For me, that would be Secure CRT. I have yet to find a terminal emulator that matches its feature set. If you regularly manage hundreds of machines using various connection protocols (serial and ssh mostly in my case) It’s worth the $$$, and so far there hasn’t been any subscription nonsense. I liked using it at work so much I forked over the dough to have it at home.
None of the free alternatives do everything I need.
I’ll also mention a few iOS apps. One is Sun Surveyor. It’s an AR app that shows you the position of the sun, moon, and galactic center at any given time. The other would have to be Radarscope. It’s a weather radar app, but it’s a really good weather radar app.
EDIT:
This one’s debatable, but I use it all the time. Plasticity is 3D modelling software that attempts to bridge the gap between practical CAD programs and software meant for 3D artists like Blender. It’s not cheap considering Blender is free, but it’s buy once use forever, and at (I think) $150 it’s within reach of an individual hobbyist who knows what they want and is willing to pay for it.
Fight club 5e. If you play enough D&D it becomes quickly worth it. It’s also proven useful in helping our new players get their characters setup more quickly.
Wip3out 2097
This is an outbound application firewall for MacOS that allows you to block applications from phoning home. It blocks outgoing traffic rather than incoming traffic, which can be toggled within the firewall settings. It has a time-limited trial period, but I did the one-time-purchase for 9 $ and it served me well since I bought it in - I think it was in 2021 - originally to keep a not-so-legally-obtained Photoshop Suite from connecting to their servers. The app is not intrusive, no annoying pop ups or the like. The app launches automatically at system start up. Occaional updates (bug fixes or to match with the latest OS version) are included with the licence.
Today I use it to block a pirated version of SketchUp (the only remaining software I have installed that has been pirated) from calling home, als well as Affinity 2 (and, probably in the future) the now free Affinity 3 (since it was aquired by Canva).
I consider this app worth its money.
Have you ever used Little Snitch? It’s another great MacOS app that has an outbound firewall. It’s been updated to include a DNS ad-blocker too.
I’ve been very happy with it for many years, but I’m always open to trying out alternatives. Thanks for sharing!
Gimp.
Tap for spoiler
P.S. This is a joke and I am very proud of it.
Your joke made me laugh, and I’m proud of you for making it.
Kagi search. It made cutting Google out of my life easy. I’d rather not pay for search but none of the free alternatives really worked like I needed. I tried out Kagi on a whim and haven’t looked back.
I just wish I could disable the Google search box on my Google Pixel home page and replace it with a Kagi search bar (that opens in my default browser though; not like Qwant does, that forces you to use their own browser).
now i just went to try it out, and I will, but the AI and pricing tiers screams “business and profit first” to me
And Google doesn’t?
They both value their customers. But in the case of Google, that’s not you.
Linux, KDE, Firefox, etc… we are ALL supposed to “pay” somehow for it, whatever our means and however we can.
When we consider free and open source software NOT paid software, we are sabotaging the very things we love.
I think you are missing the point
Well my point, which might be different from OP but I still is important and thus why I brought it in the discussion is :
- paying for software is important
- FLOSS is important
and thus ideally we would pay (again, however one can) AND have FLOSS anyway. I don’t see why we would have to settle for proprietary software.
Hard disagree. Please tell me where Linus said he expects normal users to “pay” (or whatver you meant with the quotes.) The thing that makes these revolutionary is that they are free in a world where everyone is always trying to get something from you.
There is literally no expectation of money or commits or anything. Don’t shame people for using FOSS the way FOSS was intended. If you are well off and want to support them do it! Authors will appreciate it, but dont try to turn FOSS into yet another guilt trip.
just adding: foss is what is supposed to happen in a world where the increased productivity through automation benefits everyone vs the ‘bottom line’. foss has always been my tiny island of space communism :)
tiny island of space communism
can you please expand a bit? What does that mean? Never heard this before.
Why are you deforming my words? You are free to have your own opinion and you are welcomed to disagree but when are arguing against something I did NOT say then you are not trying to have an honest conversation.
Anyway, on the spirit of discussing anyway (despite the risk of talking past each other) what do you imagine would happen if nobody, including Linus, would contribute (not necessarily financially) to FOSS? If nobody at all build FOSS or supports FOSS, there is no FOSS, as simple as that.
