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)

  • Tux960@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    LibreOffice, OBS, and VLC are definitely the best out there. And Lichess (Online Chess platform) . Do you agree with me?

    • Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de
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      2 days ago

      LibreOffice is also more compatible that Microsoft Word. It helped me and a friend to save his grandpa’s old writings that were stored in AppleWorks (.cwk) files.

    • TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zipEnglish
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      2 days ago

      Depends on your criteria. As long as your calculations are simple, it doesn’t matter which tool you use.

      For slightly more demanding calculations, Calc just can’t handle it like Excel does. Then again, using spreadsheets for demanding calculations is just asking for trouble.

    • sbird@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
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      2 days ago

      OBS is foss? huh, never knew that. I use it all the time for screen recording

    • null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
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      2 days ago

      I posted this in another thread yesterday but it’s relevant here too:

      I have a small consultancy with several staff and work with documents and spreadsheets all day. We use LibreOffice exclusively.

      Occasionally I encounter similar threads discussing the difference between LibreOffice and Microsoft Office, and the comments are all the same. So many people saying LibreOffice just “isn’t there yet”, or that it might be ok for casual use but not for power users.

      But as someone who uses LibreOffice extensively with a broad feature set I’ve just never encountered something we couldn’t do. Sure we might work around some rough edges occasionally, but the feature set is clearly comparable.

      My strongly held suspicion is that it’s a form of the dunning-kruger effect. People have a lot of experience using software-A so much so that they tend to overlook just how much skill and knowledge they have accumulated with that specific software. Then when they try software-B they misconstrue their lack of knowledge with that specific software as complexity.

      That said, IDK if I’d go as far as to say LibreOffice is clearly the “best” because that’s subjective. IMO it’s certainly comparable and is a shining example of great FOSS. Hopefully LibreOffice enjoys some attention in the current move away from American products.

    • MudMan@fedia.io
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      2 days ago

      OBS and VLC yeah.

      You snuck the LibreOffice hot take in there and… yeah, no, unfortunately.

      I don’t even think it’s better than MS Office, but these days I’d (unfortunately) take Google’s Office suite over both.

      • acockworkorange@mander.xyz
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        2 days ago

        Only Office is a much younger project and is leaps ahead. It’s sad really, I used to champion LO since the OOo days. Doesn’t make sense these days anymore.

        • gedaliyah@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          I feel the same. It’s my daily driver for about 6 months now in a professional setting with high demands. I have kept the Microsoft suite (and have not yet transitioned Powerpoint). When I go back to compare I can’t stand all the needy Microsoft interruptions getting in my way.

          • acockworkorange@mander.xyz
            0·
            2 days ago

            Nope, you were right and I was agreeing with you, and adding that a much younger project compared to LO is already ahead.

            • MudMan@fedia.io
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              2 days ago

              Oh, I’m changing it back, then.

              FWIW, Only Office IS much better (hey, at least it doesn’t open xls files with black text on black backgrounds on dark mode!), and I do think its Google-inspired “apps-as-tabs” thing is the future for this stuff. I’m not sure I’d rank it above those, but it’s certainly a much more… competitive, I guess? approach.

      • sbird@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
        0·
        2 days ago

        I really like OnlyOffice, pretty much a carbon copy of the MS Office UI and doesn’t screw up on MS-specific files (docx, pptx, etc.)

        Also, I like that OnlyOffice, unlike MS Office, has all the things in one app vs having separate apps for documents, spreadsheets, slides, etc. You can just tab between your different documents!

    • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
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      2 days ago

      LibreOffice only really became better after Microsoft started pushing Office365 which made standard MS Office a lot worse. They were on par with each other until then.

      The others 100% were always better.

      • Dave@lemmy.nz
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        2 days ago

        You sound like you know your LibreOffice.

        My experience is they are quite different but I’ve been able to do the same things for the most part.

        But how the hell do I make a pivot table that looks and functions as nice as the plain old default one in Excel?

        • CancerMancer@sh.itjust.works
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          1 day ago

          Excel is probably the one sore spot for LibreOffice, but also Google’s suite and really everyone else. Excel is tough to beat, especially when you consider the additional power of things like Power Query and Excel on web having JavaScript functions.

          That said: I truly despite pivot tables and I no longer use them. I use lookups, countif, or other functions to display what I need, otherwise I use Power Query.

          • Dave@lemmy.nz
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            1 day ago

            Whaaaaaaaat? Pivot tables are a 2 second job to summarise large amounts of transaction data or similar by month or year. Lookups or countifs would take so much longer!

            Not to mention that you can drill into the data using them.