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?

  • Romkslrqusz
    112•9 days ago

    There is no better archive utility than 7-Zip IMO

    Just wish there was a MacOS version

    • sbirdOPEnglish
      9•9 days ago

      7-zip is foss??? damn, never knew that.

    • @[email protected]English
      6•9 days ago

      rar has recovery records. i know it’s a somewhat niche feature, one far more popular in the ‘olden days’ especially in certain uh… ‘venues’… but it’s something i’ve always used when making backups with it.

      • @[email protected]
        2•9 days ago

        Tell me more.

        Edit: I’m sorry I should have specified. I’m curious about the recovery records feature.

            • @[email protected]English
              2•9 days ago

              It essentially splits the archive into multiple rar sub-files (*.r00, *.r01, etc.) and then creates several more chunks that contain parity information (par2 files) that go with it. By doing so, if you then lose *.r45 but get *.r00-r99 you can recover the *.r45 file from the parity (par2) data. It’s pretty slick.

    • ChrisEnglish
      1•7 days ago

      I use 7zip on my Mac every day. Whatchu talking’ ‘bout, Willis?