I've been using Linux for a year now. I do use CLI tool and the terminal but I'm super used to GUI and I do understand why you might don't want to bother with Terminal and stuff ! Here is my list of useful tools for beginners on Linux ! The same list for https://alternativeto.net/software/mac-os/ : https://alternativeto.net/list/29658/my-macos-setup/ https://alternativeto.net/software/windows-10/ : https://alternativeto.net/list/29653/my-windows-setup/
This free font editor allows creation of vector graphics and exports TTF, OTF, EOT, and SVG fonts, providing multiple formats for your designs.
If you want to create font and make typography !
Aseprite (previously ASE, aka Allegro Sprite Editor) is a program to create animated sprites & pixel art. Sprites are little images that can be used in your website or in a video game. You can draw characters with movement, intros, textures, patterns, backgrounds, logos...
If you want to do pixel art this one is gold !
Simple, but powerful voxel graphic editor with 24-bit color support, unlimited scene size and undo buffer, layers and much more.
Powerful voxel art editor with 24-bit color support !
Free open-source 3D software for modeling, texturing, rigging, animation, rendering, compositing, video editing, and simulation.
For 3D render and 3D animation. Nice UI, powerful tool and awesome community !
Unreal Engine is a professional suite of tools and technologies used for building high-quality games across a range of platforms. Unreal Engine’s rendering architecture enables developers to achieve stunning visuals and also scale elegantly to lower-end systems.
For making video games or 3D environment !
KIT Scenarist is a free and open source application for creating screenplays on desktops and commercial on mobiles.
For story writing, plot making etc...
Storyboarder makes it easy to visualize a story as fast you can draw stick figures. Quickly draw to test if a story idea works. Create and show animatics to others. Express your story idea without making a movie.
To quickly makes storyboard on PC !
Free, open-source video editor featuring cross-platform support, unlimited tracks, trim and slice tools, 3D animated titles, and video effects for editing projects.
A super simple video editor !
Worth mentioning if you need more advanced editing :
Shotcut
Kdenlive
DaVinci Resolve
Free and open-source 2D animation software for vector and bitmap artwork, featuring tweening, bone rigging, timeline editing, and advanced layer types across all major platforms.
If you want to do 2D animation !
Natron is an open source, cross platform nodal compositing application. It is built around industry standard open source tech such as OpenFX, OpenEXR, OpenColorIO and OpenImageIO. The feature set includes realtime playback/RAM cache, multi-threaded rendering, 2d tracking...
For making visual FX for movie production or videos.
sfxia is a tiny chip-style sound generator for Windows that lets you easily create retro, 8-bit sounds by tweaking sliders or hitting a Generate button to randomly generate a new sound.
To generate retro sound fx ^^
Free open-source multi-track audio editor and recorder with 32-bit float processing. Supports many formats and plugins for Windows, macOS, Linux.
If you need to quickly transform or manipulate a sound file audacity is the way to go !
Create, notate, and playback music with free, open-source software for Windows, Mac, and Linux supporting MIDI, MusicXML, PDF export, and community sharing.
If you want to compose / write music partition this open source app is awesome !
Waveform is a commercial, cross-platform DAW. With a focus on design and composition, it offers tools to greatly simplify everything from initial inspiration to the final mix.
If you want to play music like a DJ this free and open source tool supports tons of decks from different brands !
A versatile open-source 3D CAD modeler with modular architecture, suitable for engineering applications across multiple platforms, supporting Python scripting.
3D CAD for free :)
A modern eBook reader for Linux
Open-source suite for editing documents, spreadsheets, presentations, forms, and PDF files with co-editing modes, plugin support, AI assistant, and integration across 40+ platforms.
Open source alternative to
Microsoft 365 Copilot
Worth mentioning :
LibreOffice
It is free for Mac, Windows and Linux if you download it from GitHub, and it's paid ($2) for Android and iOS.
A modern UI for your RSS feed :D
This is a continuation of Manta App, I'm taking care about the maintenance and new features as I need it.
For invoice making. It's an updated fork of
Manta which is no longer maintained. Invoncify adds new features !
Obsidian is a note-taking app that lets you create a personal knowledge graph with ease. It is designed for non-linear thinking and allows you to easily link your notes together wiki-style.
Super powerful note making workflow ! Second brain for your PC
An encrypted messaging app focused on privacy, supporting texts, calls, photos, videos, files, and group chats, with no ads or trackers.
I use this one as a way to quickly share small files, pictures, ideas and links securely between my phone and my PC !
