These great Windows apps actually started on Linux, and they’re all free

Windows has a huge ecosystem of native apps, but many of my current favorite apps for Windows actually started their digital lives on Linux. If you’re looking for some free or open source alternatives to your conventional Windows apps, some of these options are a good place to start.

KDE connection

Windows 11 can connect to a mobile device via Phone Link, but that requires an account, and I’ve never actually had much luck with it.

My favorite alternative is an app called KDE connectionwhich was actually originally developed for Linux and then moved to Windows. Unlike Phone Link, no account is required. Just connect both devices to the same Wi-Fi network, install the KDE Connect app and you’re good to go.

You can control one device with another, send and receive files and even send text messages from your PC. Because it only works over your local network, you can rest assured that your data is private and secure.

File transfers are also as fast as your Wi-Fi speed, which is more useful than you might think. I moved over 100GB of videos from my phone to my PC in a fraction of the time it would have taken to upload them to the cloud and download them again, or transfer them via USB.

VLC

VLC has been available to Windows users for so long that everyone has forgotten about it, but it was originally released for Linux in 2001.

Since then, it has become a mainstay among Windows users as it can play virtually any media file without missing a beat. Like most Linux apps, it’s completely free, which is a very welcome change. There are still a surprising number of paid media players that VLC agrees with.

As an added bonus, VLC is completely ad-free, and always has been. You don’t have to worry about accidentally landing on a suspicious website trying to sell you a supplement.

Kdenlive

Adobe Premiere and DaVinci Resolve are probably the two most popular video editing programs for Windows users, and DaVinci Resolve even has the added benefit of being free.

However, KdenLiveoriginally developed for Linux, it is robust, capable, and remains one of my favorite apps for Windows, even if I don’t use it as often as I used to.

If you’re looking for an app that can do most video editing, that runs as well on a low-power PC as you could reasonably ask for, and that doesn’t cost anything, then KdenLive should be at the top of your list.

It receives a steady stream of feature updates that keep it on par with the premium, paid alternatives.

Caliber

I collect all kinds of PDFs from Humble Bundle, Project Gutenberg, and many other places. Somewhere I have a folder with manuals for almost every PC part I’ve ever owned.

Caliber is a Linux app ported to Windows that lets you sort books by author, publisher, series, and more. You can also use Caliber to mark up the digital books as you would in a real book, using a highlighter or a pen.

I find the ability to annotate things I want to come back to later particularly useful.

Git

Git doesn’t get a lot of glory, but it’s the unsung hero of the programming world. For many people, this is just one of those things at the beginning of an assignment that you stick in when following instructions online.

The reality is different. A large percentage of the programming world relies on Git. Git is a “version control system” for developers, essentially allowing you to track all the changes they make as they write code. You can manage different industries, customize a project’s structure, sync changes, and pretty much anything else you need to do.

I don’t write large chunks of code much anymore, but when I do, I can’t live without Git. It helps me stay on track and keep my sanity intact when trying to figure out what happened between different versions of a code I wrote.

Popular websites like GitHub and SourceForge act as repositories you can interact with using Git, so you can store your coding projects in the cloud to ensure they’re safe, or make them easily accessible to others.

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Despite being very different operating systems, there are also Windows versions available for a surprising number of Linux apps. If you see a recommended build online that interests you, don’t dismiss it as “just a Linux app.” You might be pleasantly surprised to find that it also has a Windows client.