List of recommended software

This page contains a list of high quality software available for the three major desktop operating systems, based on the contributions of /g/ users. This page is not for solidifying preferences or ideology; it is considered to be "value-free" and thus permitting of both reference to open source software and closed source software, for-profit and not-for-profit.

Modern versions of Windows, macOS and popular GNU/Linux distributions ship with high quality stock software, so consider these suggestions additive unless otherwise noted.

What does /g/ use?

• OS: Babbies First Linux or Windows 10 IoT LTSC Enterprise
• Web Browser: See Web browsers
• Email: Betterbird
• VoIP: Element or Equicord.
• Media Player: mpv
• Music Player: mpv
• Image Viewer: Simple Image Viewer or nomacs
• Terminal Emulator: Alacritty, urxvt or st.
• File Manager: none or Ranger or Vifm.
• Document Reader: Your browser.
• Text Editor: Neovim, Emacs or Visual Studio Code.
• Package Manager: WinGet or Nix
• Antivirus: Common Sense, Windows Security and/or Malwarebytes

System utilities

Package managers

Windows

Windows 10 and 11 come with WinGet, the Windows package manager. Using a package manager gives you the benefit of being able to download and install a lot of software via commands rather than having to navigate to a website, download it and run an installer. If you don't want to use the Microsoft Store, take a look at Chocolatey or Scoop.

For an all-at-once installation to install all of your favourite software in one go (useful on a fresh install of Windows), check out winutil.

Unix

Nix

Tip: While Nix can be installed on top of any Linux distribution, depending on your usage you may encounter package snafus not possible on NixOS.

Nix is the reliable and reproducible package manager, available for both macOS & Linux. Nix has quite a steep learning curve owing to it's unique syntax and methodology but once you get the hang of it, you will never have to deal with dependency hell ever again. Using Nix also grants you access to Nixpkgs, the world's largest and most up-to-date package repository.

Brew

Homebrew is the "missing package manager for macOS (and Linux)". Packages are installed in containers called "casks".

For an all-at-once installation to install all of your favourite software in one go (useful on a fresh install of Linux), try linutil.

Terminal emulator

Tip: The default terminal emulator that your OS comes with is likely good enough for whatever you're doing.

Alacritty

Alacritty is a modern, cross-platform terminal emulator that comes with sensible defaults, but allows for extensive configuration. By integrating with other applications, rather than reimplementing their functionality, it manages to provide a flexible set of features with high performance. The supported platforms currently consist of BSD, Linux, macOS and Windows.

Ghostty Ghostty is a fast, GPU-accelerated and fully-featured terminal emulator for macOS and Linux similar to Alacritty. Offers more bells and whistles than Alacritty, but has a heavier binary

File recovery

TestDisk

TestDisk was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally deleting a Partition Table).

PhotoRec

PhotoRec is file data recovery software designed to recover lost files including video, documents and archives from hard disks, CD-ROMs, and lost pictures (thus the Photo Recovery name) from digital camera memory. PhotoRec ignores the file system and goes after the underlying data, so it will still work even if your media's file system has been severely damaged or reformatted.

Virtualization

While you could use VirtualBox, there are much better options available.

Windows

Hyper-V Manager

Hyper-V is Microsoft's proprietary hardware-accelerated virtualisation platform. It can be used to create both Windows and Linux virtual machines with excellent performance. Hyper-V also supports advanced features like GPU paravirtualisation and network queuing.

Windows Sandbox

Windows Sandbox is a feature that allows you to create virtual desktops for isolating and testing suspicious applications. You can also use them as virtual development environments.

Linux

GNOME Boxes

Boxes is an easy-to-use Linux virtualisation platform using QEMU. You can install a variety of popular Linux distros with one click, and you can also bring your own ""legally obtained"" Windows installation media for Windows VMs. Be warned that more advanced features like are not available through the Flatpak version and user data isn't transferrable.

Distrobox

Distrobox is essentially, the Linux Subsystem for Linux. Run lightweight, hardware-accelerated containers with practically any Linux distro. Effectively one-command setup. Great for making development environments and keeping your workspaces separate. Comes at the cost of storage space, though.

macOS

UTM

UTM is a FOSS and user-friendly frontend for QEMU on macOS.

Parallels

https://www.parallels.com/ Parallels] is the easiest way to run Windows on ARM Macs — $80

Window management

macOS

Rectangle

Rectangle Provides Windows-alike window snapping for macOS. FOSS.

yabai

yabai Tiling WM for Mac based on binary space partitioning.

