Tools Power Users Never Shut Up About — And Why
Where curiosity meets creation — and every subscription gets cancelled. lol
Skip the Premium Tier — Use These Instead 
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
What This Is
A curated stack of free tools that actually work. Not recycled SEO garbage. Not “alternatives” that are worse than what they replace. Just tools that ship, tools that perform, and tools you’ll actually keep using.
Every pick here passes one test: Would someone who knows better still use this?
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
CLI POWER TOOLS
The terminal is where speed lives. These tools make your command line feel like it was built this decade.
• fzf — Fuzzy finder for everything
Pipe anything into it. Find files, history, processes, git branches — instantly. Once you use Ctrl+R with fzf, vanilla history feels broken.
• ripgrep (rg) — Blazing fast recursive search
10x faster than grep. Respects .gitignore by default. Search million-line codebases in milliseconds.
• fd — Modern find replacement
Simple syntax, colorized output, smart defaults. fd pattern just works.
• bat — cat with syntax highlighting
Line numbers, git integration, paging built-in. Pairs beautifully with fzf for file previews.
• eza — Modern ls replacement
Icons, git status, tree view, colors. Makes directory browsing actually pleasant.
• zoxide — Smarter cd
Learns your habits. Type z proj to jump to /home/user/dev/projects/myapp. Never type full paths again.
• entr — Run commands on file changes
ls *.py | entr python main.py — instant hot reloading for anything. Simple, composable, just works.
• tldr — Simplified man pages
Practical examples instead of walls of text. tldr tar shows you what you actually need.
• jq — JSON processor
Parse, filter, transform JSON from the command line. Essential for API work.
• btop — Process viewer
Visual, interactive, actually usable. Looks gorgeous with full graphs.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
SELF-HOSTED ESSENTIALS
Own your data. Run your stack. These are tools the community won’t stop recommending — because they actually work.
Photos & Media
• Immich → Replaces Google Photos
Face recognition, smart search, mobile apps, shared albums. Looks and feels like Google Photos. Active development, huge community. The one everyone switches to.
• Jellyfin → Replaces Plex
100% free. No account required. Hardware transcoding included. No “live TV channels” or streaming service upsells. Just your media, your way.
• Navidrome → Replaces Spotify (for your library)
Self-hosted music streaming. Subsonic API compatible. Light, fast, works with every mobile app.
Productivity & Backend
• Nextcloud → Replaces Google Workspace
Files, calendar, contacts, notes, office suite, video calls — all self-hosted. The Swiss Army knife.
• PocketBase → Replaces Firebase
Single binary. SQLite backend. Deploy in 30 seconds. Auth, realtime, file storage. Perfect for side projects.
• Forgejo / Gitea → Replaces GitHub
Lightweight Git hosting. Forgejo is the community fork after Gitea went corporate. Both are solid.
• n8n → Replaces Zapier
Visual workflow automation. Self-hostable. No per-task pricing. One flow replaces 17 Zaps.
• Activepieces → Replaces Zapier
Cleaner UI than n8n. “Todos” feature lets you pause workflows for human approval. Unlimited flows on free tier.
Monitoring & Infrastructure
• Uptime Kuma — Beautiful uptime monitoring. Status pages. Notifications to everything.
• Dashy — Customizable dashboard for all your services.
• Portainer — Docker management UI. Makes containers approachable.
• Traefik — Reverse proxy with automatic HTTPS. Docker-native.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
NOTES & SECOND BRAIN
Your thoughts deserve better than Notion’s loading spinners.
• Obsidian — Local-first markdown
Power users’ choice. Plugin ecosystem is insane. Your notes are just .md files you own forever.
• Logseq — Outliner-based, open source
Daily journaling, task management. AGPL licensed = stays open forever.
• Anytype — P2P sync, encrypted
Notion-like feel with actual privacy. No central server.
• AppFlowy — True OSS Notion clone
If you want Notion’s UI without Notion’s downsides. Written in Rust/Flutter.
• SiYuan — Local-first with sync
Block-based, bi-directional links, built-in sync.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
DESIGN & IMAGE EDITING
Create without Creative Cloud.
• Photopea → Replaces Photoshop
Browser-based. Opens PSDs natively. Built by ONE developer. Feels exactly like Photoshop. Free forever with ads, $5/mo without.
• GIMP 3.0 → Replaces Photoshop
2025 release finally added non-destructive editing. Learning curve is real but it’s genuinely powerful.
• Krita → Replaces Photoshop (for illustration)
Digital painting focused. Better brush engine than Photoshop for artists.
• Penpot → Replaces Figma
Free Dev Mode (Figma locks it behind subscription). Self-hostable. Real open source. No file limits.
• Inkscape → Replaces Illustrator
Professional vector editing. SVG-native. Steep curve but unlimited ceiling.
• DaVinci Resolve → Replaces Premiere Pro
Hollywood-grade color grading. Full NLE. Free version is more capable than most paid editors.
