Gonna go with Firefox as both my most-used piece of open-source software, and the software I see as most important to its ecosystem. If Firefox fails then we've just got Chromium-based browsers and, I guess, Safari.
Firefox and its derivatives. They're the last free bastion preventing a Chromium monopoly on the browser market, which is hugely important - especially these days with Google's push for Mv3.
Shout out to Firefox and Librewolf
Shout-out to Vivaldi for forking before mv3 happens. It is chromium based but they are very openly anti-google. It's the OG Chrome devs as far as I understand.
Firefox. It is the only thing keeping Google from total internet domination
Ill throw in some obscure ones I use daily.
StemRoller. It's an AI-powered toolthat takes an mp3 and separates each instrument into its own file. Im a musician, and having access to stems like this is a game changer.
Carla is a tool for hosting VST plugins without the need for a full DAW. I primarily use Amp Simulators, and this has become a mandatory tool on any computer I use. It's also maintained by the creator of KXStudio.
Blender by a huge mile. Yes, there’s tons of other software like Linux, of course, but Blender is such a powerful, well managed, economically viable and healthy (community) project that it should be shown as an example of how Open Source should be.
My biggest hurdle with other projects is the fanboys, because many times they’re quite toxic, insulting everybody who doesn’t adore the project and don’t accept constructive criticism.
By a huuuge mile indeed. Blender devs are great at listening and communicating with the community.
The standardization of hotkeys and features across the software is fantastic. The UI is snappy and filled to the brim with intuitive QoL features I wish were standard for my OS.
I have irreconcilable grievances with a lot of open source software, VLC, VSCode, etc, and find development slow and heading non optimal for others like Sharex and Firefox... but Blender, that's green on all fronts.
Firefox and Bitwarden
LibreOffice is equal to any office software out there, and has been much more stable than OpenOffice, and works without an internet connection unlike Google Docs.
Proxmox, opnsense, fdroid, and many more on r/selfhosted (now on lemmy also) .
sunshine, moonlight ( play my games anywhere in the world, games run on my pc at home)
Firefox (the best browser against google monopoly), thunderbird (best mail client)
LineageOS, microG, Mozilla Location services, Magisk, aurora store (let me use Android without any of google tracking)
Bitwarden, Proton mail/vpn, Nextcloud (finally no gmail tracking)
Jellyfin, kodi (lets me create my own Netflix)
GNU/Linux, GNOME, KDE and host of other Linux projects. No more windows tracking. Also if you want to really know how the OS works, you should start tinkering with Linux. I expanded my knowledge base by just using Linux as daily driver.
The list just goes on and on. I am so grateful for all the open source devs that put their time in developing these tools.
For those wanting to go further, checkout https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted
uBlock Origin - the chaddest AdBlock of them all!
I'd go with either Firefox or Thunderbird. Both are immensely useful pieces of software that I use on a daily basis, and have evolved (mostly) nicely over time.
Not to give Mozilla too much credit, Nextcloud is also pretty slick!
It's Lemmy you fools. It's always been Lemmy.
Not one per se, but I love when a piece of open source software absolutely destroys it's competition. I'm not talking Firefox vs. Chrome or Unity vs. Godot debate (both are better, don't @ me), I'm talking when it's not even close, the open alternative is just industry standard.
VLC, Calibre, OBS and maybe Blender come to mind.
So many to choose from...Linux, Syncthing, Vim, Firefox and Thunderbird/K-9 Mail, Keepass and derivatives, GrapheneOS, Inkscape, VLC/mpv, yt-dlp...there are just too many daily drivers to name them all.
Git itself.
Which allowed this monstosity I contributed heavily to, to leave a hellscape of svn patches: https://github.com/LandSandBoat/server
So git earns the "favorite" designation hands down.
Not by importance. Obviously that would be the Linux kernel, GCC and GNU coreutils, and the Firefox web browser, among some other foundational things (code to run my desktop GUI, for example).
So, I'll say my favorite is PCSX2. Ever since they got rid of the ancient plugin architecture this emulator has been getting sooooooo much better, and it was already great! I would add other top tier emulators like Dolphin, DuckStation, SNES9X, SameBoy, and so on. I just love emulators :)
Newpipe, tor, keepass xc , syncthing and KDE connect
I use a lot of Open Source software at home but Home Assistant is by far the most used, although mostly it's doing its automations in the background without me having to think about it.
Right now it's Proton. The work that has been done to makengaming possible on Linux is astounding!
SQLite. Probably the most widely used open-source library in the world. Pretty much every computer, phone, tablet, and a lot of embedded systems, all use it.
Firefox I think is actually the best browser totally independent of technological ethics issues. Started using it because I was on 2GB RAM at the time and Chrome was much more RAM-intensive (apparently this is reversed now,) and I've never looked back.
vim, neovim and a bunch of plugins. It's such a great productivity booster, I am using it daily for SW development.
I'm convinced anyone who doesn't say emacs is simply just more productive than me
I think I'll go with GIMP: it's such a well made tool and for 99% of use cases is a valid alternative to professional photo editing suites
7-zip, Firefox, VLC player
My favorites based on usage:
7Zip. It's clean and has a lot of convenient features.
Bitwarden. I have too many accounts these days. It's a life saver and it's on all my devices!
Rufus Formatting tool. This rules. It's great for just formatting or creating a bootable USB. Not to mention it's portable so I can bring it with me to work.
7zip is such an easy pick, its almost the default option lol
Edit (forgot):
We definitely need Blender in the mix as well!
Also Signal, Bitwarden and Firefox.
Blender. Probably one of the best pieces of software I've used ever.
Most used for me is Firefox (in fact I'm so used to it, it didn't even come to mind until I saw so many replies mentioning it!).
The favorite is probably git.
For the recently discovered stuff that would probably be the Astro frontend framework (and Svelte).
Also what a wonderful thread to discover stuff. Thank you all!
spoiler
Also my first ever comment on Lemmy. 😎
qBittorrent came to my rescue after uTorrent went commercial.
FFmpeg
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