After I install Linux Mint (which is the distro I have settled on), I replace:
- Thunderbird with Betterbird
- Firefox with Librewolf (I also install Brave for web services that need a chromium browser).
- Celluloid / Rythmbox with VLC player
- Default Libreoffice with latest Libreoffice from source.
- ClipIt/Parcellite with xfce4-clipman
I find this to be my optimal setup and these software give me the extra quality of life that make my workflows easier.
What software do you replace and install on your distro of choice?
Edit: I forgot to say I replace sudo with doas. That’s something my friend told me to do although I personally don’t find any immediate working advantage with it.
I leave Firefox installed, but I download and use Chrome. Chrome is much faster than Firefox in many websites I use (not only youtube where Google might be using a secret sauce, but also Photopea and other js-heavy websites). Also, Chrome is using way less RAM than Firefox. I have a bunch of older laptops with 4 GB of RAM, so these “small” differences in speed between the two browsers is VERY evident on these older computers (not so easily seen on very fast PCs). Many people don’t like me writing all that, and often downvote me for having written that in the past, but it’s god’s honest truth. I looked into installing a totally degoogled chromium, but it’s not updated asap for security updates, so it’s a no-go for me.
I also prefer VLC for videos, and OnlyOffice instead of LibreOffice (better MS compatibility). Also, because it’s Linux Mint and comes preinstalled with warpinator, I prefer LocalSend instead of Warpinator. Easier to use.
Yeah, I used Chrome up until extremely recently because genuinely no browser Just Works to the extent Chrome does.
Fast, good media codec support, Web API support for hardware access for PWAs, doesn’t lock up w/ a lot of tabs (post-quantum FF is better about this, but not quite there), excellent DevTools, and just generally snappier and more polished than even chromium.
I switched to firefox recently exclusively for better home-manager support, and other than the ability to use home-manager more easily, it’s just a slightly slower and jankier experience at all times whether it’s requiring transcode for Jellyfin, laggy WebGL performance, janky DevTools, or missing WebAPIs.
What about regular Chromium? Pretty much exactly like Chrome but open source and with less google (still a bunch, otherwise ungoogled chromium wouldn’t exist). Also one question to the RAM part, is the amount of available RAM actually slowing down other applications? Because Firefox reserves a proportionally larger part of RAM than Chromium so the amount of available RAM shown in the taskmanager is larger, but a larger part of RAM can be freed if required. Also in benchmarks (and my experience) Brave is faster and lighter than Chrome and updates within 24h of Chromuim security fixes, also open source and more privacy friendly, so why not use that?
Chromium is ok in my opinion, but it’s also a few days away from getting updated in the repo for security updates. I don’t like Brave because of its crypto ties.
As for RAM, on low RAM machines Firefox is hitting the swap way earlier than Chrome/ium does. It really is a problem on low end PCs. It’s definitely not as optimized. And it’s not juset the RAM, as I explained, it’s just slower. I use Photopea to edit photos, and there’s an order of magnitude difference in speed on a PC with about 4000 passmark cpu points (and some of my laptops have only 500 points!!). Probably not noticeable on fast machines (machines with over 10k passmark points). Also, where Firefox could do 480p without dropping frames on youtube, Chrome can do 720p on the same video. So for slow machines, I’ll always suggest chrome/ium. For fast PCs, I guess it doesn’t really matter what you choose.
I doubt you’re getting downvoted for saying that chrome is faster than firefox, but for the irony of using Linux with a Chromium based browser, while being on lemmy.
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Chromium, while open source, is controlled by Google and a lot of browsers (Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera, Samsung Android, Vivaldi) are built on it, giving it a market share of around 75%.
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Electron apps are frameworks based on Chromium (ie VSCode).
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Google is evil and with Manifest V3, Adblockers like uBlock Origin, will eventually stop working for all derivatives (even for Vivaldi).
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The future: Because Chromium got the de facto monopoly there is no need for Firefox support anymore and the big corpos (ie Microsoft is a sucker for Chromium/Electron) can turn what’s left of the “old” Internet into apps without the ability to block ads or tracking.
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No “?”, just Profit.
I’m aware of all these things, and I agree with you. But the FACT remains: Chrome works on a 2 or 4 GB old laptop much faster and with less ram than Firefox. The one thing you don’t want in your desktop experience is to be hitting the swap constantly, because your hdd or ssd will be killed very fast, and the experience will just be slow. The whole point of removing Windows from these laptops is to find efficient software that will bring a new life to them, instead of ending up in a landfill. And that means the following:
- For PCs with 4 GB of ram, Linux Mint is the best choice (or with XFce if the cpu is slow, or with debian+xfce if the ssd is only 16 gb as in some chromebooks).
- For PCs with 2 GB of ram, Q4OS is the best choice. It has the best balance between low ram usage and a cohesive DE with good desktop preferences (it’s a fork of KDE 3.5).
But in both cases, Chrome/ium is the best case, because it’s, a. Faster, b. Uses less ram.
