#foss software

[madmwyrd]

Are you a fan of foss software?

i am BROKE so i kinda need to use it, but even then, its really good. i use shotcut for making videos, audacity to record audiobooks and other stuff, and firefox has been my browser of choice for over a decade now, so i would say yes!!

[praxis-app]

join the praxis discord - sign up - github

[biohazardouscanine]

THANK YOU.

Spray paint / airbrush effect coming in Tux Paint 0.9.34

[aro-culture-is]

Aro culture is, when forced to buy a Google phone cuz that's all you can afford, trying your damnest to use the invasive advert tracking to your advantage.

i.e. periodically typing in "I'm aromantic" to the chrome search bar & loudly saying it into the phone speaker in the hopes you'll stop getting jump-scared by an influx of dating app ads when forced to watch them in mobile games

,,, please. i beg of you. do not. for one, google doesn't recognize that as a metric, at best it places you into a queer category and targets you with ads that are promoted to queer people. They do not bother with granularity, because the advertisers are who are paying for categories or lack thereof. they also probably categorize you as single when you do that stuff, which again, defeats your goal. if you want to tell advertisers to get out here's actually a pretty simple thing to look for:

from there, consider:

install the firefox app (free), and use the uBlock Origin extension (best adblocker, free... and still works on youtube and twitch if you use the firefox app to load them)

i also recommend the breezewiki extension (free), because fandom wiki sucks on an ethics level, and this directs you to an identical, but ad-less page so they don't get money from you.

anyways my solution is stop seeing ads lol

related: install bitwarden as a password manager. it's free, well-established and credible, and you can use it on both android apps and firefox (as an extension) (also on any device in general). you only ever have to remember one password, preferably new, ever again. it's got the rest for you, stupidly well encrypted, and you can store data like security question answers, secure notes, and more!)

[wordcubed]

"Yeah, I switched to Coqsmear after Mastur.BAT hung too many times. Have you tried DawgMeat yet? I hear it's the spiritual successor to the T.O.A.D. Project. I still haven't got sound to work but I hope ToeJammer will fix that. Oh, and hit me up on Fookbase. It's a fork of Forkbase by the original dev!"

—What the average open source user sounds like

[sakuraswordly]

[netscapenavigator-official]

I just read that Godot has an "unofficial" and "experimental" port for PowerPC Linux??? And, like, I'm always happy when modern software supports legacy hardware... but.... PowerPC?? On Linux???? Like, are there really enough PPC Linux devices out there to warrant support of a modern game engine??

[girderednerve]

i installed open video downloader, a FLOSS utility for ripping youtube videos, which is such an easy to use & convenient program, & it reminded me of the campaign i went on (completely unsuccessfully) a couple years ago to get clickless mouse added to the patron computers in my public library, because i had watched multiple older adults struggle immensely to double-click on our computers, went looking for an easy solution for them, & found that someone had already thoughtfully written an elegant & adaptable little program, initially intended as an accessibility tool for a particular friend of theirs. this is why i love FLOSS projects so much: they're usually personal passion projects, at least at the outset, & they reflect such powerfully pro-social values that even when they have nothing to offer me in particular i am delighted by them. thank u to all FLOSS devs <3

[kittycatherder]

time to be excited about FOSS projects once again!

have a cool program for e2ee file transfer inspired by thinking about two wizards opening up wormholes to transfer tomes to each other

Get things from one computer to another, safely. This package provides a library and a command-line tool named wormhole, which makes it possible to get arbitrary-sized files and directories (or short pieces of text) from one computer to another. The two endpoints are identified by using identical “wormhole codes”: in general, the sending machine generates and displays the code, which must then be typed into the receiving machine. The codes are short and human-pronounceable, using a phonetically-distinct wordlist. The receiving side offers tab-completion on the codewords, so usually only a few characters must be typed. Wormhole codes are single-use and do not need to be memorized.

it also has some different clients including a gui version here (note; it's also a program you gotta use with command line but once it opens it'll have a window and you can just pin that to your taskbar to not have to run the command line to get it up and running)

and a web app

and some android and ios versions

[maypop-the-dragon]

PSA: Free Software

Reading this may really save your time, privacy, and money! Reblog or share to spread awareness!

Folks often use software that’s expensive and sometimes even inferior because they don’t know there are alternatives. So to those unfamiliar: basically, free and open-source (FOSS) or "libre" software is free to use and anyone can access the original code to make their own version or work on fixing problems.

That does not mean anyone can randomly add a virus and give it to everyone—any respectable libre project has checks in place to make sure changes to the official version are good! Libre software is typically developed by communities who really care about the quality of the software as a goal in itself.

There are libre alternatives to many well-known programs that do everything an average user needs (find out more under the cut!) for free with no DRM, license keys, or subscriptions.

Using libre software when possible is an easy way to fight against and free yourself from corporate greed while actually being more convenient in many cases! If you need an app to do something, perhaps try searching online for things like:

foss [whatever it is]

libre [whatever it is]

open source [whatever it is]

Feel free to recommend more libre software in the tags, replies, comments, or whatever you freaks like to do!

Some Libre Software I Personally Enjoy…

LibreOffice

LibreOffice is an office suite, much like Microsoft Office. It includes equivalents for apps like Word, Excel, and Powerpoint, which can view and edit files created for those apps.