Clipboard manager

Pastebar

Pastebar FOSS, Cross-platform clipboard manager.

CopyQ [1]

Antivirus

The best antivirus software we can recommend is common sense and good extensions like uBlock Origin / Lite. Don't do something stupid like getting your software from download.com, or that scam brothersoft website. Always look at the file name, and don't open dumb shit with titles like FurryHyperMacroHermPorn2016-DougWinger-GiddeonCorralftCockvore.zip.png.exe.

The second best option is the antivirus software your device comes with. If you aren't paying for something, you are usually the product. Popular options like Avast, AVG, COMODO and the like are either shoddily programmed or actively malicious in order to get some kind of return on investment.

Furthermore, the locking-down of modern operating systems has had the small silver lining of vastly improving userland security. Still, the best way to avoid viruses is to use common sense.

Use our recommendations should you fail to have common sense.

Malwarebytes

Malwarebytes is a proprietary antivirus program for Windows & macOS popular in various security communities as a backup scanner. It is offered both as freeware and commercial software. The free version of Malwarebytes allows the user to manually scan for and remove malware, but a license must be purchased if the user wishes to take advantage of its scheduled scanning and real-time protection features.

Any.run

any.run is a closed-source web-based malware analysis tool you can use anywhere.

Internet

Web browsers

Firefox

Firefox is free software developed by Mozilla. It is highly extensible via addons and included as the default browser in many Linux distributions. It is often criticized on /g/ and /tech/ as "SJWfox" because of some Mozilla developers outspoken campaigns on social and political issues.

Chromium

Chromium builds are based off the underlying code of Chrome. While nearly identical to Google's browser, they lack proprietary components like automatic updates and Widevine DRM. However, non-Ungoogled Chromium still phones home to Google.

Tor Browser

Tor Browser (formerly known as Tor Browser Bundle) is a package of a modified Firefox extended support release, NoScript, HTTPS-Everywhere, Tor, TorButton and TorLauncher. It automatically routes traffic through the Tor network and deletes history and cookies when closed.

K-Meleon

K-Meleon is a FOSS web browser for Windows. It uses the Gecko rendering engine just like Firefox, but sports a native Windows UI. It is absurdly configurable. Also very suitable for resurrecting Pentium M and older systems because of it's speed.

Email clients

Desktop email clients provide off-line email storage and additional features over most web-mail clients.

Thunderbird

Thunderbird is a free and open source email client based upon the Gecko rendering engine. Like its sibling Firefox, it offers the user extensive customization options via third-party add-ons.

Betterbird

Betterbird is a fork of the more well known Thunderbird. After Mozilla followed in the inglorious footsteps of GNOME where features are removed and bugs closed as wontfix, Betterbird stepped up and delivers fixes and features. It is compatible with most Thunderbird addons.

Claws-Mail

Claws-Mail is a lightweight FOSS (GPL) email client based on GTK+. Supports PGP, vCalendar (Outlook compatible), RSS/Atom feeds, spam filtering and more via a well-maintained collection of first party plugins. Sending HTML emails is not supported. Reading HTML emails is usable but much improved by enabling WebKit or LiteHTML rendering engines.

Instant Messaging (IM) clients

Before being v&, weeaboo nonces often use communications software to exchange nude images with police officers posing as kawaii lolis.

Element

Element is a free and open source cross-platform instant messaging client and the flagship implementation for the Matrix protocol. It's a solid Discord alternative, with support for voice and video calling. DMs are end-to-end encrypted by default. Bridges to other messaging services, such as Discord, Jabber, iMessage and more are available with third party bridges. Unfortunately, however, it is an Electron app.

Pidgin

Pidgin is a free and open source instant messaging client developed in C. It is based upon Libpurple and offers support for Jabber (XMPP), Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, GroupWise, Sametime, SILC, SIMPLE and Zephyr out of the box. Support for additional protocols like Matrix and Signal is offered through third-party plugins. Plugins are available for OTR, OMEMO and many other features. Beware that it stores passwords in plain text by default.

File:Discord.png Discord

Warning: The usage of third party clients may result in your Discord account being permanently suspended. This has yet to be confirmed in the wild, but you should know.

Discord is a non-free VoIP and instant messaging client, widely used for gaming. It is absolutely chock-full of spyware but it is the main platform that normies use. The Linux client is absolutely terrible and doesn't support all of Discord's features. Consider using Vesktop or Equibop if you have to use the Discord app.

