Over 20 years, easy. I started my PC life as a Mac user, switched to Windows for gaming, then switched to Linux for freedom. VLC has followed me the whole way and been a must-install since the first time I used it.
Steam? Though I'm not sure I'm loving it... 22 years now... But it worked back then, it still works now, and it hasn't lost itself to enshitification. It even followed me to linux.
The enshittification of Steam would really sting and significantly harm PC gaming as a whole.
As GabeN ages, I really worry about the day when he finally hands control of that company over, because as soon as ROI becomes their primary objective, it’s game over.
Prioritizing the experience and quality of the platform over profit maximization has actually earned them more money in the long run as they’ve slowly snowballed over all their competitors. I really hope the new stewards understand this and genuinely love gaming as a whole as it seems a lot of decision-makers at Valve currently do.
Your comment made me realize that when steam finally does succumb to enshittification. All the other pc gaming launchers are going to blame us pc gamers for supporting steam all these years and not using their shitty ass products. Hopefully it’s no time soon
For some 20 years VLC has been installed on my computers though streaming has made it less used than before.
Steam: not been enshittified yet. Also one of the great forces behind Linux gaming being more mainstream.
Does the Linux kernel count? It's been 12 years since I tilted at a faulty network driver on windows 7 and just uninstalled it and did not look back. There has been many different distributions since (now I use arch btw) but the kernel is the same.
Vi/Vim. Is it intuitive? No. Is it user friendly? Heck no! What it is is everywhere. $20 Chinese travel routers? Yup. Wireless access points? It's there. If it has a shell you can log into, it almost certainly has it.
You're thinking like a developer. "I can just add or remove this or that." I have to think like an IT guy. I'm working on dozens or hundreds of machines that are not mine and that I can't change. So I need to get comfy with the tools that are most likely to be there by default.
Thanks. Been trying to retire my age old PS6 portable app for ages, and want to move to Linux full time, but keep having to go back. GIMP has always been so frustrating to use. I install it, then run away after trying and struggling to do basic stuff.
It‘s like photoshop pre-subscription. Just the menus and keyboard shortcuts are a little different. It‘s all I‘ve used for years now, I wouldn‘t know what to do with any other program.
Don't worry. They stopped unless you have an order for 200,000 units. My GeForce 1650 has gotten me through some tough years. I sure hope I have the opportunity to affordably upgrade next decade.
Unless you're trying for the AAA "BESTEST GRAPHICS EBAR!" you don't need a super powerful video card anymore. There's many games, much better too, that don't require that much hardware to run.
Big true. I'm obviously not doing any raytracing but it still ran Cyberpunk. And it DLSS is turning out to be bunk but AMD's FRS algorithm helps with a lot of stuff
Yeah so many production companies are trying to incentivize you to buy shit.
Unless they're using Unreal Engine 5, them they just have no idea wtf they're doing and you'll have to read online how to edit the options ini to make it run
We don't need raytracing, fake frames, top tier graphics that'll look obsolete. TF2 is still going strong and it sure as heck isn't a graphical powerhouse. In fact one of the reasons it's so popular is it'll run on essentially a toaster of a computer.
Arch is often pictured as some Uber hacker magic which it isn't. It is a useful collection of software packages with great documentation.
Arch is for example useful if you want to program with new Rust versions, tools like jujutsu, cross-compile for your Sailfish phone, and so on.
(By the way, Guix features now a recent Rust/cargo version, too!)
And both Debian and Arch have advantages / disadvantages, so both are useful for different tasks. Learning Arch is really not a big step or costs much time if you know the foundations of Linux.
+1 on the great documentation! Have I ever used Arch? No, and there are enough distros out there that I'm not sure I ever will. But have I ever referenced Arch's wiki? Yes, often, and plan to continue to do so. <3 to the Arch Wiki authors!
Vector is amazing for things that potentially need to be resized. I do a lot of scale drawings for work, and I never know if it’s going to be printed on something as small as letter size paper, or blown all the way up to something like a plotter blueprint size print. And working in vector means the gigantic plotter print isn’t blurry, because the drawing isn’t comprised of individual pixels that blur when you zoom them in or out.
It also means I can get extremely fine detail on something that may normally only be tiny on a page. For instance, maybe I have a 50’x50’ room, and I have a small 4 inch object to place in it. On the regular letter paper size, that will basically just be a dot. But I can zoom waaaay in for a detailed image of that object if needed.
Foobar2000 for me for audio! Handles hundreds of thousands of songs on a standard USB HDD over the network incredibly fast, plays every audio file, best tag editing features I’ve ever seen, full conversion from lossless to other formats, a hella minimal interface dark before they was a common thing, and a tiny footprint.
Yeah I've heard that too, I'd just rather not have to deal with wine for something as basic as a media player. Especially when it's supposed to be as simple and lightweight as foobar
Sumatra PDF Reader is no-frills and distraction free. Even on my ancient PC, it's fast as heck. I have rather rudely installed it on other people's PCs, because their slow all-singing all-dancing PDF readers drove me up the wall.
RawTherapee converts "RAW" files from digital cameras to friendlier image formats, and pretty often RawTherapee's edit is all I need. It's feature packed, it can do film simulations, image de-noising, tone-mapping, and now it has the ability to do some local adjustments, too. I have several "RAW" converters, including a commercial one, but I keep coming back to RawTherapee as the mainstay, the most productive for me.
I've got foobar2000 set up as a pretty plain-looking, non-distracting music player. It's got great library features, it has a wildly customizable interface, it's got a plugin architecture to extend its abilities in many ways. It has stayed on my PC for years because of its quiet competence, always serving without demanding my time or attention.
I used to keep my password file and other confidential stuff inside a TrueCrypt virtual volume. Now I use the successor, VeraCrypt. Both have always worked flawlessly; in fact, TrueCrypt is way smaller and I'm not aware of any security issues with it, it's just not actively developed anymore.
Ah, another Sumatra user! I also used RawTherapee during my student years. I'll keep in mind your other two suggestions, you sound like a reasonable person
Debian-flavored Linux - My only complaints are hardware compatibility-related, and that is primarily because Nvidia and Intel both suck Microsoft's floppy disk.
Krita, Gimp, Blender - Never needed another art program. Adobe can eat my paintbrush.
LibreOffice - I would literally have this over MSOffice any and every day of the week.
VLC - It just frickin' works. And it's good at its job. It plays anything!
Love the motto. I did look around a bit and it seems that the was some controversy a few years ago with them. Some headlines suggesting development finished. Are you just using a couple of years old build and it's not breaking, or are there actual updates still?
Just an old version. It doesn't auto update and I think the only versions actively developed today are the iOS and Android apps. Not even sure where you download the desktop version on their website since it's vastly different now.
WACUP is an updated version of WinAMP 5.666 or smth, for m$win ofc. Alternatively and systems other than m$win there's audacious which is a fork of XMMS/BMP and can be built with either GTK+2 or Qt5.
WinAMP 2.95 was the best version but it doesn't support FLAC..
Most people have their favorite old version of Winamp that they run.
I used Winamp for a very long time myself, but ended up giving it up when I gave up Windows. (yes, I know you can run it under Wine, but I also have Qmmp now)
Right, yeah, i cant run it then either. I just assumed it would have a linux build. I wouldn't really want to use it with wine, I prefer native programs
Firefox (now using Waterfox), I started using when it was still Mosaic and no idea it would one day become Mozilla Firefox..
LibreOffice.
In a couple years, maybe three, I'll be on Mint for 10 years and, yep, I do like it. And I certainly love many GNU apps that came with my distro: they're lightweight, focused and so incredibly useful <3
I used to love Mac OS (previous to Linux, since the early 80s I had been an Apple user) and many small third party apps. But I moved away from Apple and have no desire to go back.
Firefox was never mosaic. It is the successor of Netscape Navigator, kind of, they're not the same project and there was no continuity but Mozilla was created by Netscape. Microsoft licensed Mosaic to create Internet Explorer based on it.
And even that was a fractured history. The Netscape to Mozilla release was heavily influenced by Netscape being bought by AOL followed by the Netscape team dumping a non functional browser (they ripped out a ton of code they didn't own) on the open source world. People had to basically patch the stubs until it built and then rebuild from there. By the end, Mozilla barely resembled Netscape, but it did get the community finally building a serious open source option.
Plex+Sonarr+Radarr. Netflix raising subscription rates again? Yarrr, not my concern. Studios locking away their content behind exclusivity agreements? Yarrr. "This program is not available in your country"? YARRR!
