Trying to discover new/unheard Linux desktop programs (Sorry for the confusion).
Edit: I apologise for confusing a lot of people. I meant Linux desktop “programs” coming from Windows/Mac. I’m used to calling them “apps”.
Edit: 🙌 I’m overwhelmed with the great “programs” people have recommended in the comment section. Thank you guys.
Because you asked about “apps”, people are replying with mobile apps. I think you wanted to write “programs” considering the community. Maybe you should edit this
People started saying apps to programs on computer as well. No idea who’s fault it is. Apple’s? Only old people call it software or so.
Not exactly sure whose fault is this but if OP still wants to use the term “app”, they should at least mention it’s “desktop apps”, or just go with “programs” which is the proper term. Because even with “desktop apps” I still understand it is as web apps more likely.
Distrobox supports waydroid to use android apps on wayland. There are many small purpose built apps for android than can be useful on desktop.
No one seems to be mentioning apps in this specific kind of context, and I don’t consider a locked down and stripped orphan kernel to be “Linux” but a lot of this stuff it FOSS and can now run on both.
EDIT: realized this was for desktop, so removed the original list of mostly android apps. Here’s my go to desktop apps:
Lollypop - music player
Invoiceninja - open source invoicing service
Meld - file/folder comparison
Librewolf - hardened Firefox
Joplin - notes
QEMU/Virt-Manager - virtualization for that one windows app you still need
KeepassXC - password management
Element-desktop - Matrix client
Gparted - no fuss partition management
Lutris - game launcher that works with epic games (among many others)
PDFarranger - best PDF management I’ve found on Linux Soundconverter - easy to use file converter
Restic - backups
Fdupes - duplicate file finder
Freetube - privacy respecting YouTube client
Paperless-ngx - very well built electronic document storage. Must be run as a server.On linux?
Whoops, didn’t notice the /c this was posted to 🤦♂️
Hahaha if Aegis was available on Linux I’d switch to it instantly.
I second that. It’s been brutal trying to find a good FOSS 2FA app for desktop.
If you’re already using keepassxc, you can import OTP codes and use that. That’s what I do when my phone is not around to use aegis. It’s not as pretty, but it works.
I have a few codes duplicated in my keepass vault for the services I log in to often on desktop. The autotype is super nice in those cases. Other than that I do generally prefer having a separation between password manager and 2fa data though. Probably only a theoretical safeguard in my case, but simple enough to keep in place for the time being.
If you’re in the GNOME ecosystem, you could give Authenticator a shot. It’s worked quite well for me so far.
I’m on KDE 🥲 That Gnome app has been almost enough to get me to switch though. There’s a few Gnome apps that KDE doesn’t have a comparable parallel to.
NewPipe
edir to mass-rename
fd is more convenient than find
aria2 makes downloads go brr with parameters
-x 10 -k 5Mand is integrated with multiple tools like yt-tlp, yayOh, and pass for password-management
ssu makes root console tools password-less. That and rdo for gui-tools (both a bit over 100 loc) made me uninstall sudo.
I like to pack services in containers so ctop has been a great basic ui to manage and monitor them in the shell
For terminal, the first thing I install is Midnight Commander - dual pane file manager. https://midnight-commander.org/
For all of my physical Linux machines - Cockpit and Cockpit-File Sharing plugin.
Desktop
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Thunderbird
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Firefox
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Vivaldi
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Gnome
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Chromium I use Firefox, wife uses Chromium and My WFH job I use Chrome. Vivaldi is a backup browser, I’ve been messing around with.
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QEMU/LibVirtd - So I can run a Windows VM for my old Canon Lide 60 scanner which scans clearly there, otherwise in Linux, it’s contrasted super grey for some reason.
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Kopia-UI - Backup system which supports NFS Shares - set and forget type of setup.
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VLC - Need I say more? Lol
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OnlyOffice - Better aesthetically IMHO than LibreOffice
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PDF Arranger - Works well to re-arrange pages or rotate them after scanning them in. (I self host Sterling PDF and will probably switch to that later)
And for some inspiration - the “Awesome Linux Software” list (Not mine) similar to the other Awesome lists you see around. https://github.com/luong-komorebi/Awesome-Linux-Software
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An web browser. 99 percent of my mobile activities are done in Firefox. I have Organic Maps for routing, a local mobile payment app and a local sharing electric sooter app.