• Kdenlive → Replaces Premiere Pro
True open source video editing. Multi-track, professional features.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
PRIVACY STACK
Because your data is yours.
Browsers
• Firefox — Non-Chromium. Container tabs are underrated.
• Brave — Chromium-based but ad-blocking built in. Fastest out-of-box privacy.
• Zen Browser — Firefox-based Arc alternative. Vertical tabs, beautiful UI, growing fast.
• LibreWolf — Firefox with privacy hardening pre-applied. No telemetry.
Communication
• Signal → Replaces WhatsApp/iMessage
E2E encrypted. Open source. The gold standard.
• Element (Matrix) → Replaces Slack/Discord
Decentralized, federated, E2E encrypted. Run your own server or use public ones.
• Mattermost → Replaces Slack
Self-hosted team chat. Enterprise-grade, open core.
Email & Cloud
• Proton Mail — E2E encrypted email. Swiss jurisdiction. Free tier is generous.
• Proton VPN — No-log VPN. Free tier with no data limits.
• Mullvad VPN — €5/mo flat. No accounts. Pay with cash or crypto.
• Cryptomator — Client-side encryption for any cloud. Encrypt before upload.
• Syncthing — P2P file sync. No cloud. Your devices talk directly.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
DEV TOOLS
Code better. Ship faster.
Editors & IDEs
• VSCodium — VS Code without Microsoft telemetry. Same extensions, no tracking.
• Zed — GPU-accelerated editor from Atom creators. Blazing fast. Multiplayer built-in.
• Helix — Modal editor with LSP built-in. Kakoune-inspired. No config needed.
• Neovim — The Vim that keeps evolving. Lua config, async, LSP native.
Terminals
• Ghostty — By the Hashicorp founder. Native, fast, configurable. The new hotness.
• WezTerm — GPU-accelerated, Lua config, multiplexing built-in.
• Kitty — Fast, feature-rich, hackable. Graphics protocol.
• Alacritty — Minimal, fast, cross-platform. Does one thing well.
Git & Version Control
• lazygit — Terminal UI for git. Stage hunks, interactive rebase, all keyboard-driven.
• jj (Jujutsu) — Git-compatible VCS with better UX. Undo anything. The future.
• delta — Better git diffs. Syntax highlighting, side-by-side.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
PRODUCTIVITY & OFFICE
Get work done without Microsoft tax.
• LibreOffice → Replaces Microsoft Office
Full suite. Most mature open source option.
• OnlyOffice → Replaces Microsoft Office
Best MS Office compatibility. Real-time collaboration. Self-hostable.
• Cal.com → Replaces Calendly
Open source scheduling. Unlimited on free tier. Self-hostable. Way better UI.
• Plane → Replaces Linear/Jira
Project management. Clean UI. Self-hostable. Linear vibes without Linear pricing.
• Focalboard → Replaces Trello
By Mattermost. Kanban, table, calendar views. Self-hosted.
• CryptPad → Replaces Google Docs
E2E encrypted collaborative documents. No account needed.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
MOBILE & CROSS-PLATFORM
• KDE Connect — Phone-computer integration. File transfer, notifications, clipboard sync.
• LocalSend — AirDrop for everything. No internet required.
• Aegis — 2FA app for Android. Open source, encrypted backups.
• Bitwarden — Password manager. Open source, self-hostable.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
AI & LOCAL LLMs
Run AI without the API bills.
• Ollama — Run Llama, Mistral, Phi locally. One command: ollama run llama3
• LM Studio — Beautiful UI for local models. Download, run, chat.
• Jan — Open source ChatGPT alternative. Runs locally.
• Open WebUI — ChatGPT-like interface for local models.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT
• yt-dlp — Download from YouTube and 1000+ sites. Actively maintained.
• Stremio — Media center with addon ecosystem.
• FreeTube — Desktop YouTube client. No ads, no tracking.
• NewPipe — YouTube for Android. Background play, downloads, no Google.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
QUICK REFERENCE: WHAT REPLACES WHAT
Paid Tool → Free Alternative → Notes
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Photoshop → Photopea, GIMP, Krita → Photopea for quick edits
Figma → Penpot → Free Dev Mode, self-hostable
Notion → Obsidian, Logseq → Local-first wins
Google Photos → Immich → Face recognition included
Plex → Jellyfin → No account, no upsells
Zapier → n8n, Activepieces → Self-host, no per-task billing
Firebase → PocketBase, Supabase → PocketBase for light, Supabase for scale
Calendly → Cal.com → Open source, unlimited free
Slack → Mattermost, Element → Own your comms
1Password → Bitwarden → Self-hostable, open source
ChatGPT → Ollama + Open WebUI → Run locally, no API costs
Google Drive → Nextcloud, Syncthing → Control your files━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The 1Hack Philosophy
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
— 1Hack Community
!