What's your favorite Linux Desktop software?
For me, it's hands down Flameshot. The best screenshot tool in the world - I've got it hooked up to my PrtScrn key for super easy screenshots.
I also love Kwrite as a Notepad++ alternative, and KolourPaint as a MSPaint alternative
Firefox with tree style tabs, with the user CSS that removes tabs and combines bookmarks bar into the title bar.
Away from computer right now but I'll take a screenshot in an hour or so.
And Emacs. :)
Back at my computer now!
OK, here's my screenshot:
So, you can see the tree style tabs (TST) in the sidebar area on the left. I'm using the "photon" theme for TST. with another extension for TST called TST Colored Tabs. If you middle-button-click a link, it's opened in a new tab like usual, but TST also assigns it as a child tab of the page you were viewing. It's incredibly useful for keeping track of where you are and what you're doing. Especially in my DevOps job, I have dozens of tabs open and chaos would reign supreme if I used top-of-window tabs like standard. You can see the bookmarks toolbar has been dragged up into the title bar using the customize toolbar window accessed by right clicking on the title bar.
To accomplish this you need to enable a setting in about:config called toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets, set that to true. Then exit Firefox.
Then create a directory called chrome in your profile directory, which on Linux is in ~/.mozilla/firefox/PROFILENAME/, which you can get from the about:profiles page. Inside the chrome directory, you create a file called userChrome.css and add this stuff to it:
css
#main-window[tabsintitlebar="true"]:not([extradragspace="true"]) #TabsToolbar > .toolbar-items {
opacity: 0;
pointer-events: none;
}
#main-window:not([tabsintitlebar="true"]) #TabsToolbar {
visibility: collapse !important;
}
#sidebar-box[sidebarcommand="treestyletab_piro_sakura_ne_jp-sidebar-action"] #sidebar-header {
display: none;
}
/*
Display the status bar in Firefox Quantum (version 61+)
permanently at the bottom of the browser window.
Code below works best for the Dark Firefox theme and is based on:
https://github.com/MatMoul/firefox-gui-chrome-css/blob/master/chrome/userChrome.css
This userChrome.css file was last modified on: 28-Jun-2018.
Tested to work with Firefox 61 on Windows.
Related blog post: http://www.optimiced.com/en/?p=1727
*/
#browser-bottombox {
height: 20px;
border-top: solid 1px #505050;
}
.browserContainer>#statuspanel {
left: 4px !important;
bottom: 0px;
transition-duration: 0s !important;
transition-delay: 0s !important;
}
.browserContainer>#statuspanel>#statuspanel-inner>#statuspanel-label {
margin-left: 0px !important;
border: none !important;
padding: 0px !important;
color: #EEE !important;
background: #333 !important;
}
window[inFullscreen="true"] #browser-bottombox {
display: none !important;
}
window[inFullscreen="true"] .browserContainer>#statuspanel[type="overLink"] #statuspanel-label {
display: none !important;
}
/*
Begin section to move system UI buttons to the same UI bar/box
as the addressbar
*/
/* Adding empty space for buttons */
#nav-bar {
margin-right:100px;
}
/* For dragging whole window by mouse*/
#titlebar {
appearance: none !important;
height: 0px;
}
/*
Fix for main menu calling by Alt button
THIS BREAKS THE UI!!
*/
/* #titlebar > #toolbar-menubar {
margin-top: 10px;
} */
/* Move minimize/restore/close buttons to empty space */
#TabsToolbar > .titlebar-buttonbox-container {
display: block;
position: absolute;
top: 5px;
right: 1px;
}
And there you go! TST has more tips and configuration details in its Github project: https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab and https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-for-custom-style-rules#for-userchromecss
emacs with doom FTW.
Looking forward to learning how to get tree tabs in FF.
I updated my original comment above yours. I hope my comments/instructions are understandable, please let me know if I wasn't clear on anything!
Wine/Proton. It's a one-stop solution for gaming on Linux (for current games). Lutris is also worth mentioning as a frontend/launcher.
Also worth mentioning Heroic Launcher. Works beautifully with the Epic store.