Yup. Got my lifetime PlexPass on sale like a decade ago, and it has easily paid for itself a hundred times over. I also run Jellyfin because I prefer the UI, but the security vulnerabilities (and lack of a native TV app on my mother-in-law’s TV) mean it isn’t really suitable for external access. So it’s Plex for the friends and family, and Jellyfin for me. Luckily, they both happily run side-by-side.
But also MATE and Pulseaudio (yes). I really like paprefs, pasystray, and how easy it is to send audio over the network. To the point where I reinstall Pulseaudio instead of Pipewire, because Pipewire requires long command lines for what was easily done in a few clicks with Pulseaudio.
I dread the day where I will be forced to "progress" to Pipewire and lose that easy feature.
The year was 2010, and the iPhone was not yet available where I lived. I could have bought one, and I could have activated service with it, but I would never be able to use it at home or anywhere around home. So it would have been pointless. I wanted one. Android was cool, but it wasn't really what I wanted. Wife needed a new phone, and our carrier had a deal. Two Android phones for $100, and each came with a $20 Android Market (what Google Play Store was called then) gift card. So yeah, we took that deal. The phones were ass, but I was able to put CyanogenMod (now called Lineage) on them and make them a little better.
We wanted a grocery app, and we discovered an app called OurGroceries. Free with ads, or $5 to remove the little banner at the bottom. Even without paying, it offered synced grocery lists and even Web access. As in, my wife is at the store and I'm on the computer, I just hit the bookmark and add something to the list, she sees it in a second or two (provided she has signal or WiFi). We both paid. The app was useful and it was nice.
When I got an iPhone, I immediately paid the $5 again. They since changed it to where only ONE person on the sync account needs to pay. That is to say, if you and five family members all download it, all six of you get ads. But if ONE person connected to the sync account pays, the paid status syncs and nobody has ads. That said, I'm not mad because $10 of the $15 I've paid wasn't even mine to start with, it was on a gift card. It's been 16 years, and we still use it.
Is it the best grocery app? I think it still ranks highly. Personally I think the one in Paprika is a little better. Our first requirement is that it must support iPhone, Android (my wife still uses Android), and computer. Paprika checks those boxes — so does Google Keep, which is another good option (that is also free!). Apple has shopping list support in Notes, and our computers are Macs, so that works, but Apple Notes doesn't really work on Android. It actually does, I think, through the browser (since my wife has an Apple account, on the Mac and on her iPad), but it's not as robust if you actually have an iPhone. Any note taking app should work, but the sync won't be there.
So if you don't want to pay, Google Keep should be your first stop. If you don't like Google for privacy or whatever reason, you'll probably have to pay. OurGroceries is either a single developer or a small team, and they're independent, and deserve at least the $5 they're asking for a whole family to use their app indefinitely (as long as they keep the server up — I hope, should they ever decide to take their server down, they allow a self-hosted option). If you want more features, Paprika is definitely a solid choice, but you'll want to wait for a sale. Normally it's like $10 on phones and $20 on computers or something. But it's actually not a shopping list app. It's a recipe manager that has a shopping list and a pantry inventory. And a couple other things. (OurGroceries also has a recipe manager, but it's not great, it's really just another kind of shopping list that can be copied into an actual shopping list — you can have multiple.)
I like OurGroceries, but they want almost $20 to remove ads these days. Or an ongoing subscription, which... yeah, no. That is too much for a glorified checklist.
This is the answer. You can play back the track on headphone and record another track on top. It even adjusts the input delay by pinging the mic through the headphones. Nifty stuff. Great for laying out ideas. Not professional by any means.
Probably USB. Since phones have a USB input, they can take things like USB mic interfaces. Get a 4-input interface, and there ya go.
Depending on the app’s permissions, it may even be able to take inputs from other apps, like Discord for call audio, or whatever app you’re streaming your music on.
Damn Small Media Player. Loads instantly. Plays mp3s. Takes up 850 KB on my hard drive and ~15 MB RAM while playing a song in a large playlist. Now that's what I call software.
10 years ago it was scarcely believable that a FOSS package for such a niche purpose could be so fucking good. And it got better in the meantime. If Blender had existed when I was a kid I would have probably spent every waking hour creating stuff with it. As an adult, I get limited time to do that, but I appreciate that it exists.
Of course!!!!!!! Back in the 90s, under DOS, we had something called Norton Utilities, there was some disk explorer and things like this, and a utility called Norton Commander, nc.exe, the double panel, blue on blue, easy to copy, move, explore zip as folder, etc. I used it a lot in the DOS day.
Then Microsoft Windows 3 came and a guy (iirc a Switzerland guy named Ghisler, I know it because when I want to go it, I go to ghisler.ch) wrote a NC clone in Delphi and named it Windows Commander, with the same double panel and shortcut and all, F5, F6, F7, Ctrl-U, etc. He ported it to W95 then NT then then then and at one time Microsoft told him to rename it, so it became Total Commander.
So I used NC in DOS for maybe 7 or 8 years and I'm using it in Windows for more than 30 years. I almost don't know how to use the Windows Explorer to copy/move/explore archive etc, After 30 years of using a utility to navigate your HDD and manipulate files, it is a second nature.
PS: yes I have a license since early 2000.
PPS: Double Commander in Linux is almost a 100% clone.
I've used ls, cat, echo, cd, mkdir, mv, cp, rm, & ssh pretty much every day I've touched a computer since some time near the end of the twentieth century. Honorable mention to sudo, find, rename, ffmpeg, Gimp, & VLC. If you count ROMs for games, the list gets into the deeper past, though I don't use them as often. I guess I still need to get around a few Windows/DOS machines, so DIR and (I don't love DIR) CD are is probably the absolute oldest when at the keyboard, but it's technically a different thing for different systems even though it does the same task.
As for loving it, I love when shit just works and I love the command line.
Oh, good to know! I def don't use it every day, but I did use it for something yesterday. I've been using it since before Windows had zip handling integrated with Explorer; I still like having the extra options it gives me.
Greenshot, although MS snipping tool has a cool OCR that can grab text from screenshots which is really cool so I use both at work.
7zip, VLC, MS PowerToys, KeepassX, Firefox, been using those for a long time now.
Ah, OneNote, been using that for work since I was in University, around 2005ish. Unfortunately they stopped development on the old version, made a shit mobile version which also seems to have stalled, so not sure if it's going to get any future updates. But it's still good. If people have good alternatives please let me know.
I also recommend QOwnNotes in addition, mostly because it's lightweight. I found that if you wouldwant to do handwriting, xournal++ or Rnote works well. Rnote has an upper hand because it has an infinite canvas feature, kind of like onenote
Kodi/XBMC - a little over 20 years ago I jailbroke my old X-Box gen 1 and after about a week I installed XBMC (X-Box Media Center), which was about 2 years old. I just was looking for a way to save space because I could fit a whole season of a show as AVIs on a single burned DVD and XBMC could be used to play it. 20 years and a name change later it’s still my TV front end. I’ve moved from a jailbroke X-Box to a Linux based media center PC but I still automatically boot to Kodi which plays anything I throw at it, keeps track of all the shows and movies I’ve watched, is front end for playing retro games and spawns Steam if I needed all off MCE remote and a Xbox controller to game with.
Krita (a digital painting and Photoshop alternative). I've been enjoying using it for probably 10 years now, and it's only continued to steadily improve. Fantastic program.
Switched to being a full-time Linux user around 2005, still love it ...
Used AwesomeWM for a long time but a few years ago I switched to an even more minimalist WM a friend of mine is developing ... still love it despite some bugs ...
Tried a variety of IDEs but always ended up with Emacs ...
And, last but not least, I've been developing my own software for music composition and performance for more than 10 years now, and use it every day ... can't say it's the same because it always changes, but I use it practically every day :)
mIRC (or for you guys, any IRC client). Not as vibrent as in the old days and some missing functions in comparison to modern clients such as Discord and many more.
XNview. This was a screen capture & basic editing tool I started using in like the Windows95 era. Yes, the latest couple of version of Windows also do this, but I've got the hotkeys memorized at this point.
I reckon I should point out that I'm transitioning to Linux, so I rarely use it anymore. But we had a helluva run together.
Im coming up on 15 years of being a Linux user. From playing around/tinkering to leading to my first Job to now working as a Linux Sysadmin for a couple of years.
When I was a helpdesk monkey, I was the only one who knew linux, so I was, by all accounts, the linux sys admin. None of the other IT monkeys had any idea how to even use linux, let alone admin a linux server. I felt great knowing i had skills no one else had lol
Definitely MediaMonkey, though I’ve had it for 16 years instead of 10 after paying $40 for a lifetime license. The license format changed once and I’ve misplaced my key a couple of times, but their support has always been great at getting me back on track.
I can’t use a Mac without it. Just read the website, it does damn near everything, and just as good as Apple would in most cases.
