Software I like
list of software I like, use and endorse, inspired by suckless.org's list
not all software in that list is lean and minimalist (at least not as lean as things in the suckless list) but most of them are since that's my favourite kind of software, the kind that don't get in your way
Links goes to official sites or repos but most things are probably in your OS's package manager
Operating systems
- Debian: packages so outdated it can be infuriating, but it is the most supported server OS to exist, whatever you wanna do a Debian tutorial exist, systemd (apparently there's a lot of reasons to hate systemd idk all of them, Devuan exist if you want deb without systemd)
- OpenMandriva: Kinda bloated, few packages, little documentation, but it's easy to install and the community is based and comfy, systemd (sometimes it takes minutes to shutdown because of systemd)
- Slackware: More of a lifestyle than a distro tbh, has a reputation of being almost unbreakable, doesn't really have a package manager you just get 15GB of software almost every tool you need for everyday use (you'll be surprised how much is missing tho), there are some unofficial package managers but you should try generic tarballs and appimages first, be careful when upgrading the kernel the automatic upgrade thing doesn't fix the bootloader, the stable version is a few years old meaning it got years old drivers keep that in mind if you have a recent machine. Apart from that it aims at being a simpler linux, without all the complex layers of abstractions of modern distros, the inner workings are straightforward and easy to understand, no systemd, no package manager gettiing in your way, no auto-generated config files. Salix seems to be a great derivate if you want a noob-friendly slackware
- Tails: live-usb OS meant for maximum security, useful for stuff where you wouldn't even trust your main OS (like accessing your cryptocurrencies per example)
If you wanna use a stable distro you gotta ask yourself how old that distro version is, because updating drivers manually on a distro can be cumbersome (and a guy from openmandriva told me not to do that cause it could mess with some stuff, idk if i should have listened to him or not).
The point of "rolling release" like Arch is to always have the latest packages, the only moment where it is an upside is when you preordered your GPU at launch and need the absolute latest mesa drivers and kernels. If you can, just get a stable one that's recent enough it will save you a lot of trouble, if there is one stable distro that you want but is too old you can use the development branch of that distro which will be basically kinda rolling release until the stable version gets released then you can easily switch
Removed fron the list:
- Alpine Linux: insanely lightweight OS, mostly just works, however there are a few things that makes it mostly unsuitable for desktop use, first of all they don't have glibc which means it is mostly unable to launch precompiled GNU/Linux programs, then they recently had a thing where they completely dropped support for Plasma X11 (they're in the mindset to make x11 disappear) and it is kind of a hassle to make GUI works the documentation contradicts itself, as a server OS it is probably perfect tho (and very well supported since Alpine is the basis of all Docker containers)
- Arch/Artix: only listed here as a historical piece but I don't really recommand it anymore, I only use it because I can't be bothered to reinstall my machine. Gained its popularity be making users feel l33t for insalling it manually using a guide and without an automated script. Its most important characteristic is that every package is the latest version possible, which seems like an upside until you realise every time you update it's 2+GB with a non-null chance of something random breaking
libraries and programming languages and stuff
- Go: the most perfect programming language, both fast and easy to use, produce statically linked executables by default (unless if the dependencies have C code)
- C: the OG language for most suckless devs, most common low level language, very fast and powerful (link goes to LRS wiki because the official site for C is basically useless)
- Zig: next-gen C, haven't tried it yet but it's fully compatible with C libs and I heard it solved a lot of C's problems (still in beta tho)
- raylib: simple, easy-to-use video game library, few header files, no dependencies, just as much as you actually need and no non-sense, got a lot of bindings for languages other than C, Go bindings seem to work well
- sqlite: simple, extremely easy to install database
- BASIC: very simple and straightforward, easy to understand, excellent for learning and making simple programs, may be quite limited depending on the dialect you use, it is usually the scripting language of old computers such as the amstrad CPC you can read the user manuals of those machines to learn how to program (no link provided as every implementation is different)
- Shell: scripting language of unix-like operating systems, very comfy and straightforward, quite similar to basic (except you can't really make games entirely out of it), most commonly used to automate unix systems and glue softwares together
- LuaJIT: comfy and simple programming language, probably the best "high level" language, the LuaJIT interpreter is insanely faster than the Lua one (something that would take more than 3 seconds take 0.16 on luaJIT)
Server software
Software to install on your server, I will list those that are hassle-free to install (I deliberately did *not* list akkoma/pleroma cause it is too much of a hassle to install)
- conduit.rs: Matrix server (instant messaging), very easy to install, statically linked (which means no dependency hell for you to handle, single executable that works everywhere)
- Cinny: Matrix client, very easy to use got all the features you need (except VoIP but whatever)
