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.

  • Varyk
    43·
    1 year ago

    VLC is obviously the best media player, I can’t think of one I’ve used that comes close ever, either in ease of use(hotkeys) or functionality.

    Audacity is such a simple yet comprehensively functional audio editor.

    OBS is a very simple video recording software that works so well.

      • Varyk
        2·
        1 year ago

        I used MPV for a while, seemed a little bare bones to me compared to VLC? Maybe that’s just because I was more familiar with VLC and know how to do most things with it already.

        I went from winamp to VLC and then tried probably everything and then went back to VLC

        • ѕєχυαℓ ρσℓутσρє@lemmy.sdf.org
          4·
          1 year ago

          I had the same experience when I first tried mpv. Went back to VLC.

          I tried mpv again years later due to some annoying bug in VLC, and finally made some efforts to customize the shortcuts to my liking (most were fine, just added a couple extra ones like k for pause) and installed some plugins (like mpv-sub-select and skip-intro). Now I can’t be satisfied with anything else.

          It’s kinda like Neovim in that sense. Super customizable and integrates with everything.

      • cujoOPEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        I don’t think I’ve had to reconfigure mine for different window sizes… of course, I don’t typically record individual windows I record a screen.

        If I may ask, what do you use OBS for that you have to record individual windows that are sized differently each time?

          • cujoOPEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            Right, right. I think it’s a little unfair to say OBS isn’t simple in that regard, though, as recording small snippets of screens isn’t really what it’s targeted towards. It’s more of a content streaming/recording software, IMO. I honestly don’t know what I would use if I needed to regularly record differently sized small portions of my screen to send to people.

    • orphiebaby@lemm.ee
      1·
      1 year ago

      I think PotPlayer is a lot better than VLC— although it’s a little weird out-of-the-box, so you have to change a few of its many, many customizable settings.

      • Varyk
        1·
        1 year ago

        I can’t really think of a customizable option I’ve wanted that VLC doesn’t have, what do you mean by better?

        • orphiebaby@lemm.ee
          1·
          1 year ago

          I’m too sleepy to list them, but check it out. Right-click and check out the options, it’s like an explosion xD