What are some FOSS programs that you think are a far better user experience than their counterparts?

VLC absolutely wrecked Windows Media Player. Firefox was the same with IE.

Bitwarden password manager. I've used several proprietary PW managers, Bitwarden is by far the most stable, intuitive, and functional IMO.

Blender. I feel pretty confident in saying that there is simply nothing like it in the commercial world. Its feature set is unreal; its like the swiss army knife of 3D modelling programs. I can't say enough good things about Blender. It has replaced so many secondary programs in my workflow and is slowly dominating to become my entire workflow.

It used to suck to use in the late 2010s and then work was done to overhaul its space-shuttle cockpit interface, and now it actually feels concise and usable. I freaking love blender now. Big time blender fanboy right here.

My Pop!_OS system has never shown me ads for Candy Crush.

OBS is so good that I don't know why anyone would ever use X-split.

Signal. Who else is making a post quantum secure e2ee algorithm and making sure the code is open source and not duplicating the keys everywhere? Thank goodness for the kind devs on this project and for other FOSS projects everywhere!

VSCodium is better than most text editors. BTW, if you didn't know, you can still install some (turns out not all of them will work so you might still need the proprietary build from MS) extensions from Microsoft's store manually.

ShareX is the best software I have ever found for taking screenshots and/or quick gifs/videos. It's a real shame it doesn't have a GNU/Linux version, it's the only app I miss badly from my Windows days. Any other screenshot software is just nothing in comparison with it.

Joplin is my fav note-taking app. I have tried a lot of them but this one just works, has quite a big feature set, can synchronise using different mediums, from Dropbox to using Syncthing and synchronising files locally, doesn't look poorly, is cross-platform, has e2ee, doesn't cockblock you with paywalls. For me it's the perfect note-taking app.

Aegis is the best 2FA app for Android there is atm. IIRC, it got created because Google Auth had some problems with privacy so the whole idea of Aegis is to be the better option.

Lichess — a chess server with no BS and there are 0 paywalls. chess.com would force you to pay for stupid things like puzzles, with Lichess I am able to procrastinate with chess. For free.

NewPipe is the best YouTube client there is. For me, it's because of fast-forward on silence and the ability to unhook pitch and video speed. That means you don't have to either waste your time on literal nothing or struggle to understand what a person is saying anymore. NewPipe also gives you everything YouTube Premium does.

Thanks for the praise! We're not on Lemmy too much, but someone in the Core Team caught site of this and shared it with me. If you're wondering who I am: github

Blender for video editing. I haven't even touched its 3D animation features.

I’ll take LibreOffice Writer over MS Word anytime. All that ‘I know better than you,’ ‘You wanted to copy the space, too, right? Even though you stopped marking before it,’ can kiss my ass.

All the Linux file managers I've tried are nicer to use and more stable than the Windows File Explorer.

Inkscape?

Desktop: Zotero, RStudio, Thunderbird, Sumatra PDF, Notepad++, NoMacs (image viewer), Espanso (text expander), qBittorrent, Inkscape

Android: FairEmail or K9 Mail, Authenticator Pro, Feeder, F-Droid, Pocket Casts, SD Maid

Multi-platform: Home Assistant, Wireguard, Syncthing, Jellyfin, Kodi, Samba, Firefox

Honorable mentions that don't have the best UX but are still hugely appreciated for existing: Joplin, QGIS

Audiobookshelf. Way WAY better than Audible

Calibre vs... em something that's not calibre.

I'm honest not sure what I would use instead, but it would be hard to replace.

Firefox/LibreWolf

VLC >> everything else

KDE is better than Windows

Audible Audacity is more audio programme than most people need

KdenLive is more video editor than most people need

Kritta is more art programme than most people need

There are edge cases where there are professional programmes that might be better but unless you are a professional you do not need them and even semi-pros would likely be better served by those three

The thing I find hard to convey is that FLOSS software is superior to proprietary software for many reasons, most of which are non-technical: FLOSS software is superior to proprietary software if it isn't spying on you, if it's governance is collective, if it's not build to make you pay for things that should be free, if it lets you decide where your data goes, etc...

we're often missing the point when we attempt at side-by-side comparison of FLOSS and proprietary software.. It's usually one-dimentional, and playing on our opponent's field: these companies racketing their users based on rent-based exploitative business models will always have more resources than independant developpers to improve "UX/UI"... so I think this must not be the only prism through which reading these things.

From my computing guide https://lemmy.ml/post/511377 :

The following software is shared by both Linux and Windows, which will astound you, because the quality of these is the best in their respective categories. There will be a (*) marking for the better one, and (^) if it is FLOSS.

