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What are some FOSS programs that you think are a far better user experience than their counterparts? (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by to c/opensource@lemmy.ml
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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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[–] 319 points 2 years ago (4 children)

VLC absolutely wrecked Windows Media Player. Firefox was the same with IE.

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  • [–] 42 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Did you know that MS now charges for you to play some codecs with windows media player?

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  • [–] 38 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Unless something has changed recently, that's not exactly true. They charge 99c for the distribution of it through the windows store (or whatever it's called) but you can install them the traditional way no problem

    I think it's still dumb but it's a distinction worth making. I think the description even links the website where you can download it

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    looked it up, you’re right. The payment is for the codec out itself which is normally done by GPU companies and often can be downloaded for free.

    My bad for not reading text on a window from Windows with a “$ please”.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    So you admit you didn't read it, but then you happily go around spreading misinformation?

    Why do you guys do that?

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Windows Media Player wrecked its own dumb self. It was good right up to Windows 2000 and Windows ME (which is a whole other kettle of fish), and then it got bloated, unintuitive and it kept nagging you for random shit. VLC is a great app, don't get me wrong, the bar was not all that high is what I'm saying.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    I have still yet to see any other media library handle so many tens of thousands of audio files of varying encoding & naming conventions, so smoothly; "Media Monkey" etc were oft recommended but never once up to the task. Until just a few years ago, it was remarkably convenient for ripping a CD, too; correct metadata & all.

    For a short while, WMP was to music files, as Calibre is to ebooks.

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  • [+] -6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    What do you feel makes it better?

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  • [+] 1 point 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)
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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    Better auto-handling of subtitles, including automatically downloading them

    VLC can do that too as far as I know. I haven't used it in a while since I use the default media player on Arch and MXExplorer on Android and for my Movies/Series I use Jellyfin

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