Tools matter

Awesome Free Software

The ultimate guide to quit pirating

Audio/Video

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

Imaging/Design/Foto

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	-

Text Editors

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

Language/Writing

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

Developer Tools

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
difit	Offline diff viewer	NodeJS	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
Resterm	HTTP/GraphQL/gRPC client	Lin, Mac, Win	curl, postman, insomnia
rainfrog	TUI database manager	Lin, Mac, Win	DBeaver

Engineering

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

Utilites

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?

Browser Extensions

Name	Specifics	Platform
uBlock Origin	A general-purpose blocker	Fox, Chrm
I (still) 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

GNOME Extensions

• Hot Edge
• Battery Health Charging
• AWSM
• Auto Move Windows

Cool Hardware

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

Apps I Use On The Go

Other Stuff

• The Book of Secret Knowledge
• More Software
  • More Awesome Linux Software
  • More awesome software by language
• More Free Services (Russian)
• My Cheatsheets