Some FOSS programs, due to being mantained by hobbyists vs a massive megacorporation with millions in funding, don’t have as many features and aren’t as polished as their proprietary counterparts. However, there are some FOSS programs that simply have more functionality and QoL features compared to proprietary offerings.

What are some FOSS programs that are objectively better than their non-FOSS alternatives? Maybe we can discover useful new programs together :D

I’ll start, I think Joplin is a great note-taking app that works offline + can sync between desktop and mobile really well. Also, working with Markdown is really nice compared with rich text editors that only work with the specific program that supports it. Joplin even has a bunch of plugins to extend functionality!

Notion, Evernote, Google Keep, etc. either don’t have desktop apps, doesn’t work offline, does not support Markdown, or a combination of those three.

What are some other really nice FOSS programs?

edit: woah that’s a whole load of cool FOSS software I have to try out! So far my experiences have been great (ShareX in particular is AWESOME as a screenshot tool, it’s what snip and sketch wishes it could be and mostly replaces OBS for my use case and a whole lot more)

  • kurcatovium@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    Just from top of my head and from what I have to use at work:

    • Dolphin vs. Explorer - Dolphin is sooo much better and useful it’s not evwn funny
    • Notepad++ vs. Notepad - day and night, even though Notepad got an overhaul in W11 it’s still piece of shit compared to Notepad++
    • literally any foss player vs. what MS offers - be it VLC, SMPlayer, MPV, anything is better than windows built in crap
    • ImageGlass, Nomacs, Gwenview, etc. vs. MS Photos - same as above, windows picture viewer is now worse than ever while open source alternatives get better and better
    • and plenty others, like Linux vs. Windows, lol
    • WolfLink@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      2 months ago
      • literally any foss player vs. what MS offers - be it VLC, SMPlayer, MPV, anything is better than windows built in crap

      FFMPEG is an open source command line tool and software library for audio and video encoding. You’ll find it mentioned in the credits of just about any video playing software ever, but you can also just go use it for free.

      • gigachad@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        2 months ago

        I can play 90% of my games without efforts. 5% are to old, the other 5% are EA Games, need uplay or whatever shitty launcher, have Anti-Cheat - stuff you usually wouldn’t want to have on your PC anyway