Honestly, its gotta be the MS Office suite.
Yes if you're just writing your own simple documents libreoffice/OpenOffice will work, but if you have to do anything more complex than a single page spreadsheet, text-on-white presentations, or 3 page MLA book reports.... or, even worse, have to interact with documents and spreadsheets created by basically any other person on the planet, I've just never had a good consistent experience with any of the free options.
The most recent one is, of course, Sync for Lemmy. It may just be muscle memory at this point, but I find the experience a step improvement in browsing.
On my home server front, I would mention Plex despite Jellyfin's massive improvements over the past 2 years. Plexamp is just a magical piece of software.
For the most part, though, I think I'd reverse the question. Most of the time, I prefer OSS.
I still donate to Inkscape each month (please do the same at https://inkscape.org/support-us/donate/), but it became unusable for me on macOS, unfortunately. I now use Serif Affinity.
Inkscape is fantastic on Linux. I’d highly recommend it!
Photoshop, Fences, Plex, Steam, Unraid. I just highly prefer them to any alternatives I have tried. And believe me, I have tried every alternative to Photoshop and Fences that I could find. They just don't do it. And because of those two in particular, I have to add Windows to the list.
Oh, and I guess Sync for Lemmy. The only reason I even know what Lemmy is, is the fact that the Sync for Reddit app stopped working and basically said, "Yeah, move to Lemmy, idiot."
Visual studio code. There's nothing else that's anywhere near as good that doesn't cost money. Those annoying terminal text editors just don't do it for me. I need code autocomplete and do not understand how there exist people who have the patience to get by without it. I do not have the time to be switching tabs 20 times a second because I can't remember function parameter overloads. That intellisense autocomplete is just too good.
It's just plain better than any other alternative. Better UI, better UX, better features, better customization, support for Monet... I could go on all day.
Steam and Discord, but mainly Steam.
If you told me I had to go 100% FOSS tomorrow, I could do it pretty easily, except for those two apps.
95% of my games are through Steam, and 95% of all my friends, family, and online community are in Discord. I could probably even dump Discord and convince some of my closest friends and FAM to switch to a Matrix client or something. But giving up Steam would mean I would basically be giving up nearly all gaming in my life.
And contrary to many other FOSS enthusiasts, I actually think Steam and Discord are great apps. I've rarely had issues with them, especially Steam. The UI is decent, the features are great, (Steam game join, Workshop mods, etc.) And Discord works really well on Linux for me, and GrapheneOS on my phone.
Of those two, I'd rather dump Discord. Valve is generally a very FOSS friendly company and pretty consumer friendly compared to most multi-billion dollar corpos. And what they've done recently for Linux gaming over the last few years with Proton, the Steam Deck, etc has has made gaming on Linux a wonderful experience for me.
Recently I have been trying to get into more FOSS games and GoG DRM-free games as an insurance policy for what I know is coming down the line one day. Gabe will either retire, pass away, or be bought out by a corpo/capital investment firm and Valve will become victim to the enshitification effect like all other proprietary software.
There is a small hope I have, idk if this is even possible, but what if Gabe chooses to open source some or all of the Steam code instead of letting it get bought out or taken over by somebody else? That would allow for the FOSS community to fork it and build a FOSS Steam.
Like I said though, a pipe dream for now. Long live FOSS!
This will get me loads of downvotes, but Windows 10 Mail and Calendar (not Outlook) is simple yet works flawlessly and is miles ahead of Thunderbird by usability, stability and user-friendliness. On the other hand though, Ubuntu Evolution is even better and is open-source.
Windows over Linux based OSes. The support (albeit via mass adoption) is much better. I can run almost any old software, including games. Plug in anything that's plug and play and not worry about driver compatibility. Things tend to just work and I'm not one accidental sudo away from wrecking the whole OS.
I just disable ads, put a custom start menu in place, and I'm golden.
I'm not saying Windows doesn't have issues, but for me personally it's likely far less than a Linux OS.
