What are some FOSS programs that are objectively better than their proprietary counterparts?

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨scheep@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨nostupidquestions@lemmy.world⁩

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?

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Comments

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SexualPolytope@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I agree with most of the programs that others have posted. I’ll just mention two that I absolutely love but no one has mentioned yet, rsync and mpv.

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- lars@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Wow wasn’t aware rsync’s FOSS
  
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- n3mo@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  God tier. I’ve used these both so much over the years.
  
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tatann@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
AntennaPod is a pretty great podcast player, far better than the one Google did (and abandonned)

Newsblur is the only RSS reader that I’ve found that can apply filters to feeds

I’ve switched from Discord to Element with some friends for daily text chat and vocal chat (video games) and it’s less cluttered than Discord, and the voice even sounds better

SpamBlocker is a better phone/SMS spam filter than the proprietary ones I’ve tried

Firefox (and forks) has been my browser for more than 20 years, I can’t go back to proprietary ones

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- aeshna_cyanea@lemm.ee ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Matrix/element is good for private group chat but quickly falls apart for any public/semi public scenario where you might need automated moderation :( discord still undefeated there
  
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- scheep@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  I use NetNewsWire (iOS), but I might try out Newsblur. Seems pretty interesting. SpamBlocker looks like a cool alternative to Whoscall. Element is great, the only downside is getting people to adopt it. Firefox (and its forks) are awesome.
  
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  - tatann@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    The SpamBlocker I was refering to is on Android (f-droid), I’m not sure about iOS
    
    github.com/aj3423/SpamBlocker
    
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  - tatann@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    I only used Discord with a bunch of friends I play with, no “official game servers” so it was pretty easy
    
    The hard task will be to have some other non-gaming friends to join, because they use Whatsapp (which me and my gaming friends refuse to touch)
    
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thisfro@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Zotero

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- scheep@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  helps you keep track of your sources, it was really helpful for my history coursework
  
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MITM0@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Would you be interested in FOSS games ??

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- scheep@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  fun! I know Luanti (previously Minetest) and it seems really cool.
  
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  - MITM0@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Ok then, are you interested in an RTS game ? Try WarZone-2100 & it even has a single-player campaign You’ll need to download the cutscenes
    
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Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Any FOSS Linux/Unix shell, bash, zsh, fish, tcsh, whatever, is a million times better than cmd or the early versions of PowerShell. Yeah, I know, PowerShell Core exists now, and it’s even open source and cross platform, but it still sucks.

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- jj4211@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  And by extension, terminal emulators. Pretty much any open source one is miles better than the closed source ones.
  
  Microsoft recognized this and has dramatically improved theirs as Microsoft terminal, an open source replacement. But it still isn’t as good as a lot of other terminals.
  
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  - dgdft@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    For anyone who missed it, the Windows Terminal team is infamous for claiming that it would require PhD level expertise to implement some basic optimizations suggested in a Github thread. Within a few hours, another developer countered that claim by submitting a functioning PR with said improvements implemented.
    
    Team lead Dustin Howett then went on to double down on the original claim that said optimizations were unfeasable, and publicly attacked the author of the original suggestion thread on Hacker News. He issued an extremely half-assed apology and is still a Micro$haft employee to this day.
    
    blog.royalsloth.eu/…/it-takes-a-phd-to-develop-th…
    
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Yingwu@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I’d say Logseq is better than any note-taking alternative that works in the same way. It’s a bit different to regular note-taking apps as it acts more as a knowledge database based on tags, than with a regular file-folder structure. Also I prefer Actual Budget to YNAB, as it’s starting to have even more features than YNAB and actually supports things like bank syncing for major parts of Europe that even YNAB doesn’t. And it’s free to host yourself or really cheap to host through PikaPods. But it’s hard to say “objectively” because in the end, a lot of it is subjective. If people are used to running one program, it’ll be hard to switch to another, even if it’s “objectively” better.

The largest issue with FOSS applications is that many contributors don’t have any UX/UI knowledge, which is a huge factor in why people choose one program over another. I’d argue GIMP is a mess compared to Photoshop, even if GIMP is able to many, many things that Photoshop is able to.

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- ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Definitely and sadly not better than Obsidian. Also it can’t sync and it stinks for that
  
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  - Yingwu@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    From my limited experience with Obsidian, I still preferred Logseq actually. And the syncing is easily done by just storing the markdown files in a cloud folder. But yeah, it’s subjective for sure.
    
