What open source programs do you recommend for Windows? (Windows exclusive or not)

I am and all my life have been a Linux user, I have nothing against Windows or MacOS, I just like Linux, and lately I have been experimenting with Windows in a virtual machine and I don’t really know much open source software there apart from the one that is cross-platform like Firefox or Joplin.

At the moment I know:

Flow Launcher: It’s a typical rofi style launcher, although I’m not a TWM user I like to just press super and type the first letters of the program I’m looking for to open it.

Lively Wallpaper: A program to have animated wallpapers, in the style of Wallpaper Engine.

Edit: I want to clarify that I read all the comments, I only respond to some because many times I have nothing to contribute to many of them because I don’t know what to comment. Thanks to all of you for providing your lists of programs, I will be sure to try as many as I can because they are great, at least I know what to install if I use Windows one day!

Crozekiel,

Wild, you are like from the alternate universe where Linux is dominant and nerds play around in windows. Are things better where you are from? :P

transientpunk,
@transientpunk@sh.itjust.works avatar

Being around the Steam Deck forums when it initially launched felt otherworldly. A super popular device launched with Linux as a first class citizen, and Windows users were desperate for drivers that improved unstable usability. It was surreal.

zikk_transport2,

Lmao I remember. I’ve been there too! 🔥

Xirup,
@Xirup@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Of course! In this universe everybody uses linux phones and they are actually usable (and repairable)!

csm10495,
@csm10495@sh.itjust.works avatar

Well Android is Linux based… so maybe this is a similar universe.

thru_dangers_untold, (edited )
  • Firefox: best web browser out there
  • Bitwarden: password manager
  • ShareX: screenshot utility. Greenshot is also good, but I prefer ShareX
  • WinDirStat: disk usage utility
  • KDE Connect: connect Android phone to PC
  • Image Glass: image viewer
  • OBS: video & audio capture
  • Blender: 3D modeling, animation, video editing
  • Handbrake: video conversion
  • VLC: video/audio playback
  • Audacity: audio editing
  • SpeedCrunch: calculator
  • Notepad++: text editor
  • Spyder (via Anaconda): Python IDE
fetchezlavache,
@fetchezlavache@lemmy.world avatar

KCE KDE Connect?

thru_dangers_untold,

yep, thanks!

Yomope,

If you liked windirstat i warmly recommend wiztree ( not sure if open source tho).it’s the same but faster. like FASTER faster

gornius,

although I’m not a TWM user I like to just press super and type the first letters of the program I’m looking for to open it.

It will never stop to amaze me how many people don’t know it’s a feature in every major DE and every Windows starting from Vista.

Even on Windows 10/11, just tap windows key and start typing without clicking anywhere.

My list of FOSS I use everywhere (these work in Win and Linux):

  • Open Tablet Driver - if you’ve got the drawing tablet it probably supports it. You can customize everything and has even built-in plugin manager.
  • Krita - GIMP alternative with non-destructive editing capabilities.
  • yt-dlp - download videos from almost any video sharing service, even TikTok, Instagram etc.
  • neovim - for quick file edits
  • vscode/vscodium with vim plugin - my IDE for everything
  • ffmpeg - forget handbrake - you can do even basic video editing here. Join two videos together? Done. Add audio to video? Done. Crop part of the video without reencoding it? Done. Loop a video to 10 hours without reencoding it? Done in matters of seconds.
  • kdenlive - an actual video editor that is 100% FOSS, doesn’t suck and works on Windows and Linux.
  • imagemagick - ffmpeg for images
Obi,
@Obi@sopuli.xyz avatar

It recently stopped working for me (windows key search) and it’s super debilitating once you got used to it.

ErwinLottemann,

why not use neovim as your ide instead?

gornius,

I used to, but I need to get my job done, not play with configuring it for hours just to achieve what VSCode does out of the box. Plus settings sync is great.

iloverocks,

Lite xl is also a nice IDE and very lite

GreenMario,
  1. GIMP (Image editor)
  2. putty (Secure shell/terminal emulator)
  3. WinSCP (Secure FTP client)
  4. QBittorrent (guess.)
  5. 7zip (All in one compressed archive manager)
  6. Firefox
  7. Notepad++ (text editor with syntax highlights)
  8. Handbrake (Video transcoder)
  9. VLC (all in one video player)

These are my top must have installed. There are others but they’re situational

Let’s not forget the various console emulators that are open source as well. All the good ones are.

hogofwar,

I use Kitty instead of Putty recently, though I don’t know if the difference is worth it.

jjakc,
@jjakc@lemthony.com avatar

I just use Powershell, much easier imo

grandel,

That’s a good list!

