{
"title": "These 3 Free Apps Aim to Replace Your Windows Essentials — Only 2 Succeed",
"content": "A hands-on evaluation of three rising open-source applications on Windows has delivered a split verdict: MarkText and RustDesk are ready to replace paid tools for writing and remote access, while Ghostty—a much-hyped terminal emulator—still trails far behind. The tests, conducted during the weekend of July 10–12, put each app through typical daily workflows, measuring stability, features, and ease of use against established proprietary alternatives. For Windows users tired of subscription fees or data-collection practices, the results offer a clear roadmap of what to adopt and what to skip.

The Test Results Are In

Over a three-day period, a trio of open-source apps were installed on clean Windows 11 machines and stress-tested alongside their commercial equivalents. MarkText squared off against Typora, a polished Markdown editor whose recent pricing shift disappointed many; RustDesk aimed to dethrone TeamViewer and AnyDesk in remote desktop scenarios; and Ghostty was evaluated against Windows Terminal (the built-in default) and the popular third-party terminal Alacritty. Testers assessed:

  • Installation: Could the app be downloaded and launched without hidden dependencies?
  • Feature completeness: Did it cover the core functionality needed for daily use?
  • Performance: Was there noticeable lag, high memory usage, or crashes?
  • Windows integration: Did it respect system themes, scaling, and keyboard shortcuts?
The findings were stark. MarkText handled everything from quick notes to full-length documentation with grace, matching Typora’s live preview but adding a few unique touches like out-of-the-box Dark Mode themes. RustDesk connected machines in seconds, delivered smooth 60fps remote sessions on a local network, and—crucially—allowed users to bypass any cloud intermediary by setting up a private server. Ghostty, despite its impressive GPU-driven engine and elegant interface mockups, repeatedly crashed when handling multiple tabs, and its configuration options were buried in a JSON file that lacked documentation for Windows-specific tweaks.

MarkText: A Word Processor for the Markdown Age

If you’re a writer, developer, or student who juggles plain-text formatting, MarkText deserves a spot on your Windows taskbar. Unlike bloated office suites, it stays laser-focused on Markdown, supporting the CommonMark spec, GitHub Flavored Markdown, and pandoc extensions for citations and cross-references. The editor offers three views: a raw source mode, a real-time rendered preview, and a side-by-side split. A focus mode dims everything but the current paragraph, ideal for distraction-free drafting.

Installation is a breeze—just download the 70 MB portable ZIP or use the Chocolatey package manager (choco install marktext). It starts up in under two seconds and idles at around 80 MB of RAM, even with a 5,000-word document loaded. Export options include PDF (via Chromium), HTML, and Word. Image handling is intuitive: paste a screenshot from your clipboard, and MarkText stores it as a relative-linked file, keeping documents portable.

But the app isn’t perfect. The original project stalled in early 2023, and while a community fork (MarkText-Next) has revived development, the 0.17.1 release remains the stable benchmark. That means some modern niceties—like a built-in grammar checker or real-time collaboration—are absent. If you need those, consider Obsidian or Notion. For solitary, no-nonsense writing, however, MarkText is a free gem that outperforms many paid rivals.

RustDesk: Remote Desktop Without Strings Attached

Remote access software is a necessary evil for millions of Windows users, from IT support staff troubleshooting family PCs to freelancers hopping into their workstations from a café. The dominant players—TeamViewer, AnyDesk, LogMeIn—all impose limits on free usage or push subscription plans. RustDesk flips the script entirely: it’s open source, you can self-host the entire infrastructure, and the client is free forever.

Setup is trivial. Point a browser to rustdesk.com, download the 4 MB installer, and run it. The client generates a nine-digit ID and a password; share those with the remote machine you want to control. Within seconds, you’re connected. On a local network, data travels directly between peers (encrypted with NaCl), so latency stays below 10ms. Over the internet, a relay server mediates the connection. RustDesk operates public relay servers for convenience, but the real power comes from self-hosting your own. Deploy the RustDesk server on a cheap Linux VPS or an old PC in your office, configure a domain name, and you’ve got an enterprise-grade remote desktop solution that costs nothing beyond electricity.

IT administrators will appreciate RustDesk’s silent installation options (rustdesk.exe --silent-install) and the ability to pre-populate a custom server address in the config file. The service can run in the background without a tray icon, making it perfect for managed deployments. One caveat: while the Windows client is polished, the mobile apps (iOS, Android) are still catching up—touch controls can feel clunky, and Wake-on-LAN isn’t yet a one-click affair. For desk-to-desk remote work, though, RustDesk is a no-brainer.

Ghostty: The Terminal That’s Not Yet for Windows

Terminal emulators don’t usually get the hype that greeted Ghostty when Mitchell Hashimoto, co-founder of HashiCorp, announced it. The promise is irresistible: a terminal that feels native on every OS, uses your GPU to render text and graphics at blistering speeds, and handles everything from simple shells to complex TUI applications smoothly. If it works, it could replace Windows Terminal for power users.

The reality on Windows, however, is far from that vision. The current beta (builds are distributed through Discord) installs a binary that often fails to recognize system fonts, doesn’t replicate Windows Terminal’s profiles flexibility, and crashes when you try to split a pane vertically. Enabling GPU acceleration—the whole point—can lead to rendering artifacts on some Intel integrated graphics, a problem the team acknowledges. Configuration is done via a single config.ghostty file, but many options documented for macOS simply don’t port over.

To be fair, Hashimoto has been transparent that Windows support is trailing. The terminal is written in Zig, and cross-compilation to Windows has unearthed subtle bugs. The roadmap targets a stable 1.0 release that works identically on all platforms, but that might be a year or more away. For now, Windows users who want a GPU-accelerated terminal should look at Alacritty (stable) or Wezterm (highly configurable), both of which run natively and have large communities.

Your Move: How to Adopt These Tools Today

Switch your Markdown editor

  1. Download MarkText from github.com/marktext/marktext/releases. Use the portable edition to avoid registry changes.
  2. Open the app, go to Settings → Editor, and enable “Auto Save” and “Spell Check” (download a Hunspell dictionary from the wiki if needed).
  3. Import existing notes by dragging .md files into the MarkText window. Set it as the default app for Markdown files via Windows settings.
Set up RustDesk for remote access
  1. Install RustDesk on all your Windows machines from [rustdes