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.
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”)
It comes also with a doctor, you can invoke it with “M-x doctor”. I discovered Emacs in the 80s, used it a lot in uni in the 90s, Emacs is a religion, or an OS, it’s so powerful it’s incredible. Nowadays I’m mostly using code for coding, or simply nano for small scripts/text.
Emacs is a religion, or an OS
Philosophy is a subset of religion, and there is a definitely an Emacs philosophy about making absolutely all software hackable, and controlling the computer using text.
App platforms are a subset of operating systems. People confuse the two because most app platforms are inseparable from the operating system on which they run. But some software, like the Web, or Java, or to some extent .NET/Mono, are app platforms that run the same apps across multiple operating systems. Emacs is an app platform.
Doctor, Doctor, my brother thinks he’s a chicken!
Too much fun! Like many other Comp. Sci. students, I spent way too many hours trying to get Eliza, an automated psychiatrist from MIT, to say something shocking. Weizenbaum, the developer, “was surprised and shocked that individuals, including his secretary, attributed human-like feelings to the computer program.” In this sense AI is nothing new because Eliza passed the Turing Test in 1967.
80s/90s was the good old time, no web, only irc, gopher, usenet, things like this
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
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.
I think that the question is primarily about Desktop Apps, since this is the Linux community.
Mmmh. To me apps are the things installed on a smartphone. The things I install on a computer I call programs.
But the same applies there for me, too. I basically do everything in the browser.
I understand your point. “Program” is a more wider term. Javascript executed in your browser could be a program too. App is just a short term for a standalone program with a GUI, IMO.
It’s just how languages change with time. For example what we simply call “libs” today used to be called by their full name “program libraries”. You don’t often see someone calling them like that anymore. I feel that communication nowadays requires us to constantly check the context in order to avoid misunderstandings. It’s maybe a reason why I don’t write that much online anymore.
A good kit IMO, in order of priority:
- Cherrytree; nominally for making hierarchical lists but you can basically use it as a wiki for your entire life. You can theme it yourself too, if you think it looks too retro out of the box.
- Syncthing, for keeping files synced between devices without having to use a server.
- Qbittorrent, for getting files you need. Remember to install search plugins.
- KeepassXC. Password manager (local, not on a server, use in combination with Syncthing).
- Convertall, for unit conversions.
- Calibre, for managing an ebook library, converting formats, removing DRM, transferring to ereader etc.
- Rhythmbox, for music library, podcasts, internet radio.
- Shotwell, for photo and video library. Easy to use, supports tags (metadata written to image files).
- GIMP, for image manipulation. It’s extremely versatile, comprehensive and versatile. 3.0 is due out soon and will include non-destructive layer effects. Heavyweight piece of software, so expect a learning curve.
- Ardour, for music production. Heavyweight, steep learning curve.
- Flowblade for video production. Lightweight, easy to learn.
- Libreoffice, desktop publishing.
- Librewolf; privacy-focussed web browser.
- Thunderbird; highly organisable email client.
- Freetube, for watching youtube videos without all the ads and tracking. Local subscriptions and playlists, which you can export to use with Newpipe on Android. Also lets you download video and audio.
If you like the terminal also add:
- ranger; file manager
- newsboat; RSS feed reader
- yt-dl; download videos from youtube and many other sites ;)
- w3m; command line web browser. I like to use this in combination with newsboat.
Enjoy!
I use CoreCtrl to fix my GPU’s atrocious fan curve, which is a necessity since normally it overheats to high hell. With CoreCtrl, I have a nice fan curve that makes my GPU rarely, if ever, run hotter than 70°C.
I wish it had Nvidia support. Even though I have it installed, it’s useless for me. Currently trying to find a fan control/curve tool/program that works with Nvidia GPU.
I’m using Green With Envy to manage the fan temp curves for my NVIDIA GPU.
Do you mind sharing your fan curve? Also, I can’t unlock the additional feature of Green with Envy. (I think there’s a command for that).
Here is my fan curve. I was having stability issues when the GPU got hotter that 50 deg C, which the card should be fine with, hence the curve
The additional feature? Do you mean the CoolBits stuff https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA/Tips_and_tricks#Enabling_overclocking
Thank you and Yes, i can’t seem to make it work on fedora. Overclock Profile section.
