windows port of transmission.

[Dat Guy]

^ PicoTorrent is a nice alternative for Windows.

http://www.picotorrent.org/

[MG2R]

AFAIK Plex media server is closed source. Is there an open source alternative?

[MrMarriarty]

kodi?

[Wolf_Lbh]

DaVinci Resolve 14 - I know it has been suggested before but I just got around to testing it and holy crap is it amazing so I had to mention it again. It has every feature I'm looking for in Premiere and it is free, but not only that it also has a professional level audio editor (Fairlight) built into it. When it comes to free video editing this program can't be beat.

LaunchBox - Amazing free frontend, just tell it what platform you are playing (e.g. Gamecube), the folder your roms are in, and it will suggest an emulator (e.g. Dolphin), and add cover art for all your roms and such. This way you can have an entire multiplatform collection displayed and sorted by one program and you can even search for games or have them favorited and just clicking them will launch them with the appropriate emulator. I love it.

qBittorrent - utorrent has some issues and it's been largely phased out by qBittorrent

Foobar - A bit tricky to setup for the casual audience but it is hands down the music player with the best plugins and most customization.

Music Box Alpha - made by the makers of LaunchBox it looks like it will turn out to be a user friendly music player that is compatible with Foobar plugins. It is still under development but when finished it will probably be the best music player.

PotPlayer - vlc player sometimes greys out the video for me but PotPlayer has never once given me any problems. Nothing but flawless playback. And it comes with all the codecs it will need so you don't need to hunt for any bulky codecs packs. Also it has a bunch of awesome features like the ability to completely change the ui and keybind almost any action, as well as just some useful stuff like the option to play the next file in the folder you started playing media in automatically until it cycles through the entire folder.

Emulators - I now consult http://nonmame.retrogames.com/ for all emulator suggestions as they keep up to date with the most accurate emulator programs for each platform. (The short answer is use RetroArch, it probably has a core for whatever system you want to play integrated into it) A few emulators that stand out as being amazing on their own are:
Dolphin - Gamecube & Wii emulator that is phenomenally built.
Demul - dreamcast emulator that can upscale to 4k
Cemu - Wii U emulator that can upscale to 4k (Breath of the Wild looks amazing!)
RPCS3 - Temperamental ps3 emulator that has recently become a lot more stable and can play many of the games if you have a powerful enough computer
Citra - experimental 3ds emulator that is doing really well and can play some games to completion with almost no issues
CXBX - experimental xbox emulator that is working with a test game, hopefully progress will keep on chugging

[bory_gamer]

is there a windows alternative for flash that can run on a machine that doesnt meet its req ,yes its the same operaring system but i need an alternative that can for example play youtbe videos and not as old as shockwave

[Wolf_Lbh]

1 minute ago, bory_gamer said:

is there a windows alternative for flash that can run on a machine that doesnt meet its req ,yes its the same operaring system but i need an alternative that can for example plau youtbe videos and not as old as shockwave

Html5

[bory_gamer]

1 hour ago, Wolf_Lbh said:

Html5

dont think it can play youtube

[Wolf_Lbh]

1 minute ago, bory_gamer said:

dont think it can play youtube

It can
https://www.youtube.com/html5

[Quirley]

Would love to see an alternative to Dreamweaver with multi(!) html-file management, on-page editing, SASS compiler, minifier and FTP upload.

[arximughal]

I am not sure if any one already recommended this or not, but I use alternativeto.net heavily when it comes to find suitable, community recommended OS software. 

P.S. I am not related to the website in any way, just thought it might help

[nua_play_ray]

Excellent list

 

An free alternative to DropBox, Google Drive, OneDrive is ownCloud by https://owncloud.org

Install the owncloud on your server/domain, download the desktop app, and the android app, and keep everything up to date no matter what device you are on.

Upload photos instantly from your phone, manage email, calendars and contacts.  

[jde3]

On 4/19/2018 at 2:51 PM, nua_play_ray said:

Excellent list

 

An free alternative to DropBox, Google Drive, OneDrive is ownCloud by https://owncloud.org

Install the owncloud on your server/domain, download the desktop app, and the android app, and keep everything up to date no matter what device you are on.

Upload photos instantly from your phone, manage email, calendars and contacts.  

Nextcloud is a fork of Owncloud by the original creators. if you like Owncloud try Nextcloud.

(During this fork there was a somewhat cryptic message about Owncloud hurting it's users by the creator and he quit the company he started.)

 

Also people are asking for a VPN but why is nobody recommending OpenVPN? it's fantastic software.

 

Some things to add/change:

1. Emby. A competitor to Plex. It can do pretty much everything Plex can and even supports a large array of playback devices like android, PS/Xbox and Roku. The big difference for Emby is that they do not index your media like Plex does and can be used as a 100% private installation.

2. QT Creator and Gnome Builder. Not sure why these aren't listed for IDE's.

3. Lollypop is a pretty good music player and a upgrade over Banshee.

4. Wavebox (formerly wmail) is a e-mail client for webmail users. (non-free) - (Evolution exists here as well but.. I have a checked past with Evolution)

5. There are lots of mail servers like Squirrel Mail, some are quite impressive and useful for large installations like Zimbra.

6. Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp have unofficial desktop clients for Linux. https://github.com/Enrico204/Whatsapp-Desktop https://messengerfordesktop.com/ Wire has an official one. https://wire.com Corebird is an unofficial Twitter client.

7. Remove TrueCrypt and replace it with VeraCrypt (it's successor, at least mostly.. TrueCrypt is somewhat mysterious software, nobody knows who actually created it, the original developer using an alias told people not to use it anymore.. You might just want to use Luks/Geli)

[Combat_Killer]

Windows Media Player Classic is no longer supported, just thought i would let you all know.

 

WMPC-HC Link to source

[xScratchHackerx]

Doesn't windows already have a zip extractor tho?

[Wolf_Lbh]

1 minute ago, xScratchHackerx said:

Doesn't windows already have a zip extractor tho?

Last I checked it doesn't work on .rar or .7z, just .zip

7zip is an epic program you should take a look at regardless.