Intro
Randy recommends software that doesn't lock you in.
Software That you can install and feel that you somewhat have control over. not babysitting you. If you've listened to this podcast for the last year or so, you'll probably know by now that I'm not a fan of software with a shut-off switch: e.g., All Adobe Software, Windows (yeah, you can enter your product key, but it always wants to speak to the manager on the internet.) Here are a few that I recommend.
- 7zip - can extract so many different types of compressed archives, and does it much faster than the built-in Windows zip compression.
- GIMP - (GNU Image Manipulation Program). This program has been around for 25 years, is powerful, and completely free. It doesn't need a resource-hogging update service in the background like Adobe uses to make sure you're paying the Adobe recurring monthly tax.
- Syncthing - It synchronizes files between two or more computers in real time.
- Greenshot or ksnip - Both receive regular updates and are open source. I personally like the annotation features of ksnip much better, especially how fast the blur tool works where you can blur out sensitive information in a screenshot. Greenshot is by far more popular, but ksnip is solid and I think I may like it better.
- Obsidian - I should have mentioned this as my episode announcement because it was a big move for me that I finally accomplished. I was able to trash OneNote at last. Paired with Syncthing, I've never had as good of a syncing experience as I have with my Obsidian notes. I can open and instantly sync my notes on Windows, MacOS, Android, and iOS. This already beats OneNote for syncing capabilities.
For people that are big into graphing things, thoughts, ideas, Obsidian has an amazing ability to graph out the thoughts and knowledge. You can easily find out how one subject relates to another. Picture these Atom-looking nodes on your screen, where you can highlight over any node to see it's connections. Something that the Obsidian team mentions on their website that really caught my attention was sort of hidden at the bottom. They mention something that I've sort of felt all along regarding proprietary data, and how it compares to data that has the freedom inherited from being open and or open sourced. They mention "In our age when cloud services can shut down, get bought, or change privacy policy any day, the last thing you want is proprietary format and data lock-in."
- mRemoteNG - Multi-Remote Next Generation. I love this tool. If you have machines that you remote in to regularly, you should give mRemoteNG a try. Think of it as a remote desktop tool all within one window, sort of like modern, tabbed web browsers, except each tab is a different remote connection within mRemoteNG. The protocols that mRemoteNG supports are RDP, VNC, SSH, Telnet, HTTP, rlogin, Raw socket connections, and PowerShell remoting. It's open source and you can trust it. I've been using for nearly 10 years.
- Free software make me feel like my computer is much less dirty and further from being corrupted from greedy software vendors.
