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

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.

xtremeownage ,

Home assistant vs Homeseer.

Home seer will cost you 300-500$.

It’s add-ons and extensions are all paid.

Home assistant is literally better in every way possible.

Zetta ,

I want to use jellyfin but the android TV app is bad and that’s the only place I use it

TWeaK ,
  1. XBMC forked off into Plex. Plex introduced a far better UI.
  2. XBMC became Kodi. Kodi learned from Plex.
  3. 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.

cujo OP ,
@cujo@sh.itjust.works avatar

I disagree, I think it’s still perfectly reasonable to criticize Plex. Specifically for that complacency. Just because they were an important step to getting where we are does not mean they are above reproach.

Besides, I wasn’t really criticizing Plex? All I said was that I prefer the UI/UX in Jellyfin, and that Jellyfin is still “Just Working” where Plex failed for reasons unknown. Plex isn’t bad, I enjoyed using it while I did. I just found something FOSS to take it’s place. 🙂

TWeaK ,

You definitely can criticise them, but yeah maybe that word is too strong for what we’re describing here. I just meant that it isn’t all that unusual that Plex have fallen behind, there’s an ebb and flow to development - but it’s very nice that the FOSS offering is in the lead.

ArdMacha ,

Jellyfin was a fork of Emby, previously Media Browser, a plug in for Windows Media Center.

christophski ,

Ahh, so that is why it is written .NET

WindowsEnjoyer ,

Depends on what is counterpart.

  • Flameshot - better than sbipping tool.
  • QBittorrent - better than uTorrent
okamiueru , (edited )

Here is my opinion on some FOSS software. PS, I’m too old to give a shit about team mentality, I just want stuff to work. Also, my motivation for liking FOSS is not so much “free”, but rather “unencumbered and unrestricted shared human technology and knowledge”.

  • GNOME, for the hate it gets, it comes close to getting everything right. I’d give it a 95/100 score. Windows a 30/100, and MacOS a 35/100. No verdict/comment on KDE as I haven’t used it. I have good reasons for disliking W10/W11 and separate ones for MacOS. As desktop environments, they are both shit for each their own reasons.
  • Blender. 3D/Scultping/Drawing/Video Editing. Aside from Linux kernel, the most impressive and well managed FOSS project there is. I grew up with pirated 3dsmax, and what a dream it would be to grow up today with Blender as it is.
  • Linux as a OS kernel. One can argue about the desktop market share, but people don’t know better. They think the software that runs on it defines it. But, there is a reason why 100% of top 500 supercomputers in this world run on Linux. I’d also mention the Arch/AUR community. Doesn’t matter if you use Arch or not, arch/aur wiki is a goldmine.
  • Godot: 2D game engine. As a 3d game engine, it’s not nearly as good as the non-FOSS competition.
  • Firefox: If it wasn’t for Firefox, I don’t know what I would do. I don’t trust chrome one single bit.
  • Alacrity terminal: I’m sure there are plenty great FOSS terminal emulators, but the built in ones for MacOS and Windows are garbage.
  • Prusa Slicer: I think this one is as good as the commercial counterparts for FDM G-code generation.
  • VLC. Mixed feelings about this one, as I think it’s UI is lacking, but since it plays almost everything the UX ends up being great.
  • LibreOffice Writer. Perhaps debatable. But the fact that you can trust LibreOffice to respect and adhere to the OpenDocumentFormat, and equally trust Microsoft Word to deliberately not do so in subtle ways, LibreOffice Writer is ultimately the better software IMHO.

Projects I wish had an edge over commercial proprietary software:

  • Gimp. It just isn’t as good, even if you get used to it. Some things, of course, it can do much better (e.g the G’Mic QT filter pack). The lack of non-destructive work flows is the key part that is missing.
  • FreeCAD. It’s good, and you can do wonders with it, but oh so rough compared to onshape/Fusion/etc.
  • Darktable. Not as good as commercial counterparts like Lightroom.
  • Kdenlive. Not as good as Davinci Resolve, or the adobe counterparts.
  • LMMS: Not as good as most commercial DAWs.
  • Krita: This one is actually not too far away from being best in class. I still suspect photoshop and has an edge
  • InkScape: A “best for some vector things but not all”-kinda thing. It’s FOSS nature makes it the defacto vector editing software for certain kind of makers. But as a graphical vector editing suite, adobe’s stuff is just much more solid.

