Dreamwidth.
this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2025
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Asklemmy
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Wikipedia.
Though I could do without the endless donation blockups.
I can forgive Wikipedia and Internet Archive for the spam. Both sites are incredibly valuable and completely ad-free.
They are one of the highest achievements of humanity, imho, that even make me feel proud to be a human.
It's hard not to try to support them.
The "spam" is for them to operate, not maximise their profits.
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I came here to say both of those things about the Internet Archive, but I also hope both of those orgs get tons of donations regularly because I wouldn't want to live in a world without them
I just pay the 52$ once a year and know I've done my part for knowledge.
You know what?
I’m gonna start doing that.
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Linux
It just keeps getting better and more polished.
I think Linux enshitifcation will happen when Linus Torvalds is no longer the benevolent dictator. I assume bigtech would add more DRM crap for more usecases etc, regular (unintentional) userspace breaking for desktop users since development would be focused for server/cloud computing etc.
Well thankfully FOSS allows anyone to fork anything, so I imagine there will always be decent distros out there.
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Voicemeeter
Overwolf
Reaper
VLC
PCPartpicker
Ninite
There’s probably some others I’m missing.
YES to Reaper. No surprise that the original developer of Winamp makes an amazing DAW.
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Steam
This! Steam is the only proprietary program I use on my Linux machines that I'm actually happy with and don't want to get rid of
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- VLC
- Winamp
- Audacity
- 7Zip
- Openoffice
- Steam
- Firefox
- Wikipedia
- Duckduckgo (the search engine)
Most of those are programs rather than services.
That's kind of telling in itself to be honest. Services for most people these days mean subscription (or some kind of recurring cost). The nature of the overwhelming majority of businesses means they will be looking to increase profits. One extremely common way is to degrade the service you provide slightly. Increasing ads, lowering quality, etc.
One of the only exceptions I would say is Steam. But people could argue that Steam isn't a true service because it's closer to a store front, at that point you're arguing semantics though.
There's also self hosting a service to consider? How would that count in this instance. I self host a few things like nextcloud, Plex, and others. Yes it's still a program and technically a service as well?
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7zip and VLC.
Actual paid services? Basically only Steam.
FOSS is the only software you can count on to not start nickel and diming you once the subscriber count starts to level out.
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Signal is good so far. Firefox is teetering on the edge, but it's also good so far (poor little fox). Lemmy and Mastodon are both great, but maybe that's EZ mode because they're built as alternatives to proprietary social media sites.
I pay for ArsTechnica and I feel that I get a lot of value out of doing so. And keep in mind, being a paying subscriber of a service does not safeguard the service from enshittification, so that's quite great
Firefox is teetering on the edge
Get LibreWolf . They take FF builds and rip out the telemetry/ads/AI/enshit.
It's... beautiful
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Linux has become better and better and now its incredibly good, better then windows and mac OS if you just spend a few weeks learning the small differences.
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My regular open source tools:
- Inkscape
- GIMP
- OpenShot
- Synfig
- Firefox/derivatives (currently using Waterfox)
- Terminal emulators
- OpenSCAD
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The Pirate Bay
That's plain wrong that site is littered with viruses and ads these days. 1337x is much better.
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Kiseido Go Server (KGS)
If KGS's UI looks like it hasn't been updated in 20 years, that's because it's already perfect. There's no ads, it's purely functional, it does exactly what it needs to do and nothing more. If you click on "KGS Plus" you have the option to spend money on lectures given by human pros. Otherwise it's completely free, and it's still an active go server that's been around forever.
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PiHole
Not an overly surprising one, but the arch wiki has been an incredible source of info with no ads, tracking, or any of the modern web bullshit for as long as I’ve used it.
They’ve been hit with some pretty major DDOS attacks recently and they’ve done a really good job of keeping the important parts of the service as accessible as possible - they haven’t resorted to buying into cloudflare’s monopoly or blocking vpn users despite either or both being the easy way out.
For anyone else who’s relied on them as much as I have, now would be a great time to donate!
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Agnostic:
- VLC
Windows:
- TotalCommander (Android too!)
- Irfanview
Mac:
- A better finder rename
- Daisy disk
- Iterm2
- Dropout.tv
- Davinci resolve
- Obsidian
- Jellyfin
- Airgradient air quality monitor
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My local ISP. They are not a monopoly, they are local only, they provide fiber and great customer service. You call and they answer instantly, they don't treat you like an idiot when you call. They don't restrict anything and you have unlimited data. It's very simple.
Last month T-mobile bought them after years of great service so I expect the enshittification to come any day now, but so far nothing has changed.
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Irfanview https://www.irfanview.com/
It's literally one of the only reasons I'm still using Windows.
No other image viewer is as fast and as useful.
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Rss.
It's cool yeah. But not unenshittified. Many sites enshittify their own RSS feeds, demanding workarounds like caching, reformatting, or scraping, using tools like RSSHub.
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Craigslist
Hasn't changed much at all, and their app is exactly what it needs to be, nothing more--i think the only thing I wasn't able to do in the app was clear a saved search, but there's no bloat, no ads, don't need an account unless you're posting or saving searches.
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Do RSS feeds count as a "service"? I fear one day they will go away and that will be the end of my efficient way of keeping up with things I am interested in.
There is currently an amazing amount of top-quality, open source, design and development software: Blender, Godot, Inkscape and Krita, for instance.
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Steam. I think a lot of people are unappreciative of how user friendly and open it is. When Gabe bites the dust I think it's going to get very shit very quick.
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- audiobookshelf
- gluetun
- homeassistant
- immich
- invidious
- jackett
- jellyfin
- kavita
- lazylibrarian
- lidarr
- mylar3
- mumble
- navidrome
- podman
- prowlarr
- qbittorrent
- radar
- sonarr
- syncthing
foss stuff - slackware, seamonkey, emacs, keepassxc, fvwm, etc
nonfree stuff - xnview, wacup, winrar
websites - wallhaven, hackernews, etools
I want Winrar to sell merch with licenses included. I want an official "I bought Winrar and all I got was this dumb shirt" shirt.
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Stack Exchange. I know, controversial, as people complain about rules being there too strict and community not being too welcoming nowadays, but still a real goldmine of knowledge. All of that with no ads, no spam, no dark patterns.
Soma.fm
A bit more niche, but I'd say Roll20 for online TTRPG's. It has quirks, absolutely, but it has gotten better overall and is free with optional paid plans that offer good benefits which are not necessities.
Fastmail. Getting better and better, profitable and charging for services.
Posthaven. Not getting better and better but started good and staying good. Profitable and charging for services.
Unraid. Getting better and better. Not cheap, but a lot simpler to operate than TrueNAS for day to day stuff.
Kickstarter. Yes they’re a virtual monopoly but so many awesome things I’ve joined through it (though fuck you Eve/Dough for roping me into your shitty monitor which never really worked).
Virpil controllers. Rock solid, made by fanatics and rightly loved by fans. Cannot speak highly enough about their hardware (though their attitude to customer service is … Eastern European).
Affinity products. They might be cresting though and about to roll steeply downhill towards enshittification valley. But I still love them for now.
Linux. What’s not to love.
Lemmy. In fact so so many open source products. Honestly, it’s hard to grasp the quality.
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