In the past, most software I used was paid and proprietary and would have some sort of limitation that I would try to get around by any means possible. Sometimes that would be resetting the clock on my computer, disabling the internet, and other times downloading a patch.
But in the past few years I’ve stopped using those things and have focused only on free and open source software (FOSS) to fulfill my needs. I hardly have to worry about privacy problems or trying to lock down a program that calls home. I might be missing out on some things that commercial software delivers, but I’m hardly aware of what they are anymore. It seems like the trend is for commercial software providers to migrate toward online or service models that have the company doing all the computing. I’m opposed to that, since they can take away your service at any time.
What do you do?
It’s a mix of both. On my windows gaming rig I have ms office, photoshop sketchup and fl studio pirated. I haven’t found a good foss alternative for photoshop, sketchup or flstudio (using gimp is worse than being an actuall gimp ). On my Linux laptop I’ve been using more and more foss. I’m getting use to Libre office but it doesn’t do everything I need. Switched chrome for Firefox, vscodium as a code editor, waydroid for Android apps
For tools and stuff: FOSS
For games: No need to pirate thanks to Epic overloading me with free stuff. If I want something specific, keyforsteam usually does the trick for a very reasonable amount of money.
Both of these categories are just not worth it to risk a potential infection due to malware in the pirated stuff.
The only places where I do do some pirating are:
- TV shows/movies if they aren’t on the two streaming services that I pay for
- Games for the hacked retro consoles that I own
- Android apps that I can hack myself
These categories are pretty safe
I only use free software. Not all of it is FOSS, but a most of it. Well, I do use Linux so using some pirated windows software is a lot more annoying.
In my younger years I just pirated the hell out of software. From Photoshop to Sony Vegas. Nowadays i use Foss because of my Linux use, but even for my Boyfriend PC’s I mostly leet him choose between Pirated Programms and FOSS software and he mostly just needs an easy software. FOSS isn’t as feature full as paid software but mostly for the normal stuff you do you can just use FOSS.
When I was a student I had almost everything pirated, because of the lack of money and unreasonable pricing. Back then it was easy because in most cases I knew someone who knew someone who already had pirated the program.
Meanwhile I switched for alternatives (for instance I used to have Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, now I have purchased Affinity Photo and Designer) as the trend leads into the direction of subscribed software (software-as-a-service). I prefer software to be installed locally and not dependent of a stable internet connection. Also, I have no problem with paying for proprietary software, given it is priced reasonably.
Other than Windows I guess everything I use is Foss with only few free stuff (like visual studio). And it’s a lot. Many different Software.
The last software I aquired unconventionally was photoshop. Then came windows 10 and my migration to linux, so that was the end of adobe on my systems.
