Published Oct 22, 2026, 4:01 PM EDT

After a 7-year corporate stint, Tanveer found his love for writing and tech too much to resist. An MBA in Marketing and the owner of a PC building business, he writes on PC hardware, technology, and Windows. When not scouring the web for ideas, he can be found building PCs, watching anime, or playing Smash Karts on his RTX 3080 (sigh).

Paying for third-party apps is something we've all become used to, one way or another. Whether it's to fulfill work commitments or satisfy creative interests, app subscriptions now constitute a significant portion of our monthly expenses. Video editing, photo editing, note-taking, cloud storage, document editing, and antivirus are some of the areas where people prefer the convenience and features of paid software.

After paying a considerable sum in subscriptions over the last few years, I decided to give open-source alternatives a serious try, and I was surprised how smooth the transition was.…