1069
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.
LibreOffice, I'm not sure it's better than M$Office per se, but it does everything most people need it to.
Chocolatey GUI > Microsoft store
Inkscape, I'm not even sure what the proprietary version is?
Eh, I love FOSS as much as the next guy l, but I still gotta say that LibreOffice (as nice as it is) is still ages behind MS Office, and it's not even close.
The main competitor for Inkscape would be Adobe Illustrator.
Agreed. I too like LibreOffice, but it still has a ways to go. I've shown it to a couple of people and they didn't like it at all. Specifically, they mentioned the cluttered interface and unresponsiveness in some applications like Calc when dealing with massive spreadsheets. And dealing with massive spreadsheets is like half their job.
It's good that LibreOffice exists and it can be a decent replacement for someone writing a simple document every once in a while. I can not take anyone seriously who claims it is anywhere near as good as the MS stuff. Recently I created a presentation in Impress and it was hell on earth. I ran into multiple bugs and handling formatting was just horrid working with the master/template slides (or whatever they are called) was essentially impossible.
Currently working with OnlyOffice which works better by a considerable margin.
Yes, OnlyOffice has been my choice for a while now; not that I need it much anymore, thankfully
With the tabbed interface?
Are you memeing? I hate Adobe as much as the next guy but Inkscape is absolutely horrid compared to Illustrator or even Affinity.
Inkscape can do a lot, the recent 1.3 update is pretty nice. How well it can replace Illustrator basically only depends on what features you use the most, and if those features are available and/or easily replicated.
It finally has a shape builder tool, for instance. Again, it may not be up to par depending on what your personal workflow looks like, but outright calling it horrid is not appropriate imo.
I'm noticing in this thread that a lot of people consider far inferior programs the better option purely because it's FOSS and that was clearly not what OP asked. Like, none of these Adobe alternatives are actually better by any means. People keep saying VLC but it's kind of garbage compared to several others these days.
I use libre at home and MS at work, and hands down Libreoffice is terrible in comparison. It's UI is harsh and doesn't do 10% of what microsoft can do. As sad as that is to say.
Back in the early 2000s Open Office was actually better than MS for a brief period, but Libre isn't really on the same level anymore.
The proprietary version of Inkscape would be Adobe Illustrator, I guess.
Never used it though.
You can get all of microsoft 365 for free if you sign up for a developer account