What are some FOSS programs that you think are a far better user experience than their counterparts?
What are some FOSS programs that you think are a far better user experience than their counterparts?
I used Plex for my home media for almost a year, then it stopped playing nice for reasons I gave up on diagnosing. While looking at alternatives, I found Jellyfin which is much more responsive, IMO, and the UI is much nicer as well.
It gets relegated to playing Fraggle Rock and Bluey on repeat for my kiddo these days, but I am absolutely in love with the software.
What are some other FOSS gems that are a better experience UX/UI-wise than their proprietary counterparts?
EDIT: Autocorrect turned something into "smaller" instead of what I meant it to be when I wrote this post, and I can't remember what I meant for it to say so it got axed instead.
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Here is my opinion on some FOSS software. PS, I'm too old to give a shit about team mentality, I just want stuff to work. Also, my motivation for liking FOSS is not so much "free", but rather "unencumbered and unrestricted shared human technology and knowledge".
- GNOME, for the hate it gets, it comes close to getting everything right. I'd give it a 95/100 score. Windows a 30/100, and MacOS a 35/100. No verdict/comment on KDE as I haven't used it. I have good reasons for disliking W10/W11 and separate ones for MacOS. As desktop environments, they are both shit for each their own reasons.
- Blender. 3D/Scultping/Drawing/Video Editing. Aside from Linux kernel, the most impressive and well managed FOSS project there is. I grew up with pirated 3dsmax, and what a dream it would be to grow up today with Blender as it is.
- Linux as a OS kernel. One can argue about the desktop market share, but people don't know better. They think the software that runs on it defines it. But, there is a reason why 100% of top 500 supercomputers in this world run on Linux. I'd also mention the Arch/AUR community. Doesn't matter if you use Arch or not, arch/aur wiki is a goldmine.
- Godot: 2D game engine. As a 3d game engine, it's not nearly as good as the non-FOSS competition.
- Firefox: If it wasn't for Firefox, I don't know what I would do. I don't trust chrome one single bit.
- Alacrity terminal: I'm sure there are plenty great FOSS terminal emulators, but the built in ones for MacOS and Windows are garbage.
- Prusa Slicer: I think this one is as good as the commercial counterparts for FDM G-code generation.
- VLC. Mixed feelings about this one, as I think it's UI is lacking, but since it plays almost everything the UX ends up being great.
- LibreOffice Writer. Perhaps debatable. But the fact that you can trust LibreOffice to respect and adhere to the OpenDocumentFormat, and equally trust Microsoft Word to deliberately not do so in subtle ways, LibreOffice Writer is ultimately the better software IMHO.
Projects I wish had an edge over commercial proprietary software:
- Gimp. It just isn't as good, even if you get used to it. Some things, of course, it can do much better (e.g the G'Mic QT filter pack). The lack of non-destructive work flows is the key part that is missing.
- FreeCAD. It's good, and you can do wonders with it, but oh so rough compared to onshape/Fusion/etc.
- Darktable. Not as good as commercial counterparts like Lightroom.
- Kdenlive. Not as good as Davinci Resolve, or the adobe counterparts.
- LMMS: Not as good as most commercial DAWs.
- Krita: This one is actually not too far away from being best in class. I still suspect photoshop and has an edge
- InkScape: A "best for some vector things but not all"-kinda thing. It's FOSS nature makes it the defacto vector editing software for certain kind of makers. But as a graphical vector editing suite, adobe's stuff is just much more solid.
Mobile stuff that I think is better than the counterpart, or at least so good that I don't care if there is a counterpart
- Tuner: https://f-droid.org/packages/de.moekadu.tuner/ It just does what it is supposed to. There are hundreds of these on the play store, with ads or paid. There is no need for it.
- Aegis Authenticator: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.beemdevelopment.aegis/ For handling 2FA keys.
- Gallery: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.simplemobiletools.gallery.pro/
- Telegram: Sort of FOSS. Aside from security concerns whereby Signal would win out, it's still the best UX. Compared to Messenger and Whats'App, not even a contest.
Vivaldi is not 100% open source
Also i would add qBittorrent to the "great" list, and LibreCAD to the "wish it was better" list
Ah, good to know. I found the source code for Vivaldi, but it probably has some proprietary bits so you cannot build it yourself? I'll remove it from the list.
qBittorrent
Are there non-FOSS qBittorrent clients? I didn't mention it since it doesn't feel like a thing. I don't count MacOS software, as there you'll find commercial apps for anything you can imagine. You can probably find a paid app to do Alt+Tab correctly.
µTorrent is the most popular non-FOSS one and its infamous for shipping woth some virus/spyware years ago. Many people who dont know better still use it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_BitTorrent_clients
FOSS (Free Open Source Software) is not only for free (non paid) programs, but also for open source programs.
