this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2025
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No Stupid Questions

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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?

edit: woah that’s a whole load of cool FOSS software I have to try out! So far my experiences have been great (ShareX in particular is AWESOME as a screenshot tool, it’s what snip and sketch wishes it could be and mostly replaces OBS for my use case and a whole lot more)

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[–] JayleneSlide@lemmy.world 18 points 1 week ago (1 children)

OpenDroneMap. It's a suite that provides photogrammetry, stitching, volumetric analysis, geographic correlation, and 3D model conversion from aerial and non-aerial photos. And that's only the features that I use myself. It defaults to CPU-only rendering, so you don't need a big bad GPU to GSD.

Even ignoring the lack of subscription cost, ODM performs at least as well as other applications I tried such as Pix4D. Professionally, I use it for year-over-year kelp bed monitoring, photosynthetic mass analysis, and home construction analysis, specifically volumetric infill needs. Personally, I use it to generate 3D models of my boat interior, which I convert to STL files for arranging infrastructure in limited spaces.

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[–] qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 17 points 1 week ago

A lot of non-graphical utilities


basically the *NIX coreutils, plus stuff like rsync, ssh, compression/archival tools (tar, gzip, bzip2, etc.), grep, and the like. Git also comes to mind.

I think part of this is that the UNIX philosophy is "developer friendly"


tell a good dev they need to make a compression utility that follows this protocol, and they will make a compression utility that follows the protocol.

[–] spacemanspiffy@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Well, Thunderbird, for one. Outlook makes me sad.

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[–] expr@programming.dev 17 points 1 week ago (1 children)

https://www.visidata.org/

Way, way better than excel for working with tabular data. Excel is child's play in comparison.

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[–] MTK@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Honestly, almost all Microsoft products are objectively worse than FOSS alternatives, they are just so big that people are unwilling to escape the Microsoft ecosystem.

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[–] tatann@lemm.ee 16 points 1 week ago (9 children)

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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[–] nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 1 week ago (2 children)

i am using Darktable to edit raw photos. i don't know if it's better than Lightroom or Capture One overall, but it is for my use case.

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[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)
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[–] Yaky@slrpnk.net 14 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Markor: one of the few Android text editors/notepads that saves text to text files (crazy idea, right?) and works rally well with Syncthing.

Conversations.im for Android is an incredibly well made XMPP/Jabber messenger, and their message polling and real-time message delivery is unmatched AFAIK.

ratbag (and the frontend, piper) is a tool for remapping buttons on mice with a sensible interface. Beats installing proprietary Logitech software.

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[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 14 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Borg is an amazing backup utility.

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[–] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 1 week ago (3 children)

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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[–] cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 14 points 1 week ago (10 children)

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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[–] Allero@lemmy.today 14 points 1 week ago

OBS, Portmaster, Trilium, FlightGear

+all the minimalist Adwaita apps on the Flathub. Love 'em.

[–] thal3s@sh.itjust.works 13 points 1 week ago

Krita is a fantastic image editor with a customizable UI that’s very powerful but easy to use.

Pixelmator is a waste of $70 when you get more (you can resize the toolbar buttons!) for free with Krita.

[–] danciestlobster@lemm.ee 13 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Stepmania, the way better free DDR for PC!

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[–] tja@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago (2 children)
[–] Tja@programming.dev 13 points 1 week ago (2 children)

It just lacks a good text editor!

Yes, I'm a dad...

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[–] Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 12 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Syncthing.

Supports LAN Syncing and no limits other then the hardware you host yourself.

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[–] lastweakness@lemm.ee 12 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I'm really sorry but Joplin is not and will not ever be "objectively" better than Obsidian. SilverBullet is subjectively better than Obsidian though. Note taking is such a heavily opinionated matter that there's no scope for objectivity there.

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[–] Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 11 points 1 week ago (4 children)

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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[–] umbraroze@slrpnk.net 11 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Over the last few years I've been drawing stuff on Clip Studio Paint. Wonderful app, very powerful, the asset marketplace rules.

But it has a bunch of really weird jank too. It's as if it has all of the power in the world but you need to spend extra time digging through the app to do stuff.

Krita, which I finally tried a few months back, feels really excellent. Stuff is configurable as hell. All of the stuff is easy to discover. I'm working much faster.

Now, Krita doesn't have all of CSP's niceties, and I guess I have to see how to wishlist them.

Similarly CSP's 3D mockup tools are great, but nowhere as smooth and powerful to use as Blender's. Which is weird because CSP isn't a modeling program - you'd think they'd stick to what they actually do and at least polish the camera/pose controls and such. No dice. I wish I could just stick CSP assets in Blender, but they use a proprietary model format.

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[–] eestileib@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 1 week ago (8 children)
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[–] Tetsuo@jlai.lu 10 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Apache?

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

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[–] flop_leash_973@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (4 children)

I really like Flameshot for screenshots.

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[–] Snoopey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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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[–] Takumidesh@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Lichess -> chess.com

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

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[–] zqps@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 week ago (2 children)

pdfSAM. OBS. Veracrypt. A bunch of macOS usability tools that I am definitely taking for granted at this point.

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[–] zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Sorry, Joplin is a nightmare. I want something that stores Markdown in flat files, not a database with changing versions where one version of the db doesn't work in another version.

I tried to port the database over from another system, but the new version of Joplin wouldn't read from the old version's database, and it would corrupt the database when I tried to open it. What a crock of shit. I had to figure out how to dump the data from the tables using sqlite.

I use nb now instead. It is a bit wonky because it uses NodeJS, but you can view and edit files in a web browser, and it saves each entry as a .md file, which is the sane and rational way to do it. So, if nb ever fucks off, I have all my work in a directory of Markdown files, not some broken-ass sqlite database.

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