HN Explorer

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

34 points by zsolt_terek ↗ HN
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

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tanderson92
FFTW -- Fast Discrete Fourier Transform. Reason: it routinely beats proprietary FFT routines on real & complex and single & multidimensional transforms, and with better accuracy.
cwmma
QGIS: GIS software that isn't worse then the big closed source programs and is better at certain specific things.
ramtatatam
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)

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

gadders
VLC for video playback?
alexvoda
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/

paramk
Subtitle Edit: for creating/editing subtitles
idiotclock
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

tokenrove
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.

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

https://obsproject.com/

michaelbuddy
yes!!! great callout. this software is amazing. Records better reliable video + audio stream on my machine than 350 camtasia.
cweagans
vim.
shpx
Just wanted to let you know neovim is at a point where you can use it as a drop in replacement and not notice.
ctb_mg
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."
jbrooksuk
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
ctb_mg 

  - Greenshot: Screenshot capture
  - Audacity: Audio editing
LarryMade2
Scribus - Desktop Publishing/Layout

Blender - 3D design/animation