For me, that would be Secure CRT. I have yet to find a terminal emulator that matches its feature set. If you regularly manage hundreds of machines using various connection protocols (serial and ssh mostly in my case) It’s worth the $$$, and so far there hasn’t been any subscription nonsense. I liked using it at work so much I forked over the dough to have it at home.
None of the free alternatives do everything I need.
I’ll also mention a few iOS apps. One is Sun Surveyor. It’s an AR app that shows you the position of the sun, moon, and galactic center at any given time. The other would have to be Radarscope. It’s a weather radar app, but it’s a really good weather radar app.
EDIT:
This one’s debatable, but I use it all the time. Plasticity is 3D modelling software that attempts to bridge the gap between practical CAD programs and software meant for 3D artists like Blender. It’s not cheap considering Blender is free, but it’s buy once use forever, and at (I think) $150 it’s within reach of an individual hobbyist who knows what they want and is willing to pay for it.
Immich https://immich.app/
Absolutely amazing and it’s technically free, but please donate if you can, they fucking deserve it.
Being able to host your own photos and have ai to help identify faces WITHOUT internet or giving your private photos to the tech giants is worth every penny.
Bitwarden. It’s free and open source, but you can pay for a subscription
if you don’t want to self host for synchronisation between devices. It’s very cheap and no doubt worth it.Also Aseprite, for pixel art and custom format exports.
Edit: looks like both these programs are just straight up fully featured and freely available now.
Sync between devices doesnt require a subscription?
I use it on my desktop, laptop and phone, no issue
Never paid a dime
For real, I had been using Bitwarden for a couple of years for free and it never once had to show an ad to ask me to buy it’s subscription. I just realized that it was giving me tons of value, and that prompted me to buy the (fairly priced) subscription. That’s a gold standard imo.
I saw a banner in the extension telling me the premium version existed once, but it wasn’t very intrusive
what kind of synchronization between devices are you referring to? I’ve never had a subscription and have used multiple vaults on numerous different devices
Basically storing an encrypted backup of your secure content so that a password you add to bitwarden on desktop can be accessed via your phone, accessible via a login.
ok, that’s basic cloud sync, which is a core free feature of Bitwarden, not a premium feature. you don’t need to purchase a subscription for that, it’s literally the fundamental purpose of any modern password manager and is completely free in Bitwarden
Yeah it does look like cloud sync is free now. I was a pretty early adopter of bitwarden so I believe originally you had to pay for cloud sync support, but I may be wrong.
Still, I’ll continue to support them because they’re the only password manager I’ve used that has some semblance of mutual respect.
Libresprite is the open source alternative and it’s nearly identical.
Aseprite is free if you compile it yourself, isn’t it?
It used to be gpl licensed
Right, but it’s still free (even for commercial use) under the current license so long as you compile it from source yourself and don’t share the binary. The author just has some weird thoughts about the GPL.
Hmm odd. So there isn’t really much of a difference between using libre sprite and aseprite.
mullvad vpn
Yes. This. 100%.
Even if it wasn’t the most reasonable to license, it’d still be the most flexible and “hackable”.
$60 for a lifetime
Yup. A price that respects their user base. On that basis alone I have had (and will continue to have) no issue paying for another license if needed.
When I switched to Linux I just bought a new copy instead of figuring out how to transfer the license I had for my Windows PC because the Reaper team just straight up deserves the money.
Kagi search. It made cutting Google out of my life easy. I’d rather not pay for search but none of the free alternatives really worked like I needed. I tried out Kagi on a whim and haven’t looked back.
Balatro on me iPhone
Gimp.
Tap for spoiler
P.S. This is a joke and I am very proud of it.
Your joke made me laugh, and I’m proud of you for making it.
Photoshop used to be worth the money. The move to subscription based comes at a time when alternatives are starting to catch up though, so that time (of being worth it) may be coming to an end.
Linux, KDE, Firefox, etc… we are ALL supposed to “pay” somehow for it, whatever our means and however we can.
When we consider free and open source software NOT paid software, we are sabotaging the very things we love.
Hard disagree. Please tell me where Linus said he expects normal users to “pay” (or whatver you meant with the quotes.) The thing that makes these revolutionary is that they are free in a world where everyone is always trying to get something from you.
There is literally no expectation of money or commits or anything. Don’t shame people for using FOSS the way FOSS was intended. If you are well off and want to support them do it! Authors will appreciate it, but dont try to turn FOSS into yet another guilt trip.
just adding: foss is what is supposed to happen in a world where the increased productivity through automation benefits everyone vs the ‘bottom line’. foss has always been my tiny island of space communism :)
tiny island of space communism
can you please expand a bit? What does that mean? Never heard this before.
i am referring to societal model of star fleet in the fictional lore of star trek tng
Why are you deforming my words? You are free to have your own opinion and you are welcomed to disagree but when are arguing against something I did NOT say then you are not trying to have an honest conversation.