Check out Bottles for running Wine and derivatives from a GUI :)!
I'm a bit of a fan of Okular. It just does a good job displaying PDFs and is not annoying. The table of content works well if the document has one. There is text select and block select for when you need to get content out of the PDF. You can tell Okular to ignore DRM with a simple checkbox in the settings, for files that "don't allow" selecting and copying text or "don't allow" printing.
My only complaint about Okular is when it comes to form fillable PDFs. I usually prefer using the inbuilt Firefox pdf reader for those.
Okular also has vim keys for navigating.
gparted because it’s the best partitioning manager with a gui that I’ve used
Syncthing is one of the most useful pieces of software I've ever used. It just works, and it works well.
Im dipping my toes in self hosting and syncthing is just :chefs kiss:. I use it only with Obsidian, Signal & Aegis so far (and will sync my configs as well on linux), and the safety net it gives is just awesome.
This 💯. Syncthing is the holy grail of sync apps. Nothing else I've used comes close.
If based on the thing I used most then it has to be Firefox!
If you want something more trivial but personal, openttd - the best game ever. :)
Ansible + Podman from Red Hat really a game changer in Industry Standard. Sometimes I want to just say, Fk Docker because they don't listen from security perspective, until Red Hat made Podman, and they are thinking.... (3 years), then implement the rootless container... same on HPC.. fk docker...
Fuck docker! All my homies use podman!
Cant go without kdeconnect anymore
I'm not gonna mention the basics like Kate. They're great but nothing new.
My 2 hidden gems that I use on a daily basis are:
Wow, I've never seen QOwnNotes before! It looks appealing. I'll have to check it out
I like KDE Connect quite a bit. Its a great tool to show of in front of my Windows friends and super usefull for media control.
The kernel. I literally can't use my computer without it!
Jokes aside, I'm a big fan of Kolourpaint too.
tbf the zen-kernel is a really cool thing to have if you get it package correctly into your system.
It is, and I've used it for a while. I don't recall why I stopped it, it was a long time ago; perhaps I didn't notice any meaningful difference in performance? Stock kernels are good enough for most purposes.
Bottles. Best non-steam gaming solution hands down.
Could you compare it to lutris?
Way better UI, no hussle with configuration, flatpak support is seamless. Very good experience over all, such a smooth game adding -> configuring -> playing experience.
KDE Connect, Spectacle
I'm glad I'm not the only one that prefers Spectacle to Flameshot. Flameshot is way too bloated IMHO.
While maybe not the perfect match for your search, alternativeto.net might be interesting for you. As the name implies you can search for alternatives for a specific piece of software or just browse through some categories to find something you might like. Comments and reviews will be there to help you out more. Just remember to filter by linux, as you might get results exclusive to windows or mac, and by whether or not the software is free and maybe also open source if you only want to use those.
It's probably Neovim. I spend most of time in a day while working on it. Its suitable for almost all code and text editing jobs.
Also I should have to add okular which is really nice for reading pdf's and mangas.
Being a flutter dev (and shameless fanboy) I will suggest people try:
appflowy - a FOSS near-clone to Notion.
spotube - FOSS music streaming using the spotify API for metadata and youtube for music playing/downloading. Completely free of ads and works surprisingly well as long as the music you like is mirrored to YouTube.
honourable mentions:
Plex, Nextcloud, Radarr, Sonarr, qbittorrent. Not your usual apps for these kinds of threads but they're absolutely top-tier for linux home servers.
I never know spotube, this is first time! WOW!
I think I can start put it into my uncle smartphone.
I do still pay for spotify premium, because their service is awesome. Welp...
It's not a drop in replacement for spotify, of course. It just uses Spotify's public API for fetching playlists and routes them through Youtube to play the audio of music videos hosted there, but as a free option it's one of my faves :).
If you want podcasts or certain spotify-only remixes you'll still need spotify.
Wow it's available for Android too, it's even on the Play Store (which I didn't expect)!
How I never heard of Spotube?
