Switch to these open source apps if you're stuck on Windows or Mac OS!

Hey everyone, this is Nick, and not everyone can or wants to move to Linux, but this doesn't mean that you can't get from under the grasp of the big companies in terms of the software you run, even if you stick to Windows or macOS. There's a huge number of open source applications that can replace or even sometimes exceed their proprietary counterparts, and most of the time for free. Just like today's sponsor, Safing, which makes tools dedicated to help you manage your internet connection. They are open source and they're all free. This video is sponsored by Safing. They make the Port Master, which is an amazing tool that lets you control and monitor your internet connection with a simple graphical user interface. You get block lists, you get profiles depending on your current connection, and you can even tweak settings per app. It's also completely open source and free. Safing also makes the SPN, or Safing Privacy Network. It's a powerful VPN alternative which spreads your connections across the globe instead of rerouting all your connections to only one server. With the SPN, you can be everywhere at once, and no website can build a profile from your visits and your location. Of course, you also get all the benefits from a traditional VPN. That's something you'd like to try, and if you want to help support Safing's open source work, you can subscribe to the SPN right now, or download the Port Master by heading in the link in the description below. Okay, but why would you want to go the open source route if you're already familiar with a few tools that you use every day? Well, there are multiple reasons. The first one is, of course, to reduce costs. Most open source software is also free of charge, and if you use a bunch of Adobe tools or Microsoft Office, the bill at the end of the month can be quite high. Compound that over a few years, and you'll realize you're sinking thousands of dollars into software that could probably be replaced. The second reason might be to prepare a smooth transition to Linux. Taking the plunge and changing your habits for your OS and your apps at the same time can be a big barrier to entry, so you could start by replacing applications first, and once you're comfortable, move over to Linux. Finally, you could also just want to get out of the walled garden that proprietary software locks you in. With open source software, you could use open formats that are interoperable, you get better backwards compatibility, and generally just more freedom to use other things. And I know you can't always replace a proprietary piece of software with an open source one, but most non-professionals could definitely switch to open source alternatives. I've been running my day job as a product owner for the past five years on open source software exclusively, and my channel almost runs on open source software exclusively as well, apart from the video editor which I use DaVinci Resolve for. So if a dumbass like me can do it, there's no reason why you couldn't. So now, let's begin with open source apps for graphics design, 3D modeling, or photo editing. The most obvious one here is GIMP. It's an amazing piece of software that I personally use for all my design needs, for mock-ups at my freelance job, for YouTube thumbnails, or for quick photo edits. If you're not convinced, check out Davies Media Design. They're using GIMP exclusively for photo editing and graphics design, and what they're doing is pretty amazing. If you're more used to Photoshop and its shortcuts, you can also extend GIMP using PhotoGIMP, a plugin that makes GIMP behave as closely to Photoshop as humanly possible, even adding a variety of tools to fill in the gaps. There's also a huge library of plugins you can add to GIMP to make it even more powerful, and it's very customizable with tool panels you can move anywhere you want, and a ton of options to tailor it to your needs. It takes a bit of time to learn the workflow, but once you do, it's amazing. Its name might be dumb, but it's free of charge, it's open source, and it runs on every major desktop operating system there is, so it might be worth it to relearn a thing or two. If you're more into digital painting, Krita is what you're looking for. It's super flexible, again with panels that you can move around to suit your workflow. It has tons of brushes, and you can further extend that by downloading new ones. It supports vector graphics and text, it can open PSD files from Photoshop, and it's hardware accelerated with OpenGL, so things stay fast and responsive. Of course, it works with various tablets to draw freehand, and it even supports HDR. There are tons of examples of people painting masterpieces with Krita, and some even use it for 2D animation, thanks to audio import support and exporting options to let you render a video. Krita is also completely free of charge, and gets frequent updates, adding some great new features. The last major update brought, for example, a built-in recorder to record your painting sessions, or a storyboard editor. If someone pointed a gun to my head and told me to paint something amazing or die, I would absolutely die, but you don't have to. Try Krita and stay alive. For vector graphics, the go-to open source app is Inkscape. Whether you want to mock up an application, or a website, or design an icon, or just draw something, Inkscape can do it all. It exports to virtually any image format you might want, including SVG of course, but it also has great PDF export support. You'll find all the usual tools you're used to, including pencils, calligraphy, shape tools, bezier curves, z-order operations, transformations, layers, node editing for path, and a lot more stuff I have no mastery of at all. It's once again completely free of charge, and available for every major desktop OS. It's also completely out of my skill range, as I have zero talent for design, and also I'm too lazy to learn, but if you're not, Inkscape has tons of tutorials on their website. For 3D modeling, you probably already know about Blender. One might argue it's the best tool for the job, used by animators, VFX artists, and modelers all around the world. It's so powerful, it can even be used as a video editor, if you're so inclined. It lets you model, sculpt, and texture anything. You can rig models and animate them, it supports simulations for particles, water, and a lot more, but it also lets you color grade, do camera tracking, motion tracking, and compositing. Can you guess what I'm going to say now? That's right, I have no idea how to use Blender, I'm no modeler, I'm no VFX artist, but I would like to try the video editing part of Blender in the future. This video is going to make me real humble before it's done. Let's finish this section with some photo editing. Darktable is probably your best option here. It lets you edit your pictures non-destructively, and your original images are of course preserved. It supports RAW files, of course, and uses the GPU to process most of its operations, so stuff stays pretty fast throughout. It supports display color profiles, and lets you export to a variety of formats and platforms, and can even generate a simple HTML image gallery to embed on your own website. It also supports HDR, it can be scripted using the Lua language, and it's very customizable in terms of keyboard shortcuts. Here again, you can find a ton of tutorials on YouTube to learn how