Tools matter
| Name | Type | Platform | Popular Alternative |
|---|---|---|---|
| DaVinci Resolve | Video&Audio editor (All-in-One) | Lin, Mac, Win | Vegas/Premiere + After Effects + Audition + SpeedGrade |
| HitFilm Express | Video&VFX editor | Mac, Win | Vegas/Premiere + After Effects |
| Kdenlive, Shotcut, Olive, OpenShot, Flowblade, Pitivi | Other FOSS video editors | Lin, Mac, Win | Movie Maker |
| Ardour, LMMS, qtractor | Digital Audio Workstation | Lin, Mac, Win | Audition in a multi-track mode, FL Studio |
| JACK | Sound server (great with Ardour) | Lin Mac, Win | Many sound cards + hardware mixer |
| Calf Studio Gear | Audio plug-in pack (great with Ardour) | Lin, Mac | Random VST Plugins |
| ocenaudio | A perfect single-track audio editor | Lin, Mac, Win | Audition in a single-track mode |
| Resonic Player | A perfect audio player, analyzer and organizer | Win | - |
| VLC | The ultimate media player | Lin, Mac, Win | Many of them |
| MPC-BE | Old classic Media Player | Win | VLC |
| OBS Studio | Live video production software with unlimited capabilities | Lin, Mac, Win | - |
| HandBrake | The ultimate video converter | Lin, Mac, Win | Tons of ugly and greedy shareware |
| NATRON, enve | 2D animation, VFX, and Motion Graphics | Lin, Win | After Effects |
| Chataigne, ossia score | Intermedia sequencer (for live shows and media installations) | Lin, Mac, Win | Touchdesigner |
| Q Light Controller Plus | DMX Controller Software (live stage lightning) | Lin, Mac, Win | Sunlite Suite |
| OpenToonz | 2D Animation software | Lin, Mac, Win | Adobe Animate |
| LosslessCut | FFmpeg GUI for lossless operations | Lin, Mac, Win | CLI ffmpeg |
| Pedalboard2 | VST plugin host for live processing | Lin, Mac, Win | OBS Studio |
| cobalt | YouTube downloader | Web | youtube-dl |
| Name | Specifics | Platform | Popular Alternative |
|---|---|---|---|
| blender | Widely appreciated 3D tool | Lin, Mac, Win | 3ds Max |
| GIMP | It's awesome when you use shortcuts | Lin, Mac, Win | Photoshop |
| darktable, RawTherapee | Raw photos developing toolset | Lin, Mac, Win | Lightroom |
| Hugin | The best panorama photo stitcher ever | Lin, Mac, Win | Many of them |
| Inkscape | Vector editor for creative drawings | Lin, Mac, Win | CorelDRAW |
| LibreOffice Draw, Karbon | Simple vector editors for technical drawing | Lin, Mac, Win | CorelDRAW |
| Krita | Digital painting made free | Lin, Mac, Win | SAI |
| Synfig Studio | 2D animation software | Lin, Mac, Win | Adobe Animate (former Flash) |
| FontBase | Font Manager | Lin, Mac, Win | - |
| FastStone Image Viewer | Ultimate | Win | ACDSee, IrfanView |
| Excalidraw | Whiteboard | Web | Microsoft Whiteboard, diagrams.net |
| ImageManipulation | Finds similar images | Python | - |
| Name | Specifics | Platform | Popular Alternative |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visual Studio Code | Ultimate | Lin, Mac, Win | Sublime Text |
| Lite XL | Light and Fast | Lin, Win | notepad.exe, AkelPad, leafpad, lite |
| Vim | It seems hard unless you try (my .vimrc) | Lin, Mac, Win | Neovim |
| HackMD | Online & Collaborative | Web | Google Docs |
| Trilium Next | Personal Knowledge Base | Web/Desktop Sync | Obsidian |
| Joplin | Personal Knowledge Base | Lin, Mac, Win, Android | Evernote |
| Name | Specifics | Platform | Popular Alternative |
|---|---|---|---|
| LanguageTool | Good spell checker | All | Many |
| Emojipedia | Emoji search engine | Web | - |
| Glosbe | Dictionary with usage examples | Web | - |
| Thesaurus.com | Synonims search engine | Web | - |
| LaTeX | Believe me, it worth learning | Lin, Mac, Win | Microsoft Office |
| LibreOffice | Quite a robust office suite | Lin, Mac, Win | Microsoft Office |
| DeepL | AI translator | Web | Google Translate |
| Name | Specifics | Platform | Popular Alternative |
|---|---|---|---|
| GCC | The compiler that changed the industry | Any | Visual Studio, LLVM |
| Regex101 | Regular expressions debugger | Web | Your language's debugger |
| GitLab | Raise your own internal GitHub-like service! | Web | GitHub |
| tig | Text-based UI for Git | Lin, Mac (CLI) | - |
| Fork | GUI for Git | Mac, Win | Git Extensions, SourceTree |
| GitKraken | GUI for Git (free for home and opensource) | Lin, Mac, Win | Git Extensions, SourceTree |
| P4Merge, DiffMerge | Diff/Merge Tool | Lin, Mac, Win | KDiff3, WinMerge |
| git-filter-repo | Rewrite the whole Git history | Python | git-filter-branch, BFG Repo-Cleaner |
| tldr | man in a nutshell |
Web, CLI | man |
| explainshell | Explanation to any shell command | Web | man |
| Data Converter | Text, Bin, Dec, Hex, Base64, Hash sums | Web | Hand-made tools |