Konsole
By far it's Kate, even though I'm now a neovim user. It's just a great IDE.
xorg. I used its predecessor a lot in the past, and I still get PTSD when I see an XFree86 config file.
Oh god, the flashbacks
I've replaced Flameshot with Spectacle on my system because it is preinstalled on Plasma, has almost the same set of features and, in my experience, work snappier. Also, Flameshot can have issues working on Wayland
Yeah Flameshot is probably the thing I've been missing the most on Hyprland. Idk why since in theory it should be able to work but I could never get it to so I've been stuck using a much worse solution for screenshots
Not sure if it counts, but obsidian for notes and my daily journal, and latte-dock to replace the stock KDE app bar.
Oh, and emacs with doom for general text editing and most coding tasks.
I used to use latte-dock, but I found the expirience quite buggy. Is it better now?
Define "buggy". I've still got a problem where occasionally when I mouse over the dock, it redraws the icons, but I'm living with that until it hurts enough for me to figure out why.
Krita. It is so good I cant believe it is free
Honestly I didn't know Kirta was free because the first time I saw it was on Steam, later found out it was free but it's such a good product I'm happy I found it there first.
The question is weird to me, but I'll plug Strawberry Music Player. It's a fork of Clementine, which was a fork of Amarok from when Amarok was still good.
xmonad - tiling wm because I'm too lazy to place windows by handsfirefox - since a lot of things I'm working with is web based and I like my adblock and don't want google spying on meurxvt - a terminal that is fast enough for most applications yet doesn't use as much memory as fancier onestmux - a terminal multiplexer - terminal tabs are not as nice plus lets you leave stuff running remotelyneovim - I need a text editor and it works great for that purposes covering all my needsTmux with continuum is the best
I dunno if it counts, but I use libreoffice more than anything else. It's a very well made piece of gear.
I've written multiple novels with it, short stories, essays, a home brew ttrpg system, etc. It doesn't just do "good enough", it is on par with anything else I've ever used.
Honestly, I installed it on my windows PC recently, and I found it really clunky. And it sounds like there's no dark mode?
I do IT for a living, and for as big of a bitch Office is, it does work pretty damn good... When it's working. I felt like I went back in time a decade when I was working with Calc.
I'm not trying to fight, but I'm genuinely curious, do you only use Writer? Have you worked with Word lately to compare how they've changed? Thanks
Not OP, but I like that libreoffice:
I also trust the document recovery options more, and enjoy using 'free' software when possible
Dark mode is coming to the latest release of LibreOffice, or very soon, so I've heard.
It's possible in current and recent older versions to change the default colours to almost-but-not-quite emulate a dark mode. I have to admit it's not a quick thing to do, nor is it perfect once done, but it can be attempted. (That said, maybe I gave up changing things at "good enough" which is why it's not perfect.).
Oh, I've used it, and it isn't worth the price. They could offer it for free and I still can't say I'd switch. It isn't that there aren't differences, there are. They just aren't enough to matter.
Writer, that's the bread and butter. Calc is mainly for tracking timelines, "lore", etc. Draw isn't a common use.
Dark mode isn't as superior when writing long form though. It's nice, but it's easier to catch weird patterns for me (dyslexia). Calc vs excel, well that's not really a competition for professional use, though calc functions well enough for the kind of use I put it to.
The most popular that I use are:
shutdown command (i use it daily)Honorable mention: Molly (the FOSS version, a privacy focused client for Signal)
Edit: Almost forgot about QEMU+kvm for virtualization
Mixxx is the only Linux-native DJ software that I know of, but it's still amazing. If it's missing featutes compared with Serato or Recordbox I'm not good enough to miss them yet, and the features it doea have are damn impressive.
Likewise, Inkscape and Gimp are both great. I know that Gimp takes a lot of heat for not being as "good" as Photoshop, but it's just different. The few times I've tried Photoshop were as painful to me as Gimp seems to be for others. And since I don't need the CMYK functionality that Gimp is missing, I'm happy with Gimp.
LaTeX has a steep learning curve, but using anything else for documents is like stone knives and bearskins in comparison.