Anyway, on the spirit of discussing anyway (despite the risk of talking past each other) what do you imagine would happen if nobody, including Linus, would contribute (not necessarily financially) to FOSS? If nobody at all build FOSS or supports FOSS, there is no FOSS, as simple as that.
I think you are missing the point
Well my point, which might be different from OP but I still is important and thus why I brought it in the discussion is :
- paying for software is important
- FLOSS is important
and thus ideally we would pay (again, however one can) AND have FLOSS anyway. I don’t see why we would have to settle for proprietary software.
Total Commander on Windows. It can be used for free with the nag dialog, but I paid for it since I was using it every day.
Automate on Android: it’s an automation tool with its own programming ‘language’ like Tasker, except visual. Tasker has some weird and cumbersome idioms, while Automate is mostly regular programming mapped onto its visual blocks. Plus it doesn’t require buying more apps for additional functionality like Tasker. Alas, it can’t do custom dialogs or onscreen buttons, so I might still need Tasker for that.
Unified Remote on Android: nice remote control for the desktop machine, with the ability to add custom controls programmed in Lua (iirc).
Magic Dosbox on Android: it allows adding custom onscreen controls tailored to each game.
Functional Ear Trainer and Perfect Ear on Android: nice training for hearing notes and rhythm, though I can’t say they did much for my lazy ass.
Sunvox on Android: a music tracker with modular synths. Seems to be the only full-blown tracker on Android. Alas, doesn’t seem to be very good with samples, the workflow is a bit cumbersome, but I need to properly try that yet. The app has been around for ages, I’ve seen it twenty years ago for Palm and Windows CE. There are also desktop versions, which are free iirc. (Also, the author can’t currently receive payments from Google Play since he’s in Russia. It’s better to write to him and arrange payment via bitcoin or such, afaik he’s happy to provide the full app that way.)
On Mac, there are many open-source utils for tweaking the interface, but paid Bartender and Hazeover are better than alternatives. One hides extra menu icons, the other dims background windows.
Alfred on Mac, a launcher: you call it up with a hotkey, and type a few letters to run an app or, crucially, a custom action. It’s unmatched by alternatives, especially on Windows and Linux. Typing a couple letters into Alfred is often quicker than cmd-tabbing to an app. And it’s way better for frequent actions than mousing around.
I’m also planning to buy Renoise, the cross-platform music tracker. It does about everything the big DAWs do, but with the keyboard-centric workflow. Pretty cheap too.
I also use Total Commander for Android. It’s the only file manager on Android that makes sense to me.
Yeah, the Android app is great, and is free. The open-source Ghost Commander is lacking in polish in comparison.
The only thing I’m missing from TC on Android is filtering the list with keyboard entry instead of jumping to the file that begins with those letters. The former is much better, as shown by Double Commander.
Divemate, better than keeping logs in different apps if you change computers. Android only, sorry. If you chew the fruit you gotta find something else.
Plex Media Sever used to be great and well worth the lifetime pass. With the recent UI changes I would drop kick it if I could. Sadly the other options just don’t work right with large libraries.
Torque pro is nice especially if you have a turbo charged vehicle. Free is fine if you just need to check codes.
I feel like there are a lot of people who hate on Plex here, but for me it’s really been super solid so I always try to advocate for it. JF wasn’t for me. Buy once/use forever, great capable interface, great apps (downloads work perfectly now), and I never need to fiddle with it. I replace a Synology package every few weeks when they release a new version and it just keeps ticking.
I paid $89 for it on sale, and I’d definitely groan if I had to pay $250 for it today, but I’d still pay it. I’m just glad they’re paying hardworking folks to make the software I’ve used EVERY DAY for years. It’s the buy-once-cry-once model we wished every other software vendor would go back to.
I agree it’s super stake and works well. The new UI for TV’s is a fail.
There is a school of design thought that says you should be able to navigate to what you need in 3 clicks or less. Old school windows xp is an example, most everything needed was start, mouse over programs and click to access it. It you used it frequently it was start, click on the program. The longest was start, control panel, and then the app you needed.
Plex’s new UI has me hitting the back button so many times it’s faster to exit and come back in when before it was a simple scroll left and move around. To get to movies I have to move up then click multiple times and move down to browse instead of just moving let and clicking movies. As soon as anything else is able to support my library and allow me to use an old school plex interface like what the web browser still does Plex is dead to me. They have already stated the new UI is the future and they are going to eventually move to a more roku type model to profit from streaming. If they would keep the old UI available for people who prefer it I would stick around. They also split the android app so you his need 3 different apps if you have video, audio, and picture libraries.