But if I had to describe it (poorly) it remaps gestures on nearly any input device, including the stream deck and many Logitech devices (MxMaster!). The custom gesture support is linear, meaning that the animations track with your fingers/input rather than just pop onto place (like how you can “peek” into Mission Control” and the old launchpad with trackpad gestures).
Age of Empires 1 is old enough, but does one "use" it?
It's got a unique co-op feature where you actally control the same people and can divide tasks (not like other RTS where you can play in a team but still need to do everything yourself, with any resource sharing being a manual (or even taxed) action in a menu somewhere), so my gf and I are sticking with this game. I think it's the only game we've been playing consistently for our 10 years together. Crap, did I say playing? I meant using! It's a relationship tool. Try it today! xD
I don't think any software I regularly used has changed since 2016( lemmy being an obvious exception. Rip reddit). Maybe home assistant. Not sure when that started. Most used: Obviously gnu+Linux+gnome. Gimp, beersmith, sabnzdb, deluge, plex. Vscode, Firefox. I'm sure many others
OpenLDAP. Have been running that as the backend of several of my services since 2015.
I use it for authentication/authorization, either directly or via Authelia, as well as the backend storage for my DNS, DHCP, Kerberos, email servers, and a few internal / self-built applications. I even registered an official IANA PEN so my custom LDAP schema are properly implemented. It's setup with a 4-way multi-master replication strategy and highly available via two load balancers in different data centers (plus one locally).
Runner up is Nginx as I've been running it for just as long or a bit longer, and it also underpins most of my services in some way (at least as the frontend proxy/WAF).
The switch from Premiere Pro to Davinci Resolve was happiness every step of the way. Current workplace uses premiere pro… it’s like a time capsule. Barely any changes in 7 years and still subscription.
I know it's a Google product! But I've been using the android Gboard keyboard on my phone for about as long as android phones have been a thing. The slide typing has always been great. I've tried many other keyboards because, y'know, Google, but I've not found any as good.
Yep, my final straw was when they added an ad that couldn't be removed that blocked 1/3 of your board. It could be "minimized", but it still blocked a portion of the board.
Oof, that's rough. Guess I didn't miss out when we stopped using it back in the day. Although...at that shop, we switched to Jira. What a mess.
At the time, I really appreciated the simplicity of Trello. Nothing else I've used has come close. Working as a programmer, I really just want a simple system.
I still love Illustrator and Fusion360. I've been using AI since 1995! When F360 came out solidworks was at its lowest for reliability and I was constantly losing work. They cost money but the revenue both provide me makes those costs a rounding error at most.
Tweakybeat for the iPhone. One of the first music apps to come out on iOS. I bought it before I had an iPhone - to play with on the test phones at work.
It’s a monophonic sequencer with a single noise source which can be tweaked to make drums, beeps, swoops and gurgles. Such fun and always go back to it for a quick bleep session ever so often
Sublime Text. Used it to write web a year or two before VS Code was released (2015). I never started with VS Code because of that and still use Sublime Text for anything that does not require an IDE.
The only issues I've had with LW so far has been how aggressively it blocks things for privacy. I had to change some of the default settings to let me access some sites even though that reduces the amount of privacy.
What kinds of issues did you have, and what's better about waterfox? I may need to check it out.
I have actually. Mineclonia too. it's what I go to now instead of MC (for singleplayer at least). it is quite amazing to me how seemingly complex features are quickly added.
If you tried 10 years ago it's like a completely different app now. Comparable to Blender was clunky to use until suddenly it's everyone's favorite. I think QGIS is moving in that direction.
these days i mostly run freebsd and linux instead of windows, so xnview mp is the only one that works. i still have xnview classic on my windows machine, iirc it was kinda faster or smth..
I'm using it through Freetube app. I has in built subscribe lists and I can save videos to a watch later list or other playlists. I have a ancient laptop that I'm using, youtube in a web browser is sloooooow and awful. Youtube in Freetube is fast and easy, because it doesn't do all that tracking and whatever else bullshit.
I have tried many YouTube apps too. I have used these previously: LibreTube, ReVanced YouTube, NewPipe, PipePipe, Tubular, GrayJay. But I just liked to use YouTube in-browser most. It's what I'm most comfortable with and it's less addicting this way for me.
Yeah I wouldn't have any problems with using it in the browser, if it didn't slow my shitty laptop to a crawl. Freetube lets me use it while watching/listening to a video. The privacy etc stuff is just a bonus on top
Yup I use revanced on the mobile, though I fear they will go tits up soon, with all the infighting and drama amongst them. Luckily the people who left revanced team are continuing the work under a different name, that I have already forgotten but shouldn't be too hard to find.
I use Freetube on the laptop only. Freetube also has built in sponsorblock, remove shorts, adblock and all that good stuff.
I have tried ReVanced. As far as I know, it's the best mod of YouTube. If you wanna use YouTube in an app with account and if you also want Dislike count then this is the one to use.
But I prefer using YouTube in-browser and without any accounts, so ReVanced YouTube is not for me but still good choice.
Blender. It's been almost 20 years now since I started working with it, and the time I spent learning it was worth every minute. It is an incredibly powerful tool.
Papyrus on my android.
It's not even in the playstore anymore, but i keep -and backup- apk's.
It's just the simplest notes app, without any markup. It saves as simple text files.
I just open it, jot something down, and leave it. Saves automatically.
It might be way more than 10 years even, 15 plus years?
I have a Andoku, a sodoku game that was open source and had the perfect setup options for selecting and placing numbers.
It got sold, and new devs immediately added ads and broke everything. I think it's some sodoku 3 with subscription options now. Been running it since probably 2013ish.
My SO and I play as a team across dinning tables in restraunts while we wait for waiters or food or whatever.
There are plenty of answers in this thread that lists applications that have kept being updated over the years, which I don't know if it is a valid answer, it depends on the definition of the question, and how you interpret the software of Theseus.
I am going to be semi pedantic, no binary updates but config updates and compabillity layers are ok.
I still play Unreal Tournament 2004, I have three copies, one on CD, one on Steam and one on GOG, it is an awesome game, that even has an official native Linux version with an installer on the CD.
It is fantastically fun, well balanced and just amazing.
You have to edit the config files to support modern resolutions, and make it connect to the community master server, but that is a one time change and then you can just start blasting.
Zero-k, the successor to the Total Annihilation game from 1998.
I used emacs today, in bash, with a host of other commands like xargs and sort. None of it was fucking Systemd related, like systemctl, nor raging because network manager took a nap on my server, so it was a great day.
It's been a while since I've used TrueCrypt because I switched over to Linux and used Luks. But I thought everyone had moved to Vera Crypt. Is that no longer the case? Just curious, Since I haven't read much about that world for many years.
Other than pc games of that vintage I don’t think there is a single piece of software I enjoy using these days, they all hog all the ram and fill your screen with login prompts and popups about how useless AI features can further ruin your day.
XnView MP - cross-platform image viewer and organizer that I love for it batch convert tool. Besides many work tasks that required simple leveling or watermarking automation, I used it to make my couple of underpowered and lowres e-ink books show me manga in the best possible way. I chained up grayscale, rotation to portrait if landscape, posterisation, cutting white borders and resizing the result to the book's screen, the entire Gutz or Berserk or Uzumaki processed in one go and saved to another folder keeping the structure intact. This way I sprinted through so many works I probably outdid my real wage in the month I started, calculating the price of each tome in Eastern Europe.
TotalCMD - Win darling that I rarely ever use now, but it's the first thing I think of (and miss on Linux) when I need batch renaming of files. Find&replace, adding counting numbers, using regular expressions (while looking them up each time, lol). It says a lot when I come to task and think of it in a logic that this exact tool allowed me to use.
AIMP - surprise-surprise, another batch editing tool that primarily a music player, and also Win only. It is the slickest way I found to mass convert files to other formar via a context menu item, and it also provides a tool to mass edit metadata of music files, with a pretty flexible data rearranging patterns, e.g. I could fill a blank metadata table sourcing from it's name deftones_-_shove-it.mp3 and other kinds of manipulation.
I just really like that some programs provide nice GUIs for reliable automatisation of repetitive tasks, that you don't need to write macros over programs instead. The closest I felt like that from a corporate software is MS Office Word's Find&Replace in older editions, where you could use regexp, target specific styles and tags, etc, but it still felt too limiting and dumbed down, so for some context aware replacement tasks I wrote macros and was scaredly considering going to either edit their lunatic XMLs on the code level or learning the hell of VBA scripting if I'd have time and zero self-respect. The two only persons I know who wrote some VBAs in my circle actively encouraged me not to 🤪
I moved to linux but if there are any folks still foolish enough to be on windows then portable apps is huge. Get a new machine and just move the folder over and your good to go. I really with either appman could get a gui going like it or a gui project for appimages would use appman as a repo base.