LaTeX has a steep learning curve, but using anything else for documents is like stone knives and bearskins in comparison.
Have you seen or tried "typst" yet? It's a modern alternative to LaTeX. Haven't tried it yet but looks promising.
Thanks for that, it looks much nicer than Latex!
To add to Inkscape and GIMP, Krita is also pretty damn nice.
Timeshift...
Based on time spent using them, Firefox, Steam, and Terraria. Wait, do games not count?
The real answer is actually probably Gnome itself. The DE, I mean. The workflow suits me perfectly, and I even like a lot of the basic Gnome apps, although their naming convention get on my nerves sometimes (your official web browser is called "Web" and your official music player is called "Music"? But the one that makes me actively angry is calling their official text editor... "Text Editor." C'mon, folks.)
This has been the case for me since Gnome 3 dropped. Which was quite a surprise for me since I thought of Gnome 2 as a less user friendly, uglier XFCE and kinda hated it. I still kinda feel that way about Mate, but Memo kicks ass and it's much better than Gnome 2 was overall.
Interesting, maybe it's because I wasn't in the community yet when Gnome 2 was a thing but I always disliked Gnome 3 and love Gnome 40. The changes aren't even that big but I simply wasn't able to adopt to the Gnome 3 workflow and with 40 it clicked immediately.
Oh I definitely prefer 40+. And I think the changes are actually fairly big; not the basic idea of the workflow, but the way it's implemented has definitely gotten better.
I prefer KDE and I'd have to echo the same. Putting K in front of everything is cringy.
Oh man I thought I was the only one when it comes to the naming conventions. I've seen it on Cinnamon as well and it's absolutely annoying if you want to figure out the exact name of the software, only to get hit with "Text Editor" but I suppose this does make it easier for those new to Linux to get accustomed to their new environment (probably also the real reason they do this) though I still wish we could switch that behavior off somehow.
Well... kind of. The difference is that the official Gnome text editor's actual name is Text Editor. It's not a case of the desktop calling, for instance, Pluma or Xed "Text Editor". The Gnome music app is literally called " Music."
Docker, btop, grim, foot.
+1 for btop - so much easier to find and kill runaway processes.
S rank: Firefox MPV KeepassXC
A rank: VLC Bitwarden KOreader
B rank: KDEnlive Gimp Libreoffice.
If you enjoy KWrite & KolourPaint, give Spectacle a go for screenshots. Works amazing on my end and it's built into most KDE OS spins along with KWrite and Kolour. While I know the name Flameshot, I've never actually needed it as Spectacle is solid!
Honestly kitty terminal, neovim, and Firefox. Those are my three most used programs. Bonus shouts out to Lutris and proton. After years of using wine proper, the relatively recent advancements in gaming on Linux has been incredible.
Alacritty, neovim, qutebrowser here. :) Gotta mention tmux too. And I guess if we're going lower level: OpenSSH & Qtile (Tiling Window Manager)
Cinnamon is hands down my favourite DE. I always see people talking about GNOME and KDE, to me Cinnamon is the best of both worlds. Strongly recommend it with the Orchis GTK theme, which is made for GNOME but works fine on Cinnamon.
My favourite graphical app in the more traditional sense is Firefox. If CLI apps are allowed, I'm a big fan of GNU Nano, a CLI-based minimalistic editor, basically Emacs Lite.
I don't see how nano is anything like Emacs... Though if you like nano you might also like micro.
I'll definitely give it a try, thanks! I tend to categorise all CLI editors in my head as either Emacs-like or Vim-like, based mostly on keyboard shortcuts. Nano's shortcuts look more like Emacs than like Vim, so, Emacs Lite.
Strawberry and 0AD are awesome
I prefer Lollypop for music, but can completely agree with 0 AD. I'm amazed that is FOSS.
Firefox, emacs, grep, konsole
I really like the disk usage analyzer in gnome. The ui/visualization is really intuitive and useful, and I often wish for something similar on windows.
I use SpaceSniffer for Windows but it uses the rectangular view not the pie. I do like the pie.
