this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2023

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What are some FOSS programs that you think are a far better user experience than their counterparts? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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] 23 points 1 year ago (11 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?

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (3 children)

(neo)vim

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[–] Ironfacebuster 19 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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!

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

No, you don't have to pay us a dime.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (6 children)

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

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[–] kokesh 17 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (9 children)

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.

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

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

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

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

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I recently started playing with LibrePCB. Best PCB tool out there which I've used. The project is 5 years old roughly, the documentation is not complete and the library of parts does not compete, but for small projects it's really a delight. It focuses on simplicity, compatibility with versioning, fully open parts library and ease to send to manufacturing with built-in partnerships with PCB manufacturers. I highly recommend having a look: https://librepcb.org/

Edit: They very recently released version 1.0 of LibrePCB, with many exciting changes such as the 3D parts viewer. Read more about it here:

https://librepcb.org/blog/2023-09-24_release_1.0.0/

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (4 children)

XBMC forked off into Plex. Plex introduced a far better UI.
XBMC became Kodi. Kodi learned from Plex.
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.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (13 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

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

Godbolt. Thank whatever cosmic great fortune sent goldbolt.

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

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.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Surprised people are still using it. What protocols do you use?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (5 children)

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?)