Shoutouts
Thanks to the following commenters below for additional recommendations that I added to this post!
- bruhduh
- Toes
Free Open Source Alternatives
[Visual/Graphical]
For all visual/graphical artists I would personally recommend switching from Photoshop over to
- KDE’s Krita
- Licensed under: GPLv-3.0 or later
- Flathub
- GIMP
- Licensed under: GPLv-3.0 or later
- Flathub
[Audio]
For audio migration I’d recommend switching from Soundbooth to
- Tenacity
- Licensed under: GPLv-2.0 or later
- Flathub
- LMMS
- Licensed under: GPLv-2.0 or later
- Flathub
- Status: “Unverified”
[PDF]
Acrobat Reader to
- MuPDF
- Licensed under: AGPLv-3.0 or later
- F-Droid
- KDE’s Okular
- Licensed under: GPLv-2.0 or later
- Flathub
[Video]
Premiere to
- Shotcut
- Licensed under: GPLv-3.0 or later
- Flathub
- Kdenlive
- Licensed under: GPLv-3.0 or later
- Flathub
- OpenShot
- Licensed under: GPLv-3.0 only
- Flathub
- Status: “Unverified”
There’s also an excellent thread started by [email protected]
Not open source, but pro grade, often nicer to work with than adobe stuff. The Affinity suite. Pay once per major revision. Decent upgrade plans. No subscription. Designer, photo and publisher.
The business model could change very quickly and promises by companies aren’t worth the paper they are written on. The CEO might tomorrow decide to sell the company to a large tech company which more often than not leads to the destruction of the software the company developed. Only open source or, even better, free software can guarantee that your software wont be enshittified.
They’ve actually been acquired a few months ago, they promised no changes to their business model but I’m not hopeful
They will boil that frog slowly. Soon there will be an alternative subscription with a discount for previous license holders. Then they hide the option to buy a perpetual license so only people who spent time to search for it can find it; and finally they will remove the option completely and claim that they did that because “Nobody was buying it”.