I like open-source software not only because the apps are free of charge, but they’re often better than their proprietary counterparts. Here are the ones that have replaced common proprietary apps for me.

Joplin

Who needs Evernote when you have free note-taking?

I used to use Evernote to keep track of information and jot down ideas, including generating ideas for articles like this one. But Evernote kept jacking up the price and moving features into the paid versions. I had had enough and found Joplin.

Like Evernote, I can create short notes as well as “clip” items from the internet to save for later. This is handy when doing my research. It even has the same cloud sync features. I can keep my notes in sync across my devices with the Android app.

I’ve been happy that I swapped Evernote for Joplin.

GIMP

Adobe Who?

I’m not a heavy graphics user, but I still need to manage images like everyone else does. It would be hard to justify a subscription to the Adobe Creative Cloud. Even when Photoshop was offered as a product you could buy, I couldn’t have afforded it when I was in college. GIMP has proven to be an able replacement. I mainly use it for cropping and resizing screenshots for my articles. It works well enough for me.

LibreOffice

No one has to know I’m not using Word or Excel

As a writer, I do make use of a word processor. As Microsoft has moved to offering Word as a subscription as part of Microsoft 365, I didn’t want to keep paying subscription fees.

For that reason, I switched to LibreOffice for any offline writing work in its Write word processor. The UI feels a bit clunky, but Write works pretty well for actually writing.

The other LibreOffice app I use is Calc, a spreadsheet similar to Excel. I tend to use it more to format and enter data for my statistical experimentation in the Scientific Python stack mentioned later.

I like how LibreOffice can read common Office files from Word and Excel. This makes it easy to exchange files with other people. I used LibreOffice for a freelance writing client that required .doc files for years, and no one appeared to catch on that I wasn’t actually using Microsoft Word to write them.

Vim

I can actually exit it, but I don’t want to

I like to dabble in code. I could fork out for a proprietary IDE like JetBrains, but I’ve found that Vim gives me what I need in a code editor.

I used to use GNU Emacs, but I increasingly preferred my editor to just be an editor, and I’ve also found the default keystrokes to be uncomfortable on the “chiclet” keyboards that laptop manufacturers seem to have standardized on.

Despite the quirk of Vim’s mode-based editing, I’ve found it to be a capable editor. It also feels very comfortable to use for my fingers. Not only can I exit Vim, but I don’t see a reason to.

Scientific Python: NumPy, SciPy, SymPy, Jupyter

Who needs Mathematica?

What I call the “scientific Python” stack of NumPy, SciPy, SymPy, and pandas would be an equivalent of Mathematica, Maple, or MATLAB. This would be less of a replacement for something I used and more of a replacement for something I would never have used in the first place because it was so expensive.

I mainly use NumPy, SciPy, Jupyter, IPython, pandas, and Seaborn, with dabbling in SymPy as the ultimate desk calculator. NumPy is a library that offers powerful linear algebra calculations, SciPy offers common scientific calculations, IPython is an enhanced interactive mode, Seaborn offers powerful statistical plots, and SymPy is a computer algebra system that offers symbolic computations ranging from simple algebra to calculus to linear algebra.

Jupyter notebooks are useful for saving records of my computations.

SageMath

Another free Mathematica alternative

While I use the scientific Python stack mainly for statistical calculations, SageMath positions itself more explicitly as a replacement for proprietary math programs like Mathematica or Maple. SageMath is also based in Python. I tend to use it more for pure math exploration, even though it has NumPy and R for statistical calculation.

Audacity

A reliable audio editor

I’m not a heavy audio editor, but when I do need to edit some audio files, Audacity has always been there. It’s pretty easy to use for a beginner, and it’s fun to apply audio effects to files. I’ll probably never compete with Pink Floyd, though, but it’s a good app to have around. It seems like something basic that’s not included with most OSes these days, or at least in Windows.

SumatraPDF

The best PDF reader

SumatraPDF is a nice utility to have, since PDFs will likely be around until the heat death of the universe. I could use Adobe Acrobat to read my PDFs, but that would mean voluntarily using an Adobe product. SumatraPDF is a good program on its own. I can’t speak for any other advanced features, but I like the ability to tab PDFS to show more than one at once, similar to tabbed browsing. It also remembers previous tabs. Now I can have too many PDF tabs open the same way I have too many browser tabs open.

I like how SumatraPDF “just works.”

These apps have replaced proprietary ones in my arsenal because they work and they’re a pleasure to use. Not only can these apps replace proprietary software, but most of them just do a better job than their closed-source counterparts. The argument for open source may ultimately be how good these apps are for practical-minded users.

Operating System

Ubuntu Linux 22.04 LTS

CPU

13th Gen Intel Core i7-1360P

GPU

Intel Iris Xe Graphics

RAM

16GB DDR5

Storage

512GB SSD

Weight

2.71 lbs