Bitwig. I'm moving to libre tools like Pd and Ardour, so I didn't renew my license. But it works just like it does on Mac.

Except that it supports touch screens on Wayland, and you can't do that on a Mac.

The one that surprised me the most was Steam, honestly.

Surprised no one has mentioned OBS. I don't use it for streaming, but afaik it's one of the more popular options for that. So it's really cool that not only is it available for linux, but it's open source and works great. I'm sure every linux user has had audio, general hardware, or GPU acceleration issues at some point, but OBS is seamless in my experience. Pretty cool to see a piece of software live at the crossroads of all that and get it right.

Microsoft Defender.

I convinced my work to let me use linux on their laptop. They sent me instructions for setup. One of them was to install Microsoft Defender, had a link to the Ubuntu package and everything. Blew my mind.

Mixx is a cool free dj software, didn't expect davinci resolve to have an official version, stremio also I didn't think would have an app for whatever reason. I like inkscape for vector art, didn't realize it was a thing til I swapped to linux. I use software and apps more in general because it's stuff I've installed and its not hidden by bloat, even if there is more windows stuff out there, its way easier to discover actual useful software using linux through linux appstores compared to windows.

about 10 years ago, i noticed steam was available for linux. for the longest time i had pretty much written off gaming on linux (apart from like tuxcart, nethack, emulators...). i hadn't considered actually being able to play "real" games.

that was before proton, so there really wasn't a ton of stuff i could play, but i found some good stuff like hotline miami, papers please, super win the game.

obviously now we have proton and linux can be argued as a superior gaming platform in many cases.

I was really surprised by some libre games with really good graphics for free software, like Xonotic or Unvainquished. And also very cool projects like Speed-Dreams, that is not as beautiful but is really promising

Otherwise, very cool stuff like Kdenlive, Ardour, LMMS, Puredata, ... This is a long list! 😅

KDEConnect, probably the best (only?) to do what it does in such a magnificent way

Bitwig and Reaper. Two of the best music DAWs on the market and they each have a Linux native version.

EDIT: I forgot to include Renoise, the music tracker DAW.

Zoom. No dark mode though.

Microsoft Edge was a recent surprise. It's surprising both that Microsoft would create it and that any Linux users would run it. Since its Chromium based, there should be no need for developers to test Edge separately.

LocalSend.

No more USBs ever (outside of install media). So so simple, fast, and works on all devices and FOSS.

It is really the best UX of any file sharing app I have experienced (outside of airdrop I guess, but obvious problems there)

Okular is also a favorite of mine.

For me it was blender. I absolutely loved using blender as a teen for making silly games and animations (I wasn't good at that). Now as an adult I re-discovered it and I use it for making DnD minifigs

Kdenlive. I used Adobe Premiere professionally and Kdenlive completely replaced it for me.

Wine/Proton, made my switch to Linux way easier

Probably REAPER

What surprised me the most, also in part due to me not really being knowledgeable about software solutions in their respective industries, was the Unreal Engine (the editor that is) and Houdini being available on Linux. Tbf, at least in the vfx department it is apparently more common as most of the high profile software in that industry does have a native Linux version available.

What I appreciated the most though was software like Reaper and Renoise providing a (very good even) Linux-native version when I looked for a new DAW to learn, seeing most software in the audio industry not being very Linux-friendly.

Surprised? IE/Edge. Like, why?