Gajim

Gajim is a FOSS cross-platform GUI Jabber client written in Python. It supports OMEMO and not OTR.

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) clients

Graphical User Interface (GUI)

HexChat

HexChat is a continuation of XChat and makes both its source code and binaries available to users of all platforms it's created for. Like its parent software, HexChat is licensed under the GNU GPL. It includes all the basic features one would need, and can be ideal both for new users and IRC veterans. Has built-in plugins for Lua, Perl and Python scripting.

ChatZilla is an IRC client addon for XUL clients such as SeaMonkey and Pale Moon. Great for people who want basic IRC features without having to install an additional application.

Terminal/Command prompt

Irssi

Irssi is the father of rice clients and easily accessible for all systems. The author of the Metacity window manager for Linux describes his software as follows: "Boring window manager for the adult in you. Many window managers are like Marshmallow Froot Loops; Metacity is like Cheerios." Irssi is the terminal IRC client equivalent of that sentiment. Irssi is extensible through plugins.

Weechat

Weechat is Irssi with more rice, scripting languages, ideal defaults and development. It is rising in popularity as a preferred client on /g/. Weechat also includes plugin functionality.

Voice-Over-IP (VoIP) clients

Jitsi

Jitsi Meet is a Discord/Skype alternative using standards compliant FLOSS. It supports text encryption with OTR and audio/video encryption with ZRTP. The downside is that it is a web app.

Mumble

Mumble is free and open source audio chat software. It is superior in audio quality and latency by always being the first client to use latest technologies, such as the Opus audio codec. Nobody uses it unfortunately.

Google Voice

Google Voice runs in a web browser and requires a plugin for full functionality. There does not appear to be official desktop software for this. The botnet never felt so good. Free phone numbers, calling, texting, and integration into Gmail.

Search utilities

Windows

Everything

Everything is a proprietary freeware search engine for Windows that instantly locates files and folders by filename, by monitoring file system changes in real time and indexing them.

macOS

Alfred

Alfred is a simple but efficient application launcher. It is best in combination with the Powerpack.

Launchbar

Launchbar is a little more complicated than Alfred, but has a few convenient features that Alfred lacks.

File compression utilities

File compression software is widely used by various software distributors and archives to mitigate bandwidth and storage space requirements.

7zip

7zip is a free and open source file archiver developed in C++ by Igor Pavlov. Its primary feature is lossless compression in the 7z format, based upon the Lempel–Ziv–Markov chain algorithm. In addition to the handful of formats it is capable of creating new archives in, 7zip can retrieve files from archives in virtually any format that one is likely to encounter.

• 7zip can be installed on macOS/Linux via brew.

PeaZip

The PAQ and LPAQ methods are capable of an impressive degree of lossless compression, but the time and system resources required are equally impressive.

PeaZip is a free and open source archiver developed in free Pascal by Giorgio Tani. It is notable for its native PEA format and its support of cutting-edge compression technologies like PAQ and LPAQ that are not supported by other popular archivers. Like 7zip, it is capable of retrieving files from virtually any archive that one might encounter.

File sharing

BitTorrent clients

qBittorrent

qBittorrent is a libtorrent-based free and open source BitTorrent client written in C++. According to its developers, the aim of the client is to provide a free software alternative to µTorrent.

Deluge

Deluge is a libtorrent-based free and open source BitTorrent client written in Python. It is highly extensible via its plug-ins system. Deluge is notable for having originated the particular method of protocol encryption that is currently in use by every major BitTorrent client. It can be a bit of a resource hog on Windows compared to other clients.

Transmission

Transmission is a popular free and open source client that is easy to use and lightweight. For years it has been the preferred BitTorrent client on macOS and GNU/Linux, and it finally has received an official release on Windows.

FTP clients

Tip: Most modern file managers (as well as web browsers) support the FTP protocol. macOS and Linux also come with ftp or sftp commands available in the terminal

FileZilla

Filezilla is a free and open source FTP, SFTP, and FTPS client written in C++. Sourceforge downloaders should be advised that the installer offered there potentially contains adware.

TermSCP TermSCP is a cross-platform free, open source TUI file transfer utility written in Rust.

WinSCP

WinSCP is a free and open source FTP, SFTP, and SCP client written in C++.

Direct Connect

FlyingCarpet FlyingCarpet is an open-source AirDrop clone, Written with Rust.

Sharedrop ShareDrop uses WebRTC to share files between two devices. Can be used in any web browser.

EiskaltDC++

EiskaltDC++ is a cross-platform program that uses the Direct Connect and ADC protocols. It is compatible with DC++, FlylinkDC++, LinuxDC++ and other DC clients.

Maintenance

Disk cleaners

Warning: Most, if not all "PC cleaner" programs are at best, snake oil, and at worst, malware. Cleaning the registry next to nothing. Any app that claims to "speed up your PC" by removing junk files is almost guaranteed to be predatory in some fashion. Steer well clear!

BleachBit

Bleachbit is a lightweight free open-source disk cleaner that can manage deletion of unnecessary files.

dupeGuru

dupeGuru is a FOSS program for finding duplicates in your computer. Supports images, audio and other multiple scan types such as filename, content and tags.

Clonezilla

[Clonezilla https://clonezilla.org/] is a free and open source Linux-based disk management utility that supports every major file system and even a few minor ones. It can even try to clone unsupported filesystems using dd but your mileage may vary.

Password management

KeePassXC

KeePassXC is a fork from the cross platform password manager KeePassX. Since KeePassX suffers from slow development and rarely gets updated, KeePassXC should be preferred. It is published under the GNU GPL.

Strongbox Strongboxis a free password manager for macOS and iOS. It supports the KeePass format and has a nice GUI. Additional features, like biometric authentication, are locked behind a paywall.

Bitwarden

Bitwarden is an open-source password manager designed to securely store and manage passwords, usernames, and other sensitive data across multiple devices. It allows users to generate, store, and autofill passwords across various devices and browsers. Bitwarden is known for its robust security features, such as end-to-end encryption, ensuring that only the user can access their stored data.

Firewall

Wireshark

Wireshark is a cross-platform firewall for Windows and macOS

ufw

ufw is a simple Linux firewall.

Remote desktop

Tip: If all you need is terminal access, all three major operating systems come with a terminal ssh client

RDP

Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) is a proprietary protocol developed by Microsoft which provides a user with a graphical interface to connect to another computer over a network connection. Despite this, however. RDP is the de-facto standard protocol for graphical remote desktop sessions.

• Windows, of course, has native support for RDP. Instructions for how to set it up can be found here
• macOS has native support for RDP. Instructions for how to set it up can be found here
• You can connect to, and host RDP sessions on Linux using Xrdp

Barrier

Barrier is a free, open source virtual KVM forked from the last FOSS version of Synergy.

Productivity

Document readers

Okular

Okular is the default document viewer for the systems that are bundled with the KDE environments. It supports PDF, PS, Tiff, CHM, DjVU, epub and many other common extensions, it also has some nice features such as annotations, drawing, highlighting and it's completely free and open source.

Word processors

OnlyOffice

OnlyOffice is a free and open source document processing suite focused on Microsoft Office compatibility. It can either be hosted as a web service or run locally.

WordTsar

WordTsar is an open-source clone of the extremely popular DOS word processor, WordStar. Comes with an optional GUI and the ability to save in some slightly less antiquated file formats (like .docx)

Obsidian

Obsidian is a free and open source Markdown editor designed for note-taking. It is highly extensible with plugins. A multi-device sync service is offered as a subscription.

Zim Zim is a word processor used to maintain a collection of wiki-like note pages. Each page can contain links to other pages, simple formatting and images. Pages are stored in a folder structure, like in an outliner, and can have attachments. Creating a new page is as easy as linking to a nonexistent page. All data is stored in plain text files with wiki formatting. Various plugins provide additional functionality, like a task list manager, an equation editor, a tray icon, and support for version control.

Text editors

Sublime Text

Sublime Text is a paid, proprietary text editor for code, markup and prose.

Neovim

Neovim is a Vim fork designed to reduce attack surface and improve editor speed. An extremely feature-rich programmer's text editor with extensive plugin support.

Emacs

Emacs is an extensible, customizable text editor and more. At its core is an interpreter for Emacs Lisp, a dialect of the Lisp programming language with extensions to support text editing.

Spacemacs

Spacemacs is a community developed configuration for Emacs, making it more accessible especially to those who are used to using Vi.

Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Codeis a free and open source, cross-platform text editor. It is developed by Microsoft. Despite being based on Electron like Atom, its performances are usually superior compared to the later, while delivering equivalent functionalities.