Mobile stuff that I think is better than the counterpart, or at least so good that I don’t care if there is a counterpart

nitefox ,
@nitefox@sh.itjust.works avatar

Gnome

true. To be fair, it but it does some things that are unnerving: mainly, their default file manager is too basic / abstruse to use (to copy the file path you have to use a hidden shortcut, seriously?)

okamiueru ,

I agree. Nautilus could be better. But to compare it with MacOS, which straight up hides the root file system, you cannot mount sftp/ssh etc, or even let’s you cut and paste files, not to mention the crappy traversal of folders. The worst part of gnome (if you can call the file manager a part of gnome) is still miles better than the commercial counterpart.

moormaan ,

Thanks, great list!

ZosoRocks3 ,

Seconded

ciko22i3 ,
@ciko22i3@sopuli.xyz avatar

Vivaldi is not 100% open source

Also i would add qBittorrent to the “great” list, and LibreCAD to the “wish it was better” list

okamiueru ,

Ah, good to know. I found the source code for Vivaldi, but it probably has some proprietary bits so you cannot build it yourself? I’ll remove it from the list.

okamiueru ,

qBittorrent

Are there non-FOSS qBittorrent clients? I didn’t mention it since it doesn’t feel like a thing. I don’t count MacOS software, as there you’ll find commercial apps for anything you can imagine. You can probably find a paid app to do Alt+Tab correctly.

ciko22i3 ,
@ciko22i3@sopuli.xyz avatar

µTorrent is the most popular non-FOSS one and its infamous for shipping woth some virus/spyware years ago. Many people who dont know better still use it.

…wikipedia.org/…/Comparison_of_BitTorrent_clients

FOSS (Free Open Source Software) is not only for free (non paid) programs, but also for open source programs.

just_another_person ,

Solid list and arguments 👍

Didn’t know about the Android ones. Thanks a bunch.

TWeaK , (edited )

Tuner: f-droid.org/packages/de.moekadu.tuner/ It just does what it is supposed to. There are hundreds of these on the play store, with ads or paid. There is no need for it.

My god this is wonderful!! Thank you so much! It looks like it’s only inferior to an in-line tuner, but a little better than those clip on ones, and far better than all the apps that just play a note for you to tune by ear.

Edit: To be clear to everyone, the reason this app is so good is that it uses the mic to measure your instrument, giving you a visual representation of how far out you are.

okamiueru ,

Glad you like it! Developer (it’s mostly one) deserves the thanks though.

TWeaK ,

Nah both of you deserve thanks, the app is no good if no one knows about it.

ikidd ,
@ikidd@lemmy.world avatar

Im old too, my loyalty lying with FOss is that it can’t get turned off or enshittified if I can fork it. Especially true with most self-hosting stuff vs cloud services. If I have no alternative to a cloud service, I do without instead.

cujo OP ,
@cujo@sh.itjust.works avatar

I agree with you in the mindset. “Free as in free beer” is not the important aspect for me, so much as the “free as in free speech” bit.

Funny that all the things you listed you wished were better than the competition falls almost entirely under the purview of artistic solutions. GIMP, DarkTable, Inkscape, etc. I’ve always heard, and I think for the most part it holds true, that FOSS software for artists is usually a worse experience because it’s primarily dominated by software designed and implemented by technically minded people for technically minded people who happen to be artistic, rather than designed by artistically minded people and implemented by technically minded people.

I know it’s probably an unpopular view, but I’ve found it to be true a lot.

okamiueru ,

That is an interesting observation, though, it is getting quite better. Blender is top tier. Gimp, Krita and InkScape are also exceptional software. Just a little bit rough around the edges, and some niche commercial applications. Very easy to be highly productive with those tools. Same with FreeCAD. But, where as Gimp, Krita and InkScape I would say are 8/10 in feature completeness, FreeCAD is more 5/10.

Stahlreck ,

I know it’s probably an unpopular view, but I’ve found it to be true a lot.