Ouff, a fair few of the big players:
- MS Office > LibreOffice, it's not even remotely a contest. This is not because of any personal preferences, nor because of functionality. I'd just be an asshole for being the guy who breaks interoperability, which we have long established. Since this is squarely a work-first product, and everyone is just trying to get through they day and go home to their families, I won't make their day worse. Hence, MS Office preferred.
- Photoshop > GIMP. The latter is good for simple edits, but anything even moderately complex is not only far easier in Photoshop, it's also flat out faster, owing to far better hardware utilization.
- Google Maps > any alternative really but specifically OSM, for cars and public transit (I don't hike much but I heard good things about OSM for hiking though there are of course specialized apps for that since you want to bring specialized hardware for serious trips). While I can make OSM work, it's just such a hassle, and often so buggy and wrong I might as well just wing it entirely without navigation then. In particular for public transit.
Microsoft Office. I write a lot of documents that require contant citation and updates of sources, comments, etc. I have to review documents, create tables of content etc etc. Even though MS Office is far from perfect in many of these, free alternatives such as Libre or Open Office are just terrible.
Adobe Acrobat. I have tried at least 5 other PDF readers and editors for windows, and none of them are remotely close. Either they don't have any document editing at all and are just PDF readers, or their editing capabilities are VERY clunky, not feature rich, or just don't work.
I haven't ever found another program that let's me directly edit text in a PDF that already exists.
I don't need to edit PDFs much but when I do it's usually quite important, and Adobe is by far the easiest and quickest to do it in.
I hate that that's the case, because I really don't like Adobe as a company and would rather not have to use their software, but there it is.
Affinity suite over any of their open-source competitors. I love Krita for painting, but for image editing, Affinity Photo is just so much better-suited and unlike Gimp, it's modern, actively maintained and has a much more thought-out workflow. I heard that Inkscape was fine, but I personally didn't like it either (but then, I also didn't really like Illustrator all that much, it's really a fully subjective opinion). But even if you did like Inkscape, you don't have the seemless integration between the products as Affinity does. You can create pixel graphics in Photo, import them in your vector graphics in Designer, and can seemlessly embed any of the two into your documents in Publisher. And each program has a special mode ("persona") that gives you the basic functionality of the others, and the UIs and workflows generally feel very similar and unified between them. For the hobbyist who doesn't want to pay for an Adobe subscription, it's truly unbeatable and the only reason I still need Windows every now and then.
I prefer paint.net for asbuilts in underground construction. I use GIMP when I'm on Linux / MacOS but paint.net is a nice simple in between from basic paint-> photoshop.
GIMP is a lot closer to photoshop. Don't get me wrong - it's a great software but paint.net fills that role a little better for what I need to do.
I paid for and use parallels on my apple silicon laptop just for oaint.net
My really obvious one, and a huge source of problems for me, is Discord. But the biggest one was a wild one:
Irfanview
It is a super-fast image viewer and simple image editor. Supports every format I've ever thrown at it. Bulk conversion and resize works like a charm. Hell, it's half the reason I haven't moved to Linux for my daily use.
As much as I dislike Adobe, Photoshop is something I can't get away from.
For now, REAPER for Linux over Ardour. REAPER is cheap, and while it is absolutely not free software, it is about as close as you can get while still being proprietary. You can use the trial for as long as you want without paying, and other than a nag screen, it is fully functional. You can rewrite some of the built-in effects, and there are several options for writing your own audio plugins and extensions.
Frankly...I vibe with REAPER, and I don't vibe (yet) with Ardour. I'm still reading the manual, and I'm still going to try keep trying it out, but there are a couple choices REAPER made that I prefer. For example, REAPER doesn't distinguish between MIDI and Audio tracks. This is really useful to write lines in MIDI before I know how to play them on a real instrument, then seamlessly use the original signal chain after the MIDI instrument. According to what I've read and worked with so far, Ardour has a few different track types.
