[JasonB]

I've used LibreOffice for ages and wouldn't go back to Microsoft. Likewise, I've used Firefox forever. And FileZilla for managing website files on a server.

I started using Paint.net for photo editing during lockdown and really like its simplicity - plus I'm a bit old school and prefer a minimum amount of image manipulation. I started using GIMP a very long time ago (2000-ish) and agree the time spent getting used to it is worth the effort.

Blender is something I've used, but never really needed. I think I might give Inkscape a go.

One of the best pieces of free, open source software is Audacity - a brilliant audio editor. I first used it when I was making digital copies of LPs and cassettes in the early 2000s. It's good for recording and mixing music, although not a true Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) like Logic Pro. I've used Audacity extensively to edit down tracks for use on our WHO Racing videos.

Good call on Filezilla, I'd forgotten about that. But it's free, open source, and multi platform. It's also done a fair amount of heavy lifting on this very site, having uploaded pretty much everything, thousands upon thousands of files.

I've never used Audacity, but I've heard good things about it. 

I did use Logic for many years, but I guess that's kind of the opposite of what we're discussing here, being fairly expensive, and they sold out to Apple and never made a windows version again, as far as I know. I swore a lot at that point, because I'd also used its predecessor, Notator, a midi sequencer application which we used to run a bank of synthesizers, and drum machines from an atari, through the late eighties and nineties, following on with Logic which was more of a proper DAW. Happy days.

Inkscape is definitely worth a try, nice bit of kit.