Sketch, a Mac UI design app similar to Adobe XD and Figma, but you own the fucking app and can keep using a 10 year old license if you don’t need major version updates like me.
Well till my Windows 10 machine died, it was Reason. Reason is an all in one DAW. Program, record, mix and master with super tactile graphics and an intuitive layout. Been two years without. I miss it.
I've been meaning to ask, what complaints do you have with open source DAWs? I know a lot of VST plugins just refuse to work in other programs, but what specifically do you miss the most?
The Reason workflow was special. It was just like working with hardware. When my windows machine croaked and I moved full time to my Linux laptop, I installed a few things, but Linux was not talking to my ancient audio input interface. Little surprise there, I had been running it with a windows 7 legacy driver. I have not bought a new one yet. That's it. Had enough going on to not get back to messing with it. I don't actually have an opinion on any of what I have installed.
Easy - VLC
Over 20 years, easy. I started my PC life as a Mac user, switched to Windows for gaming, then switched to Linux for freedom. VLC has followed me the whole way and been a must-install since the first time I used it.
mpv is superior imo, especially on Linux.
VLC for me too. What a great program it is, never a single problem.
Steam? Though I'm not sure I'm loving it... 22 years now... But it worked back then, it still works now, and it hasn't lost itself to enshitification. It even followed me to linux.
I'm loving their commitment to Proton, making gaming on Linux better than ever.
Latest reports have linux up to 5%, almost double from 6 months ago
The enshittification of Steam would really sting and significantly harm PC gaming as a whole.
As GabeN ages, I really worry about the day when he finally hands control of that company over, because as soon as ROI becomes their primary objective, it’s game over.
Prioritizing the experience and quality of the platform over profit maximization has actually earned them more money in the long run as they’ve slowly snowballed over all their competitors. I really hope the new stewards understand this and genuinely love gaming as a whole as it seems a lot of decision-makers at Valve currently do.
Your comment made me realize that when steam finally does succumb to enshittification. All the other pc gaming launchers are going to blame us pc gamers for supporting steam all these years and not using their shitty ass products. Hopefully it’s no time soon
If I had a gripe to share it'd be (the gambling) and Community features feeling stuck in 2008.
I’m happy with keepass, but I’ve always been curious about pass.
Does the browser extension work well? Is there a good solution for using it on android?
VLC
7-Zip
Steam
FireFox
Everything else deteriorates beyond recognition over time.
VLC...
Legen (wait for it)..... dary.
For some 20 years VLC has been installed on my computers though streaming has made it less used than before.
Steam: not been enshittified yet. Also one of the great forces behind Linux gaming being more mainstream.
Does the Linux kernel count? It's been 12 years since I tilted at a faulty network driver on windows 7 and just uninstalled it and did not look back. There has been many different distributions since (now I use arch btw) but the kernel is the same.
Vi/Vim. Is it intuitive? No. Is it user friendly? Heck no! What it is is everywhere. $20 Chinese travel routers? Yup. Wireless access points? It's there. If it has a shell you can log into, it almost certainly has it.
Isn't vi designed to be navigate with a keyboard that looked like this? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/KB_Terminal_ADM3A.svg
Arrow keys were on HJKL.
vi is bloat. What's wrong with using cat and echo?
vi is bloat. Back in my day we used ed. And we were happy with it.
Ed, man!
Cat and echo are bloat. What's wrong with programming the microchips each time you want to change a byte?
You're thinking like a developer. "I can just add or remove this or that." I have to think like an IT guy. I'm working on dozens or hundreds of machines that are not mine and that I can't change. So I need to get comfy with the tools that are most likely to be there by default.
It's a joke. I'm also an IT guy, so I'm comfortable with vi.
Although I use nano at home so I don't have to think.
Ah ok. whoosh I guess. I’m used to hearing “just write the drivers yourself” and the like.
I just use nano, but I'm not a developer or anything
VLC maybe 20 years. How long has it even been around?
GIMP 10+ years for sure.
Winamp. It really whips the llama’s ass. (Edit fixed)
*whips
What was before? Wipes? 😄
Gimp. You're a much better person than me. I always found the gimp learning curve way too steep for me
check out photogimp
Thanks. Been trying to retire my age old PS6 portable app for ages, and want to move to Linux full time, but keep having to go back. GIMP has always been so frustrating to use. I install it, then run away after trying and struggling to do basic stuff.
Maybe Photogimp will get me there?
Thanks, again i couldnt quick click with gimp, this looks nice. Have you tried any indesign alternatives?
It‘s like photoshop pre-subscription. Just the menus and keyboard shortcuts are a little different. It‘s all I‘ve used for years now, I wouldn‘t know what to do with any other program.
I'm still using a (legitimate) copy of Photoshop CS6, and that couldn't be further from the truth
I have no fucking clue why this thing is still running. Why do we even make new gpus?
Don't worry. They stopped unless you have an order for 200,000 units. My GeForce 1650 has gotten me through some tough years. I sure hope I have the opportunity to affordably upgrade next decade.
Hey if the bubble pops all the ai datacenters sure have some nice goodies to sell
many of them lack a display output port sadly..
And even the ones that have one don't have a gaming driver
i guess that's a non-issue with linux, especially seeing stuff like bc250 lately..
hopefully we get some cheap gpus later that can be used with workarounds like outputting to other gpu!
Unless you're trying for the AAA "BESTEST GRAPHICS EBAR!" you don't need a super powerful video card anymore. There's many games, much better too, that don't require that much hardware to run.
Big true. I'm obviously not doing any raytracing but it still ran Cyberpunk. And it DLSS is turning out to be bunk but AMD's FRS algorithm helps with a lot of stuff
I have an 8th gen intel CPU, many modern games are saying not good enough. It powers through them just fine on slightly lower graphics settings.
Yeah so many production companies are trying to incentivize you to buy shit.
Unless they're using Unreal Engine 5, them they just have no idea wtf they're doing and you'll have to read online how to edit the options ini to make it run
my 2080 (that I think is 5 years old??) is just smashing all the steam games I can throw at it.
We don't need raytracing, fake frames, top tier graphics that'll look obsolete. TF2 is still going strong and it sure as heck isn't a graphical powerhouse. In fact one of the reasons it's so popular is it'll run on essentially a toaster of a computer.
Many. The oldest and most popular ones are maybe
vi
bash
putty
Firefox
Notepad++
Irfanview
Vlc
OBS
IrfanView, haven't heard that one mentioned for a long time.
It is very fast, eats all formats including RAW, can delete without stupid questions, and I use the "batch rename" a lot.
Have yet to find a replacement on Linux...
Really? I always considered irfanview to be tolerable if I had to use windows but nothing special, and the licensing has issues.
It's still the VLC of image viewers on Windows, in that it opens any format.
Kinda sucks for editing, though.
For simple batch edits, resizing or conversion it's amazing tho.
I still haven't found out how to crop with it, tho.
>= 33 years
>= 32 years
>= 28 years
>= 26 years
>= 20 years
>= 17 years
>= 15 years
>= 11 years
what I use now and will very, very likely still use in 10 years
The most complex way to say “I use arch btw” I’ve ever seen
Arch is often pictured as some Uber hacker magic which it isn't. It is a useful collection of software packages with great documentation.
Arch is for example useful if you want to program with new Rust versions, tools like jujutsu, cross-compile for your Sailfish phone, and so on.
(By the way, Guix features now a recent Rust/cargo version, too!)
And both Debian and Arch have advantages / disadvantages, so both are useful for different tasks. Learning Arch is really not a big step or costs much time if you know the foundations of Linux.
+1 on the great documentation! Have I ever used Arch? No, and there are enough distros out there that I'm not sure I ever will. But have I ever referenced Arch's wiki? Yes, often, and plan to continue to do so. <3 to the Arch Wiki authors!
First person I've heard from that loves LaTeX
LaTeX is by far easier to use than "word processors" if you want consistent formatting.
Yeah, if you're writing up papers LaTeX is excellent. I've done some LaTeX myself but I'm very happy not having to write any papers today.
I use it for letters too. It is a breeze to use.
Is it stupid to say Linux
No it isn't.
arch btw
Got 'em (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞
InkScape.
I don't fully know why but vector graphics just work for me in a way that pixel graphics don't. I love fiddling with vectors.
Absolutely. Nothing scales better 😃
Vector is amazing for things that potentially need to be resized. I do a lot of scale drawings for work, and I never know if it’s going to be printed on something as small as letter size paper, or blown all the way up to something like a plotter blueprint size print. And working in vector means the gigantic plotter print isn’t blurry, because the drawing isn’t comprised of individual pixels that blur when you zoom them in or out.
