The sort of program that once set up, just ticks along without fuss or bother forever.
For me, as I’m replacing the vms today which I set up five years ago and haven’t needed to touch since;
- HAProxy
- KeepaliveD
Not easy to learn, but once they’re running, they both go on forever.
Debian and basically everything in its repos. Might be somewhat old, but it is really fucking stable
My small selfhosted system appreciates this very much. Having Debian as my base OS makes everything easier.
Total agreement. So many unsung heroes involved in Debian. Work has agreed with me - today’s job involved migrating those load balancers to Debian underneath.
That’s my dream
It’s a blessing and a curse how stable it is. I think less bleeding edge is better but when shit like audio and GPU are fucked they’re pretty much always fucked until dist-upgrade time.
VLC
grep
coreutils
yes this is a jab at rust-coreutils
Syncthing. Absolutely ace bit of software. I remember it being a little questionable in 2013, but today it performs exactly the same task, just more reliably. Love it.
Yep I love it. It’s how I keep my password manager synced between devices. It can be finicky to set up but just works without thinking after that.
Good shout! I use syncthing myself to sync all my useful stuff between multiple devices seamlessly.
nano
nano 😎
Anything from Debian. I even run Debian-Testing, and it’s rock solid. Also, Linux mint, on my other partition.
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I have mixed feels. It can work day after day but in practice it doesn’t. That’s on me 😂
The Linux Kernel.
Many have already mentioned tools that I also use and appreciate immensely.
My pick is Steam. I’ve picked up on gaming in the past 2 years and it’s very stable right now. Every game that I have interest in just works, I can install games, including early access or demos without looking at the compatibility or the release date. The download speeds of games are high (imho at least where I’m located, and compared with a PS5). My partner is a heavy gamer and has to yet find a game that doesn’t work on her machine.Firefox + uBlock Origin + sponsorblock. Set it and forget it.
I haven’t seen an advertisement or a sponsored segment on my desktop in over a decade, and same with my phone for several years. I’m astonished how willing most people are to put up with a constant barrage of ads coming from devices they own
Systemd
*grabs popcorn*

Just it always makes you wait for ~3 min and shows: … wait for something to be Configured (25s / no limit). :-)
Supernotes.app
Linux Mint
Rockbox
Sayonara music player
Syncthing
Rockbox
I desperately wish my Rockbox consistently worked without crashing or freezing once a week.
Caddy
Love caddy
The OS itself, Debian. If I have to pick a component, Mate Panel. Compared to the Windows 11 start menu, it’s useful, customizableand has no ads. My IT department at work can’t even figure out how to remove the Windows 11 start menu ads from my computer.









