What are some FOSS programs that you think are a far better user experience than their counterparts?

cujo@sh.itjust.works to Open Source@lemmy.ml – 1060 points –

I used Plex for my home media for almost a year, then it stopped playing nice for reasons I gave up on diagnosing. While looking at alternatives, I found Jellyfin which is much more responsive, IMO, and the UI is much nicer as well.

It gets relegated to playing Fraggle Rock and Bluey on repeat for my kiddo these days, but I am absolutely in love with the software.

What are some other FOSS gems that are a better experience UX/UI-wise than their proprietary counterparts?

EDIT: Autocorrect turned something into "smaller" instead of what I meant it to be when I wrote this post, and I can't remember what I meant for it to say so it got axed instead.

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Hands down the clang C++ compiler, no commercial C++ compiler I've ever seen or even heard of even comes close enough that a comparison could be meaningful.

I never expected to see a compiler in this list, at least not in 2023.

Back in 1988 I realized how rubbish Microsoft was when I discovered Borland's Turbo Pascal and Turbo C compilers. I'd previously used the MS compilers and they were multipass, multi-minutes to finish a compile. The Borland ones were single pass and FAST.

Back then, compile times could be huge, and everyone was publishing benchmarks on compiled program performance, which mattered on the hardware of the day. I never even think about that stuff these days.

I used to exclusively use clang but IMO gcc is just as good if not better. Both are pretty bulky but sometimes the LLVM toolchain can feel like bloat. Most of the time GCC is preinstalled on my linux distro so I don't even need to install it I just git clone my projects and run my Makefiles. The only reason I ever use clang now is on my chromebook because gcc isn't available through Termux.