Phoenix

Phoenix is a free and open source, cross-platform text editor. focusing on web development. It is written in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Integrated development environments

IntelliJ IDEs

IntelliJ IDEA (for Java), PyCharm (for Python) and Rider (for .NET) are available for free for non-commercial usage.

IntelliJ IDEs all share the same standard IDE features, official and community plugins, and a keyboard-centric workflow with powerful global search. They are the closest analogue to Visual Studio you'll find on Unix.

Eclipse

Eclipse is a feature-rich IDE with a major focus on its plugin system. Plugins are used for everything from language support (Java, C++, Python, C#, etc.) to adding additional features or aesthetics (Git integration, Vim keybindings, relative line numbers, CMake support, color schemes, etc.). It also has a reasonable set of built-in features. Some of the more notable of these include the plugin install/update tool, a highly configurable code formatter, and a customizable UI.

Geany

Geany is a text editor using the GTK3 toolkit with basic features of an integrated development environment. It was developed to provide a small and fast IDE, which has only a few dependencies from other packages. It supports many filetypes and has some nice features.

KDevelop

KDevelop is a feature-full FOSS IDE for C/C++. It has an optional dark colour scheme, built-in gdb and makefile support, optional vim keybindings, autocomplete, and a Sublime Text-alike code minimap scroll, amongst many other features.

Visual Studio

Visual Studio is Microsoft's IDE for C, C++, .NET (C#, VB.NET, ASP.NET), Python & Rust. Community versions are available for free. Full versions are usually free or discounted for MSDN members, students, etc.

Xcode

• Xcode is Apple's own IDE. Supports C, C++, Objective-C and Swift. It's also currently the only way to build native iPhone apps.

3D Modelling

Autodesk Maya

Maya offers a comprehensive creative feature set for 3D computer animation, modeling, simulation, rendering, and compositing on a highly extensible production platform. Maya now has next-generation display technology, accelerated modeling workflows, and new tools for handling complex data.

Blender

Blender is a free and open source 3D graphics suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline; modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, even video editing and game creation.

Multimedia

Image editors

Raster art

Krita

Krita is a user friendly program for sketching and painting, offering an end-to-end solution for creating digital painting files from scratch.

Darktable

Darktable is a free (libre) powerful photography workflow application and raw post-production developer.

Photopea

Photopea is a free clone of Adobe Photoshop CS6 that works in-browser. All photo processing is done on device. The software is closed-source and ad-supported. The app can be "installed" from Chromium-based browsers to provide an Electron-app like experience. Ads can be disabled with userscripts

Affinity Photo

Affinity Photo is a paid, proprietary, non-destructive photo editor that provides excellent Photoshop compatibility and a similar workflow. It also works quite well using Wine

Vector art

Inkscape

Inkscape is a vector graphic editor.

Vectorpea

Vectorpea Adobe Illustrator CS6 clone. Same developer and caveats as Photopea.

Image viewers

Tip: The default image viewer that comes with your OS will suit most use cases

XnViewMP

XnViewMP is the enhanced version to XnView. It is a powerful freeware media browser, viewer and converter. It is compatible with more than 500 image formats. XnViewMP also comes with an easy to use yet powerful batch conversion module.

Simple Image Viewer

Simple Image Viewer is a lean, fast and highly configurable viewer/editor with a minimal GUI.

nomacs

nomacs is a free and open source image viewer, which supports Windows & Linux. You can use it for viewing all common image formats including RAW and PSD images. It also has support for plugins and batch processing.

Digital audio workstations

Tip: You can use Windows VST2 and VST3 plugins with Linux DAWs using yabridge

LMMS

LMMS allows you to create melodies and beats, synthesize and mix sounds, and arrange samples. You can have fun with your MIDI keyboard and much more – all in a user-friendly and modern interface. Furthermore LMMS comes with many ready-to-use instrument and effect plugins, presets and samples. Compatible with many standards such as SoundFont2, VST(i), LADSPA, GUS Patches, and MIDI.

Ardour

Ardour is for people who want to record, edit, mix and master audio and MIDI projects. It supports AudioUnit, LV2, LinuxVST and LADSPA formats as well as FX plugins. Automate any parameters. Physically manipulate them via control surfaces. Distribute processing across as many (or as few) cores as you want. Best-in-industry sync to MIDI timecode and LTC. Send and receive MIDI Machine Control. Sync with JACK transport and MIDI clock. Use OSC to drive almost any operation.

