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)

  • hexmasteen@lemmy.ml
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    9 hours ago

    The OpenStreetMap ecosystem (e.g. Organic Maps as an Android Client) is better than Google Maps.

    Tusky is better than any proprietary Twitter client.

    F-Droid and Flathub are both better than Google Play.

    Thunderbird is better than GMail

    Real open Podcasting (e.g. Antennapod) is better than Spotify.

    OpenDesk is better than M365.

    Signal and Matrix are both better than the chat tools from Meta, Apple, Google.

    (It’s about ecosystems/platforms, because most software doesn’t work in isolation)