I use the same, except I use LibreWolf (privacy focused fork of FF) and VS Code instead of Firefox and Notepad++

cityboundforest,
@cityboundforest@beehaw.org avatar

Vs code

I would actually recommend VSCodium; it’s the same product but without the Microsoft telemetry.

HaggierRapscallier,

Does it lose any MS connected features? Other than surveillance.

GreenMario,

Yeah VS Code definitely if ya doing programming. I’m just editing config/ini files once in a while so N++ is just right for me.

otter,
@otter@lemmy.ca avatar

Some of these are cross platform but:

7zip

Autohotkey

Bitwarden

Calibre

Draw.io

Handbrake

Speedcrunch

WinHTTrack

WinSCP

cityboundforest,
@cityboundforest@beehaw.org avatar

Seconding AHK, Bitwarden, and Calibre

Virual,

I prefer nanazip to 7zip because it’s just forked 7zip that’s been updated for modern windows. They’re working on a dark mode too.

otter,
@otter@lemmy.ca avatar

Good to know!

vim_b,

PowerToys: productivity utilities like window pinning, window management, accented character typing assistant, color picker, text extractor, etc.

thehellrocc,

Seconding this. It has every feature you know Windows needs but it still doesn’t have (likely because of the need for testing or being aimed at power users).

AnonStoleMyPants,

You forgot the best thing. Window management, aka Fanzy Zones. You can set areas to your monitor and snap windows to those instead of just left / right side of monitor. Completely customizable.

Redo11,

I have to say it, Rufus.

lunicoDee,

To install linux

1993_toyota_camry,
@1993_toyota_camry@beehaw.org avatar

Ventoy is the easier answer these days IMO. Just drop ISOs on your Ventoy’d usb key and choose them from a menu at boot time.

Redo11,

Ventoy is easy, but not perfect. I tried multum of unique images and it struggled hard. From openwrt to freedos to reboot of Hiren’s boot cd, it just couldn’t load them correctly.

1993_toyota_camry,
@1993_toyota_camry@beehaw.org avatar

Not to be argumentative, but in case you’re interested:

According to the ventoy site it supports those images, though openwrt requires a plugin and freedos seems to require using memdisk mode, though I’m less clear on the limitations there.

Redo11,

Oh, I didn’t know that, but still, I don’t expect to be truly universal. But as long as you are dealing with ISOs of LX server/desktop or WIN, it’s an amazing tool.

1993_toyota_camry,
@1993_toyota_camry@beehaw.org avatar

For sure. Nothing will ever be as reliable as writing the image to usb/cd/floppy.

Redo11,

Well, there is an option of using multiple partitions and setting up grub

TodaviaTyler,

Came here to say this exactly!

staticblanket,

BalenaEtcher or Rufus for writing ISOs to usb.

folak,

Or ventoy ? More useful, and so much faster than rufus.

520,

dd works very well if it's a Linux ISO and you're using the USB solely as a livecd.

It can also byte-clone discs and partitions, including ripping CDs and DVDs.

folak,

Don’t know about dd, but I’ll give an eye. www.ventoy.net/en/index.html Ventoy has a ton of features.

captain_aggravated,
@captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works avatar

dd is a fairly ancient/standard file copy utility, if you dd an ISO file to a drive, it images that drive.

Ventoy is basically a clever use of GRUB, which allows booting multiple ISOs from the same USB stick.

thejevans,

BloatyNosy

Universal Debloater and PC Manager for the most up-to-date version of the Redmond OS (Windows 11)

github.com/builtbybel/BloatyNosy

sleek

an open-source (FOSS) todo manager based on the todo.txt syntax

github.com/ransome1/sleek

WinDirStat

a disk usage statistics viewer and cleanup tool for various versions of Microsoft Windows

github.com/windirstat/windirstat

MacType

Better font rendering for Windows

github.com/snowie2000/mactype

VelociCatTurd,

In my experience, windirstat is inferior to other similar software. It’s mostly fine but it can be very, very slow to get you results. Though honestly I don’t know if the alternatives like space sniffer or Wiztree are open source.

thejevans,

They’re both closed source.

