Linux

I replace ARCH with Windows 11 bloat edition. I use windows 11 BTW

I don't replace anything. I just install what I need from the beginning.

And yes, I run Arch btw. :D

Firefox with (used to) Vivaldi, but now Zen Oh. That's it. Everything else for me is default

• Firefox -> Edge
• Libreoffice -> Gsuite PWAs
• kernel -> Azure Linux kernel (added trust of Microsoft)
• nano -> vim
• vi -> Emacs
• GNOME -> Deepin
• Bash -> Powershell >=7.0

Fish for shell everywhere

cat > bat

ls > exa

(h)top > btop

whatever terminal > alacritty

whatever browser > librewolf + brave

cli editor > micro

app launcher > albert

vlc > mpv

I choose what I want when I install. I use Arch btw

Arch, so pretty much nothing.

Except maybe ZSH (but it's 'added', I guess; not 'replaced').

• Clementine - music player
• yakuake - terminal
• fish - command line
• Geany - text editor
• eza - replacement for ls
• zoxide - replacement for cd
• bat - replacement for cat
• Librewolf - replacement for Firefox
• Brave - replacement for Chromium

bash -> fish

As a former Windows SUPERUSER, I always change the desktop wallpaper, just to show off. 😋

But jokes aside and apart from things already mentioned, I always install the Speedcrunch calculator, and xbindkeys so I can copy all my keyboard shortcuts.

I still haven't found a web service that really needs a chrome browser or that you cant' just trick with changing the user agent

Nothing. I picked a distro that works for me out of the box. On top of that I only installed stuff, instead of replacing stuff.

First thing I install is git, followed by emacs.

Then I download my init.el and my PC setup is complete.

VLC player with mpv

I use MPV as movie and general media player with my custom config as well as auto-crop and URI copy/paste scripts. It works better than any other media player I tried in the last 10 years. I only use VLC for DVD menus, but it sucks even at that task, because the cursor gets stuck and the menus lag even when playing from SSD folder.

I use Tauon Music Box as music player because of its design, easy playlist/library customizability and Jellyfin integration. I also pay for spotify and use spicetify with custom skins if the songs are available there.

Kröhnkite as real auto-tiling solution with KDE Plasma.

But I'm on Arch btw., so there is not much default software apart from what the KDE meta packages contain.

Apps I replace with newer versions (on Mint too):

1. LibreOffice, with the latest .deb from their website
2. Celluloid, with mpv. I cannot tell how much I appreciate mpv even though it sucks with DVD, for which I use VLC ;)
3. yt-dlp, with the latest version available from git
4. Screenshot, with Ksnip.
5. Whatever the default image viewer is, with Pix.

There are a handful on non-default apps I've used across my last 3-4 distros at least:

• mpv - the best video player, period. Minimalist UI, maximalist configuration options. I've been using it for many years across many OSes and at this point everything else feels wrong.

• Geany - My favorite GUI text editor on Linux.

• Foliate - the simplest eBook reader I've found.

• Strawberry - It's "fine". Honestly, I've never found a music player on Linux that I really liked. I keep falling back to Strawberry because it's familiar and generally works as expected.

I usually replace these:

1. Bash with Fish
2. Neofetch (if there is) with Fastfetch+Hyfetch
3. Firefox with Floorp
4. Mkinitcpio with Dracut
5. GRUB with systemd-boot

Celluloid is honestly better than VLC. Native Wayland, Pipewire, no filesystem permissions (Flatpak)

I am on Fedora Kinoite, I replaced Kwrite with Kate, all the other default KDE apps are great. Okular, Gwenview as Flatpak, and apart from that a mix of different KDE, GNOME or 3rd party apps as Flatpaks.

I made a list here, but it is a bit outdated

https://github.com/boredsquirrel/recommended-flatpak-apps

1. VLC with SMPlayer. I don't understand why they keep shipping VLC as default. It sucks.
2. Kate with KWrite.
3. Nano with Vim in *buntu variants
4. Elisa, Rhythmbox, etc. with Strawberry. Although I mostly just use Spotify nowadays.
5. Calculator with calc.

Everything else works just fine, unless the distro made an insane choice like having XTerm as the default terminal emulator.

pdf reader with okular

Gnome Files with Thunar.

It’s the perfect file manager for a user like me.

I install the minimal version and go from there.

I didn't see this one yet:

apt -> nala

Though I think it's technically just a wrapper, the colour support and formatting makes things much easier to parse (visually)

• bash -> zsh
• Gnome terminal -> Ghostty/Alacritty
• Adwaita -> My custom adwaita build with smaller sizes
• Default UI/Mono Font -> Inter/Meslo
• Default browser -> Zen Browser

• bash -> fish
• default text editor (like Kate) -> geany
• firefox -> firefox-esr
• chromium -> ungoogled-chromium
• nano -> micro
• top -> htop, btop
• default PDF reader -> Okular

Terminal -> foot Text editor -> neovim, or more recently I've been trying Helix.

Those are the biggest two. I also recommend mpv over VLC.

Konsole - kitty Firefox - librewolf Bash - fish Juk - mpv