- emailwiz: one click solution to install a full mail server, script that work on debian-based machines (would probably not be hard to adapt the script for other distros)
- darkhttpd: very simple web brower for static pages (doesn't have encryption, pair it with stunnel or something similar for that)
- transmission: bittorrent client, very easy to install, present in every package manager, have a web interface
- Shaarli: minimalist, database-free microblogging/bookmarking engine
web browsers
Most of them are actually terrible but whatever i'll list the one i like (or hate the least)
- waterfox: firefox fork maintained by some english guy, telemetry disabled, UI improved, JPEG-XL reenabled, you can actually set a custom page for new tabs, the guy reacts quickly to issues and seems to listen to the community
- ladybird: new experimental brower, aims to be a true alternative to firefox, chromium and webkit, they still have a very long way to go (as of 2024) but they're insanely based on many levels
- netsurf: minimalist web engine that almost works correctly, they just don't have much support for anything newer than html 4 css 2 but they're a surprisingly capable browser
- dillo: minimalist web engine that is somewhat worse than netsurf but they're kinda comfy and still in active development
- ungoogled-chromium: if you need a chromium-based browser, that one's the only one with zero telemetry and zero unsocicitated requests by default
Whatever you do do NOT use Firefox as it is NON-FREE SPYWARE, use a fork of it, I used to use Librewolf but this fork is lowkey schizo most sites were broken due to excessive "anti-fingerprinting" and there is a bit of woke bs in their dev team apparently
firefox forks are more customizable than chromium forks thanks to the userchrome css file, on chromium you can't even disable the X on tabs, you can't set the new tab to be a custom page on ff forks (except waterfox), basically both are infuriating in different ways and nothing is perfect, and both are made by mentally ill glowies, hopefully ladybird will fix that situation in a few years
window managers
- dwm: very minimalist tiling manager, customization by modifying the source code (not as hard as it sounds)
- hyprland: not sure if i should recommand this one, tiling window manager for Wayland, they have features that other wayland things don't have and they're the only wayland-related project that's in the hands of actually sane people, they used to make a lot of breaking updates which is why i stopped using it but i think the situation is better now
- iceWM: comfy floating window manager that I really want to like and recommand but that thing is weird and mess with xbindkeys and sxhkd for reasons I don't quite understand
removed from the list :
desktop software
- sxhkd: launch commands on keyboard shortcuts, some WMs have that feature built in but I recommand sxhkd anyway cause it will make switching WM way easier (do not use xbindkeys, for some reason that one is unreliable)
- dmenu: must-have for shell scripts, can also be used to run software, see luke smith's tutorials to understand how versatile that thing is
- vulonkaaz's scripts: a selection of scripts I wrote for myself, can be useful for you too
- nsxiv: good image viewer
- mpv: good video player
- zathura: good document viewer
- mpd: excellent music player, work as a daemon with multiple clients (best one is mpc)
- pdfbook2: essential program to print pdf files into booklets, unfortunately an insanely bloated software since it got some pretty nasty nested dependencies (depends on python, pdfjam and on pdfcrop which itself depends on some TeX stuff), part of TeX Live so if you have this it's already installed on your system, it may output US page format by default you have to configure pdfjam to get A4 by default
- FreeCAD: CAD software to design 3D parts
- Cura: to send 3D files to 3D printers
- KiCAD: to design PCBs
- whonix: overengineered TOR browser, work as two seperate VMs, should be very secure
Tools, CLI and TUI software
- Zsh: way better shell than bash, you can use my own config file for sane defaults
- Neovim: the text editor, easy to use easy to learn (and easy to fuck up with useless plugins so don't bother, simpler is better)
- sc-im: TUI spreadsheet calculator
- yt-dlp: youtube downloader, as well as a downloader for almost everything that's online, works very well, never use a distro package manager to install it, use pip or github release, it is one of the only softwares that actually NEEDS to be the latest possible version at all time (distro packages are NEVER up to date even on arch)
- ffmpeg: do anything you want with any media file you want, conversion, recording, editing, this thing can do so much I can't list it all
- newsboat: good enough RSS viewer
- gomuks: Matrix client (instant messaging) kinda bloated but it's the only text-based matrix client that I know that's remotely usable (i don't use it i just felt like i needed to list one text based matric client for people who want away from web apps)
- mutt-wizard: best TUI mail client out there
- go-mtpfs: mount MTP devices with FUSE, useful to access files from android phones
useful commands:
yt-dlp "url" -f 251 --remux-video ogg # Download a youtube music in the best audio quality and save as .ogg (no transcoding, optimal quality)
Networking
- ZeroTier: virtual LAN, similar to hamachi, very easy to use, useful for accessing your LAN from outside or making minecraft servers without bothering about port forwarding
- Nebula: virtual LAN, harder to install than ZeroTier and requires a internet exposed server but don't rely on anyone else's server and they support NetBSD
Android
- LineageOS: the ROM I use since recently, god tier, minimalist, as spyware-free as a smartphone can be (nb: you can never trust those devices), the only problem, if you live in europe mostly, you'll have issues with banks (tldr: euro banks rely on "safety" checks made by google, of course google is not too fond of unlocked bootloaders and custom ROMs)
- f-droid: app store that is actually good