As you might have noticed some patterns and anomalies:

• Most of the winners here are FLOSS and cross platform at the same time, consistently.
• I did not mention the best for Linux file managers
• A few of these do not have ^ which means they are not FLOSS
• XNViewMP and Filelist Creator are rarities in that they are not FLOSS, yet are benevolent pieces of adware/spyware-free software available as cross-platform, and also XNView is the winner of 2 types of software, because it is the ultimate tool for anything to do with images. Nothing comes close, and never has.
• SMART HDD/SSD monitoring tool is an issue on Linux, because free tools cannot do external HDDs for some reason, even though on Windows this is possible. (https://www.smartmontools.org/wiki/SAT-with-UAS-Linux) R-Studio can, but it is extremely expensive and nothing else works from my experience.
• MS Office is the superior tool for office and document work. This is a truth we have to live with.

VLC is obviously the best media player, I can't think of one I've used that comes close ever, either in ease of use(hotkeys) or functionality.

Audacity is such a simple yet comprehensively functional audio editor.

OBS is a very simple video recording software that works so well.

Kodi (formerly XBMC) beats pretty much all streaming services in terms of UI.

Librera Reader is a PDF // ebook reader for Android. It has a very smooth user experience and useful options. I used to have 5 or so different PDF readers installed and would pick and choose according to the task at hand but now I'm down to just 1.

Hands down the clang C++ compiler, no commercial C++ compiler I've ever seen or even heard of even comes close enough that a comparison could be meaningful.

Emacs and vim are both vastly superior to all other text editors.

Which one you like better is a matter of taste.

Vim is a girlfriend with rock hard abs who wants to take you rock climbing and of whom you're secretly a little scared.

Emacs is a big bouncy happy girl who wants to take care of you in every conceivable way, then split a bucket of RAM while binging pirated movies.

Unironically, the terminal.

The whole GNU+Linux distro on your desktop computer. Or on your server.

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.

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In many regards using Blender can be a much more pleasant experience than using many of the commercial "standards" such as Maya or 3dsmax. Depends what aspect you're looking at of course, it's not perfect and it is lacking in some areas. Krita is amazing for painting, infinitely better than Photoshop.

Xournal++ for pdf annotating, note taking

LibreOffice, I'm not sure it's better than M$Office per se, but it does everything most people need it to.

Chocolatey GUI > Microsoft store

Inkscape, I'm not even sure what the proprietary version is?

I run Plex and jellyfin side by side. Plex usually gives me the most hassle free experience so I use that most of the time.

I prefer the flexibility of creating user accounts myself on jellyfin so that's nice.

But jellyfin after being up for 4~5 days balloons to 6GB of RAM consumption while Plex stays at ~200mb. Really annoying.

(neo)vim

I was setting up a Plex server, but when I noticed I had to pay to be able to play my own content on my phone I immediately switched to jellyfin. Haven't been able to test it yet, but as long as I don't need to pay them to be able to watch my own content on my own devices on my own network, I'll be happy!

Linux in general. MacOS if fine, but the app ecosystem is often annoying. And Windows is just a complete dumpster fire these days.

I switched to Jellyfin two years ago and never looked back.

I could be biased but 2009scape. While originally a Runescape clone of 2009, they've preserved the integrity of the game much better than the official versions

On Android; mpv, KeePassDX, FlorisBoard, AntennaPod, Read You, NewPipe, Jerboa, Unitto Calculator, CloudStream, Aegis, TrailSense, OpenKeychain, K-9 Mail, EDS lite, ViMusic, InnerTune, GrapheneOS Camera, Librera FD ...are my favourites.

Kicad beat the crap out of EagleCAD. So much so that autocad just folded and discontinued EagleCAD.

1. XBMC forked off into Plex. Plex introduced a far better UI.
2. XBMC became Kodi. Kodi learned from Plex.
3. Jellyfin came along and learned from both of them.

So I don't think you can really criticise Plex too much here. They were perhaps getting complacent and they've definitely been shown up, but they were an important step to where we are now.

Pandoc. I'm not even sure there is a decent alternative.

I would love to use Jellyfin but it (indexing, changing metadata...) is too slow with a few hundred movies and shows on my Synology. Plex is way faster.

The scanner app on Linux is far better than Windows: auto preview white scanning, auto pdf creation WITH multiple pages.

Hey what about Kodi?

Pidgin. Consume soo little memory in comparison to other chat applications. Is really fast, just try start and scroll history in a chat conversation. But it looks ugly.