This is pretty much all apps I use.
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The first things I install on a fresh linux install are always
htop(task manager) andmicro(nano but better).Thrown away your current ssh client and get
Emacs.
Emacs is an app platform in and of itself, and the vanilla installation comes with dozens of its own apps pre-installed. Like how web apps are all programmed in JavaScript, Emacs apps are all programmed in Lisp. All Emacs apps are scriptable and composable in Lisp. Unlike on the web, Emacs encourages you to script your apps to automate things yourself.
Emacs apps are all text based, so they all work equally well in both the GUI and the terminal.
Emacs comes with the following apps pre-installed:
- a text editor for both prose and computer code
- note taking and organizer called Org-mode (sort of like Obsidian, or Logseq)
- a file browser and batch file renamer called Dired
- a CLI console and terminal emulator
- a terminal multiplexer (sort-of like “Tmux”)
- a process manager (sort-of like “Htop”)
- a simple HTML-only web browser
- man-page and info page browser
- a wrapper around the Grep and Find CLI tools
- a wrapper around SSH called “Tramp”
- e-mail client
- IRC client
- revion control system, including a Git porcelain called “Magit”
- a “diff” tool
- ASCII art drawing program
- keystroke recorder and playback
Some apps that I install into Emacs include:
- “Mastodon.el” Mastodon client
- “Elfeed” RSS feed reader
- “consult” app launcher (sort-of like “Dmenu”)
Was gonna recommend Emacs, myself, but looks like you got it covered! Emacs is an amazing tool and is worth the journey
How do you think one should get started with Emacs? Should they start start with regular GNU Emacs or should they install one of the “distros”?
Honestly, just download/install from your package manager and then start using it. One of the best built-in modes is called Org mode. Don’t try anything crazy because it’s easy to get overwhelmed. It took me some periods of stopping and starting before things felt natural and became my daily driver.
How do you think one should get started with Emacs? Should they start start with regular GNU Emacs or should they install one of the “distros”?
I always recommend using the default setup for any software. The same goes for learning GIMP, Krita, Blender, FreeCAD, or whatever else, even though you can customize them all to your liking.
It is usually a good idea to try and learn the workflow that was intended by the people who developed this software, you could learn something from trying to use the computer in the same way that the professionals do. Same for Emacs: professional software developers have used it for almost 50 years, the default keyboard shortcuts are set the way they are partially for random historical reasons, but partially because they often make a lot of sense.
If you are interested, please check out my blog series on getting started with Emacs, called Emacs for Professionals
I discovered warpinator recently, useful for transferring files to my android phone.
I really like Lunatask. It’s a task/habit management app kind of like Todoist, but it works better for me personally. The premium version is quite expensive, but the free one is quite okay to work with. And it’s still in development so a lot of features are missing (you can’t set a time for a task for example which I find ridiculous).
Also Ghostwriter, it’s a really nice minimalistic markdown editor. I wish it was a bit more customizable but I guess I could try emacs for that.
Any flavor of vi, Gnu Screen, lrzsz, bash with the usual cli tools (awk, sed, grep, tail, head, rev, cat, tac, and recently jq and yq). Also openssh client. Some flavor of netcat is also crazy useful too. This is a good home for me to do my thing.
Edir: oh, and git. How did I forget git?!
Someone already mentioned Logseq, but I’m really enjoying Obsidian for my note taking needs. It’s similar, but I have found Obsidian to be very nice. Not FOSS, but I really like what the devs are doing.
Same here. I have tried:
- Joplin
- Standard Notes
- loqseq
- simple notes
- craft and a few others, but I keep coming back to obsidian. Currently self-hosting it using one of the plugins, that helps me easily sync between pc, MacBook, android and iOS.
Nice! Yeah you’ve definitely tried a bunch of apps.
What service are you using to self host obsidian? And is it cheaper than paying for obsidian sync?
Cool thanks for the info! Ill check it out
