Ask Lemmy

CBC Gem, which is our country's public news corporation's streaming service which is a catalog of Canadian television. There's also CBC Music which is the radio app, and you can even listen to the live streams of the Metropolitan Opera on Saturdays.

Syncthing.

Connect any two devices' folders together wirelessly, from anywhere.

Don't have a server? You don't need one. Every device is an individual node.

Backup? If you do have a server, offload some of your content and keep on rolling, or set scripts to move files by age.

Libraries. Most even rent video games, power tools, audio/video hardware, baking utensils...SO MUCH STUFF. All free.

In terms of fully free, obligatory mention:
Your library may offer more than books alone, depending on how well supported they are. Borrow music, movies, sometimes even video games. For music and movies they may also offer these to borrow digitally as well via online services they coordinate with.

Porn

LibreOffice

Free Office Suite which is excellent for personal use. If you are on mobile Collabora Office if you want an Android/iOS version

Making sure to keep it legal, right?

Let's stick with Project Gutenberg - Public domain ebooks and other media, spanning centuries. They're incredibly important for keeping our literary past alive.

I might have more later.

I’m surprised no one has mentioned it yet:

Jellyfin

With just a cheap computer you can have your own Netflix and Spotify.

Closing your eyes, slowly taking a deep breath, and calmly, breathing in, and breathing out, while focusing on the sensations in your body, and how much more relaxed you're feeling right now

i.e. meditation

The cats and dogs out in the street are free. You can just bring a friend home. /hj

I love how chill and helpful everyone is here.

VLC Media Player

https://www.videolan.org/

AntennaPod for podcasts

It's great, customizable, I sent a suggestion to the volunteer development team, and they made it happen.

https://fmhy.net/

freemediaheckyeah

The largest collection of free stuff on the internet!

https://rentry.co/megathread

Pretty useful.. when one site fails the other usually work.

Pi hole

https://pi-hole.net/

In most eu countries the law requires businesses that give out food to also allow you to order free tap water. If youre in a city and dont want to spend money on a bottle of water, walk into mcdonalds and ask for free tap water. A lot of european countries also have strict laws about tap water so for example in france unless otherwise indicated with a warning, tap water is always potable.

Hugs

A little late but OpenTaxSolver - free desktop tax software that gives you a printout of tax forms that you can mail in. And it includes a few states too. Way easier than the annoying corporate sites that constantly log you out and charge a fee for every little thing.

Edit: To my non-American friends, you don't need to worry about this

https://calibre-ebook.com/

Own your own ebooks. Make sure all devices work with whatever format you need.

Your local city college may or may not offer free classes (in San Francisco, you just need to show proof that you live in the city with some legal status).

Some public transportation is free for certain groups (youth and folks experiencing homelessness can get free passes here).

"First X of the month" at the zoo/a museum/whatever

lots of venues have free events.

A jog, bike ride, hike

lots of great stuff outside!

Learn a little docker and start self hosting stuff! Pihole is a great one to start with, but there are lots of other awesome projects out there:

https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted