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)

  • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works
    9·
    8 days ago

    Sorry, Joplin is a nightmare. I want something that stores Markdown in flat files, not a database with changing versions where one version of the db doesn’t work in another version.

    I tried to port the database over from another system, but the new version of Joplin wouldn’t read from the old version’s database, and it would corrupt the database when I tried to open it. What a crock of shit. I had to figure out how to dump the data from the tables using sqlite.

    I use nb now instead. It is a bit wonky because it uses NodeJS, but you can view and edit files in a web browser, and it saves each entry as a .md file, which is the sane and rational way to do it. So, if nb ever fucks off, I have all my work in a directory of Markdown files, not some broken-ass sqlite database.

    • sbird@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      7 days ago

      That’s why nowadays, I use Joplin for quick notes (where folder structure doesn’t matter) and Obsidian (unfortunately closed-sourced) for larger collections where it does matter, I have to try alternatives like trilium soon, but Obsidian is just really good. NB seems interesting, I might have to try that as well

    • milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee
      1·
      7 days ago

      Thanks for bringing this up. I almost thought to try Joplin again, from this post. But for me, having my files as files for me to use as I please etc, is too important. I guess the Joplin way works for some.

    • Rose@slrpnk.net
      1·
      7 days ago

      Joplin does have an automatic backup plugin. Which I recommend enabling for obvious reasons.

      Also, moving to different versions is kinda tricky sometimes. No matter the software, when moving from very old version to a new one, I always keep the old one around until I’m certain the stuff was moved over cleanly.

      But yeah, having the notes in a database is definitely not as robust as the plain text storage. Wish Joplin would just let you say “I have a git repository”.