It’s not. It’s the same reason why Linux is everywhere that isn’t specifically consumer oriented and front facing. Even most UIs that are designed to mimic Windows are made by tech nerds like us who just assume the users don’t know what they want. But they do, they’re used to what they know. That’s about it. It doesn’t help to say “the Windows UI is garbage anyway”, it just needs to work and feel familiar. I’m sure Linux could actually slowly take off if there was significant effort put into making it as straight forward as Windows on the front end but nobody really cares about that.

cujo OP ,
@cujo@sh.itjust.works avatar

It’s not… unpopular? Or it’s not true?

I find the assumption goes the opposite way. Linux, and FOSS as a whole, often assumes the user is knowledgeable and knows what they’re doing. Proprietary software often assumes the user knows nothing and will never know anything if they don’t hold your hand through the entire process and obfuscate and abstract all the decisions and work to a place you won’t see it, and then puts obstacles in your way to getting to it.

FOSS says, “you wanna pop the hood? Here you go, and here are all the tools you’ll need to do whatever you want,” and walks off.

Proprietary software says, “are you sure you don’t want to drop it off at the shop first? At least call a mechanic. Tools? No, no, you don’t need tools… don’t go find some, there’s no need, we can just call a tow truck. No, no, the nails are supposed to be there. Yeah, I nailed the hood shut. And super glued it. Well, I didn’t think you’d want in there… besides, you’re not a mechanic, you’ve got no idea how an engine works…” and once you do get in, it’s peeking over your shoulder the whole time reminding you that you really shouldn’t be doing that, there are professionals for that sort of thing.

christophski ,

I would say that while Ardour might not have the full suite if commercial plugins available to it that you get on mac, it’s a huge contender for DAW. I have produced plenty of music with it and it only gets better, the work flow is great.

okamiueru ,

Ardour

That’s what I wanted to mention! I just remembered 5-10 years ago, I tried getting into DAW stuff. and it just felt clunky, all of the linux ones. I definitely tried Ardour and LMMS. It didn’t help that I have no musical skill, but with FL Studio, it was more obvious that I was the problem. I’ll give Ardour another go some day. Thanks for reminding me.

christophski ,

If the last time you tried ardour was over 5 years ago then there’s been a huge amount of change! The basic Interface is the same but there’s loads of improvements including midi editing and time stretching, lua scripting and all kinds of other things. Ping me if you want any help using it

FordPrefect ,
@FordPrefect@startrek.website avatar

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?)

Viking_Hippie ,

I’ve no firsthand knowledge about it, but I’ve been hearing a lot of good stuff about Godot ever since Unity shit the bed

FordPrefect , (edited )
@FordPrefect@startrek.website avatar

Godot is not bad for 2D & 2.5D, & it’s a lot better at true 3D than it used to be, but as far as speedy usability, I’d compare it to UnrealEd 2.1 in many ways.

I really think the main reason anyone uses Godot, is the licensing & cross-platform support.

If Unreal 5.1 would run at all on any of my machines, I couldn’t even really begin to make any kind of objective comparison between it & Godot; it’s like the difference between having a bunch of clever hand-tools, versus having a bunch of really well-made power-tools.

Try making a mountainous landscape, sprinkle a handful of different trees, then carve out a tunnel that loops under itself with a ledge overhead. Anyone proficient with both the Godot & Unreal toolsets, seems to get good (& stable) results in moments using Unreal compared to minutes or hours, using Godot. Unreal’s interface & free assets have set such a high standard for so long, that I find Blender is the only thing I could compare it to, but Unreal’s workflows make Blender look like Maya.

Lifter ,

Gimp is a shame, they really had something to begin with. I use Krita now which is way more like you would expect a FOSS image editor to be. Much more similar to Photoshop if you came from there.

At work, we use gimp headless though. The scripting capabilities are great!

FordPrefect ,
@FordPrefect@startrek.website avatar

I feel like you replied to someone else’s comment?
Gimp feels just like Photoshop before Creative Suite editions…
Everything that’s not MS Paint, feels like a huge upgrade to me. On Windows, I open Paint.NET as often as any other image editor, just because I don’t need more than that for most copy\paste\crop\color tasks.

