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

Bookmarked, thank you for your work here.

I have Greenshot on my Windows work machine, or should not be listed as Linux only.

There are a few others that I definitely will be looking into, so thanks again. Unfortunately my work is going to change to a Mac so I may have to find an entirely new list soon.

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

Yes I realised I made that mistake last year. I am in the process of giving the guide that .1 version update. Also, a lot of the software here is available on MacOS, so you will not have to hunt for too many alternatives.

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