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)

  • yeehaw
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    145 days ago

    ShareX or flameshot for taking screenshots. ShareX needs some tweaks out of the box but once it’s tweaked it is so much more convenient when you need to make super quick tweaks/edits like adding steps or highlights or something.

    • @sudneo@lemm.ee
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      35 days ago

      I agree so much for flameshot. For work I moved to a Mac and we are not allowed to install flameshot (signing issue), and the workflow for taking screenshots (e.g., when writing documentation) is so much worse and slow with the default macOS tooling.

      • yeehaw
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        12 days ago

        Yes this is my main use case too, documentation. Flameshot and sharex are so quick for it. The osx one blows. So many clicks and drags. I’d rather just click and drag a box instead of spawn a box then move the corners around lol

        • @sudneo@lemm.ee
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          12 days ago

          Not to talk about annotations. Take screenshot, click preview, click edit, click rectangle tool, make rectangle (repeat), click done. Instead with flameshot it’s literally 2 clicks. Thanks for writing documentation BTW, on behalf of whomever you work with.

    • @Willem
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      25 days ago

      ShareX is amazing, it just needs a big UX improvement. If you’re not technical of nature, the program is kinda too much at once. I can’t recommend it easely to my family until it has a simpler interface option.

    • sbirdOP
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      5 days ago

      woah that looks really cool, I have to try those out. 👀

      edit: WAIT SHAREX HAS OCR???

      • sbirdOP
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        14 days ago

        IT CAN CAPTURE REGIONS OF THE SCREEN? IT HAS ACTUALLY GOOD HOTKEYS??? WOAHHHHH

        • sbirdOP
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          14 days ago

          IT SCREENRECORDS TOO??

          i guess I don’t need OBS (I’ll keep it around though in case I need to use the camera since I use that sometimes)

            • sbirdOP
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              12 days ago

              not to be that guy, but…

              *you’re (IT’S NOT THAT HARD IT IS “YOU ARE”)