I've been using REAPER for several years. It's been rock solid, it has all the options I ever needed, and Cockos has stayed out of my way as I transferred my license to almost a dozen computers. I wish they would open-source the software, but it's one of the few software purchases I don't regret.
What I need to clarify is that it is good in spite of its proprietary-ness, not because of it!
Steam and Spotify
Probably DaVinci Resolve. Back when I was on Windows I used HitFilm, but since I moved to Linux I moved to DaVinci Resolve
Adobe Illustrator over Inkscape. I thought I'd save some money and learn Inkscape but it's just too weird an un-intuitive, sometimes buggy too. Key combinations couldn't be mapped to work like Illustrator which I was used to, so it's frustrating to work with because you know what it should be able to do, but now to have to figure out what Inkscape calls the feature and what menu that might be in.
Same for Photoshop over Paint.NET or anything else. Photoshop is still the master at layered image manipulation for all sorts of things. I use it for Web/UI mockup designs, and for photo editing in some cases. Nothing else can do this as well, and again it's because I'm so familiar with it and it's key combinations and features. Plus, now the new AI features are doing way more than I ever thought possible, it's pretty impressive stuff really!
Jetbrains IntelliJ is a big contender, but I get along just fine in other, FOSS IDEs. I prefer GIMP to Photoshop, actually, but that may just be a case where I learned photo manipulation on GIMP and didn't touch Photoshop until far later.
My final answer has to be in image processing/photo editing software. CaptureOne Pro is leagues ahead of anything FOSS I've ever tried. DarkTable, RawTherapee, ART, none of it can come close to comparing right now. No matter how much time I give it, I just... Can never make the transition. Which sucks, because CaptureOne is not available on Linux and it's pretty well impossible to get it running. 🥲
I do my absolute best to avoid proprietary software. I can only think of three I use consistently. Those are Obsidian, Steam, and the Nvidia drivers.
Obsidian is a weird one; there are loads of note taking/pim/personal wiki options out there. And don't get me wrong, stuff like Standard Notes, Joplin, and Trillium are great. But for reasons I can't quite put my finger on, Obsidian is the only one that clicks for me.
Steam isn't so much an "I prefer," it's more of a "I have a huge game library I'm not willing to abandon." Without Steam, I can't play Terraria, Hades, Core Keeper, and more than 200 others. It might be a sunk cost fallacy thing, but I'm not giving up my Fallout New Vegas.
The Nvidia thing is an extension of the Steam thing. My next computer will have an AMD card, though, so that's kind of a "for now."
Petal Maps/Google Maps And Waze navigation.
Petal is my favourite, it has some features that google and Waze don't have, like free drive mode. The open-source map alternatives unfortunately dosn't even come close. And being able to have the navigation app on half the screen and Spotify/Jellyfin on the bottom half is just golden.
I know that the CCP owns Petal, and I'm not proud of using it, but the experience is great. Google is also ass when it comes to privacy, but being able to quickly check the reviews of nearby restaurants/parks is amazing.
Waze isn't great either, but checking if there are any traffic jams before jumping in the car is also cool. (I know that both Google and Petal have this feature but Waze is just superior).
Additionally, I haven't found a Bluetooth tracking alternative to Tile.
Honestly? Visual Studio. Like I am an Emacs user through and through. When properly setup with LSP, ccls, etc. it offers a better editing experience, and when it works its similar to, if not better than VS--even on huge codebases. But I would rather go live in a dumpster than have to use GDB over the VS debugger again. Its so slow, its a nightmare to use with multithreaded code, it just isnt capable of handling a large, GUI driven application.
Maybe there is some GDB config guidebook that I'm missing, but it better be something more than 'lmao just write a python script to pretty-print std::vector'.
Microsoft Excel - I tried a lot of the FOSS office suites but I always come back mainly due to familiarity but also compatibility (which I know is not much of an issue lately).
Google Photos - I have Immich setup and use it but my wife and people around me use Photos and so I have to conform.
"Pixel OS" - I can't move to Graphene or similar due to banking apps.