I haven’t done any illustration or background\logo art in about 20 years. I’m not even sure what features are considered most defining, for a good image editor these days?

Lifter , (edited )

Yes that was the wrong comment. Hmm. Someone said they don’t use some of the FOSS tools because they are so bad.

I think the main complaint with Gimp is that it is way more complex than the simpler editors, without actually being excellent for experienced users, like Photoshop is. Photoshop is also simpler to use for beginners to Gimp really missed both targets.

Krita is simpler than Photoshop and Gimp but much more powerful than n base level like Paint.

I’d say layers and masks (and operations that go with that) are the main step up from entry level.

Edit: fix typo

257m , (edited )

Feeder, a RSS reader for Android. It has great UI, is fast at finding and parsing .xml from a link and has a comfortable reading experience. It has basicslly replaced social media for me besides the fediverse. The only thing I wish it had was more customizability. Being able to install Nord theme on it would be great.

FordPrefect ,
@FordPrefect@startrek.website avatar

Can you suggest any RSSifiers, for sites/services lacking an RSS API?

257m ,

I personally don’t use a RSSifier as all the sites I want to subscribe to tend to have a rss.xml or a atom.xml. There is rss.app which has rss feed generator but I am pretty sure it is not FOSS. Not to mention it uses AI and I don’t like the idea of handing over all the websites I read to a third party company. As for FOSS you would be hard pressed to find one as it is an expensive thing to run. Best thing to do is send a message to the creator of the website you would like a RSS feed. It is not a hard thing to set up and they will probably do it at your request.

state_electrician ,

Does it load articles into a unified view or do I have to deal with each site in a browser view? This second feature is what I am after and I have not been able to find it in an OSS app. Inoreader does it and they have a free tier, so that’s what I’m using at the moment.

257m , (edited )

It downloads the html file as markdown I believe (Or whatever format it uses to store it) and displays it to you in it’s own reader. From the article you can a button to redirect you to the actual site.

Having offline access to the articles is the main reason I use RSS over social media or simply visiting the websites.

makeasnek Mod , (edited )
@makeasnek@lemmy.ml avatar

Bitcoin is FOSS. You ever tried to use western union or SWIFT to send money internationally? Slow, painful, highway robbery of a special variety. Bitcoin does it in seconds to minutes perfectly every time for next to nothing and I don’t even have to put pants on to go to the bank.

spookedbyroaches ,

Speculators have taken over crypto so the volatility is unacceptable. The only way you would make it viable is by sending the money amd coverting to a fiat currency, otherwise no one is gonna take bitcoin from you.

makeasnek Mod ,
@makeasnek@lemmy.ml avatar

The only way you would make it viable is by sending the money amd coverting to a fiat currency, otherwise no one is gonna take bitcoin from you.

Ok, that’s always been allowed.

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/e9d30cad-6b87-4185-8746-79c85fa10d13.png

Kindness ,

Godbolt. Thank whatever cosmic great fortune sent goldbolt.

shmooomaru ,

I can’t wait until 10.9 comes out next year. Intro skipper is the killer missing feature.

isolatedscotch ,

github.com/ConfusedPolarBear/intro-skipper

anthonylavado ,
@anthonylavado@lemmy.ca avatar

Thanks for the praise! We’re not on Lemmy too much, but someone in the Core Team caught site of this and shared it with me. If you’re wondering who I am: github

Lem453 ,

Please post on lemmy! I really liked seeing the devs give updates on Reddit.

An open source platform feels completely natural for a project like jellyfin!

anthonylavado , (edited )
@anthonylavado@lemmy.ca avatar

I mean we have !jellyfin

briongloid ,
@briongloid@aussie.zone avatar

It’s much easier to discuss Jellyfin here for me than on the forum.

TopRamenBinLaden ,

Thanks so much for your hard work making amazing software.

mfat , (edited )

I use Shotcut instead of Premiere Pro for work. It’s much lighter and simpler.

stewie3128 ,

Can it export EDLs or FCP-compatible XMLs for your audio team?