The fact that no one in these comments, seems to have had a really decent FOSS IDE \ engine to recommend for 3D game development, makes me sad.

Like, Unreal is pretty great, but it's not FOSS (& won't run on any of my machines anyway).

Is there anything FOSS that really streamlines 3D game development?
(I want to say Vulkan but I feel like that's some sort of perennial "gotcha!" joke, at this point?)

Godbolt. Thank whatever cosmic great fortune sent goldbolt.

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I use Gimp and Krita, ShareX also with the complementary Extension, integrated with FileCoffee, old but gold VLC media player, PicView image viewer/editor (IMO best alternative to IrfanView), ProtonVPN (yes, it's OpenSource), Crow Translate, FreeTube, Portmaster, Cherry Tree editor, apart of some games (The Dark Mod, Armagetron Advanced, Scorched 3D, and some more)

I don't 100% understand LPPL, but I believe it qualifies under open source, but regardless if it's open source or not, LaTeX > Word and I will die on this hill.

Are we allowed FOSS alternatives to common FOSS apps lol? In which case, I'm saying NeoStore > F-Droid.

Also, separately, Zotero > all commercial reference manages and increasingly over PDF readers too.

Feeder, a RSS reader for Android. It has great UI, is fast at finding and parsing .xml from a link and has a comfortable reading experience. It has basicslly replaced social media for me besides the fediverse. The only thing I wish it had was more customizability. Being able to install Nord theme on it would be great.

Home assistant vs Homeseer.

Home seer will cost you 300-500$.

It's add-ons and extensions are all paid.

Home assistant is literally better in every way possible.

Let's be honest though, the Android app for jellyfin is so so buggy. My partner can't even use it because there are certain orders of starting a video, casting, closing the app, reopening to starting subtitles, recasting, just to get it working

I use Shotcut instead of Premiere Pro for work. It's much lighter and simpler.

Plex, running locally, on my server: “You should add a server!”

Plex, running locally, on my server: “Claim 10.0.0.10!”

Plex, running locally, on my server, after claiming my server: “You should add a server!”

I can't wait until 10.9 comes out next year. Intro skipper is the killer missing feature.

Pulsar is better than VS Code for JavaScript.

https://github.com/pulsar-edit/pulsar

Jellyfin would be great if only you could change subtitle colors. With HDR content, having pure white subtitles is eye-scorching.

gimp

Depends on what is counterpart.

• Flameshot - better than sbipping tool.
• QBittorrent - better than uTorrent

@cujo NewPipe

Man, I've been running Plex for about a decade without a ton of issues. I tried jellyfin, and I can't get video to play anywhere that's not the PC that's running it. What am I doing wrong?

I play a lot lately with SuperCollider (sound design + algorithmic composition software) and I love it. I don't even think there is a commercial alternative.

I want jellyfin, but the number of devices I'd have to manually setup around my house, tvs etc, is daunting and terrifying.

does anyone know if there's a free alternative in Visual Studio to PHPTools? I refuse to believe the only way to debug PHP in visual studio is a paid license extension

GNOME Document Scanner is surprisingly working smoothly out-of-the-box (with Brother printer at least)

Does JellyFin have a equivalent Music Streaming Solution? Or does anyone know an other FOSS program?

I'm really attached to Plex Amp. It is everything that Play Music promised to be with automatic radio playlists.

I have 40 GB of music that I'd listen to for hours all day.

TV Headend + Kodi

I’m a little curious what you replaced Photoshop with :)

I personally run an older build of emby, the open source software jellyfin was forked from. It's very similar, but I found emby's video transcoding (or explicit not transcoding) to be more reliable

Just found this I wonder if it works on Linux. Not quite as cheap, but it's getting there! Scratch that, it apparently only does 720p.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004266435517.html

I want to use jellyfin but the android TV app is bad and that's the only place I use it

Calibre vs... em something that's not calibre.

I'm honest not sure what I would use instead, but it would be hard to replace.

Any FOSS YouTube app

ublue kinoite. Immutable OS FTW.

DWM, Newsboat, MPV, NSXIV

Bitcoin is FOSS. You ever tried to use western union or SWIFT to send money internationally? Slow, painful, highway robbery of a special variety. Bitcoin does it in seconds to minutes perfectly every time for next to nothing and I don't even have to put pants on to go to the bank.

Jellyfin can't utilize local network storage... How is that a useful tool for a HOME MEDIA SERVER??!?

It looks as though there are methods for utilizing network storage solutions. This has not always been the case with Jellyfin but either way I was dead wrong. My bad folks.

Yeah but Jellifin kinda sucks ngl