Ask HN: Best open source/free software in their own category?

Posted by zsolt_terek on Friday January 30, 2015 @04:15AM
from the ask-hn dept.

I recently stumbled upon Krita on HN, which I really like. Would be great to collect the most powerful, feature-rich free software that are among the best in their category, and that get close to or even beat the commercial ones. I know some other great pieces like Gimp, Inkscape, but what's the state of the art for animations, music notations, audio mixing, etc? GUI & CLI should be both ok.

Here is a list of my favorite software that are worth learning:

  - Gimp: photo editing
  - Krita: digital painting, illustration
  - Inkscape: vector drawing
  - sox: sound processing (command line)
  - ffmpeg: video processing (command line)
  - imagemagick: image processing (command line)

( 28 comments | 34 points | on HN )

Re:Ask HN: Best open source/free software in their own categ... by ramtatatam on Friday January 30, 2015 @06:00AM (#8971442)

That may sound silly but humble Notepad++ should be a part of your list of great opensource software. Although at first glance it does not require spending time on learning its functionalities it offers a lot of plugins that allow to replace proprietary software (i.e. I'm using XML-plugin and that allows me to work with XMLs without using specialised software like Altova).

Also TrueCrypt - I'm using it all the time (although there are changes in maintenance community the last stable version was proven to be clean - I still trust old good truecrypt)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Best open source/free software in their own categ... by davismwfl on Friday January 30, 2015 @12:26PM (#8973080)

+1 Notepad++, I live in it when using a Windows machine. I wish it was available for OSX.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Best open source/free software in their own categ... by alexvoda on Friday January 30, 2015 @07:56AM (#8971751)

Natron: for cross-platform video compositing (Adobe After Effects alternative) at http://natron.inria.fr/

Synfig: for cross-platform 2D vector animation (Adobe Flash alternative) at http://www.synfig.org

Scribus: for desktop publishing (Adobe InDesign alternative) at http://www.scribus.net

FlashDevelop: for ActionScript development (Adobe Flash Builder alternative) at http://www.flashdevelop.org/

MyPaint: for intuitive full screen digital painting (Autodesk Sketchbook alternative) at http://mypaint.intilinux.com/

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Best open source/free software in their own categ... by lozf on Friday January 30, 2015 @06:11AM (#8971476)

Radio Station Programming: LiquidSoap http://www.liquidsoap.fm/

Streaming: Icecast http://icecast.org/

Low bandwidth, low latency audio codec: Opus http://opus-codec.org/

Lossless audio codec: FLAC http://xiph.org/flac/

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Best open source/free software in their own categ... by _jomo on Friday January 30, 2015 @05:50AM (#8971412)

Video downloading: youtube-dl

https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Best open source/free software in their own categ... by thenomad on Friday January 30, 2015 @06:00AM (#8971443)

VirtualDub - video manipulation software that does some things better than 99% of its competitors (including direct-stream processing, which for some reason most commercial editing suites don't). Not a replacement for Avid / FCX / Premiere / whatever by any means, but it does some stuff better than anything else.

http://www.virtualdub.org/

Also, grep.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Best open source/free software in their own categ... by _jomo on Friday January 30, 2015 @05:55AM (#8971428)

password manager: KeePassX[0] (or MacPass[1] on OS X)

KeePassX works cross-platform and there are ports for Android and iOS.

0: https://github.com/keepassx/keepassx

1: https://github.com/mstarke/MacPass/

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Best open source/free software in their own categ... by gadders on Friday January 30, 2015 @06:57AM (#8971603)

VLC for video playback?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Best open source/free software in their own categ... by tokenrove on Friday January 30, 2015 @10:45AM (#8972531)

I am fond of ardour for mixing audio recordings.

Lilypond is my favorite music notation software, but I have a predilection for text-based formats.

