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)

  • tty5@lemmy.world
    3·
    2 days ago

    It’s great when what you are designing is best described as code, but I find it absolutely not worth the hassle otherwise, because even basic things like chamfers/fillets are extremely hard to execute.

    • megrania@discuss.tchncs.de
      1·
      2 days ago

      hmm I might be biased because I’m a programmer by trade, and even make music with code, so describing things as code is pretty natural to me … but I once I got the hang of it I found it easier than TinkerCAD in some sense, because there I would always get lost in the stack of objects … and FreeCAD … well, I couldn’t even get a basic box designed … 😅

      • tty5@lemmy.world
        1·
        2 days ago

        So am I. I’ve been writing software for a living for almost 20 years, so when I wanted to make a slightly more complicated box to 3d print openscad was my first choice too. Then I tried freecad and hated it with passion. Eventually I ended up making it in solidworks - it sucked the least of the tools I’ve tried.