Reaper

Reaper is closed source, paid full, flexible feature set and renowned stability have found a home wherever digital audio is used: commercial and home studios, broadcast, location recording, education, science and research, sound design, game development, and more.

FL Studio

FL Studio is a closed source, paid. full-fat DAW available natively on Windows and macOS, if you have a Windows copy, you can run it on Linux using Bottles. To reduce the audio latency of Windows code translation, consider also installing WineASIO

Audio editors

Tenacity

Tenacity is an easy-to-use, multi-track audio editor and recorder made as a replacement to Audacity which now includes telemetry. It has support for LADSPA, Nyquist, VST, Audio Unit effect and VAMP analysis plug-ins.

FFMPEG

FFMPEG is also the gold standard for audio encoding and editing, command line based.

Audio players

foobar2000

foobar2000 is a venerable freeware audio player available on Windows, macOS and on Linux using Wine

Strawberry

Strawberry is an actively maintained fork of Clementine, with more advanced configuration options (including support for alternative backends), and a variety of changes meant to make life easier for users with very large music libraries.

MPD (Music Player Daemon)

MPD is a flexible, powerful daemon for playing music. While mpd doesn't directly play music to you, it provides a stream of it (locally or over the internet) to which you connect to with a client (as it's a server, not a music player). It is the mpd client that provides you with all the functionality you expect from a music player. The advantage here is that you can have multiple clients connected and listening to one instance of mpd, or you can stream over the internet. Some music players listed below will be mpd clients, which means that you may need to install mpd as well (if it doesn't come included) for them to work.

Video editors

Kdenlive

Kdenlive is a free and open source multi-track video editor made by the KDE Team. it's based on FFMPEG and is compatible with a variety of video and audio formats.

Olive

Olive is a free, open source video editor currently in beta seeking to provide a more modern editor workflow. it's one of the most promising free (as in freedom) video editors currently.

FFMPEG FFMPEG is the gold standard for video encoding and editing. Olive and Kdenlive are pretty much just wrappers around FFMPEG and you can do everything they can do, without bloat, using just the terminal.

Pikimov

Pikimov is a freeware video and motion graphics editor web app with a very similar workflow to Adobe After Effects. Everything is processed on-device. It currently does not support Firefox

Davinci Resolve

Davinci Resolve is a proprietary, professional colour grading tool and video editor. It is free, with a paid version available.

Transcoding

HandBrake

Handbrake is a free and open source audio/video transcoder with an easy to use GUI. It can rip and convert a variety of video formats, but can not break DVD or Blu-ray copyright protection.

MakeMKV

MakeMKV can convert video from proprietary (and usually encrypted) discs into a set of MKV files, preserving most information but not changing it in any way. It can instantly stream decrypt video without intermediate conversion and decrypt Blu-rays and protected DVDs.

MKVToolNix

MKVToolNix is a set of FOSS tools by Moritz Bunkus for working with Matroska files. It can mux, split and merge mkv files with no transcoding or loss of quality. It can also add or remove audio and subtitle tracks, change track order and edit metadata.

yt-dlp

• yt-dlp is a command line program for downloading videos from YouTube and similar sites.

Video players

mpv

Tip: The majority of configuration for this application is done manually by editing its configuration file.

mpv is an incredibly powerful and widely-used fork of mplayer2 and MPlayer. It features FFMPEG playback, high quality scaling algorithms, OpenGL output, proper color management, and is completely free and open-source. With yt-dlp, it can also play video and audio streams, and even .gif files!

If you'd prefer a more user-friendly experience:

• On Linux, consider Haruna (KDE, LXQt) or Celluloid (GNOME, XFCE).
• On Windows, consider mpv.net
• On macOS, consider [IINA]

VLC

VLC is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.

Kodi

Kodi is a free and open source GPL software media center featuring a 10-foot user interface for use with televisions and remote controls. It is highly customizable via skins and addons. There are even addons available for streaming from internet services like YouTube and Twitch.tv. It plays nearly every video and music format out of the box. The built in scrapers can pull data from sites like IMDB and thetvdb to allow sorting media by actor, genre, rating, etc. It can export this data to local files for offline use.

External links

• PRISM Break — Lists software for different platforms that respect your freedom (and points out those which do not). Maintained by the EFF.
• Switching Software - A list of FOSS alternatives to proprietary software.
• Usesthis-interviews - all about what hardware and what software literally whos use for their disgusting normie professions. Search "site:usesthis.com vim" to pwn people you disagree with.