Zotero is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, share research and cite your research sources directly in your favourite word processor, with 300 MB free online storage.
Zotero help you collect, organize, manage, search and cite your research sources or books.
Blazing fast, collaborative code editor with real-time multi-user support, built-in Vim mode, language-aware syntax trees, integrated terminal, and multi-buffers.
A better IDE for most programmer way better than VS Code
This repository contains a build file to generate FLOSS release binaries of Microsoft's Visual Studio Code - Open Source ("Code - OSS") project, the open source core of the proprietary 
Visual Studio Code.
If I have to do some code use this telemetry-free Visual Studio Code fork.
Open-source password manager with AES-256 encryption and device sync. Store and access encrypted logins across platforms like iOS and Android.
My password manager and you should use one too !
The Tor software protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, it prevents the sites you visit from learning...
When I want more privacy online I use Tor.
Free the internet from data collection with Mullvad VPN – a service that helps keep your online activity, identity, and location private. Only €5/month.
If Tor does not fit my use case I use this VPN !
ClamTk is a graphical front-end for ClamAV, an open source antivirus engine for detecting trojans, viruses, malware & other malicious threats. It is designed to be an easy-to-use, lightweight, on-demand antivirus scanner for Linux systems.
If you want an anti-virus on linux there you have one now !
Secure and encrypt entire partitions or devices, including system drives, with automated, real-time protection and enhanced security measures.
To encrypt your disks or partitions.
GnuPG allows to encrypt and sign your data and communication, features a versatile key management system as well as access modules for all kinds of public key directories. GnuPG, also known as GPG, is a command line tool with features for easy integration with other applications.
GNU Privacy Guard is encryption software for files and emails.
ExifCleaner is a free app written in Electron framework, opensource desktop GUI app to remove exif metadata from images and video files with simple drag and drop. It's built on top of the proven ExifTool library and supports fast multi-core batch processing of files.
To remove metadata from your pictures.
Brief is a GTK4 application for browsing tldr-pages. It provides a clean, native interface to view community-maintained help pages for command-line tools.
If you're a inux beginner this app is nice for when you have to use the terminal. Or if you want to learn to use CLI tools.
If your distro does not come with a nice global search tool use this !
Worth mentioning :
Albert
Download videos from multiple sources (YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter and +) to mp3 or mp4 !
Worth mentioning :
ClipGrab
PeaZip is free file archiver utility, based on Open Source technologies of 7-Zip, p7zip, FreeArc, PAQ, and PEA projects, for Linux, macOS and Windows.
If you need an archive tool.
Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope.
To look at the sky on your PC !
Ksnip is a Qt based cross-platform screenshot tool that provides many annotation features for your screenshots.
Advanced screenshoting tool
PureRef was created to be a simple and lightweight tool for artists to organize and view their reference images. Image can be scaled and collage can also be made.
If you work only on one screen this one is a must as it allow you to have a window always on top where you can place images and create moodboards. It's pay what you want so you can put 0 and it will be free ^^
Comprehensive software providing screen recording and live streaming on Mac, Windows, and Linux with powerful encoding support and unlimited scenes.
If you want to record your screen use OBS ! Simpler :
Kooha
A full fledged GUI integration for the most award winning open-source android screen mirroring system -- scrcpy located on https://github.com/genymobile/scrcpy/ by @rom1v - srevinsaju/guiscrcpy
If you want to interact or record your
Android screen from your PC.
Facilitates device communication, enabling notifications, SMS replies, file sharing, and remote control across multiple operating systems.
To connect your
Transmission has the features you expect in a BitTorrent client: encryption, a web-based interface, peer exchange, UPnP and NAT-PMP port forwarding, web seed support, watch directories, tracker editing, global and per-torrent speed limits, and more.
My go to torrent client for any Linux distro !
Share files, host sites, and chat securely and anonymously via Tor using direct, password-protected onion services. No third-party servers or metadata stored.
Share large file securely over the Tor Network
Ventoy is an open source tool to create bootable USB drive for ISO files. With ventoy, you don't need to format the disk again and again, you just need to copy the iso file to the USB drive and boot it.
To make multi-ISO bootable USB drive
Comments
All distros use systemd under the threat of garbage that will check the age of users. However, I would like to try to share distros for this list that do not use systemd:
Devuan GNU+Linux MX Linux PCLinuxOS Redcore Linux
However, I do not rule out that the distributions listed by me will add garbage in the form of age verification.
Kick out mozilla for librewolf, which now gives option to use containers and store cookies and site data.