1076
What are some FOSS programs that you think are a far better user experience than their counterparts?
(sh.itjust.works)
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.
You're right that it mustn't be the only prism, yes. But maybe we shouldn't also splinter things like functionality and appearance/usability from the merits of "free as in freedom" either? One of the things that makes FOSS apps work better than alternatives, when they do, is the fact that it's not looking for extra revenue streams all the time with marketing-led nonsense features, bloating the hell out of their product, redesigning just to seem modern (usability be damned), and so on.
And what happens when you have a FOSS alternative with committed and talented devs, a large user base and resources tends to be something truly superior.
Those are different dimensions that should be considered together. Of course we should still invest efforts into UI/UX, where possible and where it represents the will of the participants in the project... but when answering questions such as "which FLOSS piece is superior" i think we should always find a balance between those, and bring them together...