Chris Were's recommended apps and websites
A list of useful apps, games and web services. Items listed here are free and open source unless specified otherwise.
Apps
Apps listed in this section are done so with Linux users in mind. Some may be available for other platforms but not all.
- Delta Chat: an email client for desktop and mobile which displays emails like instant messages, available as an appimage.
- Firefox: my day-to-day browser of choice.
- GIMP: my photo and image editor of choice.
- Inkscape: design and edit vector graphics (e.g. SVG and PDF files).
- Kdenlive: video editor: reasonably advanced and full-featured, available as an appimage.
- KeePassXC: one of the best password managers around, available as an appimage and as a snap.
- Krita: a really full featured photo and image editor, available as an appimage.
- LibreOffice: office utils, available as a snap, flatpak or appimage.
- Libresprite: creating and animating pixel art. Available as an appimage.
- LibreWolf: respin of FireFox with some tweaks. Available as an appimage.
- OBS (Open Broadcaster Software): screen recorder and livestreaming software.
- OpenShot: video editor: fine for basic video editing, available as an appimage.
- SimpleScreenRecorder: screen recorder: not as full-featured as OBS but a useful recorder nevertheless.
- Scribus: desktop publisher - available as an appimage.
- RSS Guard: simple RSS reader available as an appimage.
Games
- Battle for Wesnoth: a turn based fantasy strategy game.
- Chromium BSU: fast paced, arcade-style, top-scrolling space shooter.
- Freedoom: free and open source FPS game based on the Doom engine.
- Hedgewars: a turn-based strategy, artillery, action and comedy game (like Worms).
- Minetest: free, open source voxel game engine and game, fun to build stuff in. Available as a snap.
- OpenArena: community-produced deathmatch FPS based on GPL idTech3 technology.
- OpenMW: open source engine for The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Original game files required.
- OpenTTD: Transport Tycoon Deluxe as imagined by FOSS.
- Red Eclipse: a fun Arena shooter, available as an appimage.
- Shapez.io: factory line puzzle game, similar to Factorio.
- Widelands: a Settlers-esq strategy open source strategy game.
- Xonotic: free and fast arena shooter.
Web apps
Open source web apps
- Apertium: free and open source alternative to Google Translate.
- dpaste: free and open source alternative to Pastebin that works without JavaScript.
- Diagrams.net: a simple drawing and chart making program, available as an appimage.
- Hastebin: free and open source alternative to Pastebin.
- HTMLhouse: quick and easy webpage creation tool for people who like to code in HTML.
- Framapic: free and open source image hosting service.
- LibreSpeed: free and open source speedtest; no Flash, no Java, no websocket.
- LibreTranslate: free and open source translation tool.
- Jitsi Meet: video chat and conferencing.
- MultiTwitch: view multiple Twitch streams side-by-side, great for watching multiplayer streams.
- Neocities: build simple websites with HTML (like this one).
- OpenStreetMap: FOSS's answer to Google Maps.
- Piskel: pixel art image editor.
- p2p.chat: peer-to-peer video conferencing application.
- PrivateBin: open source Pastebin alternative with privacy enhancements.
- Twitch stream RSS generator: generates a RSS feed for your Twitch channel.
Open source front ends
For this section I've linked to instance lists. This is to help further decentralise and share the load. Please considder donating to your favourite instances.
Closed source web apps
- Blogtrottr: delivers updates from RSS feeds to your email inbox.
- MailForSpam: receive email at a temporary address. Use it when signing up to certain websites to avoid spam.
- Temp Mail: receive email at a temporary address. Use it when signing up to certain websites to avoid spam.
- TweetDelete.net: lets you automatically delete Twitter posts that are older than a specified age.
Web browser add-ons
Whilst most of these tools should be available for multiple web browsers, I use Firefox as my primary browser and this selection might reflect that.
- behind!: a easy way to download images from awkward websites.
- uBlock Origin: a free, open source, ad content blocker.
Online resources
- Ambient Mixer: generate background audio to create your perfect environment using creative commons samples.
- DaFont: large collection of fonts, searchable by licence.
- Font Squirrel: large collection of fonts, searchable by licence.
- FreePD: large library of public domain music.
- Incompetech: large library of creative commons music.
- KissCC0: a library of public domain images.
- Libreddit: an open source, freedom respecting front end to Reddit.
- PickUp Image: library of public domain images.
- Public Domain Pictures: library of public domain images.
How-tos and fixes
Mastodon and fediverse tools
Gemini tools