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  - scheep@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    I like Obsidian too. That said, unless I’m handling a huge amount of notes at once, Joplin works much better, esp. for quick notes and to-do lists. Obsidian’s vaults are a bit annoying to switch through. I still use Obsidian for like one or two things but most of my notes are now in Joplin (which can sync as well!)
    
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  - SigmarStern@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    I have multiple different graphs/vaults/whatever synced by simply storing the markdown files in a synced folder and I never had any issues. The new version of logseq is supposed to use a database and syncing, afaik.
    
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- SigmarStern@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Logseq is the best note taking app for me. And a lot of my programmer/adhd colleagues. I cannot keep order in my notes and logseq does it for me. It’s so essential for my workflow that I have a monthly donation to the project set up.
  
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- kurikai@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Ive used gimp for over 18 years. Im so used to it i find photoshop is a mess lol
  
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- scheep@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  interesting, I’ll have to try loqseq.
  
  That might explain why some FOSS apps have terrible UI. There’s plenty that have really really good UI as well
  
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acockworkorange@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
MuseScore sheet music.

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- JiminaMann@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  I’m missing 2 things,
  
  the ability to play drag notes in the playback (minor)
  
  And the ability to have a bar be played on the 2nd or 3rd repeat (kinda major)
  
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acockworkorange@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Borg is an amazing backup utility.

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- null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  borgmatic is an abstraction layer that makes borg a little easier to work with.
  
  Things like scheduling, repo management, notifications. I like it very much.
  
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  - acockworkorange@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    I use Vorta, a GUI frontend, because I’m a filthy casual.
    
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IndustryStandard@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Heliboard

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NutinButNet@hilariouschaos.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I am blown away by KDEnLive and how quickly I’ve been able to pick it up to learn it.

It’s as simple as the classic Windows Movie Maker but also just as capable as iMovie or what little I did in FinalCutPro on a Mac.

One feature I love on this is that I was editing a video on my Windows gaming PC and have the files all on the cloud. I then loaded that same project on my Linux laptop and it gave me an error that it didn’t have the media… however…it would parse a folder FOR ME and then add that media back into the project. In minutes I had the complete video timeline just as it was on my Windows machine now on my Linux laptop.

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- scheep@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  kdenlive is very intuitive to use, I like using it for basic video editing. Not a professional though, so I can’t comment on anything about those kind of workflows.
  
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Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
vi (incl. vim etc.) and it’s only counterpart emacs are both open source.

apache and nginx are the undisputed top webservers.

samba is better than Windows server.

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- seeigel@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Why is samba better?
  
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  - Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Ultra reliable. Secure. Easy to maintain.
    
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  - bappity@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    because you don’t have to use 💸money 💸 and you can see all its code
    
    I mean it’s in the title of this thread
    
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  - helvetpuli@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    It’s more reliable than SMB or CIFS and considerably harder to attack.
    
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Tetsuo@jlai.lu ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Apache?

I think it’s still the leader and I certainly prefer it to other alternatives.

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- twistypencil@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Nginx is taking over, but yes
  
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  - CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    I switched from Apache to nginx maybe 10 or so years ago and haven’t looked back.
    
    So much easier to configure
    
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- friend_of_satan@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  This is interesting. I haven’t heard somebody use “Apache” as a reference to httpd in a long time due to the rise of nginx and because Apache.org does so much more than just httpd.
  
  But I agree. Apache httpd 0.x was one of the softwares that first showed me how much better Linux is than Windows. IIS at the time was an insecure confusing monstrosity. I wonder if it still is.
  
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Takumidesh@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Lichess -> chess.com

But it’s hard to be impartial / objective about modern stuff like that.

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- scheep@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  seems interesting, might have to check it out
  
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cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
ShareX or flameshot for taking screenshots. ShareX needs some tweaks out of the box but once it’s tweaked it is so much more convenient when you need to make super quick tweaks/edits like adding steps or highlights or something.

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- sudneo@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  I agree so much for flameshot. For work I moved to a Mac and we are not allowed to install flameshot (signing issue), and the workflow for taking screenshots (e.g., when writing documentation) is so much worse and slow with the default macOS tooling.
  