- microG: FOSS minimalist implementation of google services, that absolutely do not have nor demand root access as opposed to the real thing, work surprisingly well
- aurora store: alternative client to google play store, works great with microG
- Binaural Beats: audio technology to influence your brainwaves, useful for meditation and a lot of other things
- Expand: Monroe Institute's meditation app, uses audio technology similar to binaural beats (non-free, expensive, a better alternative is to get the gateway tapes from piracy and play those through a media player)
- Termux: linux distro as an android app, very useful to use normal software such as nvim on your phone
- OpenCamera: powerful camera app, don't forget to enable camera2 API
- NewPipe: simple youtube viewer and downloader, perfect for music streaming, can't log into your account
- ReVanced: modded applications, can remove bullshit from corporate applications such as youtube's official app
- HeliBoard: comfy keyboard, I recommand disabling spell checking
- Organic Maps: comfy OSM viewer, accurate maps and navigation, offline use
- Speed Overlay: speedmeter as an overlay, very simple, just works™
- VLC: comfy media player, comfy music player, comfy video player(nb: as of now the music player is NOT gapless so it's basically unusable to listen to albums)
- M.A.L.P.: MPD client, basically to remote control your computer's music player
- Sky Map: point to the sky and see the names of the stars you see
- Flightradar24: look up informations about the planes you see in the sky, web version (non-free, collect personal data)
- Husky: microblogging client (pleroma)
- FluffyChat: chat client (matrix, don't use the web version it doesn't work properly)
- Caffeine Mode: prevent phone from going into sleep mode (can be very useful)
- PlantNet: proprietary app to identify plants using AI, idk it it is the best but it is the one I use, web version
- Safetycore-placeholder: prevent some google spyware from installing itself (no matter what an android device should never be considered safe or secure)(you're not concerned by this if you don't have any google services of course)
- grayjay: (untested yet) free and opensource client for every single video hosting site out there, basically the equivalent of an RSS agregator but for bugmen, can allegedly replace every single app for every single one of those video platforms
Eldrich abominations
virtual neural network, "deep learning", generative "AI", a demoniac technology beyond human comprehension
most of them are coded in Python, the language of the shaitan, most of them are literally impossible to run if you don't have a PhD in demonology, but some software are actually useable (doesn't make it any less haram tho)
- KoboldCPP: text generation, runs LLaMa derivated models on the CPU, or GPU, requires a shitton of system RAM, actually easy to use
stable-diffusion.cpp: image generation, runs SD, flux and some other on CPU, I'm listing it here but i never actually managed to run that thing properly yet(obsoletes, can be done with koboldcpp now) (image generation on CPU is *really slow*)- Waifu2x-ncnn-vulkan: image upscaler, present in most distro package manager, runs on GPU with Vulkan API (there is CPU mode)
- dolphin-2.9.3-mistral-nemo-12b: one of the many text generation model you can run on koboldcpp, apparently good, uncensored and have up to 128K context (download only one files, there are different ones with different levels of precision, higher is better, get Q4_K_M or Q5_K_M if you're not sure)
- NemoMix-Unleashed-12B: apparently good model for ERP
- Qwen3-14B-abliterated: Main model I use right now, good at most things you would use ChatGPT for, supports most languages (apparently, never tested), 32k of context.
Qwen 3 really likes to "think" (read: generating random junk for the lulz before giving the actual response), you need to set the thing up a certain way if you don't want that, in koboldcpp's webpage go to settings and look for Format>Instruct Tag Preset, set it to "ChatML (no think)", or ChatML if you actually *want* the thing to "think", if you set it anything else it becomes weird and the model don't know when it's "thinking" or when it's supposed to give the actual answer (edit: with latest updoot those retards removed chatml nothink, now you have to use regular chatML and go to the token tab to force thinking off, very cumbersome idk why they thought it would be a good idea)
there are an insane amount of different models and they keep spawning every single day, no one seem to clearly tell which one is better than the other, honestly it's too confusing for me to keep up
There are some insanely big models that are apparently good but require you to own actual datacenters to run them, there are models insanely small (like 2.5B or 3B) that are apparently impressively good for their size (so actually quite garbage but can be useful in specialized tasks, small enough to run on a smartphone or a low end arm board)
Heating
If you heat your house with electricity you might as well use your desktop computer to do so
- folding@home: use compute power for scientifical research (mostly medical), you'll get nothing from it apart from the heat this generate but contributing to medicine is always a good deed (i think)
- BOINC: another botnet for science research, haven't tried it but they exist, might actually be better than f@h
- XMRig: for Monero mining, tried it last winter I didn't make enough to even withdraw from the pool (granted i didn't mine 24/7) but it might be a great option for heating that pays for itself
Apparently contributing to f@h and BOINC you can get Gridcoin idk what it is maybe it's worth it
Lists
- Suckless rocks: mostly sane stuff
- Cat-v harmful: kind of a meme
- igwiki software minimalism: /g/'s list, mostly sane
- Luke Smith's programs: Luke's list, mostly sane
- tastyfish's less retarded software: i only added him to my list of list cause i got a crush on the guy tbh (very minimalist software tho)
I'll add more stuff later maybe