| DB Browser for SQLite | A quick and easy way to use SQL | Lin, Mac, Win | - |
| PM2 Runtime | Production Process Manager for Node.js | NodeJS | SystemD or Docker |
| Partition Wizard | Free Partition Manager for Windows | Win | Many |
| ptpython | A better Python REPL | Python | python |
| Podman | Docker done right (with backward compatibility) | Lin, Mac, Win | Docker |
| Ansible | Describe and maintain the state of your servers | Lin, Mac, Win | bash scripts |
| Nomad | Orchestration the Easy Way | Lin, Mac, Win | Kubernetes |
| Diffy | Online diff-file viewer (diff -ur ./d1 ./d2 > d.txt) |
Web | git + GitLab or GitHub |
| Flutter | Next generation of cross-platform development. Dart is awesome. | Lin, Mac, Win | PhoneGap |
| Turndown | HTML to Markdown converter | Web | pandoc |
| Google Colab | Free computing resources (including GPUs) | Python, Web | |
| ShredOS | Wipe all of your disks | bootable x86/x64 | ? |
| Nomad | A simple orchestrator that you can manage yourself | Web | k8s |
| Jupyter | Python notebook | Any | Python Interactive CLI |
| Harbor | Container registry | Containers | Docker Registry, ACR |
| CustomTkinter, Kivy | Python GUI Library | Python | PyQt, wxPython, tcl/tk |
| csvkit | Treat CSV files as database tables | Python | - |
| mosh | SSH client for long-distance and unstable links | Lin, Mac, Win | ssh+tmux |
| RustScan | Fast port scanner | Lin, Mac, Win | nmap |
| Windmill | Automation platform | Web | Power Automate |
| OKD | Easy k8s distributive | Web | kubespray, k3s, minukube |
| navi | shell snippets mamanger | Lin, Mac, Win | Ctrl+R |
| Name | Specifics | Platform | Popular Alternative |
|---|---|---|---|
| FreeCAD | The 3D CAD | Lin, Mac, Win | SolidWorks |
| SolveSpace | The parametric 3D CAD | Lin, Mac, Win | SolidWorks |
| BRL‑CAD, OpenSCAD | Extremely hard. Don't even try. | Lin, Mac, Win | - |
| LibreCAD, QCAD | The 2D CADs | Lin, Mac, Win | AutoCAD |
| KiCad | The EDA | Lin, Mac, Win | P-CAD, Altium Designer, EAGLE, DipTrace |
| bCNC | The ultimate GRBL CNC tool on tcl/tk | Lin, Mac, Win | Many |
| Name | Specifics | Platform | Popular Alternative |
|---|---|---|---|
| FreeFileSync | Nice and friendly file synchronizer (mostly for backuping) | Lin, Mac, Win | - |
| Tixati, qBittorrent | Awesome no-ad torrent clients | Lin, Win | μTorrent |
| KeePass | Secure password manager | Lin, Mac, Win, Android | Paper? |
| Bitwarden | Convenient password manager | Lin, Mac, Win, Android | KeePass |
| 7-Zip | The best archiver | Lin, Win | WinRAR |
| WizTree | Disk space analyzer | Win | Folder Size |
| GParted | Partition manager | Lin, Mac, Win | MiniTool Partition Wizard |
| Clonezilla | SSD Migration software | Lin, Mac, Win | Macrium Reflect, EaseUS Todo Backup Free |
| fixparts | Converts primary partition to logical | Lin, Mac, Win | EaseUS Partition Master |
| SVGOMG! | Cleans up the SVG markup | Web | - |
| RustDesk | Remote desktop | Lin, Mac, Win, Android | TeamViewer, AnyDesk |
| awfice | Simple browser-based office apps | Web Browser | - |
| Element, Mattermost, Rocket.Chat, Zulip | Collaboration software | All | Slack, Teams |
| Joplin | Notes | All | Evernote |
| Tor Browser | Slow, but very secure anonymizer | Lin, Mac, Win, Android | VPNs |
| Syncthing | Continuous file synchronization program | Lin, Mac, Win, Android | rsync |
| Home Assistant | A single place for all smart home automation | - | Mi Home |
| WingetUI | Keep your apps always updated | Win | MS Store |
| yt-dlp | It works! | Python | A youtube-dl fork |
| Jitsi / Jitsi Meet | FLOSS Video Conference Service | Web | Zoom, Google Meet |
| is.gd | Link Shortener | Web | former goo.gl |
| Bananas Screen Sharing | cross-platform, p2p screen 🖥️ sharing 📡 made simple ⚡ | Lin, Mac, Win | Jitsi Meet? |
| Name | Specifics | Platform |
|---|---|---|
| uBlock Origin | A general-purpose blocker | Fox, Chrm |
| I don't care about cookies | Clean more useless shit from the Internet | Fox, Chrm |
| Dark Reader | Dark mode for any page | Fox, Chrm |
| LanguageTool | Spell Checker | Fox, Chrm |
| Stylus | Userstyles manager | Fox, Chrm |
| Tampermonkey | Userscript manager | Fox, Chrm |
| To Google Translate | Quick translatioon tool | Fox |
| Link Text and Location Copier | Copy text linked to current page | Fox |
| VkOpt | VKontakte Optimizer | Tampermonkey |
| Name | Specifics | Software |
|---|---|---|
| Omega2 | The cheapest Linux platform | OpenWRT-based Linux |
| ESP8266 | The cheapest MCU with Wi-Fi | MicroPython, Lua, Arduino, and more |
| C.H.I.P. (R.I.P.) | A better Raspberry Pi | Debian-based Linux |
| MAX9814 | Microphone preamp | USB |
| SoloKeys | Opensource FIDO2 keys | YubiKey, Authenticator app, SMS |
Software