It also means I can get extremely fine detail on something that may normally only be tiny on a page. For instance, maybe I have a 50’x50’ room, and I have a small 4 inch object to place in it. On the regular letter paper size, that will basically just be a dot. But I can zoom waaaay in for a detailed image of that object if needed.
VLC for video MediaMonkey for audio
Neither have ever failed me unless the files themselves have errors, then that's beyond their control
Foobar2000 for me for audio! Handles hundreds of thousands of songs on a standard USB HDD over the network incredibly fast, plays every audio file, best tag editing features I’ve ever seen, full conversion from lossless to other formats, a hella minimal interface dark before they was a common thing, and a tiny footprint.
Incredible piece of software. I love it so much.
I wish it was on Linux
Same! Anyone have reccos for Linux players that are like Foobar2000? It FEELS like a piece of software that should be on Linux hahaha
Edit: I’m reading it works great with Wine, but I’ve never used that before as I’m new to “as primary OS, non-CLI Linux” so I’ll try that later!
Yeah I've heard that too, I'd just rather not have to deal with wine for something as basic as a media player. Especially when it's supposed to be as simple and lightweight as foobar
Only ten years?
KDE, better then ever.
Sumatra PDF Reader is no-frills and distraction free. Even on my ancient PC, it's fast as heck. I have rather rudely installed it on other people's PCs, because their slow all-singing all-dancing PDF readers drove me up the wall.
RawTherapee converts "RAW" files from digital cameras to friendlier image formats, and pretty often RawTherapee's edit is all I need. It's feature packed, it can do film simulations, image de-noising, tone-mapping, and now it has the ability to do some local adjustments, too. I have several "RAW" converters, including a commercial one, but I keep coming back to RawTherapee as the mainstay, the most productive for me.
I've got foobar2000 set up as a pretty plain-looking, non-distracting music player. It's got great library features, it has a wildly customizable interface, it's got a plugin architecture to extend its abilities in many ways. It has stayed on my PC for years because of its quiet competence, always serving without demanding my time or attention.
I used to keep my password file and other confidential stuff inside a TrueCrypt virtual volume. Now I use the successor, VeraCrypt. Both have always worked flawlessly; in fact, TrueCrypt is way smaller and I'm not aware of any security issues with it, it's just not actively developed anymore.
Ah, another Sumatra user! I also used RawTherapee during my student years. I'll keep in mind your other two suggestions, you sound like a reasonable person
Foobar, my love. No other audio player comes close. It’s so minimal and so powerful and fast.
Last i heard, truecrypt had some SERIOUS vulnerabilities. stick with veracrypt.
VLC
VLC used to be the bomb, but lack of recent development forced me to switch to MPC
Age of Empires 2, my true love xoxoxo
D'ya watch Wololo last weekend? What a tournament!
Though as good as the aoe2 tourney was, I think aoe4 had them beat this time. So exciting and tense, completely unlike the previous aoe4 Wololo.
I didn't know it was on unfortunately. I must admit I find the level those folks play at absolutely astounding though, and a little depressing lol.
vim mutt tmux curl bash ksh WindowMaker Firefox OpenBSD Debian Krita Inkscape ffmpeg VLC git
You're a braver person than I.
aerc is a very nice, a little less fiddly modern alternative for me nowadays
Yeah, that's what I use, too, after years on Alpine.
Linux, Firefox, Thunderbird, vi/vim, VLC, Mutt (only occasionally), Irssi
Linux.
Darkstone (1999) - Good game for a Diablo clone.
Debian-flavored Linux - My only complaints are hardware compatibility-related, and that is primarily because Nvidia and Intel both suck Microsoft's floppy disk.
Krita, Gimp, Blender - Never needed another art program. Adobe can eat my paintbrush.
LibreOffice - I would literally have this over MSOffice any and every day of the week.
VLC - It just frickin' works. And it's good at its job. It plays anything!
Well I haven't been using Newpipe for ten years... Maybe Skyrim...no, I haven't played that in years... Well it seems my list is gonna be short:
VLC
GIMP
7zip
KiCAD for 10 years now. Leaps and bounds better than then!
Steam 15 years or so
VLC since windows XP
Firefox since then also
Arduino for quick things for 12 years about
Discord since 2016 (and now looking to change)
SSH.
WinRAR. And I paid for it.
the only reason to use winrar as far as im aware is ignorance
why are you using it
let him enjoy his WinRAR. after all, he is the one who paid for it.
VLC, notepad++
Not quite 10 years but will be by 2029:
Steam
Firefox
VLC
Winamp
Notepad++
I thought Winamp was no more? Used to love it way back.
It literally never went away. People just don't usually listen to files on their own device anymore. But it's been whipping llama ass this whole time.
Love the motto. I did look around a bit and it seems that the was some controversy a few years ago with them. Some headlines suggesting development finished. Are you just using a couple of years old build and it's not breaking, or are there actual updates still?
Just an old version. It doesn't auto update and I think the only versions actively developed today are the iOS and Android apps. Not even sure where you download the desktop version on their website since it's vastly different now.
fwiw I use Audacious which has Winamp skin support, so looks the same.
WACUP is an updated version of WinAMP 5.666 or smth, for m$win ofc. Alternatively and systems other than m$win there's audacious which is a fork of XMMS/BMP and can be built with either GTK+2 or Qt5.
WinAMP 2.95 was the best version but it doesn't support FLAC..
Most people have their favorite old version of Winamp that they run.
I used Winamp for a very long time myself, but ended up giving it up when I gave up Windows. (yes, I know you can run it under Wine, but I also have Qmmp now)
Right, yeah, i cant run it then either. I just assumed it would have a linux build. I wouldn't really want to use it with wine, I prefer native programs
7-Zip, Steam, Firefox
Firefox was never mosaic. It is the successor of Netscape Navigator, kind of, they're not the same project and there was no continuity but Mozilla was created by Netscape. Microsoft licensed Mosaic to create Internet Explorer based on it.
And Netscape was created by?
.
And even that was a fractured history. The Netscape to Mozilla release was heavily influenced by Netscape being bought by AOL followed by the Netscape team dumping a non functional browser (they ripped out a ton of code they didn't own) on the open source world. People had to basically patch the stubs until it built and then rebuild from there. By the end, Mozilla barely resembled Netscape, but it did get the community finally building a serious open source option.
Browser of Theseus
By the Netscape Communication Corporation.
This sent me down a little rabbit hole, lol.
January '93 - NCSA Mosaic released.
April '94 - Mosaic corp founded.
October '94 - Netscape browser released.
November '94 - Mosaic corp renamed Netscape corp
June '97 - Netscape Communicator released.
September '02 - Phoenix released
May '03 - Phoenix renamed to Firebird
February '04 - Firebird renamed to Firefox
I couldn't find any indication that there was any code in common between NCSA Mosaic, Netscape, and/or Phoenix.
Plex+Sonarr+Radarr. Netflix raising subscription rates again? Yarrr, not my concern. Studios locking away their content behind exclusivity agreements? Yarrr. "This program is not available in your country"? YARRR!
Yup. Got my lifetime PlexPass on sale like a decade ago, and it has easily paid for itself a hundred times over. I also run Jellyfin because I prefer the UI, but the security vulnerabilities (and lack of a native TV app on my mother-in-law’s TV) mean it isn’t really suitable for external access. So it’s Plex for the friends and family, and Jellyfin for me. Luckily, they both happily run side-by-side.
Linux, vim, zfs
Skyrim, firefox, blender, libre office, heroes of might and magic 3
Firefox (including recent forks) Antennapod Linux Cyanogen mod / LineageOS Thunderbird K9 Mail GIMP Inkscape Steam DOTA2 (bots only) apt Debian
Probably many more...
SSH in first place. No explanation needed.
But also MATE and Pulseaudio (yes). I really like paprefs, pasystray, and how easy it is to send audio over the network. To the point where I reinstall Pulseaudio instead of Pipewire, because Pipewire requires long command lines for what was easily done in a few clicks with Pulseaudio.
I dread the day where I will be forced to "progress" to Pipewire and lose that easy feature.
AntennaPod on my android. An open source podcast player with no ads that has all the features I need to enjoy podcasts.
Add gpodder for sync and perfection!
podcast addict is my podcast app of choice. it really has been over a decade. damn.
also this bubble shooter game called bubble wars.
OurGroceries.