Tuner: https://f-droid.org/packages/de.moekadu.tuner/ It just does what it is supposed to. There are hundreds of these on the play store, with ads or paid. There is no need for it.
My god this is wonderful!! Thank you so much! It looks like it's only inferior to an in-line tuner, but a little better than those clip on ones, and far better than all the apps that just play a note for you to tune by ear.
Edit: To be clear to everyone, the reason this app is so good is that it uses the mic to measure your instrument, giving you a visual representation of how far out you are.
Glad you like it! Developer (it's mostly one) deserves the thanks though.
Nah both of you deserve thanks, the app is no good if no one knows about it.
Im old too, my loyalty lying with FOss is that it can't get turned off or enshittified if I can fork it. Especially true with most self-hosting stuff vs cloud services. If I have no alternative to a cloud service, I do without instead.
I agree with you in the mindset. "Free as in free beer" is not the important aspect for me, so much as the "free as in free speech" bit.
Funny that all the things you listed you wished were better than the competition falls almost entirely under the purview of artistic solutions. GIMP, DarkTable, Inkscape, etc. I've always heard, and I think for the most part it holds true, that FOSS software for artists is usually a worse experience because it's primarily dominated by software designed and implemented by technically minded people for technically minded people who happen to be artistic, rather than designed by artistically minded people and implemented by technically minded people.
I know it's probably an unpopular view, but I've found it to be true a lot.
That is an interesting observation, though, it is getting quite better. Blender is top tier. Gimp, Krita and InkScape are also exceptional software. Just a little bit rough around the edges, and some niche commercial applications. Very easy to be highly productive with those tools. Same with FreeCAD. But, where as Gimp, Krita and InkScape I would say are 8/10 in feature completeness, FreeCAD is more 5/10.
I know it’s probably an unpopular view, but I’ve found it to be true a lot.
It's not. It's the same reason why Linux is everywhere that isn't specifically consumer oriented and front facing. Even most UIs that are designed to mimic Windows are made by tech nerds like us who just assume the users don't know what they want. But they do, they're used to what they know. That's about it. It doesn't help to say "the Windows UI is garbage anyway", it just needs to work and feel familiar. I'm sure Linux could actually slowly take off if there was significant effort put into making it as straight forward as Windows on the front end but nobody really cares about that.
It's not... unpopular? Or it's not true?
I find the assumption goes the opposite way. Linux, and FOSS as a whole, often assumes the user is knowledgeable and knows what they're doing. Proprietary software often assumes the user knows nothing and will never know anything if they don't hold your hand through the entire process and obfuscate and abstract all the decisions and work to a place you won't see it, and then puts obstacles in your way to getting to it.
FOSS says, "you wanna pop the hood? Here you go, and here are all the tools you'll need to do whatever you want," and walks off.
Proprietary software says, "are you sure you don't want to drop it off at the shop first? At least call a mechanic. Tools? No, no, you don't need tools... don't go find some, there's no need, we can just call a tow truck. No, no, the nails are supposed to be there. Yeah, I nailed the hood shut. And super glued it. Well, I didn't think you'd want in there... besides, you're not a mechanic, you've got no idea how an engine works..." and once you do get in, it's peeking over your shoulder the whole time reminding you that you really shouldn't be doing that, there are professionals for that sort of thing.
Gnome
true. To be fair, it but it does some things that are unnerving: mainly, their default file manager is too basic / abstruse to use (to copy the file path you have to use a hidden shortcut, seriously?)
I agree. Nautilus could be better. But to compare it with Finder in MacOS, which straight up hides the root file system ("a feature" of course), you cannot mount sftp/ssh etc, or even let's you cut and paste files, not to mention the crappy traversal of folders. The worst part of gnome (if you can call the file manager a part of gnome) is still miles better than the commercial counterpart.
Oh yeah, I agree. I like the integration macOs has with iOS (copy-paste and stuff), but yeah I like GNOME much more
Thanks, great list!
Seconded
Solid list and arguments 👍
Didn't know about the Android ones. Thanks a bunch.
I would say that while Ardour might not have the full suite if commercial plugins available to it that you get on mac, it's a huge contender for DAW. I have produced plenty of music with it and it only gets better, the work flow is great.
Ardour
That's what I wanted to mention! I just remembered 5-10 years ago, I tried getting into DAW stuff. and it just felt clunky, all of the linux ones. I definitely tried Ardour and LMMS. It didn't help that I have no musical skill, but with FL Studio, it was more obvious that I was the problem. I'll give Ardour another go some day. Thanks for reminding me.
If the last time you tried ardour was over 5 years ago then there's been a huge amount of change! The basic Interface is the same but there's loads of improvements including midi editing and time stretching, lua scripting and all kinds of other things. Ping me if you want any help using it