14 BEST Open Source Software That You Can Try

Want to know some of the best open-source software that you can use on your PC, then you must first understand what open source software is? Open-source software is publicly distributed software that is free and any end-user can access and change its source codes. 

Like a normal computer user, we all require software for our personal or business day to day work regardless of the operating system we use, and there is a huge market for expensive software that you can buy. 

But why waste money on these expensive softwares when their alternative free open source software is giving you nearly equal or even more features and available across multiple platforms compared to the one which are paid.

BEST Open Source Software

So, in this article, I am going to walk you through 14 best open source software that you can use for your day to day work and you don’t have to pay any amount for that.

1. Darktable

Photo editing software is the most commonly used software and Darktable is the best open-source software that you can use in the place of Lightroom. It is built keeping the photographers in mind and the software mainly focused on non-destructive raw photo editing and managing digital negatives in a zoomable and lightable database, and from there, users can create raw images and enhance them. 

It offers many features like crop rotate, channel mixer, color contrast, equalizer, multiple denoise options, and many more. It also includes many image adjustment plugins which are divided into groups. It comes with a very clean and smooth user interface to help you with your photo editing work very easily.

Darktable software works as a virtual darkroom where users can manage and edit their digital negatives. It also offers some advanced features like exposure control, three-way white balance, bilateral filters, etc. 

Platform availability: Windows, macOS, and Linux

2. Olive Video Editor

In the list of video editing software, Olive Video editor is the best open source video editing software that you can use if you are planning to edit videos on your PC. Olive lets you do the editing while previewing the multiple movies in parallel.  

Olive is a non-linear video editing software that works and feels like a “Light” version of Premiere Pro when compared based on tools and functionality.

 It offers almost all the features that you need for editing your video like, import media, split media, various effects, and transition, and many more. It also offers advanced features like distortions effects, chromatic aberration, blur effects, in between transitions, etc.

It’s very lightweight software so even if you are on a low-end pc you can still use it very easily and edit videos with a professional touch and can produce high-resolution videos with ease.

Platform Availability: Windows, macOS, and Linux

READ – BEST Video Editors For Windows 10

3. Blender

Blender could be an excellent choice if you are looking for free and best open source software for animation and 3-D modeling. It is the best software where you can do 3-D modeling, texturing, and can create awesome quality animations. 

Blender provides an awesome platform where you can show your creativity and let you know if this field is for you or not and that’s too for free.

It is a 3-D computer graphics software through which you can achieve a lot of things like modeling, sculpting, rigging, simulation, rendering, compositing, motion tracking, video editing, and game creation, etc. it is so powerful that you can create virtually anything related to the 3-D domain. It is used by NASA for publicly available 3-D modeling.

Platform Availability: Windows, macOS, and Linux 

4. VLC Media Player

I am sure almost everyone is aware of this video playing software. VLC Media player is the most popular software for video playing and it supports all types of formats. 

If you have a VLC media player installed you don’t have to look for any other media player whether it’s an audio file or video file you will be able to play both within VLC.

It has a very user-friendly interface when compared to other media player software and all its features and easiness is for free and it is one of the best open-source applications.

VLC is the best open source video and audio using which you will be able to enjoy movies or music anytime anywhere with very little effort.

In VLC you are not bound to play only the locally available videos you can browse online and play it on VLC this way you can boost your enjoyment.

Platform Availability: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, iOS, Android 

5. Gimp

Gimp is one of the best open-source and free image editing software equipped with lots of features and tools. This software is a clear competitor of Adobe Photoshop. Due to its sophisticated tools and advanced features it has become a go-to place for all the photographers and web designers for their day to day jobs.

One of its most important features is the Montage feature with which you will be able to auto-tune images and create any kind of artwork from scratch. With Gimp you will be able to create awesome quality artwork using some of its advanced features and tools like channel manipulation package animation and layer mask.

Some of the remarkable features worth mentioning are noise reduction, cropping, automatic image enhancement, filters, Bezier curve, layer mask, and many more. 

 Platform Availability: Windows, Mac OS, Unix, and Linux

A best and easy to use digital audio editor which is free and open source. With a simple interface and tons of features, it has made its name in the list of the powerful music production tools. Even a novice can learn it with little practice.

6. Audacity

Audacity is a cross-platform and one of the best open-source software that can be used for audio track editing and multitrack editing. Where there are lots of expensive audio editing software available Audacity is the best option for any starter or those who are not in a position to pay a lot.

Almost every audio format is supported by audacity and with this software, you will be able to record audio, cut, copy and splice multiple sounds together, noise reduction, able to change the speed and pitch of the sound, and a lot more.  

You will be able to record computer playbacks and will be able to export multiple individual tracks simultaneously. Audacity is a powerful and robust tool for doing basic audio editing for your day to day use.

Platform Availability: Windows, macOS, and Linux

7. ShareX

ShareX is free and open-source software that lets you record or capture any area of your screen and share it with a single click. ShareX provides you 80+ destinations where you can choose your photos to upload for sharing.  

