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Giant List of Free Resources

I have been collecting free resources I come across! Know of one not listed? Please share it for everyone 😊

Note: While I have tried most of these, I have not tried all of them. Please do some research before downloading anything.

📸Photo Editing and Digital Art:

💻 Programs:

Character Posers:

Other:

🎨 Palettes:

💬Fonts:

  • FreeTypography: Free fonts for commercial use
  • Creative Fabrica: Free fonts for commercial use (sign-up required. Click “Menu,” then “Freebies.”)
  • Font Base: Free program made to organize and preview fonts (for graphic design)

📽️Video

🎙️Audio/Recordings/Podcasts:

  • Audacity: Audio editor
  • Craig: a bot for discord that lets you record audio conversations (not sneakily, publicly) for podcasts. It even splits everyone into separate audio files for easier edits.

📖Documents and Writing

🖥️Website Building/Coding/Programing

Misc

  • Etymology Dictionary: History and meanings of words
  • Marginalia: search engine that focuses on non-commercial content
  • Text-To-Speech: Chrome Extension for hearing text spoken and seeing it highlighted
  • Dictation: will transcribe audio
  • FreeLearningList: several lists of websites where you can learn for free
  • TinyWow: A website with several different useful tools; such as converting file types, photo editing, and more.
  • Omni Calculator: This website has several different calculators/generators; including a solar setup calculator (tells you how many panels you need), constructions calculators (such as telling you how many sheets of drywall you will need) and more.
  • Food Swap Network: share homemade, homegrown, or foraged foods with each other.
  • Freegle: A free app for either giving away items you no longer want, or finding ones you need.
  • Dimensions: Need to know the average size of something? This website can show you the standard measurements and sizes of many different things.
  • Gramps: Free family tree and research program
  • Frappe Books: Accounting Software
  • iFixit: Look up the repair guides for many different common items
  • Repair Clinic: Enter the model or part number, or problem, and it will help walk you through repairing the exact item you have.

DIY Builds:

  • Awesome Social Robots: How to build a robot companion
  • Open-Sourced DIY prosthetic leg: “With an ever-increasing availability of new technologies, we created an affordable bionic leg that is accessible to everyone.”
  • DIY Open electric drive kit for wheelchairs - alpha v “The present page is a follow-up project done by a group of 3rd year students from Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Imperial College where they built a first prototype of an electric wheelchair that will be the basis for future development of an open kit to build electric wheelchairs for cheap. The idea is to keep information open and make the system suitable to use off-the-shelf components.”
  • DIY Talking Smart Glass for the Blind “A pair of talking smart glass, intended to help the visually impaired.”
  • DIY Solar Powered WiFi Weather Station V3.0 "An Open Source Solar-Powered Weather Station to monitor Temperature, Humidity, Air Pressure, Wind Speed, Wind Direction, Rainfall, UV Index, and Lux Level”

📺Media and Entertainment

  • Tubi online streaming platform with ads
  • VLC: a media player that can play pretty much anything
  • inoreader: RSS reader so you can follow your fav websites without ads.
  • Calibre: ebook management
  • Playnite: Video game manager
  • Kodi: Video media manager

Free Books (Legal):

🖼️Public Domain Art

Once something reaches a certain age, it can fall under public domain. This includes classical art (like the Mona Lisa). If they are public domain, you can use them for commercial use or marketing.

🌎 Environmental Protection DIY Plans:

  • Senso: “Senso is a device that detects deforestation using sound analysis detecting machines used to cut down trees and warning the authorities”
  • Project Eel: “Monitoring river water quality based on open-design multi-parameter sonde, built along with QuickFeather and SensiML service.”
  • Stream Research: “Data is power, and with sufficient data we can approach our respective municipalities, and provide them with all the information they need to seek or allocate funding for the preservation and conservation of our natural waterways.”
  • Droncoria: Dronecoria develops Open Source biotechnological tools and knowledge. Enabling large-scale, low-cost environmental restorations through sowing drones and seed enhancement.
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14 comments
  • Great list, this post is getting saved without question! I don't see Kolourpaint though, which is a great FOSS digital art program. I'd say it should be added to the list as it's my go to for light weight photo editing. Also, Obsidian isn't FOSS, which may not be what your looking for specifically as it has a free option. I prefer Standard Notes as it's FOSS and great for managing notes privately across devices.

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  • You pushed curating to the next level dear netizen. Thank you

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  • What an absolutely lovely list! (the section breaks are 🤌)

    As an addition to the writing category, I've found NovelWriter and Wavemaker Cards to be excellent FOSS creative writing programs (and in my opinion blow yWriter out of the water, but personally I found yWriter to be pretty lacking when it comes to UX).

    For notes, CherryTree is a nice app, though I'm not sure if it's better than standard notes, as I haven't tried it.

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    • Haha Thanks! I made the section breaks on Canva(free version) so I am not really attached to them or anything, so please feel free to save and use them if you'd like!

      Perfect, thanks! I will add those right away with credit to you.

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  • This is above-and-beyond, internet person.

    Love, light, and respect.

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  • What a fantastic list, thank you so much! Might I suggest DaVinci Resolve for the video section? The free version is shockingly good

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    • You're welcome and thanks! I will add that to the list with credit to you.

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  • Fantastic list!

    If you're ok with including AI art generating apps on the list then check out Draw Things.

    It's free, runs the models only locally on your device, and collects no data/has an excellent clear privacy policy. It also does it in a fairly user-friendly way.

    I have been extremely blown away by how capable it is. You can import Checkpoints, LoRa, Embeddings, and other Stable Diffusion-based things downloaded from huggingface, and civitai, likely other places. You can mix models and train LoRa. It has recently added API and http server functionality so you can automate image generation or plug it into other apps. It even can generate up to 25-frames of video, and it includes an exporter that does video frame interpolation.

    It runs on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and the iPad version runs on VisionOS. I take a photo with my phone and make crazy variations of art with it without having internet access or paying a dime more than my expensive device already cost me.

    With a separate app I can turn things I generate into stereo photos or video and see them in 3D on my headset.

    I can also zoom in and enhance parts of photos, or upscale them in ways that hallucinate reasonable details.

    I feel like I'm one hoverboard away from the future I was promised as a kid!

    I've been so enamored with this app recently that it's making me consider a career change, so I apologize if I'm coming off like an advertisement.

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