Gonna go with Firefox as both my most-used piece of open-source software, and the software I see as most important to its ecosystem. If Firefox fails then we’ve just got Chromium-based browsers and, I guess, Safari.
I love and use Bitwarden daily.
Firefox and its derivatives. They’re the last free bastion preventing a Chromium monopoly on the browser market, which is hugely important - especially these days with Google’s push for Mv3.
Signal, Thunderbird and Bitwarden
Firefox. It is the only thing keeping Google from total internet domination
Isn’t most of the Firefox revenue coming from Google ?
What does that have to do with Google’s ability to force their view of the world through the dominance of the browser share market?
Scary to think about. Pretty much down to 3. Chrome, Firefox and safari.
im worried about Mozillas ability to keep growing Firefox. They laid off a lot of their firefox team a few years ago and have been dipping into more commercial interests… we really need Mozilla to be the FOSS counter to big tech.
Ill throw in some obscure ones I use daily.
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StemRoller. It’s an AI-powered toolthat takes an mp3 and separates each instrument into its own file. Im a musician, and having access to stems like this is a game changer.
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Carla is a tool for hosting VST plugins without the need for a full DAW. I primarily use Amp Simulators, and this has become a mandatory tool on any computer I use. It’s also maintained by the creator of KXStudio.
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uBlock Origin, it’s not even close!
the web would be miserable without it.
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My vote was for Godot but this one is a very close second. I even have it installed on my mobile Firefox instance.
Blender by a huge mile. Yes, there’s tons of other software like Linux, of course, but Blender is such a powerful, well managed, economically viable and healthy (community) project that it should be shown as an example of how Open Source should be.
My biggest hurdle with other projects is the fanboys, because many times they’re quite toxic, insulting everybody who doesn’t adore the project and don’t accept constructive criticism.
By a huuuge mile indeed. Blender devs are great at listening and communicating with the community.
The standardization of hotkeys and features across the software is fantastic. The UI is snappy and filled to the brim with intuitive QoL features I wish were standard for my OS.
I have irreconcilable grievances with a lot of open source software, VLC, VSCode, etc, and find development slow and heading non optimal for others like Sharex and Firefox… but Blender, that’s green on all fronts.
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Blender is the model open source project :P
Krita for me!
Honestly, Blender was the first software that really “proved” open source software to me, and I’ve been an open source exclusive user to this day
GNU+Linux
Firefox and Bitwarden
LibreOffice is equal to any office software out there, and has been much more stable than OpenOffice, and works without an internet connection unlike Google Docs.
Linux.
Proxmox, opnsense, fdroid, and many more on r/selfhosted (now on lemmy also) .
sunshine, moonlight ( play my games anywhere in the world, games run on my pc at home)
Firefox (the best browser against google monopoly), thunderbird (best mail client)
LineageOS, microG, Mozilla Location services, Magisk, aurora store (let me use Android without any of google tracking)
Bitwarden, Proton mail/vpn, Nextcloud (finally no gmail tracking)
Jellyfin, kodi (lets me create my own Netflix)
GNU/Linux, GNOME, KDE and host of other Linux projects. No more windows tracking. Also if you want to really know how the OS works, you should start tinkering with Linux. I expanded my knowledge base by just using Linux as daily driver.
The list just goes on and on. I am so grateful for all the open source devs that put their time in developing these tools.
For those wanting to go further, checkout https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted
Firefox lets you use extensions on mobile too
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For degoogling i remove stock os that comes with my Android device. I buy phones which have good support for custom roms (like nothing, oneplus, pixel). You can find the custom roms on xda threads and telegram groups for your device.
After installing the custom rom i root it with magisk and flash minmicrog package which installs microG (oss version of play services) and with it comes mozilla Location services.
uBlock Origin - the chaddest AdBlock of them all!
I’d go with either Firefox or Thunderbird. Both are immensely useful pieces of software that I use on a daily basis, and have evolved (mostly) nicely over time.
Not to give Mozilla too much credit, Nextcloud is also pretty slick!
