Useful tools

yt-dlp

If you're competent at Powershell/Terminal and are annoyed with online video downloaders, yt-dlp is a solid way to easily and simply archive videos to your PC from Youtube, Bluesky, Xitter, NicoNicoDouga (with proxy), and other sites.

Mullvad

My preferred provider for privacy applications and circumventing geographic restrictions (see: archiving videos from NicoNicoDouga). Flat fee, bunch of regional servers, decent speed, hooks well into VPN clients in Docker containers (see: Glueton) so you don't need to tunnel your whole connection.

FSearch

Nice Linux alterative to Everything by VoidTools, it builds an index database snapshot of searchable files so I don't have to deal with slow file browser searches. (I could also use the find or plocate CLI commands, but I'm a sucker for GUI tools, and regex + boolean is nice too.)

Astro.js

Beyond the weird SEO and site traffic pitch, what actually draws me to Astro is that I can make repeatable HTML component templates (navigation, footer stamps, outer frame layout) that I can just auto-build into each page without having to copy-paste markup. (I could try HTML object tags or jquery or php or rail on rubys or iframes or actual web components, but I don't want to learn those yet.) (Also using Astro in VSCode makes me feel like a programmer ☺️)

Code-OSS

Open source version of VSCode; my preferred code editor. Can be relatively clean; I like the file tabs + terminal panel + filetree panel layout that reminds me of MATLAB. Also, setting up Git is pretty easy too.

Lutris

Nice omnilauncher for various storefront game libraries, retro games, and otherwise. Getting the right Wine/Proton takes a bit of overhead work for each game, but it pays off for me.

Krita

My preferred digital drawing program. Open-source, supports layers and pen pressure.

Envision + Monado and WLXOverlay-S

Envision offers a good alternative to SteamVR calibration, while WLX is a decent virtual desktop (haven't messed with custom skyboxes (dds) yet).

QDirstat

Neat graphical tool for visualizing file and folder space usage on disk (akin to WizTree on Windows), useful for seeing what less-important files need to be cleaned out.

VLC

after days of grifters and con men at CES we stumbled upon the booth for VLC. they were all dressed as wizards and told us, "we have nothing to sell, we just decided to show up". i told them I'd been using their software to pirate media for 15 years and they said "keep doing that"

— Robert Evans (the Only Robert Evans) (@iwriteok.bsky.social) January 10, 2025 at 4:24 PM

7zip

My preferred file compressor for Linux and Windows for the past 15+ years.

Cura

My preferred model slicer for 3D prints. Works especially well on Ender 3 family printers.

Spectacle

Great Linux alternative to Windows Snipping Tool, built for KDE Plasma but seems to work on any desktop environment that allows the KWin screenshot protocol.

Parallel Launcher

Newer, less-hassle emulator for N64 mods and hacks; allegedly uses a better RetroArch core than Project64. No complaints so far.

OnlyOffice

MSOffice (Word, Powerpoint, Excel) replacement for Linux; pretty functional for the most part.