this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2023
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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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[–] [email protected] 313 points 1 year ago (8 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Did you know that MS now charges for you to play some codecs with windows media player?

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Unless something has changed recently, that's not exactly true. They charge 99c for the distribution of it through the windows store (or whatever it's called) but you can install them the traditional way no problem

I think it's still dumb but it's a distinction worth making. I think the description even links the website where you can download it

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago

I really don't miss trying to find codec packs to install. Good riddance.

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[–] [email protected] 210 points 1 year ago (17 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Bitwarden is so good. I cant be bothered to self host it tbh, but ill gladly throw money their way for premium for having the best cloud-hosted PW manager

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[–] [email protected] 198 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (9 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 year ago (3 children)

As someone who gave up on Blender back in the 2010’s, I may need to revisit it.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (7 children)

You definitely should, it is lightyears improved

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s like the opposite of GIMP

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[–] [email protected] 146 points 1 year ago (15 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 134 points 1 year ago (8 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I adore OBS. I've been teaching my friends the basics on how to use it, as they've all been using some proprietary crap that makes their lives marginally easier in one or two areas but adds a huge headache in others.

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[–] [email protected] 85 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (16 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (1 children)

+1 for Newpipe, my favorite feature is hiding thumbnails so I don't have to see that stupid fucking "wow" wide-eyes face everyone makes with pointless arrows and circles. Now I just read the video title and my brain hurts less.

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[–] [email protected] 83 points 1 year ago (10 children)

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!

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[–] [email protected] 70 points 1 year ago (18 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 65 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 64 points 1 year ago (5 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 58 points 1 year ago (16 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Protip: KDE's Dolphin is available for Windows.

The Windows integration isn't perfect, but it's very useful nonetheless. Multiple tabs and the Ctrl+I filter alone makes it worthwhile.

On a related note: KDE's Kate text editor is also available on Windows and it works GREAT! So great that KDE eV has published it on the Windows store, making it easy to install

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 year ago (7 children)
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[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (20 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago (12 children)

Audiobookshelf. Way WAY better than Audible

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (8 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Windows just rips off every plasma feature at this point, even kde devs make fun of it

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago (31 children)
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[–] [email protected] 47 points 1 year ago (10 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 year ago (15 children)
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[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (30 children)

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.

Category Windows/Linux common Windows only Linux only
PDF reader Calibre (* ^ ) SumatraPDF Okular
Audio Player Audacious (* ^ ) foobar2000 -
Video Player SMPlayer (* ^ )/VLC (* ^ ) MPC-HC -
Image Viewer - JPEGView (* ^ )/IrfanView nomacs (* ^ )
File Manager Double Commander Explorer++ (*) Nautilus/Nemo/Dolphin/SpaceFM/Thunar
Media Information Tool MediaInfo (* ^ ) - -
Torrent Client Deluge (* ^ ) / QBitTorrent uTorrent -
Screenshot/Record Tool FlameShot ShareX (* ^ ) Greenshot (*)
Image Management XNViewMP (*) - ImageMagick
Media Library XNViewMP (*) Shotwell (*) -
Video Converter HandBrake (* ^ ) Freemake -
Download Manager Xtreme Download Manager (* ^ ) Internet Download Manager -
Specialised Downloader JDownloader (* ^ ) - -
Compress/Archive Tool PeaZip (* ^ ) 7-Zip (* ^ )/WinRAR -
Colour Picking Tool Colorpicker.fr (* ^ ) Instant Eyedropper gPick
Search Index Tool - Everything (*) FSearch (* ^ )
Light Photo Editor Pinta (* ^ ) Paint.NET (*) -
Advanced Photo Editor Krita (* ^ ) - -
Professional Photo Editor GIMP (* ^ ) Adobe Photoshop (*) -
Bulk Rename Tool Inviska Rename (* ^ ) Bulk Rename Utility -
Bootable ISO Maker balenaEtcher (* ^ )/Ventoy Rufus (*) -
FTP Client FileZilla (* ^ ) - -
E-Mail Client Thunderbird (* ^ ) - -
Office Suite LibreOffice/WPS Office MS Office 2007 (*) -
Lightweight Text Editor Gedit (* ^ )/Lite XL - -
Advanced IDE/Text Editor Geany (* ^ ) Sublime Text (*) -
RSS Reader QuiteRSS (* ^ ) - TinyTinyRSS (* ^ )/Liferea
Phone Remote Control KDE Connect (* ^ ) Pushbullet -
File Index Creation Tool Filelist Creator (*) Snap2HTML LinuxDir2HTML
Data Recovery/Disk Diagnosis R-Studio (* )/Testdisk (* ^ ) - Recuva
SMART Disk Monitoring Tool R-Studio (*) CrystalDiskInfo (* ^ ) GSmartControl
Disk Partitioning - AOMEI Partition Standard Free (*) GParted (* ^ )
DOS Emulator DOSBox-X (* ^ ) D-Fend Reloaded (*) -

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.
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[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago (10 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (11 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (10 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I never expected to see a compiler in this list, at least not in 2023.

Back in 1988 I realized how rubbish Microsoft was when I discovered Borland's Turbo Pascal and Turbo C compilers. I'd previously used the MS compilers and they were multipass, multi-minutes to finish a compile. The Borland ones were single pass and FAST.

Back then, compile times could be huge, and everyone was publishing benchmarks on compiled program performance, which mattered on the hardware of the day. I never even think about that stuff these days.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago (8 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Unironically, the terminal.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (4 children)

The GNOME desktop environment is way better than the proprietary alternatives in MacOS and Windows

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (9 children)

I come from the tribe of KDE and I do not offer peace

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (12 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Xournal++ for pdf annotating, note taking

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (7 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Eh, I love FOSS as much as the next guy l, but I still gotta say that LibreOffice (as nice as it is) is still ages behind MS Office, and it's not even close.

The main competitor for Inkscape would be Adobe Illustrator.

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