Software for things that are tedious or time-consuming to code.
Yes. This. 100%.
Even if it wasn’t the most reasonable to license, it’d still be the most flexible and “hackable”.
$60 for a lifetime
Yup. A price that respects their user base. On that basis alone I have had (and will continue to have) no issue paying for another license if needed.
When I switched to Linux I just bought a new copy instead of figuring out how to transfer the license I had for my Windows PC because the Reaper team just straight up deserves the money.
There are games I pay for, but only on Nintendo consoles. Aside from that, it’s strictly write it myself or go without.
I definitely should donate to more FOSS projects, though.
BuzzKill for Android.
PocketCasts used to be, before they went subscription.
Love Buzzkill 👍
PocketCasts is subscription? I don’t think I’ve seen anything indicating that to me and I know I’m not paying a subscription for it.
God damn Matt Mullenweg. I have mixed feelings. I like the services that he keeps buying but I don’t like all the things he’s doing to them.
Guessing he has a sizable legal fee to make up for nuking Word Press credibility.
Anyway PocketCast now has a subscription and I hate it.
Photoshop used to be worth the money. The move to subscription based comes at a time when alternatives are starting to catch up though, so that time (of being worth it) may be coming to an end.
There’s no reason to pay for Photoshop now if you’re just starting. Affinity is free (as in beer) and full-featured.
Balatro on me iPhone
Divemate, better than keeping logs in different apps if you change computers. Android only, sorry. If you chew the fruit you gotta find something else.
Plex Media Sever used to be great and well worth the lifetime pass. With the recent UI changes I would drop kick it if I could. Sadly the other options just don’t work right with large libraries.
Torque pro is nice especially if you have a turbo charged vehicle. Free is fine if you just need to check codes.
I feel like there are a lot of people who hate on Plex here, but for me it’s really been super solid so I always try to advocate for it. JF wasn’t for me. Buy once/use forever, great capable interface, great apps (downloads work perfectly now), and I never need to fiddle with it. I replace a Synology package every few weeks when they release a new version and it just keeps ticking.
I paid $89 for it on sale, and I’d definitely groan if I had to pay $250 for it today, but I’d still pay it. I’m just glad they’re paying hardworking folks to make the software I’ve used EVERY DAY for years. It’s the buy-once-cry-once model we wished every other software vendor would go back to.
I agree it’s super stake and works well. The new UI for TV’s is a fail.
There is a school of design thought that says you should be able to navigate to what you need in 3 clicks or less. Old school windows xp is an example, most everything needed was start, mouse over programs and click to access it. It you used it frequently it was start, click on the program. The longest was start, control panel, and then the app you needed.
Plex’s new UI has me hitting the back button so many times it’s faster to exit and come back in when before it was a simple scroll left and move around. To get to movies I have to move up then click multiple times and move down to browse instead of just moving let and clicking movies. As soon as anything else is able to support my library and allow me to use an old school plex interface like what the web browser still does Plex is dead to me. They have already stated the new UI is the future and they are going to eventually move to a more roku type model to profit from streaming. If they would keep the old UI available for people who prefer it I would stick around. They also split the android app so you his need 3 different apps if you have video, audio, and picture libraries.
I feel you on the UI changes, I’ve definitely noticed the extra clicks, and there is also a bit of a weird pattern when navigating between the main content area and the top bar where the selector wants to go to the left navigation pane.
I still feel fortunate every time I open up Plex that it exists, and I’m sure that their devs hear enough criticism on the internet that I try to leave something positive for them to find. So until the day that Plex operates anything close to the miserable experience that is a Roku in 2026, I’ll keep using it. I maintain perfect metadata and file naming for just that day.
Immich https://immich.app/
Absolutely amazing and it’s technically free, but please donate if you can, they fucking deserve it.
Being able to host your own photos and have ai to help identify faces WITHOUT internet or giving your private photos to the tech giants is worth every penny.
I love Immich, but I’m afraid to donate because they’re part of FUTO which looks sketchy and I know there was some drama about them.
For art on a Mac Sketch and Pixelmator are awesome and have fully replace the Adobe products I used to pirate to rely on.