The year was 2010, and the iPhone was not yet available where I lived. I could have bought one, and I could have activated service with it, but I would never be able to use it at home or anywhere around home. So it would have been pointless. I wanted one. Android was cool, but it wasn't really what I wanted. Wife needed a new phone, and our carrier had a deal. Two Android phones for $100, and each came with a $20 Android Market (what Google Play Store was called then) gift card. So yeah, we took that deal. The phones were ass, but I was able to put CyanogenMod (now called Lineage) on them and make them a little better.
We wanted a grocery app, and we discovered an app called OurGroceries. Free with ads, or $5 to remove the little banner at the bottom. Even without paying, it offered synced grocery lists and even Web access. As in, my wife is at the store and I'm on the computer, I just hit the bookmark and add something to the list, she sees it in a second or two (provided she has signal or WiFi). We both paid. The app was useful and it was nice.
When I got an iPhone, I immediately paid the $5 again. They since changed it to where only ONE person on the sync account needs to pay. That is to say, if you and five family members all download it, all six of you get ads. But if ONE person connected to the sync account pays, the paid status syncs and nobody has ads. That said, I'm not mad because $10 of the $15 I've paid wasn't even mine to start with, it was on a gift card. It's been 16 years, and we still use it.
Is it the best grocery app? I think it still ranks highly. Personally I think the one in Paprika is a little better. Our first requirement is that it must support iPhone, Android (my wife still uses Android), and computer. Paprika checks those boxes — so does Google Keep, which is another good option (that is also free!). Apple has shopping list support in Notes, and our computers are Macs, so that works, but Apple Notes doesn't really work on Android. It actually does, I think, through the browser (since my wife has an Apple account, on the Mac and on her iPad), but it's not as robust if you actually have an iPhone. Any note taking app should work, but the sync won't be there.
So if you don't want to pay, Google Keep should be your first stop. If you don't like Google for privacy or whatever reason, you'll probably have to pay. OurGroceries is either a single developer or a small team, and they're independent, and deserve at least the $5 they're asking for a whole family to use their app indefinitely (as long as they keep the server up — I hope, should they ever decide to take their server down, they allow a self-hosted option). If you want more features, Paprika is definitely a solid choice, but you'll want to wait for a sale. Normally it's like $10 on phones and $20 on computers or something. But it's actually not a shopping list app. It's a recipe manager that has a shopping list and a pantry inventory. And a couple other things. (OurGroceries also has a recipe manager, but it's not great, it's really just another kind of shopping list that can be copied into an actual shopping list — you can have multiple.)
I like OurGroceries, but they want almost $20 to remove ads these days. Or an ongoing subscription, which... yeah, no. That is too much for a glorified checklist.
Oof. Didn't know it went up. We paid a total of $15 and we're happy with it, but we've had the benefit of having used it for the past 16 years.
If the price is too high, Google Keep is pretty good for doing a similar thing.
L
YXIt combines the advantages of L^A^T
EX with the ease of use of LibreOffice.GIMP
It has some rough edges (fewer than it used to), but it's all I need for editing my photos.
darktable
A fully capable Adobe Lightroom alternative
cmusA TUI music player that plays music. Nothing else.
And of course VLC and Firefox, which aren't just the best FOSS programs for their use case, but the best, period.
I wish I'd have discovered Darktable 10 years ago!
I've been using this app on my android forever called J4T it's a 4 track recorder. Love it. Might not count but I think it does.
Curious, how do you have four discrete inputs?
Looks like 4 separate recordings over a single channel input
This is the answer. You can play back the track on headphone and record another track on top. It even adjusts the input delay by pinging the mic through the headphones. Nifty stuff. Great for laying out ideas. Not professional by any means.
Probably USB. Since phones have a USB input, they can take things like USB mic interfaces. Get a 4-input interface, and there ya go.
Depending on the app’s permissions, it may even be able to take inputs from other apps, like Discord for call audio, or whatever app you’re streaming your music on.
Too many OSS tools to really be able to mention them all. Thank you to so many GNU/Linus, OpenBSD, BSD*, and other developers!
I'll mention these:
Without TeX I'd go insane writing technical and scientific documents. You've saved me thousands of hours of work!
Oh, and my current time waster game: Kohan: Immortal Sovreigns.
Warcraft III
Came here to say Civ IV
Factorio
Damn Small Media Player. Loads instantly. Plays mp3s. Takes up 850 KB on my hard drive and ~15 MB RAM while playing a song in a large playlist. Now that's what I call software.
Thanks for this!
Blender.
10 years ago it was scarcely believable that a FOSS package for such a niche purpose could be so fucking good. And it got better in the meantime. If Blender had existed when I was a kid I would have probably spent every waking hour creating stuff with it. As an adult, I get limited time to do that, but I appreciate that it exists.
+1 for Blender, as an animation professional I can say it changed the landscape
VLC, IDM, Krita, Sharex
On Windows machines probably since more than 20 years: TotalCommander
Wish they would offer a linux port. (Though Krusader is quite a good replacement.)
Of course!!!!!!! Back in the 90s, under DOS, we had something called Norton Utilities, there was some disk explorer and things like this, and a utility called Norton Commander, nc.exe, the double panel, blue on blue, easy to copy, move, explore zip as folder, etc. I used it a lot in the DOS day.
Then Microsoft Windows 3 came and a guy (iirc a Switzerland guy named Ghisler, I know it because when I want to go it, I go to ghisler.ch) wrote a NC clone in Delphi and named it Windows Commander, with the same double panel and shortcut and all, F5, F6, F7, Ctrl-U, etc. He ported it to W95 then NT then then then and at one time Microsoft told him to rename it, so it became Total Commander.
So I used NC in DOS for maybe 7 or 8 years and I'm using it in Windows for more than 30 years. I almost don't know how to use the Windows Explorer to copy/move/explore archive etc, After 30 years of using a utility to navigate your HDD and manipulate files, it is a second nature.
PS: yes I have a license since early 2000.
PPS: Double Commander in Linux is almost a 100% clone.
Thanks will try out Double Commander later.
Yeah, I also got a license. It was the only license for a nagware I ever bought.
In terminals mc (midnight commander) also works great.
FYI- There's a TC Android client and it's pretty good. Interface is dated but function is more important than form in my opinion.
I've used ls, cat, echo, cd, mkdir, mv, cp, rm, & ssh pretty much every day I've touched a computer since some time near the end of the twentieth century. Honorable mention to sudo, find, rename, ffmpeg, Gimp, & VLC. If you count ROMs for games, the list gets into the deeper past, though I don't use them as often. I guess I still need to get around a few Windows/DOS machines, so
DIR and(I don't love DIR) CDareis probably the absolute oldest when at the keyboard, but it's technically a different thing for different systems even though it does the same task.As for loving it, I love when shit just works and I love the command line.
7zip, notepad++, ScreenShotAssistant, git
There's a "modern" fork of 7zip that works better on Windows 11 and it's called NanaZip.
Oh, good to know! I def don't use it every day, but I did use it for something yesterday. I've been using it since before Windows had zip handling integrated with Explorer; I still like having the extra options it gives me.
Most of 'em. Here are some highlights.
Greenshot, although MS snipping tool has a cool OCR that can grab text from screenshots which is really cool so I use both at work.
7zip, VLC, MS PowerToys, KeepassX, Firefox, been using those for a long time now.
Ah, OneNote, been using that for work since I was in University, around 2005ish. Unfortunately they stopped development on the old version, made a shit mobile version which also seems to have stalled, so not sure if it's going to get any future updates. But it's still good. If people have good alternatives please let me know.
As a OneNote user with similar time, there's nothing else that compares.
I've been testing stuff for years, and nothing else really comes close.
You can replicate the notebook structure with some other apps, but it's not the same.
I stick with OneNote 2016 on all my machines, since they can all sync via LAN with just a share.
The modern app crap is garbage, and I resent the mobile app requiring OneDrive - so my mobile devices get one specific notebook.
Check out:
Joplin
Obsidian
SilverBullet
Logseq
I also recommend QOwnNotes in addition, mostly because it's lightweight. I found that if you wouldwant to do handwriting, xournal++ or Rnote works well. Rnote has an upper hand because it has an infinite canvas feature, kind of like onenote
Kodi/XBMC - a little over 20 years ago I jailbroke my old X-Box gen 1 and after about a week I installed XBMC (X-Box Media Center), which was about 2 years old. I just was looking for a way to save space because I could fit a whole season of a show as AVIs on a single burned DVD and XBMC could be used to play it. 20 years and a name change later it’s still my TV front end. I’ve moved from a jailbroke X-Box to a Linux based media center PC but I still automatically boot to Kodi which plays anything I throw at it, keeps track of all the shows and movies I’ve watched, is front end for playing retro games and spawns Steam if I needed all off MCE remote and a Xbox controller to game with.
gcc
oh god yes because I even used djgpp in DOS in the 90s
Heh. At that time I was more of a Watcom / DOS/4GW-man. Of course, that wasn't cough entirely legal.