I'm not sure what the gnome disk usage analyzer looks like but WizTree on windows is excellent at showing you where stuff is and how much space it takes up
Is that like WinDirStat?
Here's a screenshot of the Gnome one, which is actually called baobob:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Baobab_screenshot.png
Wiztree looks interesting, I'll see if I can install it, although my work machine is pretty locked down, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's off limits.
Kate, Terminator, k4dirstat and the amazing clipboard history app in KDE.
The clipboard history app is great, but I still wish it let you pin/bookmark things you don't want it to auto-delete. There was a pull request to add it in a while ago, but it was nixed because it would make the tool "too competent" and app-like. Except that it's a pretty standard feature of clipboard managers, wouldn't make things any more complicated for those who feel like ignoring it, and none of the alternative apps work with global shortcuts on Wayland!
Any reason why Filelight hasn't replaced k4dirstat?
Basic but the nemo file manager
Just feels right to use for me
I like Nemo as well!
I love Nemo, I switched DE a few times and even used Openbox for a while but Nemo was always there! I also like the usability of PCManFM but it really doesn't look good and Nemo works even better for me!
Shortwave is by far my favorite radio app. Simple interface, auto records songs, access to thousands of radio stations from all over the world, and when scaled down, it turns into a little retro radio interface!
Emacs. Need I say more?
Nah it's all about that gVim /s
Perhaps a controversial opinion, but I quite like Mailspring as a desktop email client. It looks and feels much more modern than Thunderbird or Evolution.
Why is it a controversial opinion? Mailspring is a great email client. I've been using it for a year now.
Mostly because it isn't libre.
I literally live inside the combo of
And very rarely leave the comfort of my cozy habitat 😁
At work, I'm "forced" to use a Mac but thanks to #FOSS I've got the whole combo setup on my work laptop too except Evolution sadly.
The Caja file manager. Hell the MATE desktop environment in general is just perfect for me. Xfce is acceptable too, though the inclusion of CSD in recent Xfce releases has made me a bit more wary of it when it comes to theming.
I also use Waterfox as my browser. A Firefox fork that has the option to put tabs below address bar (where they belong imo) out of the box without needing to muck around with the userChrome.css file.
I'd say the terminal, although its not linux exclusive and kind of a cheat answer. Flameshot is also a staple for me, I use it everywhere.
MPV comes to mind, although its also available in windows.
Carla and QJackCTL for me. So much easier than having to haul around all my amps, pedals, etc.
Kasts for podcasts, since it sync with Gpoddersync on my nextcloud.
Spectacle always makes me smile with how easy and featureful it is for a screenshot app.
Okular is a better PDF viewer than any proprietary app I've used.
I'll have to try kasts and okular, at the moment I'm using castbox as a PWA which doesn't suck but generally desktop apps feel nicer to use
Easy Effects is such a great program. Very good for doing all sorts of effects on audio. Great for filters and EQ.
I do like my easy effects, absolutely no competition for anything I've ever used on windows
I can't decide which one is my favourite. But thanks for the tipp, flameshot seems really amazing!
WebCord instead of Discord
I still can't believe Discord operates in the 2015 GNU/Linux mindset of handing the user a DEB package and telling them to f off. But then again it labels its chatrooms "servers" in the client so what do I know.
I believe the linux Deb is still "unofficial"
I really like Setzer. It does everything I need from a latex editor and looks much nicer than other editors I have used on windows imo
Nothing beats Kile for LaTeX, imho.
Off the top of my head, currently it's WezTerm. https://wezfurlong.org/wezterm/
Neovim.
Reaper, OBS, and Davinci Resolve.
I guess it's probably also available for servers but the most innovative and interesting peace of software I used in years is Distrobox, I like the AUR and love Debian and Fedora so that's a bridge I have been waiting for!
I just read the comments under this thread and while most of them mention standard stuff (the things most people use on Linux) there are some interesting things in there too! :)
Does Hyprland count? It's so effortlessly slick
Micro. It's a terminal text/code editor that shares keybindings with modern text editors.
