learning something new.<\/a><\/p>\nTheir convenience features do a lot of heavy lifting to make getting started easier. When I’m contending with learning a syntax and the idiosyncrasies of a language, that is exactly the kind of handholding that I welcome.<\/p>\n
Of course, the “flagship” versions of the IDEs aren’t free, and there are some restrictions on your use. However, the free-tier (which is approved for non-commercial use) is still pretty great.<\/p>\n
Discord<\/p>\n
Discord has become the standard with no replacement<\/p>\n
![\"Discord](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/discord-public-community-servers.jpg\")
\n Credit:\u00a0Hannah Stryker \/ How-To Geek<\/p>\n
Discord is the proprietary chat, voice, and video platform. It has effectively become the default gathering place for gaming communities, open-source projects, and hobbyists alike, especially following changes to Reddit a few years back.<\/p>\n
Nitro also extends its usefulness considerably for me, since it allows me to quickly and conveniently send moderately sized files to my contacts.<\/p>\n
Try as I might, I just can’t replace Discord. The combination of the features (which tick every box except end-to-end encryption), reliability, and universal adoption mean I’ve never found a good alternative.<\/p>\n
![\"discord](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/discord-icon.png\")
<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\tOS \t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWindows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\tSupported Desktop Browsers \t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tChrome, Firefox, Opera, Edge, Safari<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\tPrice \t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFree<\/p>\n
Discord is a chat app built for gamers, with the ability to easily use voice chatting and live streaming while hanging out with your friends.<\/p>\n
Spotify<\/p>\n
Music on the move<\/p>\n
![\"Somebody](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/somebody-that-i-used-to-know-playing-on-spotify-on-a-pixel-ipad-and-windows-pc.jpg\")
\n Credit:\u00a0Dibakar Ghosh | How-To Geek<\/p>\n
I’ve built a few different self-hosted media servers, including one that runs full-time in my car on a Pi and one that lives on a server in my home. They use open-source software, they’re reliable, and they’re easy to use. However, try as I might, my own library can’t yet match Spotify’s ability to randomly shuffle music when I’m working on a project or doing some chores.<\/p>\n
There, the massive library is just tough to beat unless you’re another huge media streaming company. I always wind up begrudgingly installing the Spotify app on my Linux PCs eventually, not because I love it, but because I literally can’t completely replace it.<\/p>\n
Sometimes the closed source apps are too good to replace<\/p>\n
Open source is the right default for a healthy ecosystem, but the best tool for a specific job sometimes happens to be closed. Leaning on proprietary apps where they’re indisputably better doesn’t mean FOSS is bad or inferior, it just means practicality has to dictate some decisions.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, the gap is narrowing, and the open-source options for most apps are getting notably better with time, not worse. Today, there are about 5 proprietary apps I use on Linux. A decade ago, that number was much, much larger. Perhaps in another few years we’ll get there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Free and open source software (FOSS) is the default choice when you’re running Linux\u2014it is a huge talking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":568807,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[61,60,80],"class_list":["post-568806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/568807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Steam](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/52781215421_eac2d519e5_k.jpg\")
![\"JetBrains](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/jetbrains-toolbox-dialog-on-the-kubuntu-focus-m2-gen-6-laptop-showing-pycharm-and-android-studio-ins.jpeg\")