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 t

Hello, I am 2 months out from finishing my doctorate and I want to move to a new country! My brother and my family already moved different places with their jobs so there's no reason for me to stay here when I could be seeing new places too. We have a country picked out and my spouse is excited because they have close friends living in the city we're aiming for. Rather than go through all the new license-to-practice hoops [can easily cost $$$-$$$$ to establish] in the USA just to go someplace else and immediately pay for and take all the re licensing fees and exams I'm wondering if I can just... skip that part and move to a new place and take my exams there. This probably sounds pretty dumb to people who know about how to do this, but I don't know who to ask about this sort of thing. The library wasn't very helpful, and googling "move to XXX" just gives me a ton of websites loaded with either overly generic or overly complex government information and adverts for specialists that

A big one for me is Microsoft office (desktop), Libreoffice and other FOSS alternatives just simply don't come close, and feature wise are 20 years behind. Especially since I basically mastered MS office 2007+'s drawing features, which the FOSS alternatives don't replicate very well.

And of course Microsoft loves to push Office 365. I don't pay for that and just use desktop office, but Microsoft prefers you don't know that you can do this.

And I'm going to get shit on by Lemmy big time for this but while Linux is great and has made vast improvements in recent years, I still use Windows, not only because of MS office, but because a lot of games tend to only support Windows. I know that wine and proton exist but they're not perfect and don't feel quite the same as running native.

I wish an operating system existed with a hybridized Linux and clone NT kernel (using code from FOSS Wine and ReactOS of course) so that the numerous back catalog of NT software can run similar to as intended

For those of you that haven't seen, 4chan was hacked:

https://boingboing.net/2025/04/17/4chan-hacked-obliterated-and-unlikely-to-be-back-soon.html

A deadly blow? Will a copycat spring up? Where are the users going in the meantime? Does any of this really matter?

I have a USB stick with 32GB. However, I cannot hook an ethernet cable to the computer and router because all the router’s plugs are being used.

My Abuelo says:

• he will not rewire things with the router
• he wants me to find a way to create a Lemmy instance without Ethernet, just the regular Wi Fi connection without a router or anything.

This rules out what I was going to use, Yunohost. While I have the USB, I don’t have the router (it's full), switch, or Ethernet Cable and Abuelo doesn’t want to buy one nor does he want me to buy one.

He thinks it’d be less time consuming if I found a way to self-host without that stuff, just through Wi-Fi, and I don’t know how to program.

i’ve wanted to ask questions like this but i’d often get downvoted or the post would be removed.

I use Fediverse Obsever, which, for example, shows instances that allow signups, (ex: registration is disabled for lemmy.one) but am not sure of many instances where you don’t have to type a verification (besides lemmings.world). I think it’s good to have a typed verification, I’m just wondering which ones don’t.

I know for a fact that as a child, it was Russian. Now it’s kind of odd. Most of the time, I do have an American accent but have a mix of English too.

Example: I tend to pronounce my “r”’s like an Englishman. When I say “I don’t care/I don’t mind”, something like that, it’s English. I also pronounce words like “bath” or “grass” like an American would.

I’m largely asking about between Spotify and Apple Music, but hell I’ll take suggestions for Youtube Music, Tidal, and Windows Media Player while I’m at it because that information will be useful to someone.

All my searches so far have proven fruitless, but FOSS seems to evade web searches unfortunately so if anyone knows of a community-grown tool I’d love to know

A paintball gun is basically a mini-liquid-balloon launcher, isn't it?

As to why, less mess more or less.

I'm not talking about not using signal, but instead referring to drivers who turn off the signal so quickly.

Example when changing lane: Flick Signal on - Lane change - Signal off, literally 2 seconds and the car is not even moving fast to change lane.

Another example for when making a turn: 0.5 second to do Signal On - Turn - Signal off...

I swear on both of my nuts that these drivers arent even looking at the mirrors (any mirrors) or looking over their shoulders.

If you happen to do this, no offense but why? Is it to show the cops you did signal? Or there exists a signalphobia , i.e. the tick tock sound can annoy passengers?/

Note: for any future commotion, this was supposed to be purely educational. Okay the question should be why do countries have to do this and why is it so hard not to? Wouldn't it make sense to add this to the list of things the youth can learn at an early age?

Why can't they just allow kids in schools to learn the true names of things no matter how hard they may be to pronounce? I understand the difficulty but computers and the Internet exist so we can translate and better implement this. Like some words in English where we have no single word translation like 'Dejavu' (pardon non autocorrect), I understand. But places were changed to make it easier to produce in a native tongue. I am sure it is not only America, or English, but wouldn't we be better off respecting the culture and not changing the name, like we changed our map to the correct pronunciation of Turkey (Türkiye). So why don't we change everything back to how the countries' place names are pronounced by their citizens

Ok, so because reasons i have lots of dirty cans building up in my house, and cleaning them all to put them in the recycling has stopped me from putting them in the recycling and caused them to build up further.

Basically, how much does it matter that these cans are clean before i recycle them?

I live in the UK if that helps. Thanks!

Why do people keep adding this to their comments? Are they checking notes? Why do they feel the need to point it out if they are? Why are they saying they are if they aren't? It's like me adding "scratching head" to my comment, which I just did, but I have no idea why that adds anything to the conversation.

EDIT: Thanks for the replies, everyone. From what I've gathered, I just have to be more patient, so I'll wait for the communities relevant to me to pop up. In the meantime, I'll temper my expectations and continue using my community as a resource repository and continue linking them to people I meet online who need them.

Maybe I'm just using it wrong, but I'm returning for more than a minute after a few weeks due to having exams to study for, and there's no notifications.

My community literally stopped in time after my last post, and I'm guessing it won't resume until I work down my queue of things to post after my finals are over.

I'm subscribed to several communities I was interested in on Reddit, but even knowing I have to switch to my subscribed communities every time I log in, the feed seems very different, almost lacking in ways I can't describe. For example, a big popular one about games hasn't been posting any posts about any games I care about, and when I search for a comm

I want to learn how to draw, because I want to create my own comic, but how long does it take on average to reach a high level of drawing? Is it worth the effort?

This is quite recent but I've been browsing Lemmy a bunch lately and quite often I see extreme grammatical errors.

I'm not talking about like, incorrect stylistic choices between commas and dashes, or an improper use of ellipses or missing commas or incorrect use of apostrophes in its/it's or in multiple posessive articles or just plain typos or any nitpicky grammar nazi shit like that, but just basic spelling specifically.

It's one thing when you can't spell some pretty uncommon words and you're too lazy to look it up and/or use autocorrect, but it's a completely different league to misspell very basic words, very recently I saw someone spell "extreme" as "extream" which is just kind of baffling, I actually can't even imagine how one would make such a mistake?

And it's not been an isolated thing either, I've seen several instances like that lately.

Am I going crazy? Is it just me?