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- Fizz@lemmy.nz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Flameshot is so good.
  
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- Willem@kutsuya.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  ShareX is amazing, it just needs a big UX improvement. If you’re not technical of nature, the program is kinda too much at once. I can’t recommend it easely to my family until it has a simpler interface option.
  
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- scheep@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  woah that looks really cool, I have to try those out. 👀
  
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  - scheep@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    IT CAN CAPTURE REGIONS OF THE SCREEN? IT HAS ACTUALLY GOOD HOTKEYS??? WOAHHHHH
    
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RotatingParts@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Joplin over Evernote.

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- brax@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  I love that Joplin covers all grounds - all the way down to a terminal-based version. I’ve been thinking about switching over to it from Vimwiki
  
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- scheep@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  markdown support and recording notes offline are both, in my opinion, essential features for a note-taking app that evernote strangely don’t have
  
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reallyzen@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Gnome is the best UI there is IMO. Anything else is cluttered, or privacy-invasive, or both.

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- Hansae@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Image
  
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  - reallyzen@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    HAHAHAHA what the eff? Where does that come from?
    
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- jj4211@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Eh, I prefer KDE. It’s fairly uncluttered unless you actively mess with it and want it, whole Gnome is pretty ruthlessly “our way is the right way”.
  
  Once upon a time they only allowed virtual desktops to be in a column. Someone decided that columns weren’t for everyone so obviously make it only be in a row. Despite ages of most implementations supporting a grid layout.
  
  Window title search. This is fantastic for managing a lot of windows. I wish KDE could get better by using screen reader facilities to let you search window contents as well, but having the facility in show windows view at all is great.
  
  Their window tiling is less capable even than Microsoft windows.
  
  Any attempt to customize means extensions, and they seem to break the interfaces the extensions need constantly, and I had to face the reality that every update had me searching for a replacement extension because they broke one that want maintained anymore.
  
  But either way, the open desktop shells are better than the proprietary ones.
  
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Snoopey@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Actual Budget vs YNAB. Actual can sync data from European banks for free via an integration with goCardless, YNAB pulled this feature a couple years ago as well exponentially increasing pricing. Actual has more powerful reporting and a planned multi currency support

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- Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Oh wow, this is amazing. Thank you so much for sharing.
  
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arandomthought@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I agree with so much that has been said here. VLC, Linux as a whole (or GNU/Linux, if you are such enclined) and many more. Obsidian is sadly not open source but its free and it’s absolutely amazing!

What I haven’t found yet is a FOSS (or even just “free as in beer”) replacement for MS Project. I want to plan out a top level view of what we have to do as a team to reach some goal, assign multiple team members to one “task”, allocate a set amount of their time and see at what times we might be over or under capacity. The FOSS planing tools I’ve seen mostly work in “shifts” or let you assign one task to one person. But we’re in R&D and if I plan for 40 hours of “conceptual work” over the span of a month and assign Sarah and Steve to this with 20 hours each I don’t want to babysit their shifts. They will do the work when it suits them.

The only one I’ve seen that could do what I need is ProjectLibre but the FOSS desktop version has been abandoned a while ago and is still very buggy.

Sorry for placing this here but maybe someone knows something…

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- prinzmegahertz@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  There is logseq. I love it.
  
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  - aeshna_cyanea@lemm.ee ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    man after my own heart
    
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- Allero@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  As an alternative to Obsidian, there is Trilium. Much the same stuff, but actually open-source
  
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- rhel@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Taiga (taiga.io) could be what you’re seeking.
  
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- scheep@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Taiga is an open-source and self-hosted project management tool. Not sure if it has all the functionality you need, but it seems quite good. Never tried it though, since I don’t really do any important projects. Who knows, it could be amazing!
  
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FeelzGoodMan420@eviltoast.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Most of them

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Blaster_M@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
NAPS2. PDF scanning. Supports every platform. Dead simple for scanning and aggregsting multiple pages into a single pdf with ocr. Also can save as images.

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turnip@sh.itjust.works ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
YouTrack is good for notes, and supports Draw.io as a plugin. They have a free hosted option for personal use as well.

Then Signal obviously.

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acockworkorange@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Betterbird email client.

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loomy@lemy.lol ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
almost all of them

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sith@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
A more relevant question: What proprietary software is better than its FOSS counterpart?

Because I can’t come up with any.

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