After I install Linux Mint (which is the distro I have settled on), I replace:

  1. Thunderbird with Betterbird
  2. Firefox with Librewolf (I also install Brave for web services that need a chromium browser).
  3. Celluloid / Rythmbox with VLC player
  4. Default Libreoffice with latest Libreoffice from source.
  5. 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.

    • gi1242@lemmy.world
      12·
      6 days ago

      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 dysfunctional

      • bitcrafter
        4·
        6 days ago

        Yeah, 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.

  • hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    5615·
    6 days ago
    • Firefox -> Edge
    • Libreoffice -> Gsuite PWAs
    • kernel -> Azure Linux kernel (added trust of Microsoft)
    • nano -> vim
    • vi -> Emacs
    • GNOME -> Deepin
    • Bash -> Powershell >=7.0
      • Serge Matveenko@lemmings.worldEnglish
        6·
        5 days ago

        It just feels better and lighter. Also, autocomplete looks nicer. Devs are also amazing. They have a clear vision of the product. And Fish 4.0 had been rewritten in Rust. Now I just cannot go away:)

        • white_nrdy
          1·
          5 days ago

          I tried fish recently. Really wanted to like it. It was just hard to switch all if my environment setup stuff, since it isn’t POSIX.

          I’m sure if I had put more effort into it, it would be better. Other than env setup, I REALLY liked it. All the reasons you mentioned.

  • Buffalox@lemmy.world
    22·
    6 days ago

    As a former Windows SUPERUSER, I always change the desktop wallpaper, just to show off. 😋

    But jokes aside and apart from things already mentioned, I always install the Speedcrunch calculator, and xbindkeys so I can copy all my keyboard shortcuts.

  • chi-chan~@lemmy.world
    18·
    6 days ago

    Arch, so pretty much nothing.

    Except maybe ZSH (but it’s ‘added’, I guess; not ‘replaced’).

  • Knuschberkeks@leminal.space
    11·
    5 days ago

    cat > bat

    ls > exa

    (h)top > btop

    whatever terminal > alacritty

    whatever browser > librewolf + brave

    cli editor > micro

    app launcher > albert

    vlc > mpv

  • helmet91@lemmy.world
    181·
    6 days ago

    Nothing. I picked a distro that works for me out of the box. On top of that I only installed stuff, instead of replacing stuff.

    • sawdoctor@lemm.eeEnglish
      20·
      6 days ago

      Too many people concentrate on which distro when in fact it’s the desktop they choose that will have the biggest impact on their experience

    • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
      2·
      5 days ago

      Yeah this is me.

      I was reading these comments feeling as though I must be very odd until I got to yours.

      Debian comes with firefox ESR which I think is a good choice because it “just works”, but it’s also no one’s “preferred” browser. I tend to use both LibreWolf and ungoogled-chromium all day every day.

      I do use the terminal every day. Years ago I used oh-my-zsh for a while but I think eventually I just kind of didn’t bother to install it.

      For file manager and video player et cetera, I’ve always found the defaults to be good choices.

      • Isthisreddit@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        5 days ago

        I find most of the defaults are fine and get the job done, but I also understand the tinkerer types who like working on a super custom setup that’s theirs.

        I still use old big iron unix boxes from the 90’s, but most of the time I Install the GNU versions of stuff like ls, sed, cat etc because they are so much more feature rich (and just about any modern software/script assumes GNU versions of those tools anyway)

  • Libb@jlai.lu
    181·
    6 days ago

    Apps I replace with newer versions (on Mint too):

    1. LibreOffice, with the latest .deb from their website
    2. Celluloid, with mpv. I cannot tell how much I appreciate mpv even though it sucks with DVD, for which I use VLC ;)
    3. yt-dlp, with the latest version available from git
    4. Screenshot, with Ksnip.
    5. Whatever the default image viewer is, with Pix.
  • hersh@literature.cafe
    11·
    6 days ago

    There are a handful on non-default apps I’ve used across my last 3-4 distros at least:

    • mpv - the best video player, period. Minimalist UI, maximalist configuration options. I’ve been using it for many years across many OSes and at this point everything else feels wrong.

    • Geany - My favorite GUI text editor on Linux.

    • Foliate - the simplest eBook reader I’ve found.

    • Strawberry - It’s “fine”. Honestly, I’ve never found a music player on Linux that I really liked. I keep falling back to Strawberry because it’s familiar and generally works as expected.

  • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
    153·
    6 days ago

    Celluloid is honestly better than VLC. Native Wayland, Pipewire, no filesystem permissions (Flatpak)

    I am on Fedora Kinoite, I replaced Kwrite with Kate, all the other default KDE apps are great. Okular, Gwenview as Flatpak, and apart from that a mix of different KDE, GNOME or 3rd party apps as Flatpaks.

    I made a list here, but it is a bit outdated

    https://github.com/boredsquirrel/recommended-flatpak-apps

    • edinbruh@feddit.it
      10·
      6 days ago

      Celluloid does much less than vlc, why not just using mpv (which celluloid uses as backend) so you have a full player

      • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
        2·
        5 days ago

        Celluloid can play music and videos, online video streams etc. It has support for MPV config files.

        MPV uses X11 only afaik, so it relies on XWayland. It also likely has no portal and pipewire support.

        So no MPV is not a “full player”

  • Thadah D. Denyse@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    11·
    6 days ago

    I usually replace these:

    1. Bash with Fish
    2. Neofetch (if there is) with Fastfetch+Hyfetch
    3. Firefox with Floorp
    4. Mkinitcpio with Dracut
    5. GRUB with systemd-boot