What's something that's free that everyone should know about?
What's something that's free that everyone should know about?
I'll start by plugging Harvard's free courses catalog as well as Udemy
Edit: Gonna add 2 more I remembered-
Blender - I wish I had more time to learn it, but I did start the infamous "Donut Tutorial" once!
Watch Cartoons Online - Lots of good older stuff!
KDE Connect. its an app that lets you share lots of different things between your devices, and it does this over your home network without needing any "cloud"
- send files from one device to another
- share the clipboard. handy for copying text or a link to your phone
- get notifications from your phone on your laptop
- have music playing on your laptop and pause or change the track from your phone
- control your laptop from your phone, move the cursor around, left/right click etc
Got to say Keepass, Open source Password Manager. And Internet Archive, a non-profit library of millions of free texts, movies, software, music, websites, and more 😊
MIT has; https://ocw.mit.edu/
The cats and dogs out in the street are free. You can just bring a friend home. /hj
Not free as in freedom, but gratis. Also only works for people who are on Discord - FreeStuff Bot will notify you every time a game on one of the popular PC platforms is available for free.
Me
Free Office Suite which is excellent for personal use. If you are on mobile Collabora Office if you want an Android/iOS version
This is a great thread!
Not foss, but PortSwigger Burp Community
Your local city college may or may not offer free classes (in San Francisco, you just need to show proof that you live in the city with some legal status).
Some public transportation is free for certain groups (youth and folks experiencing homelessness can get free passes here).
"First X of the month" at the zoo/a museum/whatever --- lots of venues have free events.
A jog, bike ride, hike --- lots of great stuff outside!
In most eu countries the law requires businesses that give out food to also allow you to order free tap water. If youre in a city and dont want to spend money on a bottle of water, walk into mcdonalds and ask for free tap water. A lot of european countries also have strict laws about tap water so for example in france unless otherwise indicated with a warning, tap water is always potable.
Pretty useful.. when one site fails the other usually work.
A little late but OpenTaxSolver - free desktop tax software that gives you a printout of tax forms that you can mail in. And it includes a few states too. Way easier than the annoying corporate sites that constantly log you out and charge a fee for every little thing.
Edit: To my non-American friends, you don't need to worry about this
Making sure to keep it legal, right?
Let's stick with Project Gutenberg - Public domain ebooks and other media, spanning centuries. They're incredibly important for keeping our literary past alive.
I might have more later.
It's great, customizable, I sent a suggestion to the volunteer development team, and they made it happen.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned it yet:
With just a cheap computer you can have your own Netflix and Spotify.
Learn a little docker and start self hosting stuff! Pihole is a great one to start with, but there are lots of other awesome projects out there:
Pi hole
What3words.com and app
Basically the earth has been segragated into 10 foot x 10 foot squares that are easily identified by 3 words, super accurate, easy to tell emergency services. No more need to know lat/long to tell someone where you're at.
Own your own ebooks. Make sure all devices work with whatever format you need.
lichess.org is a fantastic online chess platform for players of all skill levels. it's free and---what's more--it's ad-free (unlike the parasitic organisation that's squatting on the chess.com domain).
it has one-on-one on-demand match-ups, tournaments, puzzles, user-published training courses, multiple chess variants, and so much more.
it's one of only two online resources to which i deem donating regularly worthwhile (the other being wikipedia).
do check it out. chess is one really healthy mental habit to inculcate.
Great resource for really well taught contents on an extensive variety of fields
LMMS - free and open source garage band. It's a little weird on how you do a song, but it's pretty great.
Tips: Look at Beats and Baselines Editor and Piano Roll Editor first to probably get you where you want to be.
Yucata - online boardgames, take your turn when you can, no pressure.
VLC: the only media player you’ll ever need. Peak FLOSS.
Audacity: free, robust audio editing/effects tool. Not a proper DAW but so feature rich some people treat it like one. Another peak FLOSS.
Freesound.org: huge library of free audio, all Creative Commons/non royalty shit. Effects, music, you name it. Been around for literally 2 decades, is run by a non-profit. Definitely a relic of a bygone era
Maybe this is sorta dumb, but meditation is a free way to feel good and spend time, and also a free method of stress relief and to reduce suffering.
It's not free in terms of your time & energy, and it might cost some money to learn, but the best meditation manual I know of is free online, or at least it used to be - it looks like it was locked down on archive.org (where it used to be freely available), but you can still find it on Anna's Archive, and you can probably find it at your local library. Either way, you can learn to meditate for free, that's how I did it.
Running is likewise relatively free (you do generally have to pay for running shoes, and athletic clothing can be expensive, but it's relatively cheap over the lifetime of those items, and it's cheaper than most other activities). A great and accessible way to feel good and stay healthy.
Free as in FMHY
RIP kimcartoon, I spent half my life there. WCO has been a good replacement, but the lack of comments makes it feel too sterile.