26/09/19 edit: Since making this list, a good number of these projects have pivoted to heavy LLM use and have dipped in quality. Check the Open Slopware list for alternatives.
Previous update: 25/11/22
Internet
- Dillo: A fast browser with its own engine that doesn't support Javascript or CSS animations. Go over .dillo/dillorc and mess around with the options, there's a lot of neat stuff in there. hjkl keys can be bound to navigation, but the browser is mainly designed to be used with a mouse. Supports Gopher and Gemini with plugins.
- Gajim: One of the better GUI XMPP clients.
- Lagrange: Gemini client. User friendly.
- LibreWolf: Firefox with a few privacy settings already set up, with UBlock Origin built in. You're still going to want to go over everything.
- nheko: One of the better Matrix clients. Has voice chat, video, custom emotes, and custom sticker support. Supports multiple profiles with the -p flag, which makes a new window for the other account. Does not support screenshare however, you will need Element or Schildichat for that.
- Tuba: Fediverse client.
Three Dimensional
- Blender: A solid 3D program.
- Bforartists: Blender for artists. A version of blender but more user friendly. Try this if Blender looks too complex.
- Goxel: Simple voxel art software. Just click to place blocks. Handy for making scenes for perspective reference.
Art
- AzPainter: Oekaki-era art software. Very fast and runs well on weaker machines. While it has been modernised over the years, it's still good for binary art. Comes with a variety of patterns. Get some resources here.
- BeeRef: A blank canvas for pasting and loading reference images. Can save and load the canvas/scene.
- Drawpile: Share and draw on a canvas online with others. Supports mypaint brushes.
- GrafX2: Art software inspired by Deluxe Paint and Brilliance. For drawing and making art using indexed colours.
- Inkscape: Vector art.
- KolourPaint: A clone of XP era MSPaint. The colour replacement trick is its own tool. Colour palettes can be exported and imported.
- Krita: Art software that's inspired by Clip Studio Paint and similar to Photoshop. Find brushes and other resources here. Supports CIELAB colour space.
- MyPaint: Lightweight art software with an infinite canvas. Feels great to sketch in with the right brushes.
- Tux Paint: Similar to Kid Pix, the UI makes sounds. Look at the gallery on the site there's so many creative pieces.
Audio
- Audacious: Music player that supports many file types out the box, including module formats. Also supports Winamp skins, which you can find here (requires Javascript).
- Strawberry: Music player similar to iTunes. Has iPod support, replay gain, and smart playlists. Check the forums for help.
- milkytracker: Tracker. It had a UI overhaul as of last year (Nov 2024) and now has an inbuilt synth. The downloads page comes with a collection of samples to get started.
- LMMS: FL Studio inspired DAW, right down to its tendency to crash.
Study
- Anki: An incredibly bloated mess of a flashcard application, and yet, one of most useful programs I've used. It has an active community with many decks and plugins. Grab the binaries (anki-bin) unless you really like compiling web browsers.
- GoldenDict-ng: Dictionary software that supports many dictionary formats. Make sure to disable full text search, it effects performance.
- pyglossary: For converting and creating dictionaries. Stardict is a good format to convert to.
Video
- mpv: Video player with good subtitle support. Has a lot of hotkeys so it's confusing at first. Has a wide variety of custom scripts, including ones to make clips. Can also play audio from a video through the terminal. Find scripts here.
- Syncplay: For watching videos with friends. Works with both saved files and online videos. It uses yt-dlp for online videos, so any site supported by yt-dlp is compatible with it. Works best with mpv.
Text
- Calibre: Ebook library managment. Handy for organising large collections. Absolutely sucks for managing books in Japanese, it renames files with kanji in them into romanised hanzi. Same applies to other non-ASCII filenames. Clunky, being a GUI program written in Python. Has various plugins. DRM removal plugin here.
- Foliate: Ebook reader.
- LibreOffice: An alternative to Microsoft Office. Works fine, though the Excel alternative has less features.
- VSCodium: Visual Studio Code but good.
- Zim: Personal wiki software. Dunno how to explain it better, but it's real handy for keeping notes. Similar to Obsidian. Exports to HTML and some other formats, can be used to make a website.
Utility
- Dolphin: File explorer. Has tabs.
- Fcitx: IME. Basically, you can use this to type in different languages. I use this to type in Japanese and Esperanto. The more recent version is fcitx5, but that may have issues. For Japanese, use Mozc and install the Mozc UT Dictionaries and the dic-nico-intersection-pixiv dictionary.
- feh: Lightweight image viewer. Can be used to set a desktop background with minimalistic window managers.
- Konsole: A decent terminal emulator with tabs. Has image support with yazi.
- noise-suppression-for-voice: Disable other applications' inbuilt noise removal filters and use this instead. It's clear and works well with soft voices. There's a guide on how to set it up in the link.
- PCManFM: More light weight than Dolphin. Don't get the qt version, it has a bug that breaks thumbnails.
- Phototonic: Gallery image viewer with tag support. Has an option to display all images in a directory along with images from all of its subdirectories.
- sakura: Terminal emulator. Supports transparency and has full IME support out the box.
- Zutty: A fast terminal emulator with bitmap font support.
Emulation, compatability layers, and virtualisation
- DOSBox: Emulate DOS software.
- KVM: Virtual machine. Run modern operating systems with this.
- Lutris: Helps set up Windows software without having to follow a guide. Mainly for video games, but works with other software too. Doubles as a launcher.
- QEMU: Emulator for various computer operating systems. archive.org has collections of operating systems already set up for it. Use KVM instead if you need to run something modern.
- SheepShaver: Emulator for classic Mac (before OS X). Guides here.
More
- ArchWiki's list of applications: A goldmine of software on Linux. This and the next link are from the ArchWiki, but they apply to Linux in general.
- ArchWiki's game emulator list: Yeah there's a fair few.
- ProtonDB: Compatability with games on Steam. (Requires Javascript)
- WineHQ: Compatability with Windows software.