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?

  • @[email protected]
    16•9 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.

    • @[email protected]
      6•9 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.

    • MudMan
      3•9 days ago

      Sorry, freudian slip. Edited to avoid future confusion.

      • @[email protected]
        2•9 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
          4•9 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.

          • @[email protected]
            1•9 days ago

            Also the fact that it’s self hostable and can also work offline and can also work as a desktop client for remote collaboration and supports several remote backends.