Kubuntu & it's default KDE apps. LibreOffice VLC CherryTree Firefox Thunderbird Gimp Kid3 Filelight UNetbootin Krename
Krita (a digital painting and Photoshop alternative). I've been enjoying using it for probably 10 years now, and it's only continued to steadily improve. Fantastic program.
WINAMP WINAMP WINAMP
It really whips the llama's ass
Switched to being a full-time Linux user around 2005, still love it ...
Used AwesomeWM for a long time but a few years ago I switched to an even more minimalist WM a friend of mine is developing ... still love it despite some bugs ...
Tried a variety of IDEs but always ended up with Emacs ...
And, last but not least, I've been developing my own software for music composition and performance for more than 10 years now, and use it every day ... can't say it's the same because it always changes, but I use it practically every day :)
mIRC (or for you guys, any IRC client). Not as vibrent as in the old days and some missing functions in comparison to modern clients such as Discord and many more.
the crazy thing is, ircv3 is being worked on. might already have been released. don't care enough to look. for a dying medium!
XNview. This was a screen capture & basic editing tool I started using in like the Windows95 era. Yes, the latest couple of version of Windows also do this, but I've got the hotkeys memorized at this point.
I reckon I should point out that I'm transitioning to Linux, so I rarely use it anymore. But we had a helluva run together.
I like Paint.NET. It's easy to use for simple image edits.
Linux.
Im coming up on 15 years of being a Linux user. From playing around/tinkering to leading to my first Job to now working as a Linux Sysadmin for a couple of years.
When I was a helpdesk monkey, I was the only one who knew linux, so I was, by all accounts, the linux sys admin. None of the other IT monkeys had any idea how to even use linux, let alone admin a linux server. I felt great knowing i had skills no one else had lol
For that long? There are only a few left:
If I include games then:
There were more that I loved, but I have stopped using them a month ago. (Because I switched to Linux):
vim/neovim
Kind of niche but Guitar Pro. Not sure what the newer versions are like but the one I have is great for composing and arrangement.
Been using the same copy of GP6 through Wine for years. Right there with ya.
Can I say Jellyfin? I think so, since it was emby before it was Jellyfin.
WinAMP
Definitely MediaMonkey, though I’ve had it for 16 years instead of 10 after paying $40 for a lifetime license. The license format changed once and I’ve misplaced my key a couple of times, but their support has always been great at getting me back on track.
Internet Explorer
Get out
Still waiting on that same page to load
Hey, they introduced tab navigation in 2006, IE7... Good times..
WinRAR. Probably over 20 years by now.
Bettertouchtool
I can’t use a Mac without it. Just read the website, it does damn near everything, and just as good as Apple would in most cases.
But if I had to describe it (poorly) it remaps gestures on nearly any input device, including the stream deck and many Logitech devices (MxMaster!). The custom gesture support is linear, meaning that the animations track with your fingers/input rather than just pop onto place (like how you can “peek” into Mission Control” and the old launchpad with trackpad gestures).
KeepassXC
Openstreetmap and all the things based on it
Zsnes
Also Winrar
KDE.
It's the only one I have used more than 10 years and loved the entire time. Everything else has been replaced, not loved or not used for 10 years.
Irfanview
Skyrim
Age of Empires 1 is old enough, but does one "use" it?
It's got a unique co-op feature where you actally control the same people and can divide tasks (not like other RTS where you can play in a team but still need to do everything yourself, with any resource sharing being a manual (or even taxed) action in a menu somewhere), so my gf and I are sticking with this game. I think it's the only game we've been playing consistently for our 10 years together. Crap, did I say playing? I meant using! It's a relationship tool. Try it today! xD
I think StarCraft has Archon mode that functions the same way. Another tool in the toolbox.
termux
Any terminal emulator, but I prefer the suckless terminal. After that I guess zsh and neovim.
I don't think any software I regularly used has changed since 2016( lemmy being an obvious exception. Rip reddit). Maybe home assistant. Not sure when that started. Most used: Obviously gnu+Linux+gnome. Gimp, beersmith, sabnzdb, deluge, plex. Vscode, Firefox. I'm sure many others
OpenLDAP. Have been running that as the backend of several of my services since 2015.
I use it for authentication/authorization, either directly or via Authelia, as well as the backend storage for my DNS, DHCP, Kerberos, email servers, and a few internal / self-built applications. I even registered an official IANA PEN so my custom LDAP schema are properly implemented. It's setup with a 4-way multi-master replication strategy and highly available via two load balancers in different data centers (plus one locally).
Runner up is Nginx as I've been running it for just as long or a bit longer, and it also underpins most of my services in some way (at least as the frontend proxy/WAF).
Guitar Pro. Ableton. Microsoft Excel.
Reaper (DAW)
How many negative days are logged on your free trial?
I bought it. Worth every penny.
Gimp
Totalcommander.
Even went so far as to get a licence.
I love Total Commander.
I’m a big fan of Smooth Video Project (SVP) for video interpolation: https://www.svp-team.com/
Say what you will about high frame rate video/animation, I paid like $10 for it in 2014 and it’s still getting updates!
The switch from Premiere Pro to Davinci Resolve was happiness every step of the way. Current workplace uses premiere pro… it’s like a time capsule. Barely any changes in 7 years and still subscription.
Only one I can think of that hasn't already been mentioned: rsync
I know it's a Google product! But I've been using the android Gboard keyboard on my phone for about as long as android phones have been a thing. The slide typing has always been great. I've tried many other keyboards because, y'know, Google, but I've not found any as good.
It was Trello until December. Enshitification.
7zip or Steam now
Oh, dear. Trello enshittified? :( I thought it was really cool when we used it for a project at work back in ... oh, maybe 2016? Way too long ago.
Yep, my final straw was when they added an ad that couldn't be removed that blocked 1/3 of your board. It could be "minimized", but it still blocked a portion of the board.
Oof, that's rough. Guess I didn't miss out when we stopped using it back in the day. Although...at that shop, we switched to Jira. What a mess.
At the time, I really appreciated the simplicity of Trello. Nothing else I've used has come close. Working as a programmer, I really just want a simple system.
Im currently using Brisqi, its offline, but im a solo dev. The free version is limited to 2 boards, but I found a workaround.
I'd probably say Steam or VLC player.
I still love Illustrator and Fusion360. I've been using AI since 1995! When F360 came out solidworks was at its lowest for reliability and I was constantly losing work. They cost money but the revenue both provide me makes those costs a rounding error at most.
I wish my answer was wobbly windows. But I'll go with Emacs and eclipse.
Firefox, probably tmux.
Blender3D. My first use of Blender was... I think... Version 2.49b. The UI was... Quite something back then.
Tweakybeat for the iPhone. One of the first music apps to come out on iOS. I bought it before I had an iPhone - to play with on the test phones at work.
It’s a monophonic sequencer with a single noise source which can be tweaked to make drums, beeps, swoops and gurgles. Such fun and always go back to it for a quick bleep session ever so often
Sublime Text. Used it to write web a year or two before VS Code was released (2015). I never started with VS Code because of that and still use Sublime Text for anything that does not require an IDE.
Fellow sublime enjoyer! Used it for typesetting LaTeX since 2014
This is an unregistered copy of Sublime Text. Purchase a license to support continued development and to get rid of this message.
Haha! I actually paid for it. (Looking at my KeePass history, I first paid for it 2016-12-23).
VLC
Firefox
WINISD (more of a love hate relationship)
I know you say "that one" , but there are several that are kind of tied, that I use every day.
I had sooooo many issues with librewolf, finally switched to waterfox
The only issues I've had with LW so far has been how aggressively it blocks things for privacy. I had to change some of the default settings to let me access some sites even though that reduces the amount of privacy.
What kinds of issues did you have, and what's better about waterfox? I may need to check it out.
Minecraft, YouTube (now I use it through FreeTube)
I have actually. Mineclonia too. it's what I go to now instead of MC (for singleplayer at least). it is quite amazing to me how seemingly complex features are quickly added.
honestly, this is why people pirate. Don't have time to migrate some shit? Welp, guess you lose the product that you legally paid for with no refund.
Had to say goodbye because of leaving Windows but Bulk Rename Utility was a tool that never let me down.
foobar2000 - My primary music player since 2012
QGIS
It just keeps getting better
O.m.g.
I couldn't get myself to like it, as hard as I tried, but I know 2-3 guys...
If you tried 10 years ago it's like a completely different app now. Comparable to Blender was clunky to use until suddenly it's everyone's favorite. I think QGIS is moving in that direction.