Ironfacebuster ,

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!

anthonylavado ,
@anthonylavado@lemmy.ca avatar

No, you don’t have to pay us a dime.

Aradina ,

I used Plex for years on my phone without paying. The Plex pass stuff is hardware transcoding, credits/intro skipping, and downloading through the plex app.

danafest ,

All of which jellyfin also does, just for free

socsa ,

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

FordPrefect ,
@FordPrefect@startrek.website avatar

Literally squeezing the last months out of a Win7 laptop before services abandon it this January, & then it’ll get Linux on its cramped little SSD

init ,
@init@lemmy.ml avatar

Any idea what distro you’re leaning toward?

FordPrefect ,
@FordPrefect@startrek.website avatar

No. I’m open to suggestions.

If I had to install right now, it would be Debian, just out of familiarity.

Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Linux Mint, even Kali are fundamentally changed from when I last tried them.

Linux window managers change more often than I need to reinstall; I get really tired of picking a distro based largely on its choice of window manager, just to end up with Gnome installed anyway after a few packages fetch their dependencies.

The other nice thing about running vanilla Debian (or Ubuntu) is that at least some of the documentation for some apps, will be applicable!?

init , (edited )
@init@lemmy.ml avatar

It sounds like you’re more familiar with Linux than the average person, so I’ll forgo advising Ubuntu or Mint. I personally prefer Pop!_OS, but that’s also because I was a MacOS user for a while and like the feel of that.

I am also more comfy on distros that use the apt package manager, but learning a new one is pretty minor.

As you said you like Win7, which feels fairly straight forward, there are a couple that strike me as something you might like. They are less flashy, lower on resource requirements, and generally stay out of the way.

  1. Xubuntu - it’s based off Ubuntu, and is downstream from Debian, so there is quite a bit of support in forums that is applicable. It’s pretty lightweight, and gets the job done. Everything generally seems to “just work”. The bad: resizing windows with the mouse cursor is sensitive and difficult.
  2. MX Linux, or a distro with a KDE environment (there are several (Ubuntu, neon, or pop_OS(?)). KDE feels a lot like “windows”, but also incorporates some sensible enhancements. The enhancements aren’t flashy (not like Mint)… they just make sense and feel right. The Bad: you need to go into settings and change single-clicking a file/program from opening the item to selecting it. One thing to note is that MXLinux does add a few things to the right click contextual menu, which might also drive you nuts–it does me. MX is good, but didn’t feel right for me. The other KDE options don’t do this IIRC.
  3. EndeavorOS - A pretty lightweight option that also feels very traditional with few frills like Win7. I don’t have as much experience with this distro as I would like. It uses Pakman and AUR, which I am least familiar with, and is also a rolling distro from what I understand, which might eliminate this option if you’re looking for stability. Although, I’ve read many comments from people who have had zero issues for years with it. But, there are things you have to be proactive about like snapshotting before updating that can make it a hassle.

Distrowatch.com is a great tool to check the pros and cons out if you haven’t seen it already.

EDIT: I don’t know why I didn’t think of this earlier, but you can also simply install KDE on Debian as well. This might be a really good option since you’re already familiar with it.

FordPrefect ,
@FordPrefect@startrek.website avatar

Haven’t looked at MX Linux before, thanks for the info!

Like I said, I really can’t care much about window managers at this point. Mostly, I’m tired of having multiple window managers installed after just a few app installs. If I start out with Gnome\Plasma, I’ll surely end up wanting some apps that have only been made for KDE, & vice versa. Never once have I seen a Linux machine that had all the apps I’d want, using just one window manager.

I suppose most apps could be compiled from source to run on one or the other, but alternative compiles have invariably been a hassle to me…

Since I end up needing at least two window managers installed anyway & they keep changing generations about 10x as often as I change machines, it’s pointless for me to have a preference. The best window manager is whichever one each developer of each app happened to use?!?

tentaclius ,

I play a lot lately with SuperCollider (sound design + algorithmic composition software) and I love it. I don’t even think there is a commercial alternative.

banneryear1868 ,

I have a Norns and love the lines community as well. I know there’s Pure Data which the Organelle uses as well. Max4Live could be a commercial alternative.

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