Of course TeX and its descendents remain world-class for serious document production, even if XSL-FO-based systems have made a big dent there.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Best open source/free software in their own categ... by protoduction on Friday January 30, 2015 @11:17AM (#8972706)

OBS - Cross-platform broadcaster software (for recording and live streaming). Better than any of its competition in my opinion.

https://obsproject.com/

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Best open source/free software in their own categ... by michaelbuddy on Friday January 30, 2015 @04:08PM (#8974502)

yes!!! great callout. this software is amazing. Records better reliable video + audio stream on my machine than 350 camtasia.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Best open source/free software in their own categ... by jbrooksuk on Friday January 30, 2015 @01:39PM (#8973548)

It's my own, but I'd like to think that Cachet (https://CachetHQ.io), although in beta is a good replacement for StatusPage.io

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Best open source/free software in their own categ... by idiotclock on Friday January 30, 2015 @10:12AM (#8972350)

Zotero is an excellent EndNote alternative

OpenShot is an imovie like video editor, I like it because it's easy to use

Rhythmbox is a featureful itunes-like music player.

Audacity isn't protools, but it's great for mixing audio

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Best open source/free software in their own categ... by tanderson92 on Friday January 30, 2015 @05:00AM (#8971287)

FFTW -- Fast Discrete Fourier Transform. Reason: it routinely beats proprietary FFT routines on real & complex and single & multidimensional transforms, and with better accuracy.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Best open source/free software in their own categ... by cwmma on Friday January 30, 2015 @05:47AM (#8971406)

QGIS: GIS software that isn't worse then the big closed source programs and is better at certain specific things.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Best open source/free software in their own categ... by aaronbrethorst on Friday January 30, 2015 @04:37AM (#8971218)

iOS, take your pick: https://www.cocoacontrols.com

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Best open source/free software in their own categ... by orkoden on Friday January 30, 2015 @07:16AM (#8971655)

That's not finished software. It's UI components.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Best open source/free software in their own categ... by owly on Saturday January 31, 2015 @06:23PM (#8978484)

I'm happy with https://atom.io

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Best open source/free software in their own categ... by Gurkenmaster on Friday January 30, 2015 @07:23AM (#8971670)

LibreOffice: word processing

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Best open source/free software in their own categ... by lovelearning on Friday January 30, 2015 @07:13AM (#8971646)

Blender : for 3D modelling.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Best open source/free software in their own categ... by ctb_mg on Friday January 30, 2015 @02:01PM (#8973689)

  - Greenshot: Screenshot capture
  - Audacity: Audio editing

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Best open source/free software in their own categ... by LarryMade2 on Saturday January 31, 2015 @08:52PM (#8978866)

Scribus - Desktop Publishing/Layout

Blender - 3D design/animation

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Best open source/free software in their own categ... by paramk on Friday January 30, 2015 @10:10AM (#8972340)

Subtitle Edit: for creating/editing subtitles

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Re:Ask HN: Best open source/free software in their own categ... by brudgers on Friday January 30, 2015 @08:39AM (#8971911)

Emacs.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Best open source/free software in their own categ... by cweagans on Friday January 30, 2015 @01:00PM (#8973301)

vim.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Best open source/free software in their own categ... by shpx on Friday January 30, 2015 @01:13PM (#8973373)

Just wanted to let you know neovim is at a point where you can use it as a drop in replacement and not notice.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Best open source/free software in their own categ... by ctb_mg on Friday January 30, 2015 @01:59PM (#8973680)

Can you elaborate on this? Their FAQ explicitly states: "Although some features are a work in progress, Neovim isn't at a stable point. Using Neovim should be done with caution as things may change."

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Best open source/free software in their own categ... by galfarragem on Sunday February 01, 2015 @10:22AM (#8980157)

Free software (not open source) but really great stuff (I use them everyday):

Music player: http://mpesch3.de1.cc/1by1.html

Batch rename tool: http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk

Flashcards learning (open source): http://ankisrs.net/

[ Parent | on HN ]