Free and Open Source Software

Just games. And I am thankful for all the open source implementations as they are almost always vastly superior to the original releases.

Thank you John Carmack for releasing the sources to your games!

Steam, because most my games are on there.

Discord, because most my friends and social groups are on there.

Google Maps. It sucks, and stores randomly pop in and out while you're trying to zoom in past the McDonalds ad that's showing despite you searching "shoe store", but it has so much more info than the competitors that they don't compare.

Well... Steam.

Steam

WhatsApp: I have been unable to convince my family and friends to use any other platform. Plus. in alot of countries, having WhatsApp becomes a must. Office 365: The only option I can use for work including Outlook and Teams. Google Maps: I keep trying to use OsmAnd+ but it is almost impossible to search for addresses.

Google Earth and Google Street View.

Even after all these years of using them, I'm still amazed.

I don't understand why we spend so much time praising proprietary software in these communities.

As to your question, I have a separate Windows machine for gaming, but that's it. I keep one foot in the free world and one in the proprietary. As for productivity tools I can't think of a proprietary tool I "can't quit" or that I would pick in favor of a free tool.

Fans of proprietary software have this weird belief that free software users choose inferior tools for purist or idealist reasons. This is offensively ignorant. No one chooses bad tools on purpose; we just consider freedom to be part of the criteria of a good tool.

Affinity was an affordable and featured alternative to the Adobe suite, but just sold to canva so yay capitalism

TotalCommander.

I was using Norton Commander in DOS in the 90s, then WindowsCommander in Windows 3, which was renamed TotalCommander. Using this for maybe 35 years. I don't know how to use Windows gui to copy/paste or explore multiple folders etc.

Solidworks - A reliable FOSS 3D CAD package would be amazing... Parametric Blender? Photoshop/Illustrator - I know how to do 50% of what I need to in GIMP/Inkscape, but I lean on Adobe usually!

Steam

Discord, Steam and Obsidian.

Discord has friends locked in. IRCcloud is so convenient. Tap to pay app is too useful. The app that controls my heat and AC is going to be a big project to replace. Spotify has family locked in. All the garbage running on my car would be nearly impossible to change.

GBoard is one I've tried to ditch a few times and end up coming back to. :(

Discord. As a chat platform, it is by far the most user-friendly one out there despite its proprietary nature and lack of respect for privacy.

Google maps, venmo, and lyft are my last real holdouts.

I tried Osmand~ but it like using your dads Garmin from 2005. The last two have been hard to find good alternatives to. Would be nice if signal payments were in a stable coin instead of a shitcoin.

Proprietary firmware on Google Pixel, blobs in Dasharo Coreboot.

On Android there are tons of video and image editors embedded in Whatsapp, Telegram, Instagram, Snapchat, Tiktok etc. but nothing comparable.

I find Desktop video editors confusing but I use Footage (GNOME) and "OpenVideoEdit" on Android.

Games, for everything else I've found a foss alternative that I prefer. I will do a google search once every couple of days if I'm really struggling to find something but even as a last resort search engine it's been getting worse - I heard they put an ad person in charge of search... so that would probably explain that descent.

Plex. I'm not sure if Jellyfin is foss, but if it is, I haven't felt like converting my library. I've put a lot of work into making it just right.

Steam, obviously.

other than video games, I think that's really it. I still use some others, like Spotify, but not primarily, I just like to have options.

Just a comment -- for InDesign-type work, I find something like Inkscape (or Scribus) easier to work with than LaTeX. I usually only use LaTeX for things where the layout needs to be pretty but not customized. Its possible to use it for design, but not a good use of time.

Sublime Text, Google Photos, Google Maps (partially)

Reaper DAW, and I have no plans on replacing because I like it. Also Reason, which I do have plans on replacing, but with what I haven't a clue. Unfortunately, audio continues to lag way behind on Linux and open source. Additionally, VST is unfortunately THE standard for audio plugins, and they are indispensable in audio production.

Well I have separate computer for music production which I don't think has any FOSS software on it, so everything that has to do with that.

Rhino for CAD.

However, I have been using OpenSCAD for parametric design more than the Grasshopper extension.

Thankfully, skipped ArcGIS entirely for QGIS and Python GDAL wrappers.

I also run a lot of proprietary stuff like Discord or Instagram due to peer pressure but I let it slide and put my hopes on Android sandboxing the apps and GrapheneOS tweaks. In my opinion, making sure that proprietary app can't reliably access your data and never giving it anything sensitive yourself is a decent risk model.

The only proprietary software I use and somewhat trust is Obdisian. Honestly, it's just excellent and I can't see myself moving away from it anytime soon.

Spotify, Netflix, a bunch of online services, old games, the update software of my car GPS...

Games, Discord and banking stuff

FolderSync on android. It's the only automatic sync application I've found that syncs to mydrive.ch.

Also a couple of UI apps, BarLauncher, which is a notification thing that let's you put app icons to launch from the notification drop down, and LaunchyWidget, like a scrolling "fence" to dump app icons in on your home screen. They're both so simple, I'm surprised that nobody has built FOSS versions of them.

On my PC I don't use any proprietary software at all.