I can't say I've used it much myself yet. I do not personally like using office software except when I have to for school.

OpenShot

OpenShot Video Editor is, as the name suggests, a video editing program. It has industry-standard features like splicing, layering, transitions, and greenscreen.

I've only made one video with it so far, but I'm already very happy with it. I had already paid for a video editor (Cyberlink PowerDirector Pro), but I needed to reinstall it and I didn't remember how. Out of desperation, I searched up "FOSS video editor" and I'm so glad I did. There's no launcher, there's no promotion of other apps and asset packs—it's just a video editor with a normal installer.

GIMP

GNU Image Manipulation Program is an image editor, much like Photoshop. Originally created for Linux but also available for Windows and MacOS, it provides plenty of functionality for editing images. It is a bit unintuitive to learn at first, though.

I've used it to create and modify images for years, including logos, really bad traceover art, and Minecraft textures. It doesn't have certain advanced tech like AI paint-in, but it has served my purposes well and it might just work for yours!

(Be sure to go to Windows > Dockable Dialogs > Colors. I have no idea why that's not enabled by default.)

Audacity

Audacity is an audio editing program. It can record, load, splice, and layer audio files and apply effects to them.

Audacity is another program I've used for a long time. It is not designed to compose music, but it is great for podcasts, simple edits, and loading legacy MS Paint to hear cool noises.

7-Zip

7-Zip is a file manager and archive tool. It supports many archive types including ZIP, RAR, TAR, and its own format, 7Z. It can view and modify the contents of archives, encrypt and decrypt archives, and all that good stuff.

Personally, I use 7-Zip to look inside JAR files for Minecraft reasons. I must admit that its UI is ugly.

Firefox

Firefox is an internet browser, much like Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, or Safari. While browsers are free, many of them include tracking or other anti-consumer practices. For example, Google plans to release an update to Chromium (the base that most browsers are built from these days) that makes ad blockers less effective by removing the APIs they currently rely on.

Aside from fighting monopolies, benefits include: support for animated themes (the one in the picture is Purple Night Theme), good ad blockers forever, an (albeit hidden) compact UI option (available on about:config), and a cute fox icon.

uBlock Origin

As far as I know, uBlock Origin is one of the best ad blockers there is.

I was on a sketchy website with my brother, and he was using Opera GX's ad blocker. Much of the time when he clicked on anything, it would take us to a random sponsored page. I suggested that he try uBlock Origin, and with uBlock Origin, that didn't happen anymore.

Linux

Linux is a kernel, but the term is often used to refer to operating systems (much like Windows or MacOS) built on it. There are many different Linux-based operating systems (or "distros") to choose from, but apps made for Linux usually work on most popular distros. You can also use many normally Windows-only apps on Linux through compatibility layers like WINE.

I don't have all four of these, so the images are from Wikipedia. I tried to show a variety of Linux distros made for different kinds of users.

If you want to replace your operating system, I recommend being very careful because you can end up breaking things. Many computer manufacturers don't care about supporting Linux, meaning that things may not work (Nvidia graphic cards notoriously have issues on Linux, for example).

Personally, I tried installing Pop!_OS on a laptop, and the sound output mysteriously doesn't work. I may try switching to Arch Linux, since it is extremely customizable and I might be able to experiment until I find a configuration where the audio works.

Many Linux distros offer "Live USB" functionality, which works as both a demo and an installer. You should thoroughly test your distro on a Live USB session before you actually install it to be absolutely sure that everything works. Even if it seems fine, you should probably look into dual-booting with your existing operating system, just in case you need it for some reason.

Happy computering!

[pencil2d-software]

Pencil2D 0.7.0 is out!

📢Change is inevitable…and after 3.5+ years and more than 480+ changes…

🎉Pencil2D 0.7.0 has been officially released!🎉

This version brings many volunteered backlog features, improvements & needed critical fixes.

You can read all about it in our release blog post ⤵️

We know it's been long overdue, but this release was massive while laying out the foundation for better things moving forward.

Nightly builds already have new changes and improvements too, so check them side by side if you run into any issues w/ release.

[praxis-app]

join the praxis discord - sign up - github

[volixia669]

I adore the Lone Gunmen as much as every other X-Files nerd, but while watching season 3's Wetwired, I realized that whether it be the 1990s or the 2020s, once you get ANY of them talking about Linux or FOSS (Free Open Source Software) they would be absolutely horrendous in how much they talk it up.

They'd put your average Linux/FOSS evangelist to SHAME with how much they'd be glorifying all of it.

[highinbrighton]

love my fellow gifmakers so much but i do wish they'd stop spreading photoshop propaganda. you don't need photoshop to make nice hq gifs, all you need is ffmpeg, gifski, and literally any photo editing software of your choice so long as it allows batch editing. free yourselves from the adobe industrial complex

[bynux]

[track-maniac]

I finally made my first pull request to an open-source project. It hasn't been reviewed yet so I don't know if it will be accepted but either way I'm really happy to finally have done it. It's just a small feature on a fork of a browser extension, but I'll work my way up from there. Maybe one day I'll be able to contribute something to KDE.

I love the feeling that when I want something to be different in a program, I can actually do it, and then share it with everyone.

If it actually goes through I think I'm going to love open-source even more and start being borderline annoying about it. I actually feel great right now.