Not only that with its basic work, shareX also provides lots of additional features through which you will be able to make your recorded or captured media more creative and stand out.

shareX also gives keyboard shortcuts through which you will be able to act very easily and quickly.

With its simple and easy to use interface you can do a lot of things like capture full screen, active window, custom area, active monitor, menus, scrolling or text, and record screen, etc. it also comes with after effects feature through with you can add different effects that can be added after the action is performed.

After effects features include show captured image, add image effects, copy the image to the clipboard for, upload it to the host, and lot more.

Platform Availability: Windows

8. KeePass

Keeping strong passwords for your account is a good habit but the problem arises how you will be able to remember the complex password for every account you make. KeePass is a very good option for that, which not only remembers your password, which you will be able to login to your accounts from any browser or even your PC applications.

KeePass is a highly secure and one of the best open source password manager software that keeps your passwords safe with a strong master password and two-step authentication.

If you are using any other password manager tool you can import the credentials from those to KeePass very easily. You can even change your database where all the credentials are being stored to a USB this way you use the passwords to different PCs.

With KeePass you will get a Configurable password generator through which you can choose what should be included in your password and what should not.

Platform Availability: Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and ios

9. Brave Browser

Security and privacy are our most important assets and now and then while we are surfing the internet we are being monitored and tracked.

To save you from all that you can look up to a free and the best open-source browser Brave Browser which provides lots of security and privacy features that will help you stay more secure on the internet.it has built keeping the user privacy in mind so you are going to get a lot of features to help you with that.  

Brave Browser is a chromium-based browser this way there are plenty of plugins available for it which you can use. Unlike any other browsers, it has a strong built-in ad blocker to save you from all the annoying ads.

With its multiple security features, you will be able to block third-party trackers, scripts, control cookies, and a lot more. It comes with an inbuilt password manager and also has a fingerprint prevention feature.

The brave incognito mode comes with Tor Level of security this way you can surf the internet anonymously and enjoy your privacy.

In Brave, you will be able to earn BAT by opting into their ads and you can even give tips to your favorite content creators from it.

Platform Availability: Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS

10. FileZilla

FileZilla is free open source software that lets users access and transfer files over the internet.

You can use it as a client or FTP server through which you will be able to access your website data and transfer files on the internet.

It is the best open-source software that is available across all platforms. It has a very intuitive user interface and comes with a comprehensive user manual to help their novice users. Using FileZilla is so easy that anyone should use it regardless of the platform or skill level.

Platform Availability: Windows. macOS, Linux

11. Inkscape

Looking for a Vector graphics designing tool. Inkscape could be an excellent option for you. It is the best open source and free vector graphic designing tool that offers a unique approach to the vector designs.

With its clean and simple to use interface it presents its features in a more clear, consistent, and stable way. It’s a versatile software that also uses SVG format which is the best format for designing banners and logos.

This software gets a high community and customer support this means you won’t be stuck if you encounter any problems.

With Inkscape, you will be able to do bitmap tracing, object creation, grouping objects, node movement, node editing, text support, z-order, and even a lot more.

Platform Availability: Windows, macOS, Linux

12. Only Office Editor

Only the office editor is the online software that you can use to create documents with a wide range of teams. With this, you will be able to achieve everything that you will get if you go for Microsoft Office Suite.

Equipped with versatile and advanced tools this open source software can boost your productivity to a great extent. It is fully compatible with Microsoft Office formats and using Onlyoffice Editor you will be able to manage documents. Projects, mail, calendar, CRMs, etc.  

Onlyoffice is a complete software that has very easy to use and user-friendly designs which can work on both the devices whether on your mobile or desktop.

You can even have your private host server where you can host your document and share it with others. It provides you with more privacy and you can even integrate it to NextCloud to host your documents.

Platform Availability: Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android   

13. Handbrake

Handbrake is a free and one of the best open source video transcoders that gives you advanced control while converting your videos to other formats. It also lets you compress your large size videos so that it becomes easily transferable.

It has a very easy and simple user interface which is the most important thing in video convertors as you will be dealing with technical stuff while converting.

Handbrake supports all the common media formats (DVD, Blue Ray, etc.), and the output format that you can achieve with this free software are.MP4, .M4V, and.MKV. you will be able to work on range selection, chapter maker, subtitles average and constant bit rate, and a lot more.

The best part is that it offers a live preview of the video converted and supports CFR and VFR. With handbrake, you can use video filters like de-noise, deinterlacing, de-block, cropping, scaling, etc.

Platform Availability: Windows. macOS, Ubuntu, Linux

14. 7-ZIP

7-Zip is a free and open source file compressor and archiver software. With this, you will be able to compress your file size without losing your important data.

The tool on installation integrates with windows explorer and starts showing all the archive folders and toolbar with drag and drop function.

With this tool, you will be able to compress your file very easily and can save a lot of space on your hard disk. It supports multiple file formats that it can decompress, including AR, CAB, ISO, MBR, UDF, RAR, GZIP, VHD, UEFI, etc.

It offers a high compression ratio and operates at a fast rate when compared to other paid alternatives like Win-Zip or WINRAR.

Platform Availability: Windows

Best Open Source Software related FAQs