to use it. Something I'm too lazy to do myself, as I generally take an amazing photo using my smartphone, and then never look at it again. Now let's move on to media related tools. For video playback, you can't find something as versatile as VLC. It's not the prettiest, but it will play virtually anything, even badly damaged files, that it can even repair. It's probably the most powerful video player you can find, with support for playing from discs, from network streams, or capture devices. It also handles playlists, chapters, subtitles, and it can change the playback speed, or even add a delay between the video and the audio. On top of that, you can even use it to convert videos to another format, or just get very detailed information about the codecs, bitrates, and formats of a specific file. I probably don't need to go further. Everyone knows VLC. Another example of an app that doesn't look good at all, but that lets you do a ton of stuff, Audacity. It's a powerful audio recording and editing station. It can digitize anything, import and export virtually any format, and even combine audio files. It has a ton of effects to make your audio sound a lot better, even with a low-end microphone, and it supports a big range of plugins. I use Audacity a lot, to fix my recording mistakes, but also to record and edit my Patreon cast, which I publish every Monday for my patrons and YouTube members. And I even used it for some English dubbing work that I did as a freelance… something, I don't know what my title would be in this case. It's just great. It looks bad, but it's really powerful. On to productivity applications now. First, LibreOffice. If you've ever used OpenOffice, forget all about it, because LibreOffice is where it's at. It's faster, it looks better, it's more stable, and it's extremely customizable, to let you work with either a toolbar and menu bar, or with a more modern ribbon. It comes with all the tools you might need for spreadsheets, presentations, visual databases, word processing, math formulas… It's basically a complete replacement for Microsoft Office, unless you're an Excel wizard and use macros all the time. It's also very compatible with Office file formats. And the best thing is, it doesn't cost a cent. It gets very frequent updates to bridge the few gaps that remain, make the interface more polished, and improve performance and compatibility. It's a very, very good program. If you had bad memories of OpenOffice or early LibreOffice versions, do give it a shot, it has evolved nicely and it's very, very powerful. Another solution is only Office. Its compatibility is better than LibreOffice, and I've been using it for a year or so now, trading files back and forth with people using Microsoft Office without any issues whatsoever. It offers less than LibreOffice, with only a word processing module, a spreadsheet app, and a presentation tool, but it does all three very well. The app mimics the Microsoft Office look with the ribbon, and it can integrate with cloud services to edit files online and collaborate in real time. You can even run it on a server and access it through a web browser, which is what I do most of the time. Full disclosure, only Office is a regular sponsor of the channel, not for this video specifically, but still, it bears mentioning. Let's complete this video with video production. For video editing, Kdenlive will probably be your go-to. It's a wonderful non-linear video editor with very powerful features to organize your media, edit your project, and render it in a format of your choosing. It has tons of transitions to smoothly go from one clip to another, it has a huge range of effects to stabilize footage, color grade, transform elements, or do compositing. You can completely rearrange the interface to suit your workflow and customize all the keyboard shortcuts. You can also use proxy clips to edit, to not tax your computer too much, add titles, download new effects and transitions from a built-in library, and even access a clipart repository. I have a few tutorials about Kdenlive on the channel, I left a link to the playlist in the card up top. I used Kdenlive to run the channel for at least 2 years, and apart from the lack of GPU acceleration, it's a fantastic program that basically does it all. For converting video into other formats, Handbrake is what you need. It can rip DVDs into a single file, convert any format to any other, it can use any codec you might want for audio and for video, and any container format you prefer. It can even add filters to the resultant file, embed subtitles or chapter markers, and it has presets for a huge range of devices. To quickly convert your stuff into a format your device can actually read. If you'd like to automate this kind of conversion work, Handbrake also has a command line interface. I know that at least one person has an automated ripping station. Pop the disk in, rip, and convert it before dropping it into a Plex server. I make use of it all the time to turn random video files into stuff that my video editor can actually work with. Definitely recommend it. Of course, the list doesn't stop here. For mail clients, you can use Thunderbird or Mailspring. For web browsers, you have Firefox, Chromium, or Brave. You can replace Slack with Mattermost, Zoom with Jitsi, you have Joplin for note-taking, Natron to replace After Effects, FreeCAD or BRLCAD to replace AutoCAD, and a ton more. And yes, as I said previously, not anyone can replace their proprietary software with open-source software. But for people who want to learn a new skill and don't have any prior experience with a proprietary piece of software, why would you go the proprietary, expensive route when you can teach yourself to use an open-source tool that costs zero? I personally only use open-source software to get my job done, as a product owner, but also as running this YouTube channel. The only piece of software I use that is proprietary is, well, the drivers I use for my Nvidia graphics card and DaVinci Resolve, and that's only because I have outgrown Kdenlive after a few years of using it exclusively. Just like I exclusively use Slimbooks devices to get work done. Slimbook is a sponsor of the channel, they make Linux laptops and desktops, they're based in Valencia, Spain, but they ship worldwide, they've got a wide range of devices. And as I said, I only use their stuff nowadays to get work done. I use their Slimbook Pro X14 laptop, I use their Chimera desktop, and I use their RGB keyboard as well. They have devices for virtually any use case, and if you're interested and you want one for yourself, just head over to the link in the description below, click it, and see if they have something for you. I'm sure you'll find something that suits your needs. So thanks everyone for watching the video, I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, don't hesitate to like, to subscribe, to turn on notifications, to write a comment, and if you didn't like it, which can happen, you can also dislike it, and write a comment as well to tell me why. If you want to help support the channel, you can join my Patreon subscribers and my YouTube members. Both get access to a weekly Patreon cast every Monday where I discuss Linux, open-source, and some personal things, and you also get the right to vote on the next topics I will cover on the channel. So thanks everyone for watching, I hope you enjoyed the video, and I guess you'll see me in the next one. Bye!