Yeah, I get you :c
Syncthing, micro, fish, btop, podman
I distro hop so these are usually the first that get installed.
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.
Thrown away your current ssh client and get
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.
You could try https://2fas.com/ open source mobile application with browser extensions and cloud sync for backups.
Or www.bitwarden.com password manager is also open source and for a small “premium” supports 2FA for mobile/desktop/browser.
I haven’t heard of 2fas before, they seem pretty interesting. I’m inclined to keep my password and 2fa vaults out of the cloud (thus Aegis and Keepass) so I’m interested in how the browser extension syncs data with a phone. If it uses a shared network or ephemeral data transfers that would be pretty nice.
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.
Syncthing and KeepassXC for syncing 2FA between devices. (I use Bitwarden for passwords)
Do you want to have 2fa keys on all your devices? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose?
Everyone needs to make their own choices about this but IMO it’s fine.
Pretty much everyone saves recovery codes in their password manager anyway, which is the same thing.
Do you want to have 2fa keys on all your devices?
Yes
Doesn’t that defeat the purpose?
I use different password between KeepassXC and Bitwarden. (On my phone one of them is unlocked by fingerprint because I am lazy but not both)
And I don’t store KeepassXC password in Bitwarden.
While my solution isn’t perfect (if someone key logged my computer I am very screwed), I think it’s better than (1) have a much higher chance of losing my 2FA tokens altogether (2) put all hope on Bitwarden being not compromised
No, 2FA stops someone from getting into your account if they have the password.
I don’t know about you specifically, but I’m surprised how many people haven’t heard of Krita, a FOSS image editing app with an optional AI Image Generation plugin.
Huh, didn’t know Krita had a plugin for that. Is it for Stable Diffusion?
It uses Stable Diffusion, yes (specifically comfy UI for the backend), but it has a much better in app UI that any stable diffusion web UI I’ve tried.
Analogous to the Krita post, I am surprised nobody seems to know KolourPaint. It’s similar to MS paint. I use it, when I need to make a quick sketch, whiteboard style, e.g. when sharing my screen with a coworker.
Otherwise, I really must have Dolphin and Okular.
I love dolphin’s split mode (quickly toggled with F3) and its ability to seamlessly navigate all kinds of protocols for my NAS, webdav for nextcloud storage, MTP for the phone…
Okular has annotations which have been super useful to me. And it’s so easy to switch between viewing single page, two-page and multi-page. Which is great for skimming text documents and presentations. The auto reload ability is great when iterating on a document (e.g. latex doc or matplotlib chart).
Otherwise, of course firefox and thunderbird, not much to say here Please don’t use chrome. It’s market share makes Google the de-facto owner of www technology. But I guess I’d be preaching to the choir here.
I use XSane and TheGimp to scan and edit my paintings, Firefox with privacy extensions to browse, VLC to play videos, Gnome Mahjongg to waste time playing. I used to use Resolve to edit videos, I’ll soon start using Kdenlive. As a visual artist I have a thing for film emulation that Kdenlive can’t do, but it’s something I’ll have to leave behind.
What do you mean with film emulation that Kdenlive can’t do?
On Resolve there various helper for-film-emulation plugins, and also third parties like Dehancer and Cineprint (which are exceptional), that do near-perfect film emulation. These things don’t exist on Linux video editors. They barely exist for Premiere/FinalCut. It’s a Resolve-first ability.
I think I didn’t expressed myself correctly, what do you mean with film emulation?
Film emulation is a whole “sub-genre” of photography and video, where creators are trying to emulate the look and feel of various types of films, like kodachrome, fujifilm, etc. In fact, most movies and music videos have a layer of such emulation during their color grading process. I also treat my videos that way for a more cinematic look.
My nixpkgs list is something like
- Firefox
- Vim
- WezTerm
- Fzf
- Zoxide
- Starship
- Copyq
- mpv
- Obsidian
- Chromium
- Xbindkeys
- Xte
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.
A lot of good stuff here. The three things that are most notable for me are:
Notepadqq
Fsearch
Librewolf
