Aside from Office, which I buy through work for like $10/seat, I mostly use open source software (Notepad++, Firefox, 7-Zip, VideoLAN, FileZilla, Gimp, Inkscape, Audacity, Shotcut, Blender) because:
- I don't trust companies to not force changes to my workflow or lock my content into a proprietary format.
- I don't use those tools enough to justify paying for closed source alternatives (except for Notepad++ and Firefox.)
I'm kinda wavering on my NLE (Shotcut is fine for what I need it to do, but it's pretty rough, looking in to Kdenlive and Olive) and still deciding on a digital image workflow tool (i.e. a Lightroom alternative, darktable looks to be the best, but I'd like to get more end user recommendations before committing my ~150Gb photo library.)
All that said, if I was a professional graphic designer/video editor/etc..., I'd totally use Adobe's stuff or whatever the professional environment called for.