The Open Source Survival Library

I recently posted a short piece on our responsibility to create a better world and how it would occur through conscious creation. The tools in this article will make our ideas reality.

If you just started working with Linux, we covered the absolute basics of open-source tools in the Survival Toolkit article, now let's expand our scope to capture all quality open-source desktop applications that are friendly to their users. We've organized apps by category, and linked directly to their project pages. If you're looking for Mobile Applications, please stay tuned for updates to the series on Mobile Privacy.

Do you have an app you'd like to share with us on this page? Send us the name through our contact form.

Password Managers

KeepassXC: Offline password manager.
Bitwarden: Cloud based password manager.

Decentralized Web

IPFS Desktop: Desktop application for IPFS Distributed Web
Atek Cloud: An open-source peer-to-peer home cloud

Privacy / Security

I2P: Private peer to peer networking layer.
VeraCrypt: Open source cross-platform disk encryption

Browsers

Ungoogled Chromium: Chromium fork with improved privacy
LibreWolf: Firefox fork with improved privacy
Falkon: KDE Project's web browser

Email

Evolution: A mail client, calendar, address book, and task manager in one.
Thunderbird: Mozilla Foundation's email, chat, and calendaring client.
Mailspring: Easy to use, modern mail client with integrations to major email providers
KMail: KDE's Email client that supports many mail protocols

Communication

Tox: End to end decentralized encrypted messenger with voice, video calls, screen sharing, file sharing.
Telegram: The world's most popular messenger.
Kotatogram: Alternate Telegram client with improved local features.
AnyDesk: Remote desktop / support software
Jitsi: Free video conferencing
Jami: Free and open source peer to peer video conferencing.

Social Media

LBRY: Blockchain media platform  
PeerTube: Decentralized video broadcasting
Nitter: Alternative twitter front-end
Invidious: Alternative Youtube front-end
Libreddit: Alternative Reddit front-end
Owncast: Self-hosted live video and web chat server

Graphics

Krita: Free and open source digital illustration program.
Inkscape: Professional vector based graphics editor.
GIMP: One of the oldest most well known image editors.
Pinta: Bitmap editor similar to Paint.NET
Gravit Designer: Vector based design app
Blender: End to end 3D creation suite

Audio

Nuclear: Stream music from any free source on the internet (Youtube/Soundcloud)
Vocal: Modern podcast client

Photography

DarkTable: Virtual lighttable and darkroom for photography.
DigiKam: Personal photo management

Audio Engineering

Ardour: Cross-platform recording & audio engineering.
LMMS: Music production software.
Mixxx: DJ Production Software  

Video Editors

Kdenlive: The KDE project's video editor
Davinci Resolve: Film-professional video editor.
OpenShot: Easy to use, powerful video editor.

Video Utilities

OBS Studio: Video recording and live streaming
Kazam: Record videos of your screen
Peek: Record videos and gifs of your screen
Spectacle: KDE's Screenshot Tool

Technical Tools

Remmina: A remote desktop client
VirtualBox: Create virtual machines

Development

Postman: Make web requests and test APIs
VSCodium: Visual Studio Code with less Telemetry
Sublime: Text editor and IDE
Atom: A hackable text editor
Emacs: Highly extensible text editor
Vim: Highly configurable text editor

Writing

CherryTree: Hiearchial note taking application that stores multimedia notes in an encrypted database. (not markdown)
Trillium Notes: Build knowledge bases & graphs with this extensible note taking application (not markdown)
Joplin Notes: Create simple notes and todo lists using markdown.

Reading

Foxit PDF: Feature rich PDF reader.
Sioyek: PDF reader for academic papers

Office

LibreOffice: Most popular open-source office suite for Linux.
OnlyOffice: Collaborative online document editor
CryptPad: Browser based encrypted document editor
HomeBank: Personal money management

Utilities  

Gnome Extensions: Extensions for GNOME Desktop (can be installed through web browser)  
Conky: System monitor and desktop widgets

Education

Celestia: Explore space in 3D
Marble: Offline globe and world atlas
Stellarium: Open source plantearium
Veyon: Control & monitor classroom computers