Over the past few months, I’ve been using Ubuntu on my secondary devices. I use it for personal projects, testing self-hosted apps, and helping friends set up machines where all they need is a browser, email, and YouTube. It’s not my primary OS, but I spend enough time in it that I need my everyday tools to work.
The biggest criticism I hear about Linux is that installing and using programs is painful compared to Windows. And honestly, there’s truth to that. You’re dealing with Flatpaks, Snaps, AppImages, package managers, and sometimes compiling from source just to get a single app running. On Windows, you download an .exe and double-click it to install the app. But when it comes to replacing core productivity apps, I was surprised by how well Linux alternatives held up. I found solid replacements for almost everything in my Windows workflow, with one exception that genuinely broke things.
LibreOffice replaced Microsoft Office
A full office suite that doesn’t need a subscription
Yadullah Abidi / MakeUseOfCredit: Yadullah Abidi / MakeUseOf
Microsoft Office is one of those apps that keeps people tied to Windows. The online version exists, but there’s no native desktop app for Linux. If you rely on Word, Excel, or PowerPoint daily, that’s a real gap.
LibreOffice fills it surprisingly well. It’s free, open source, and has replaced my entire office suite without any learning curve. Writer, Calc, and Impress handle .docx, .xlsx, and .pptx files without much fuss. So you can work with complex spreadsheets and formatted documents from colleagues without issues almost every time.
It’s also comparatively lighter than Microsoft’s offering. LibreOffice runs smoothly on modest hardware where Microsoft Office would chug. It also doesn’t force you to sign in, doesn’t show ads, and doesn’t nag you about a subscription. The classic menu and toolbar layout feels familiar if you grew up with older versions of Office.
That said, it’s not perfect. VBA macros don’t always translate, and if your workplace relies heavily on SharePoint or real-time co-authoring through OneDrive, LibreOffice can’t replicate that. But for writing documents, building spreadsheets, and putting together presentations, it does the job without asking for your credit card.
OS
Linux, Android, Windows, macOS
Developer
LibreOffice
The primary open-source alternative for offline work. LibreOffice handles complex, long-form documents and massive spreadsheets without requiring an internet connection or a cloud login.
Thunderbird handles my email
A privacy-focused email client that rivals Outlook
Yadullah Abidi / MakeUseOfCredit: Yadullah Abidi / MakeUseOf
Outlook is the default email experience on Windows, and Microsoft has been pushing the new Outlook app hard. But it’s essentially a web app wrapped in a desktop shell, and the free tier shows ads right inside your inbox, disguised as emails.
Thunderbird is a breath of fresh air by comparison. It’s free, open source, and has no ads anywhere. The thing I like most is the true unified inbox. If you manage multiple email accounts, Thunderbird combines them into one view. The new Outlook still makes you click into each account separately.
The built-in OpenPGP encryption is a nice bonus for anyone who cares about email privacy. Add in the tabbed interface where you can keep messages, calendar, and settings open side by side, and it starts to feel more productive than Outlook for daily use.
Where Thunderbird falls short is ecosystem integration. If your work revolves around Microsoft 365, with Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint, Outlook ties everything together in a way Thunderbird can’t. Thunderbird also gets sluggish with very large mailboxes, and the calendar still feels like it was bolted on rather than built in. But for personal email or mixed-provider setups, it’s hard to beat.
OS
Android, Windows, Linux & Mac
Developer
MZLA Technologies Corporation
A free, open-source desktop email client that stores your mail locally and works even when the web doesn’t.
Inkscape for design work
A free vector editor that does more than you’d expect
Inksc
Yadullah Abidi / MakeUseOfCredit: Yadullah Abidi / MakeUseOf
Adobe Illustrator doesn’t run on Linux, and for anyone doing design work, that’s a tough pill to swallow. I tried a few alternatives before I settled on Inkscape as my Illustrator replacement, and it’s completely free.
Inkscape is a full vector graphics editor with a toolset that’s surprisingly close to Illustrator. The pen tool, layers, text editing, and path operations are all there. If you know Illustrator, the learning curve is mostly about learning where things are named differently. The gradient tool is actually more intuitive than Illustrator’s since you can manipulate stops and direction right on the canvas.