Well, the permanently open applications on my system are: claws-mail, Pale Moon (browser forked from Firefox), konqueror (TDE file manager), konsole (TDE terminal), and Aqualung (music player). Other good friends include kate, Inkscape, and OpenSCAD (despite its flakiness). And I get a lot of mileage out of DOSBox.
If the OP hadn't specified desktop software, I'd also name Portage.
Makes me nostalgic for lemmings.
Now we just need to be able to tell the penguins to build ramps or dig holes.
Now we just need to be able to tell the penguins to build ramps or dig holes.
There is a Lemmings theme which I use. (It uses the graphics from the original DOS lemmings game.)
Definitely the clipboard manager. On kde, it's klipper. This is actually such an underrated piece of software that I can't live without. Windows has one too, but they added their's a little after all the linux desktop environments got one by default.
Nothing Linux only but:
Pinta. It's like paint.net but works on Linux. Quick and simple way to edit images on Linux.
Whenever I use gnome I install the material-shell extension. I love the tiling.
Telegram Desktop is pretty good.
Have you tried kdenlive? If so, how would you say they compare?
I've used both and I prefer kdenlive
Yeah but i prefer ShotCut because of its simplicity and speed.
Bottles. Makes getting stuff working on WINE 10x easier.
Zathura, Firefox, VS Code, Remmina, Virt-Manager, hexchat, drawing, Master PDF, PlayOnLinux+Wine, LibreOffice, GVIm, Pragha, XFCE Terminal (But font broken in Fedora)
Kubernetes, Docker and mpv.
urxtv
it's urxvt though
I can't type somethymes
💯.txt
Thanks for the recommendation, I installed Flameshot on Windows and it's quite a bit better than the built-in tool.
you're on windows, get sharex. It's miles ahead of anything else. It's the only thing I miss from daily driving windows.
Apostrophe. The perfect, slick markdown editor.
I just use the one built into gnome, it's the best one I've found yet having come from lightshot on windows, it just works exactly how I'd expect it to and doesn't get in my way
As for my favourite think it's gotta be either obsidian or Vscode/ium
Probably emacs, or wine along with dxvk
Komikku
I both installed kwrite and kate... whats the huge difference there? That one is more code focused and has git implementstion but still the same?
They are essentially built with the same text editing component, more specifically, kwrite makes use of kate through kparts for the editing component only, to provide a more stripped down interface as compared to kate.
So usually, when I have both and want the most features, its technically unnessessary bloat to have kwrite installed? (Except I feel like I want a stripped down interface for that moment I guess)
rofi/dmenu for scripts, mpv and Tauon Music Box
Foliate <3
Either evolution nheko or console. Even though a terminal emulator is a cop out
Excuse my silly question, but what does mpv do that vlc doesn't?
MPV has automatic native wayland support, VLC doesn’t (yet, see https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/VLC_media_player#Wayland_support)
I haven’t found any other large differences in functionality when it comes to simply playing video (only thing I use either one for).
Both are comparable in terms of video playback (both use hardware acceleration and ffmpeg) but mpv's appeal is that it's ultimately a minimal (as in lack of apparent GUI) command line tool rather than a fully featured application like VLC. I like mpv because of it's non-features which is why it's the backend for a lot of Desktop environment video players.
I have MPV setup to play any YouTube link when I press ctrl cmd m with a YouTube video url in my clipboard.
For those who don’t know: Celluloid is a GTK4 frontend for MPV that mostly just makes it look neater.
I use Lollypop for music, well in reality i just use MPV for that too lol but i downloaded that "just in case"
How does Amberol hold up with libraries in the high thousands? So many nice looking music played keep struggling with my music folders.
Really makes me miss Winamp sometimes.
Amberol does hold up really well with high threshold music folders in my experience. I had a 24+ hours worth of music that loaded successfully in less than a minute.
Amberol has a "restore playlist" feature which loads your last playlist quickly.
Why not Audacious if you want something like Winamp?
Mpv is a good engine, but I prefer something like smplayer+mpv for all the extra functionality. I also like that VLC has tons of features, like full file/codec info and stats. I know there are other ways to get that info, but it's very easy in vlc.