Skype - Like Photos, due to relatives
by now i'm almost fully switched off of directly using google products other than an android phone (pinephone was unfortunately not usable when I tried it) and google maps (when i'm delivery driving i just need it to work smoothly, don't have time to troubleshoot like i would with other software)
it's been a few years since i did a foss deep dive so i imagine pinephone and/or osm have made progress.
edit: also invidious instances kept breaking so i finally just went back to regular youtube in browser. newpipe on mobile
WinSCP, for the transfer-then-delete function. It's the only thing I run under WINE.also open sourceCalibre, for doing everything I need with ebooksedit: Calibre still does everything I need but is open source
Edit: thank you to everyone who pointed out my incorrect info
As much as I love to hate ESRI, Arcpy just works and has solid documentation. Sure I could use a strictly geopandas solution but when the customer wants to have the product in a file geodatabase, noting beats the built in export method.
I guess I am stuck in error 999999 land for life.
None.
X-Plane comes close to FlightGear. It has far-superior visuals. fully functional glass cockpits like the Garmin G1000, and simulated ATC, but the vast array of community-made planes available in FlightGear still kinda seals it for me, despite the jank.
FreeCAD has its pain points. Software like Creo Parametric is much more robust in a lot of ways, but I literally cannot run it on Linux (no mouse-wheel zoom in WINE, slide show in QEMU). Fundamentally, they are similar enough, and my work primarily takes place on a component level so I can live without the streamlined assembly workflow. Also, FreeCAD doesn't cost >$2000, and can still do FEM analysis and computational fluid dynamics. Maybe I could find a crack for SolidWorks and try that out, but it takes a long ass time to learn a CAD system proficiently.
Everyone who learned on Photoshop says the GIMP interface is weird, but I learned on GIMP and can say the same for Photoshop.
Games are the only exception, but games aren't fungible. Minecraft is not a substitute for Dwarf Fortress. CS:GO is not a substitute for Unreal Tournament.
Games, Steam, firmware, fopnu, darkmx, "Skype" (relatives), WhatsApp (relatives), Telegram (relatives and work, I don't care if the client is open), Opera Presto (sometimes for nostalgy).
Google Messages over QKSMS, but only because Google is gatekeeping RCS
For CAD and 3d design in general, I oreger Rhino. The grasshopper addition is phenominal,.and I've been using Rhino for almost.. 20 years now. I really enjoy the look and feel if it, I know basically every relevant command line input and input option etc. I use Revit and AutoCAD at work, but convinced them to get my Rhino for developing 3d models and converting them to 2D.
The only truly free program that competes with Rhino is Blender, which is an amazing program in a whole bunch of regards, but I've never liked the GUI at all.
Speaking of things Blender can also do, I prefer Photoshop to popular free alternatives such as GIMP or Blender. I'm very familiar with the tools and how they work, and the Beta improvements are mind boggling. I do however prefer Inkscape for vector work.
Speaking more about things Blender can also do, I prefer DaVinci Resolve as a free movie editor. However, I did purchase the basic license becuase I thought the program was that good. I'm blown away that they make it free with so many things enabled still.
Speaking ...Blender.. you get the idea.. digital sculpting is much nicer in Zbrush, to me. Took me forever to not hate the GUI (cough -- ok I still Hate it), but I really love some of the tools and plug-ins. It's also phenominal at mesh repair in general. Which is a subtasks I prefer Netfabb Basic for, which I think is also paid for now, but I think suspect it's included in my Autodesk license package..
The moral of the story is if you like to do any of these things go check out blender before you get used to a paid program, and save yourself decades of costs lol.
Pixelmator for macOS blows GIMP out of the water and is a one-time purchase of $50. I've used Photoshop a lot at school and Pixelmator does 99% the same.
Duolingo, I guess? There's not many libre language learning aids, except LibreLingo which only has Spanish.
Japanese visual novels, because there are more of them.
