ARMAN'S DIMENSION

SOFTWARE RECOMMENDATIONS!

i love love love using and writing free software. here's a few that i reccommend! you might already have heard of them, though...

INTERNET & COMMUNICATIONS

★Mozilla Firefox - seriously, i don't know why people bother with chrome when firefox is right there. you can import all your bookmarks straight from chrome or whatever, and it's the most privacy friendly mainstream browser out there, and with the right add ons it's pretty much perfect.
★Lagrange - this is an internet browser, but not for http/https sites. i use this to access sites hosted with the gemini and gopher protocols. while the software itself is clean and user friendly, the geminispace and gopherspace you'll be browsing is infinitely more interesting.
★Filezilla Client - basically all you'll ever need as far as an FTP client goes. i use this for uploading songs from my massive music library to my phone. sometimes i have to reupload everything, and i have >10 gigs of music in my library, but filezilla handles it swimmingly.
★Proton VPN - many VPNs are scams these days, did you know that? if you see a VPN in a youtube adspot it's almost certainly trash and compromised. this one is reliable although you do need an account to use it. proton also has an email service which i am slowly migrating all my old google and yahoo accounts over to. this is technically a freemium software, with some features behind a paywall, but the free version is fairly usable.
★Nextcloud - nextcloud is an alternative to programs like dr*pbox or g**gle drive which suck, get hacked or something every other year, and spy on you in the meantime. supports self-hosting, but if you don't wanna bother with that you can also select limited-data plans from various providers mostly based in europe, where infosec rights are better protected by law. there are paid options for these as well, but... how much stuff do you really need to put on the cloud? i sync some (well encrypted) markdown notes, and (some) social media images, and little else.
★qBitTorrent - nothing much to say here. torrenting software is all alike for the most part, except for utorrent which i'm pretty sure is spyware these days.
★Revolt - an alternative/backup for d*scord which i'm enjoying so far, despite limited features for the time being. open source and with better security. also no nitro-equivalent. recently implemented a reporting feature as of time writing this. hopefully more servers migrate here, or somewhere that's not that awful platform

READING & WRITING

★Joplin - i use this in place of the default ios notes app. it's markdown based, open source, and syncs to any computer, not just macs. it's very nifty and can be extended with a number of add ons!
★Calibre - literally this is soooo cool and convenient. manages your ebooks in multiple formats, allows you to sort tags, authors, publishers, etc. you can also download e-books from multiple sources through this, and with add-ons you can access overdrive/libby and some manga websites as well. must-have software.
★LibreOffice Suite - this is actually several different programs bundled into one metapackage, but it doesn't matter. satisfying m*crosoft office replacement. you can also search through hundreds of extentions, dictionaries and document templates for it on the libreoffice extentions website, found here.
★Okular - my PDF viewer of choice. i use it in conjunction with calibre as an e-reader on my laptop. it's simple but not too simple, and it gets the job done.
★Xournal++ - this is some handy note taking/annotation software. currently pretty minimal, but in development.
★Tomboy - tomboy is my desktop sticky notes software. i used to use noty, but it got deprecated, and this is what i use now. nice and customizable, and syncable as well, if you have multiple PCs.
★Vim - vim is my terminal text editor of choice. people joke about it being difficult to navigate or exit but honestly it becomes instinctive after a while. available as a GUI application as well, in the form of gvim.

GRAPHICS

★Krita - fantastic advanced art program. so many features, so many brushes. of all the software i use to draw this has to be the most advanced. better than GIMP.
★GIMP - okay, maybe not as good as krita for painting/drawing, but it's not incompetent despite the outdated interface, and it's better for quick edits and memes than krita is
★LibreSprite - this is a specialized program for pixel art. supports animation, interface is user friendly and aesthetically pleasing.
★Nomacs - a functional and practical image viewer. not much else to say, it's lightweight and it does its job.
★G'MIC - basically a collection of advanced effects you can use on image files. it also is available as a plug in for krita and some other graphics programs. check your distro for the integration packages if it doesn't come built-in to your installation
★Gnofract - this is a fractal generator software i've been messing around with a bit. you can pick from a bunch of different default fractals or, if you have the mathematical knowledge, load your own into the program and zoom in on different sections infinitely. you can tweak parameters and change fractal colors as well. great for abstract wallpaper!
★Sweet Home 3D - this is a home design software. the interface leaves a bit to be desired, but the learning curve isn't steep or anything and it's great to mess around with.
★Milton Paint - a vector-based art program for raster-based images. infinite zoom/detail features, works alright on WINE though I think you can also compile the source code for linux natively, I'm just kinda lazy. relatively basic functionality for now, but i haven't checked for updates recently, so that might not be true when you're reading this.

MISCELLANEOUS

★KeePassXC - the BEST password manager. seriously I love this thing. I have hundreds of accounts across many websites, and when i was a stupid kid i kept them all in a word document. anyways that doc is long deleted and now i use this instead. lets you organize passwords into categories and sub-categories, and associate little icons with the categories. you can sync a password database to your phone as well, super secure, 10/10.
★Z-Shell & Oh-My-Zsh - honestly, i don't know what compelled me to use z-shell as my terminal shell when bash was the default, but i'll defend it with my life, death before dishonour! haha, kidding.
★MusicBrainz Picard - i use this to generate tags for the mp3s i download off youtube. sometimes the tags are innaccurate or don't work so I use this in combination with a different mp3 tagging software.
★Ex Falso - this is sort of the trimmers for the hedge of tags generated by musicbrainz. i also use it to manually tag rarer mp3s that aren't in picard's database yet.
★Lutris - this is a great way to manage your game library and avoid having to install 8972897 different emulators. also integrates with steam, humble bundle, GOG, and so on.
★Qalculate! - this is the best general use calculator software in existence. it supports everything, and i mean everything. function plotting? check. unit conversion? check. equation history? check. it has everything a ti-84 would and then some; it even has a goddamn periodic table. this calculator has so many options and it's honestly better for it. the c++ of calculators (affectionate).