I feel you on the UI changes, I’ve definitely noticed the extra clicks, and there is also a bit of a weird pattern when navigating between the main content area and the top bar where the selector wants to go to the left navigation pane.
I still feel fortunate every time I open up Plex that it exists, and I’m sure that their devs hear enough criticism on the internet that I try to leave something positive for them to find. So until the day that Plex operates anything close to the miserable experience that is a Roku in 2026, I’ll keep using it. I maintain perfect metadata and file naming for just that day.
Wip3out 2097
The only software I would buy again instantly is Tasker (Android).
I’ve been using tasker for 16 years now and am always surprised that it hasn’t started to suck or had a lot of functions blocked over the years
Any interesting uses you’d care to share?
The list is literally endless, and more often than not specific to what you specifically need. Here are some things I have setup:
- If my wife texts me “911” it turns my ringer volume to 100%
- When my phone battery is below 5% and my home wifi is not nearby, it will send a text to my wife to let her know my phone might die
- I split my photos into different folders based on GPS coordinates in the exif data. I have one for home and work, then a default
- Backup files to my server when I am on my wifi
- Tracks how much time I am spending at work by checking when I am near my works WiFi
- Auto-enable Wire guard when I leave my home network
- Stores my phones location whenever it disconnects from my cars bluetooth (basically a local parked car location reminder)
- If I turn on my flashlight while pressing the volume down button it instead opens a “flashlight app” that is just a solid color on the screen. This allows me to use a light source without it being the full brightness of the flashlight. Nice when you have a sleeping partner
- I have been using DailyYou and forget to take pictures, so I have it open the app for me every 30 minutes after the reminder notification until I take the picture.
I have also used it previously for job specific tasks. Like I had a button on my home screen that would open a menu with a list of options, and then I would select one of the options. It just saved that selected text and the current time into a file so I could reference what time I did something.
If you have any sort of smart home, the options just keep growing.
I do have a smart home and spend way too much time playing around with it, but haven’t done much with Tasker yet. The only thing I use it for right now BT presence detection to trigger a task enabling wifi and disabling location.
Interesting and useful info, thanks for sharing.
I have it too but don’t use it. What do u use it for?
Some of my most used:
- Automatically disable wifi and connect to my Wireguard server through mobile data when I’m not at home, then enable wifi and shut down WG when I return home. My self hosted apps are automatically connected without having to expose any detectable app ports to the Internet.
- Detect when I’m roaming to execute variations on some tasks.
- Enable location only when in the car and using Maps, disable otherwise.
- Voice notifications when my phone battery drops below 25%, or 45% when I’m in the car.
- Change the display timeout to 5 minutes when in the car and charging, and back to 1 minute otherwise.
Any chance you’d be willing to share some of those configurations? Especially the wireguard one. For some reason I have the hardest time getting something working to connect to wire guard using tasker when I leave home.
The others I’d love to see and learn from also if you’d be willing to share. Thanks!
I had trouble getting Wireguard to connect when using Tasker on another phone. Turning on a tunnel in a task only worked intermittently. If you’re experiencing the same thing the work around is adding a step to start WG and then connecting the tunnel, but if I remember correctly I had to include a step to return to the previous app so I wouldn’t end up with the WG UI left on the screen.
I do have one task shared on taskernet.com that may be of use. Go to https://taskernet.com/?public and deselect the “Basics” tag at the top, then search for “wireguard”. Look for Wireguard Autoconnect. It’s designed to connect a WG tunnel, then run an app and maintain the tunnel as long as the app is still on the screen. It drops the tunnel if you switch to another app or the launcher. Someone else has uploaded one that connects WG when not on your home SSID, but doing that requires location to be left on all the time, something which I avoid.
Would have no problem sharing my other configs but they’ve become too complex to do that easily. Everything’s interconnected and nested with tasks setting and clearing multiple variables and then calling other tasks based on events and those variables. I’m no expert but am glad to help if you have questions and am on Lemmy often. DM me.
BuzzKill for Android.
PocketCasts used to be, before they went subscription.
Love Buzzkill 👍
God damn Matt Mullenweg. I have mixed feelings. I like the services that he keeps buying but I don’t like all the things he’s doing to them.
Guessing he has a sizable legal fee to make up for nuking Word Press credibility.
Anyway PocketCast now has a subscription and I hate it.
For art on a Mac Sketch and Pixelmator are awesome and have fully replace the Adobe products I used to pirate to rely on.