What do you want me to do about it? Change the status quo? Stop using it and go with firefox regardless, even if it ends up in an abysmal desktop experience and dead ssds? Why should I do that? The people I install Linux for them on their old laptops want a good desktop experience to replace their now slow Windows, they don’t care if it’s Linux or Gnu/linux. Now tell me, it’s still my fault for people dowvoting?
There is no irony. Like, at all. Ironically Firefox is de facto controlled by the evil Google, the very evil Google which pays a huge share of Mozilla’s bills. Also, MV3 is a non-issue for in-built adblockers, as these are not extensions. You people often (and conveniently) seem to forget this detail.
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Just disable votes on your profile. People sometimes can’t accept someone not being part of the herd.
Which is really funny, since I use Linux since 1998. It’s just that I don’t follow cults.
Same. I use what works better for me. That’s all.
Found myself replacing the broken file roller flatpak by the file roller from thr APT repo.
The desktop linux feels more and more like windows as time goes on. The things that worked fine for years are being broken in new and innovative ways.
I don’t replace anything. I just install what I need from the beginning.
And yes, I run Arch btw. :D
switched to nixos after a decade on arch. What does “default software” mean? :D
Systemd?
lol ditto. but the first thing I do on new installs is
chsh /bin/zsh, replace caps lock with control and enable vi keys. otherwise I’m dysfunctionalYeah, there is nothing more annoying in general when starting to type text into a co-workers desktop than having random letters show up rather than having the cursor move around.
Firefox with Brave and Chromium.
Tell that to Mozilla.
How do you pronounce your pronouns?
zee, zem, zeir.
Yeah. I also uninstall Thunderbird and install wine, outlook, and internet explorer
/s
Rustdesk, so I can remote into my main computer and the others I manage.
PWAs For Firefox.
And that’s about it.
I use Debian BTW. (Was on Fedora but killed it when there were sound issues, turned out to Rustdesk at fault. Can’t do Mint as it boots to black screen.)
I install the minimal version and go from there.
I stared using Zen Browser instead of Firefox lately and i find it really good.
deleted by creator
There are dozens of us. Dozens!
It’s so good! I love the design right out of the box, with very few settings adjustments.
Note that zen currently only has vertical tabs (horizontal tabs are on the roadmap). If horizontal tabs are a must, try Floorp browser instead, which has several similarities with Zen.
- bash -> fish
- default text editor (like Kate) -> geany
- firefox -> firefox-esr
- chromium -> ungoogled-chromium
- nano -> micro
- top -> htop, btop
- default PDF reader -> Okular
- nano -> nvim
fixed that for you
Stop.
Everyone has their own preferences.
No judging here.Yeah, fair point tbh, my bad
Yeah, but some people have the wrong preferences /s
Do you really replace bash though? I also use fish but even as a relatively deranged minimalist I haven’t removed bash as it has so many dependents.
Replacing doesn’t mean removing in this case.
It still needed for the system scripts, etc.More like fish is my daily driver, bash if needed (I can write a script in bash faster then in fish).
Personally I wouldn’t call that replacing. But that’s probably because I am a deranged minimalist. I can’t answer this thread because technically I didn’t remove anything that my installation started out with.
I remove anything by KDE and find an alternative from the 21st century.
I also install Janus as my text file editor, which is a Windows Notepad clone.
What is your KDE alternative from the 21st century?
Can’t be Gnome or Xfce, they’re both from the 20th.cinnamon or something
bash -> fish
Arch, so pretty much nothing.
Except maybe ZSH (but it’s ‘added’, I guess; not ‘replaced’).
VLC player with mpv
Ooh, not a “hot take” answer. I rather like MusikCube. It plays nice with putting my music on my NAS and running it from both my personal machines and my Windows/work machine too. I’m not specifically excited by it as a TUI, but it also works just fine as a basic-'03-iTunes-style-navigation clone. It’s super boring in the most usable of ways.
My more “hot take” answer is that I replace the terminal program in Fedora with the boring arsed “Gnome Console” from vanilla Gnome. It does all the stuff I want it to do and nothing more. If I was slightly more different than me I might be upset that it doesn’t do enough terminal things but I’m just me. :)
The default terminal (varies) gets switched to Kitty. VLC to MPV.
Okular instead of the default PDF editor (varies).
Text editor (varies) to Vim.
I usually just install Arkenfox, but if I’m feeling lazy I’ll use Librewolf.
I prefer doas, but I don’t usually switch to it.
I rebind my caps lock key (most useless key ever) to escape.
- VLC with SMPlayer. I don’t understand why they keep shipping VLC as default. It sucks.
- Kate with KWrite.
- Nano with Vim in *buntu variants
- Elisa, Rhythmbox, etc. with Strawberry. Although I mostly just use Spotify nowadays.
- Calculator with calc.
Everything else works just fine, unless the distro made an insane choice like having XTerm as the default terminal emulator.
save you a little changes here, Kate and Kwrite are now combined as one install… When you install one you get the other as they are no longer separate packages.
If you haven’t tried it the repl python is pretty in a pretty good calculator. Use “_” to use the output value.
