I know some of you have gone complies FOSS, but I believe if the developer wants to make money from their apps, there’s noting wrong with it, as long as they are ethical. So what are your favorite non-foss apps?
I really love PowerPoint. I feel like the automatic snapping features and general polish allow me to make very pretty slides and diagrams with a high level of control, and it feels way better to use than e.g. web-based alternatives. Admittedly, I haven’t tried a foss alternative in years.
I’m going to take “favourite” at face value, i.e. that I actually like, not just that I am forced to use because the alternative doesn’t exist (e.g. my bank’s app or the post-office’s app) or isn’t viable (PDF editors on Android).
Libby, the lending library app. I could avoid it and stick to physical media and piracy, but it’s a well-designed app with a decent catalogue and given that it’s a library and not me purchasing DRMed files, I found the ethical proposition there tolerable.
Workflowy and Teuxdeux are two web apps where I spend an embarrassingly large amount of my time online. I wish there were FOSS alternatives because I would happily contribute features and fixes to the issues I bump into in my daily usage.
Sesame Shortcuts. I know there are launcher with similar tools included, but I also use Nova Launcher and paid for it. I’ve been thinking to migrate to alternatives, but I haven’t done it yet.
Microsoft To Do. The alternatives are incomplete, ugly or don’t have the same capabilities. I’d gladly pay for any FOSS and Privacy respectful To Do app, but I guess setting up sync servers may be hard. I’ll give a try for tasks.org again in some days.
I’m glad I don’t get to say Notion anymore, Anytype.io is missing some features, but I can manage to live without them and Notion was getting worse with time.
Renoise is an excellent tracker-based DAW with Linux support (you still have to find Linux-compatible VSTs though). It changed the way I write music.
EDIT: I know there are FOSS trackers like MilkyTracker. If you want an alternative, I can recommend it, even though it doesn’t offer the same amount of features as Renoise (e.g. VST or effect support).
Steam and Discord. They are the only non-foss apps that I use basically every single day. I’m trying to wean myself off Discord specifically, but I have so many communities on there that aren’t on FOSS alternatives, and the FOSS alternatives like Matrix chat and such just don’t cut it for me yet.
Plus literally all my friends I game with and chat with are on Discord and almost none of them are even slightly interested in migrating anywhere else.
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