Klaymore,
@Klaymore@sh.itjust.works avatar

FileLight from KDE also works on Windows

Pantherina,
@Pantherina@feddit.de avatar

I dont get mactype there simply is no explanation what it does?

thejevans,

Yeah, the documentation is very sparse. I think it was originally all in Simplified Chinese, but some things have been translated to English. Basically it gives you tools to fix subpixel font rendering issues on windows. Using a rotated monitor? An OLED monitor? A TV? All of these are examples of screens that don’t have standard subpixel layouts, so fonts tend to have weird color fringing as a result. MacType allows for a lot of tweaks to how fonts are rendered, but I tend to just switch to grayscale rendering, which works well.

This reddit thread walks through the process with some specific configs and they have pictures to show how it changes things.

reddit.com/…/better_text_rendering_for_oled_displ…

TheAnonymouseJoker,
@TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml avatar

WizTree may not be FOSS (only free software) but its MFT referencing feature speeds up disk scans by 20-40x, which is far too valuable.

d3Xt3r,

Xoblite: Blackbox/Fluxbox-style WM/shell for Windows.

Open Shell: Brings back the classic start menu and other classic Explorer.exe features

Notepad2e: A lightweight and portable alternative to Notepad++

AutoHotkey: Probably the best GUI automation tool out there, this is the tool that I miss the most in the Linux world.

peregus,

Notepad2e: A lightweight and portable alternative to Notepad++ Nice! Why do you prefer it at Notepad++?

d3Xt3r,

Because it’s lightweight and portable. :)

Notepad2e is just a small exe file which doesn’t require installation. This allows me to run it on my work PC or random work VMs without filling out any paperwork. And on my personal machines, I can replace the OG Notepad with this by renaming notepad.exe in the Windows folder, so when I press Win+R -> and type “notepad”, it fires up Notepad2e. It launches just as quickly as the original Notepad, and doesn’t use much RAM either, and provides most of the features that I’d commonly use in Notepad++, such as text transformations, syntax highlighting, large file support and live monitoring (which makes is handy for viewing logs). With this, I don’t really have a need for Notepad++ - if I want more features, say I’m working on a proper coding project or something, I’d use a proper IDE like VSCode, but otherwise, Notepad2e satisfies most of my text editing needs.

peregus,

I like your point of view! Thanks!

klangcola,

There’s also Kate, the KDE Advanced Text Editor. It’s available from the Windows store, and works amazingly well on Windows, fast snappy and (almost?) just as featurefull as on Linux. I use it side by side with Notepad++

Nioxic,

Playnite for launching games

It will open up anything. Battlenet games, steam games, emulated games… you name it. Supports themes too!

www.playnite.link

AccurstDemon,

FreeFileSync a FOSS backup and folder synchronizer, a must have.

FreeFileSync is a folder comparison and synchronization software that creates and manages backup copies of all your important files. Instead of copying every file every time, FreeFileSync determines the differences between a source and a target folder and transfers only the minimum amount of data needed. FreeFileSync is Open Source software, available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

nix,
@nix@merv.news avatar

Is this different than syncthing in an important ways?

AccurstDemon, (edited )

Yes, Syncthing needs 2 diferents devices to sync, FreeFileSync syncronize whatever you want within 1 device, for example between 2 Disks or from a network disk to your computer disk.

Syncthing works great if there are 2 devices turned on and connected to a LAN or Internet, and FreeFileSync is totally disconected from the internet and only needs 1 device on (the one that execute it)

I use both, Syncthing to autosync all my devices and FreeFileSync to backup all those files to various disconected hard drives

nix,
@nix@merv.news avatar

Oh nice thats really useful ill try it thanks

AWittyUsername,

PowerToys

Andy, (edited )
@Andy@programming.dev avatar

I think I didn’t see these mentioned yet:

learnbyexample, (edited )
@learnbyexample@programming.dev avatar

Check out github.com/auctors/free-lunch (list of free Windows software)

See also www.nirsoft.net (freeware, not open source)

lunicoDee,

See also www.nirsoft.net (freeware, not open source)

I’d say free(as in beer)ware

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