Another thing I’ve come to appreciate from my short stint with the app is its SVG-first workflow. If you work with web graphics, icons, or anything that needs to scale cleanly, Inkscape treats SVG as a native format rather than an afterthought. The built-in CSS selector view lets you inspect hex codes, stroke widths, and opacity directly, which is handy for web and UX work.
The trade-off is the lack of Adobe’s ecosystem. There’s no one-click handoff to Photoshop or After Effects, and no cloud library sharing with clients who live in the Adobe world. But if you control your own toolchain, Inkscape delivers professional results without the subscription.
OS
Windows, Linux, macOS
Developer
Inkscape
Inkscape is a free and open-source vector graphics editor used to create vector images, primarily in Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format.
Kdenlive for video
An open-source editor that covers most of what Premiere does
Yadullah Abidi / MakeUseOfCredit: Yadullah Abidi / MakeUseOf
Adobe Premiere Pro is another app that’s absent on Linux. For video editing, I turned to Kdenlive, and it’s proven to be an excellent open-source alternative to Premiere Pro on Linux.
Kdenlive handles multi-track editing, keyframed effects, color correction, and audio mixing. For YouTube-style content, tutorials, or indie projects, it covers roughly 90% of what Premiere offers. The built-in proxy workflow is a standout feature. It makes editing 4K footage on mid-range hardware surprisingly smooth, and it handles mixed resolutions on the same timeline better than Premiere does in some cases.
I also like the integrated asset browser that pulls templates and stock footage from sources like Pexels and Pixabay directly inside the app. Small touches like that reduce the back-and-forth between apps.
Where it struggles is stability on large projects. I’ve had crashes and timeline lag with hundreds of cuts, even when my system resources were fine. There’s also nothing comparable to Premiere’s AI features, like speech enhancement or automatic color matching. But for a solo editor working on personal or small-scale projects, it’s remarkably capable for a free tool.
OS
Windows, Linux, macOS
Developer
KDE
Kdenlive is a free and open-source video editor that works on Windows, Linux, macOS, and BSD
The one thing that broke my workflow
Screenshots, GIFs, and quick recordings are harder on Linux
While I found solid replacements for every major app in my Windows workflow, one gap nearly derailed the whole experiment. It might sound trivial, but screenshots, GIF captures, and quick screen recordings are a big part of what I do every day. On Windows, I’ve used ShareX for years, and nothing beats it. One hotkey, region select, annotate, and it’s uploaded with a shareable link before I’ve finished my thought.
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On Linux, nothing replicates that experience. Flameshot is the closest thing to ShareX for screenshots. It handles region capture, basic annotations, and hotkey bindings well enough. Ksnip is another decent option for general screen grabs. But neither comes close to ShareX’s seamless pipeline of capture, annotate, upload, and generate a short link in one fluid action.
Screen recording is a separate problem entirely. OBS Studio and SimpleScreenRecorder exist, but those are full recording apps, not quick-capture tools. There’s no single Linux app that handles screenshots, GIF creation, and screen recording the way ShareX bundles everything into one hotkey-driven workflow. The tools exist in fragments, but the integration just isn’t there yet.
OS
Windows
Developer
ShareX
ShareX is a free and open-source screen capture and recording tool for Windows that allows users to capture or record any area of their screen, annotate images, and easily share files to over 80 destinations.
Linux can replace your workflow, but not without compromise
Switching to Linux forced me to evaluate which apps I actually need versus which ones I use out of habit. LibreOffice, Thunderbird, Inkscape, and Kdenlive all proved that open-source alternatives can hold their own against their paid counterparts. In some cases, like Thunderbird’s ad-free inbox or Inkscape’s SVG workflow, the Linux option is genuinely better.
But the ShareX situation is a reminder that Linux still has gaps in everyday usability. The core productivity apps are there, and they’re good. It’s the small, workflow-specific tools that trip you up. If your work depends on a polished, all-in-one utility that doesn’t exist on Linux yet, you’ll feel that absence every single day.
