By a wide margin the many different projects for an open source phone OS. From GrapheneOS to PostmarketOS, from Ubuntu Mobile to Plasma Mobile.

I am sick and tired of corporations telling me how I can use my phone. I am sick and tired of corporations deciding what apps I can install, from where, and what data they are allowed to collect. I am done with enshittification and the gradual disappearing of all useful information, either behind a paywall, or replaced by monetized content.

The last straw was when Google Maps decided to replace the "gas station on the route" feature that sent you to the cheapest gas station to some other logic it didn't disclose, but that stinks of affiliate preference.

Best answer: Blender by far, Blender is ON FIRE right now, so many exciting things are happening.

The answer my heart gives: Beyond All Reason (my heart really loves watching robots and tanks blow each other up in scifi battles).

I'm going to have to say OpenStreetMap, it's always going to have a place in my heart.

Meshtastic. I don't use it yet, but it is something interesting that I've kinda been low-key obsessed about.

Eventually, telecoms are gonna require IDs, internet service will require IDs. Computers will have DRMs and "AI" scanning your device to censor stuff.

Meshtashtic could be the backbone of a new "internet". One that's free from corporate control. We could build a forum on top of it.

It's been a hot minute since I've touched it, but godot is always going to have my favor. It works very well, doesn't have any bullshit.

I just need more motivation to finish my existing project, and keep the desire for a new one at bay.

Home assistant!

Well Immich is pretty fucking great

Exciting enough for me to use on a daily basis, and I'm actively following their development progress. Not contributing, mind you. Nobody wants me of all people touching their codebase.

FreeCAD - The open source alternative to various proprietary parametric CAD and solid modelling software such as Solidworks, Fusion360, OnShape, etc. This recently passed its milestone 1.0 release at which point it could finally be considered actually broadly functional for actual real world use. Among various other widgets, I prominently used it to make this and this. Yeah, you guys know how it is.

I consider FreeCAD pretty important coming from the 3D printing hobbyist's perspective because its the lone bulwark (well, okay, maybe also along with Blender and OpenSCAD) standing firm against the tidal wave of predatory bullshit being peddled by the commercial modelling software options, all of which at this point are genuine full-blown instruments of evil desperately trying to strangle, gatekeep, and paywall humankind's ability to just make some goddamned shapes to 3D print.

In other news, I complied UZDoom from source the other night because somehow I missed that zdoom.org has precompiled binaries on their site, which I haven't had to visit in years, but the UZDoom Github page doesn't. We live and learn. UZDoom is pretty exciting because it's a continuation of GZDoom with the added feature of kicking its insane former lead developer off of the project, or rather forking it out from under him. And everybody loves to play Doom.

For me it's COSMIC desktop

But that's been something I've been excited about for ages lol

Immich has been the biggest impact for me lately, but I wouldn't say it is the most exciting. I need to find one of those.

Linux of course, it's been headlining lately in terms of improvements particularly on the gaming front, but also FreeBSD based on how quickly it's been moving in terms of improvements on the general desktop front, FreeBSD is at the point where it's a viable third option on the desktop if you're not gaming, although that's assuming you're running its CURRENT branch since that's where the latest development happens.

Plasma Bigscreen. I would love to replace my Apple TVs with something more open.

Currently I think the one that is the most exciting to me is Natsumi Browser, a modification for most firefox-based browsers with an interface similar to arc or zen browser. I used zen for months after it released, but every few updates some core functionality would break and they kept removing features that were essential to my workflow so I much prefer this as a modification on top of Floorp. I think the dev just does it as a hobby project, but there's new useful features added frequently, and keybindings!

I think everything going on with the open source phone space is very exciting, also I think copyparty is very cool.

Thrive and Veloren

Open source gaming will get a massive leg up from these 2

Mine of course! A decentralised sharing/file system.

Soon to come; web compatibility...

PeerTube. It's a video sharing platform with ActivityPub federation and with peer to peer video sharing like a torrent (it is one I think) which lightens the load on instances. An alternative to YouTube is NEEDED right now. A good way to make it grow is to simply start a channel and post videos. It's currently very underpopulated. Some YouTube channels such as The Linux Experiment mirror their channels to PeerTube, so if you have a YT channel, mirror it to PeerTube.

Also to me it seems like Matrix could be the messenger of the future, replacing WhatsApp, SMS/calls, and social media DMs.

The general mobile Linux space is also interesting right now. Year of the Linux phone when? It's not currently fully ready but it's advancing. Also the FSF announced the LibrePhone initiative so there'll probably be more advancement.

A buddy and I were playing with Sonobus this morning. It lets you collaborate on music remotely.

Musicians will know already, but if you're not aware, the latency (lag) between participants makes it impractical to play in time together. But if you can get it below 30ms then it's roughly equivalent to playing with someone across the room. Needs a hard wired connection and the other people probably can't be more than 500 miles away. But for me eliminates a two hour round trip to work on a song.

The GNU project as a whole.

PostmarketOS, I have an fp3 I want to install it on

I'm also watching the latest 1v1 tournament of Beyond All Reason, double heavy mines are terrifying

Ladybird because Mozilla is killing Firefox as fast as they can and I refuse to use Chrome or one of its forks.

I am super hyped about Arrs. I have configured a stack and yet to activate it. Waiting til I can install Raspberry pi with vpn in another country for an endless downloads.

All the Arr stuff is working really great already. Whats going to happen in future? Can't wait!

Other than that, Immich is dope.

RPCS3 and ShadPS4

I really love the work Asahi linux is doing, once they add m3 support (god knows when) I am switching over.

Haiku. We need a more modern OS to compete against Linux.

I have a few open source audio projects in the works myself right now. Aside from my own stuff, Fish shell has been my latest addiction.

I like I2P. Such a cool concept and there are plenty of services that can be built upon it. Most famous for anonymous torrenting I suppose, but it can do so much more.

Wargus for sure. In the age of darkness! In the age of darkness! Why do you keep touching me?

Harvester. K8s cluster in box and vms and now open switch packaged with it.

Still trying to find a best way to grab graphics outputs so I can create a display as a service to any of the clusters connected monitors

None, really.

I like the free software ecosystem.

My own.