AdGuard lifetime membership in 2017 for Android.
Best. App. Ever.
jasc paintshop pro 7.0
xnview
vim
fvwm
seamonkey
midnight commander
Upvote for xnview, have you tried the MP version, or whatever it is. I think I run that now, but I have both installed still.
I actually just removed an old portable version that was just living rent free in my portable apps folder for years.
these days i mostly run freebsd and linux instead of windows, so xnview mp is the only one that works. i still have xnview classic on my windows machine, iirc it was kinda faster or smth..
Unpopular opinion here: YouTube
Note: Been using it through my Brave browser and also without any account. Hence, why I'm still loving it
I'm using it through Freetube app. I has in built subscribe lists and I can save videos to a watch later list or other playlists. I have a ancient laptop that I'm using, youtube in a web browser is sloooooow and awful. Youtube in Freetube is fast and easy, because it doesn't do all that tracking and whatever else bullshit.
I have tried many YouTube apps too. I have used these previously: LibreTube, ReVanced YouTube, NewPipe, PipePipe, Tubular, GrayJay. But I just liked to use YouTube in-browser most. It's what I'm most comfortable with and it's less addicting this way for me.
Yeah I wouldn't have any problems with using it in the browser, if it didn't slow my shitty laptop to a crawl. Freetube lets me use it while watching/listening to a video. The privacy etc stuff is just a bonus on top
Revanced is the best, though. You can even tell it to skip sponsored bits and waffle.
Yup I use revanced on the mobile, though I fear they will go tits up soon, with all the infighting and drama amongst them. Luckily the people who left revanced team are continuing the work under a different name, that I have already forgotten but shouldn't be too hard to find.
I use Freetube on the laptop only. Freetube also has built in sponsorblock, remove shorts, adblock and all that good stuff.
I have tried ReVanced. As far as I know, it's the best mod of YouTube. If you wanna use YouTube in an app with account and if you also want Dislike count then this is the one to use.
But I prefer using YouTube in-browser and without any accounts, so ReVanced YouTube is not for me but still good choice.
Transmit
Blender. It's been almost 20 years now since I started working with it, and the time I spent learning it was worth every minute. It is an incredibly powerful tool.
Papyrus on my android. It's not even in the playstore anymore, but i keep -and backup- apk's. It's just the simplest notes app, without any markup. It saves as simple text files.
I just open it, jot something down, and leave it. Saves automatically. It might be way more than 10 years even, 15 plus years?
I have a Andoku, a sodoku game that was open source and had the perfect setup options for selecting and placing numbers.
It got sold, and new devs immediately added ads and broke everything. I think it's some sodoku 3 with subscription options now. Been running it since probably 2013ish.
My SO and I play as a team across dinning tables in restraunts while we wait for waiters or food or whatever.
There are plenty of answers in this thread that lists applications that have kept being updated over the years, which I don't know if it is a valid answer, it depends on the definition of the question, and how you interpret the software of Theseus.
I am going to be semi pedantic, no binary updates but config updates and compabillity layers are ok.
I still play Unreal Tournament 2004, I have three copies, one on CD, one on Steam and one on GOG, it is an awesome game, that even has an official native Linux version with an installer on the CD.
It is fantastically fun, well balanced and just amazing.
You have to edit the config files to support modern resolutions, and make it connect to the community master server, but that is a one time change and then you can just start blasting.
The game is available on Archive.org.
lol, that game was fun in the office, we had a similar set up to the one in The Office.
Zero-k, the successor to the Total Annihilation game from 1998.
I used emacs today, in bash, with a host of other commands like xargs and sort. None of it was fucking Systemd related, like systemctl, nor raging because network manager took a nap on my server, so it was a great day.
there's probably more, but most of it is pretty common these days or has already been mentioned.
It's been a while since I've used TrueCrypt because I switched over to Linux and used Luks. But I thought everyone had moved to Vera Crypt. Is that no longer the case? Just curious, Since I haven't read much about that world for many years.
I have ancient crypts and I'm too lazy to move them.
I figure at some point they'll be even more secure because nobody will be able to run the software as the hardware ages out.
security through obscurity. The best way to IT
Truecrypt has known vulnerabilities, meaning that your data may not be as safe as you think it is.
Veracrypt is the modern fork of Truecrypt.
You can upgrade your old data using a legacy version of Veracrypt: https://veracrypt.io/en/Converting%20TrueCrypt%20volumes%20and%20partitions.html
DisplayFusion for monitor backgrounds. Bought a license like 15+ years ago and it's still getting updates 🕺
XYplorer file manager for windows
Caustic 3 on my mobile.
I've still not found a better android DAW. (Anyone have suggestions? )
ePSXe is still awesome for PS1 games, even as our computers get more bloated and shittier.
I have a manjaro install that old. Im holding out to see what they do with themselves before I switch that laptop to something else
Other than pc games of that vintage I don’t think there is a single piece of software I enjoy using these days, they all hog all the ram and fill your screen with login prompts and popups about how useless AI features can further ruin your day.
Don’t forget the cookie notices!
Since it hasn’t been mentioned yet, Zim Wiki. Lacks some of the more modern features in a notes app, but I think that’s one of its strong points.
XnView MP - cross-platform image viewer and organizer that I love for it batch convert tool. Besides many work tasks that required simple leveling or watermarking automation, I used it to make my couple of underpowered and lowres e-ink books show me manga in the best possible way. I chained up grayscale, rotation to portrait if landscape, posterisation, cutting white borders and resizing the result to the book's screen, the entire Gutz or Berserk or Uzumaki processed in one go and saved to another folder keeping the structure intact. This way I sprinted through so many works I probably outdid my real wage in the month I started, calculating the price of each tome in Eastern Europe.
TotalCMD - Win darling that I rarely ever use now, but it's the first thing I think of (and miss on Linux) when I need batch renaming of files. Find&replace, adding counting numbers, using regular expressions (while looking them up each time, lol). It says a lot when I come to task and think of it in a logic that this exact tool allowed me to use.
AIMP - surprise-surprise, another batch editing tool that primarily a music player, and also Win only. It is the slickest way I found to mass convert files to other formar via a context menu item, and it also provides a tool to mass edit metadata of music files, with a pretty flexible data rearranging patterns, e.g. I could fill a blank metadata table sourcing from it's name deftones_-_shove-it.mp3 and other kinds of manipulation.
I just really like that some programs provide nice GUIs for reliable automatisation of repetitive tasks, that you don't need to write macros over programs instead. The closest I felt like that from a corporate software is MS Office Word's Find&Replace in older editions, where you could use regexp, target specific styles and tags, etc, but it still felt too limiting and dumbed down, so for some context aware replacement tasks I wrote macros and was scaredly considering going to either edit their lunatic XMLs on the code level or learning the hell of VBA scripting if I'd have time and zero self-respect. The two only persons I know who wrote some VBAs in my circle actively encouraged me not to 🤪
I moved to linux but if there are any folks still foolish enough to be on windows then portable apps is huge. Get a new machine and just move the folder over and your good to go. I really with either appman could get a gui going like it or a gui project for appimages would use appman as a repo base.
StartAllBack - classic start menu in windows
Scrivener
Sketch, a Mac UI design app similar to Adobe XD and Figma, but you own the fucking app and can keep using a 10 year old license if you don’t need major version updates like me.
Sigh. This just reminded me of original Skitch, before Evernote ruined it.
I never got Evernote. But I also had diy synced bookmarks and notes for years before that on a private WebDAV server.
I'm still playing Civ2 from time to time. And sometimes Minesweeper
Haven't seen mentioned yet:
PDFgear, does all the things to PDFs and it's free.
Well till my Windows 10 machine died, it was Reason. Reason is an all in one DAW. Program, record, mix and master with super tactile graphics and an intuitive layout. Been two years without. I miss it.
I've been meaning to ask, what complaints do you have with open source DAWs? I know a lot of VST plugins just refuse to work in other programs, but what specifically do you miss the most?
The Reason workflow was special. It was just like working with hardware. When my windows machine croaked and I moved full time to my Linux laptop, I installed a few things, but Linux was not talking to my ancient audio input interface. Little surprise there, I had been running it with a windows 7 legacy driver. I have not bought a new one yet. That's it. Had enough going on to not get back to messing with it. I don't actually have an opinion on any of what I have installed.
I was looking up stuff about Linux DAWs today, and I found this. I don't know if you already know about it or not, but maybe it'll be helpful to you.
Nope, hadn't seen that yet. I will absolutely give it a solid look when I get back to my laptop. Thanks!
VNC VLC Notepad
All the apps using QT, so therefore QT.
Lighter than KDE ( which I used back 'round the turn of the millenium ), & sane.
_ /\ _