FL Studio, Ableton, and many VST. Yes, a know about Ardour, many LV2 plugins, and I tried it, and in somewhere moment, me liked it more, then proprietary analog. Some plugins is awesome, DrumGizmo is very well, Vitalium and helm too have good sound, and many another software is good, but for easy, fast, and really quality sound it easier make in proprietary analogs. It ones cause, why I have windows in dualboot (and yes, in Wine I haved large latency and another problems).
P.S But sometimes I still working on my music projects in GNU/Linux.
Substance Painter has no equal and neither does SpeedTree. And maybe JIRA if you have to pay for it as a business
macOS over Ubuntu (don't get me started on Windows). I use macOS on my MacBook Air and it's just so well thought out. Ubuntu is decent but I wouldn't want to use it for my daily work.
I love Obsidian and use it to manage my Markdown files and I'm in awe. Checked out Logseq as well but it didn't work for me.
VS Code. As much as I hate Microsoft, this is great. I'll likely look for a community-supported version without the creepy telemetry shit though.
StylusLabs Write. I've tried all the FOSS hand-written note taking apps and none of them is practical to use.
Write just works. Produces SVGs that you can view in any browser and efficiently sync via git. Amazing.
It looks like an android app from 2012 and could really use some updates in other areas too.
I also don't get why it's closed source. It's free (as in beer) and there isn't even a way to donate.Apples Notes because nothing else has the perfect amount of formatting, alongside exceptional sync.
Also Apple Mail for the same simplicity reason - Geary on Gnome is close-ish, but goes too far down the simple route. How does it not have a refresh button??
Also Logic Pro, mainly because there aren't any fully FOSS alternatives that even attempt a full-featured DAW, let alone with Drummer etc.
I also 'prefer' Apple's productivity suite over everything else, because it has by far the best UX, but I'm totally fine with LibreOffice too.
Termius saves me so much time as an engineer connecting to the dozens of servers in our infrastructure
Finale vs Lilypond. I'm convinced only the Borg actually uses Lilypond. It's obscure, terrifying and difficult to use. Maybe it's because I've been using finale for over 14 years but it's hard for me to even conceptualize how to make music in Lilypond, whereas Finale just does whatever I ask of it.
Musescore is also a good FOSS alternative but I still stick by finale.
There's a few open source front ends for Twitch that I've tried but I've had the occasional issue with video playback either stopping and being unable to reload or if I'm watching a VOD it won't consistently remember my position so I'd say I prefer the official app.
Normally I use open source ones when possible such as NewPipe or Invidious for YouTube for example.
Serato DJ pro. No other software comes close. Mixxx is nice but I lose lots of features if I switch to it.
I know a lot of effort has been put into usability for blender, but it's still just so weird compared to any other desktop app.
Clip Studio Paint. Preferred it overall compared to the free open source art programs I've tried, and there's a wide variety of user made brushes. Although I do hate how they changed their licensing in 2.0.
Altium. Reasons. (the octopart integration is really nice)
Kdenlive is still not up to pro standards. I make do with it, but if/when i'm editing for someone else i'll have to switch to a proprietary solution.
And that's besides the fact that everyone else is using it, which is usually the reason to prefer proprietary over FOSS. It's the reason i still have Photoshop installed alongside Krita.
Quicken,
I really wish there was a FOSS alternative that supported the autodownload of transactions across my plethora of banks/accounts (some I even chose specifically for better integration) but its sooo incestuous that theres really not much and what alternatives are available are usually cloud based where you cant guarantee the security of all your financial data.
Qlab is vastly superior to any other live theatre show control software.
I don't, because I'm not a Chad.
scrivener and affinity's products are much nicer. i don't even know if there's a foss version of scrivener to be fair, but i basically haven't used any other word processor since purchasing it.
YouTube(most content), gboard( the top pretictive text buttons) and probably something else
Much to my chagrin, SVP is still better than MPV+VapourSynth in the realm of frame rate upscaling. Worst part? SVP is, in fact, based on the same code that VapourSynth uses, just with their own proprietary additions that should honestly have gone back to the community.
