Which default software do you replace after you install your distro?
from Maroon@lemmy.world to linux@lemmy.ml on 30 Dec 11:08
https://lemmy.world/post/23699709
from Maroon@lemmy.world to linux@lemmy.ml on 30 Dec 11:08
https://lemmy.world/post/23699709
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.
threaded - newest
I don’t replace anything. I just install what I need from the beginning.
And yes, I run Arch btw. :D
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.
I install the minimal version and go from there.
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 uninstall Firefox and install Brave and Chromium.
<img alt="" src="https://feddit.nl/pictrs/image/3d329680-bd31-4e14-a9dc-db1074114689.png">
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
I know it’s /s, but if it worked for you, cool.
Apps I replace with newer versions (on Mint too):
mpv FTW!
how do you personally install yt-dlp? I just use pip(x).
Ah cool, that’s exactly where pipx installs to as well :3
Jesus that explains why I’ve never used this. Pip is a security issue.
Not sure to understand your remark: I don’t use pip and have no idea what risks it could represent or not.
Hard agree, also SM Player for the FE
xviewer, it’s built on top ofeogIs that no longer pre-installed, at least for camera imports?
It was on 17-20.3 but I don’t think I’ve done a clean (re)install since.
I could not swear, one or the other. Let’s just say I make it my default viewer instead ;)
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.
Edit: just as predicted, downvotes. People seem to prefer a live in a lie. Do your own tests guys before you press the trigger!
Just disable votes on your profile. People sometimes can’t accept someone not being part of the herd. Which is something really funny, as Linux is (or should be) freedom of choice first of all.
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.
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.
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%.
Electron apps are frameworks based on Chromium (ie VSCode).
Google is evil and with Manifest V3, Adblockers like uBlock Origin, will eventually stop working for all derivatives (even for Vivaldi).
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.
No “?”, just Profit.
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.
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:
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?
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.
I stared using Zen Browser instead of Firefox lately and i find it really good.
Zen browser gang 🗣️
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.
fixed that for you
Stop.
Everyone has their own preferences.
No judging here.
Yeah, but some people have the wrong preferences /s
Yeah, fair point tbh, my bad
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
Love to replace Systemd. What.a.piece.of.shit.
Wouldn’t it be easier to use a distro that is built without it in the first place?
Massively so. I sincerely doubt their post was serious.
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.
I think you forgot to add /s
Probably should have added yeah. Based on the amount of downvotes, some people took it too seriously
I still can’t get why people should downvote your comment, but fine.
Nah, I’m just bored of pointless sarcastic replies being at the top. It’s bloat!
Thanks for the explanation. I was hoping it was this instead of “I disagree!”
This one is extremely consistent with the others because once you have made the switch, it becomes harder to escape.
I’ve recently started using www.nushell.sh, and while it’s not bash compatible, which can lead to some annoyances, it’s really excellent for working with terminal data in a clean and useful manner
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
github.com/…/recommended-flatpak-apps
Celluloid does much less than vlc, why not just using mpv (which celluloid uses as backend) so you have a full player
TIL there’s a frontend for MPV. Nice.
SM Player is a good one IMO; you can skin it to look good, plus it has much more features and shortcuts, also I like that it automatically grabs the subtitle file next to an MP4
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”
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.
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
KDE <3
I prefer KDE >3
Is KDE 3 so bad that people only prefer <3 or >3, but never =3?
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.
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)
Fish for shell everywhere
Any specific features made you go fish over others like zsh?
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:)
I use fish instead of zsh just because it has all the nice stuff without having to set anything up. Helix over Neovim is pretty nice for this too.
Isn’t that just one of the perks of Linux? Unlike windows where your pretty much forced to use Microsoft software on Linux you have a plethora of choices.
You can choose pretty much whichever Desktop you want, whichever default packages you want you can even choose between Default, Snap, Flatpak, app image and build from source.
There’s no one size fits all on Linux, we all have our own unique set up
I usually replace these:
Why systemd-boot? I don’t know much about it. But I’ve heard it’s faster?
It’s mostly personal choice but I find it easier to configure and it’s certainly more lightweight and faster than GRUB (although probably not by a noticeable amount). Since I don’t need BIOS support I prefer to use it.
I have a script that makes a list of every package and binary into an output file of packages as a list. I can just cat the output of the file in a subshell and pass that off to
pacman -S. Pacman might complain here and there, but I can just edit the list. Then its justcp -rmy config files that I’ve backed up and run my backups for movies, music, pics, games, etc.And yeah, it’s not perfect, but it’s good enough for me. I still have to do other stuff like switch out bash for zsh, etc. Gotta love bash scripts and backup configs though. That plus actual backups makes restoration from catastrophic failure at least bearable, albeit still time consuming.
There isn’t much in a default Gentoo install to replace. In most of the cases where a decision is possible, you make it during the install process. Thus, I have nothing to remove afterwards (but a lot to add!)
Terminal -> foot Text editor -> neovim, or more recently I’ve been trying Helix.
Those are the biggest two. I also recommend mpv over VLC.
pdf reader with okular
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.
I’m still struggle to unclear typing vlc, but MPV works so much better
Have you tried DeaDBeeF? It’s the most similar to foobar2k coming from Windows.
Arch, so pretty much nothing.
Except maybe ZSH (but it’s ‘added’, I guess; not ‘replaced’).
bash -> fish
I definitely do the Firefox to LibreWolf (and also install Brave as a backup). I also replace the default video player with Haruna and VLC (but default to Haruna). I change music players all the time so I just replace the default with whatever I feel like using at the time. In the past I’ve replaced Thunderbird with KMail, but on my latest install I left Thunderbird alone since I like having available RAM.
Konsole - kitty Firefox - librewolf Bash - fish Juk - mpv
Gnome Files with Thunar.
It’s the perfect file manager for a user like me.
Nautilus is abomination in the file browser. Except maybe deepin’s
I wonder who’s even using these built in video players, no subtitle support, barely any keyboard shortcuts, trash like windows media player
I use gentoo: I only install what I like/want/need…
Firefox gets switched to Zen Browser (and before that, Floorp).
I also always download Okular for PDFs. It always seems to be better than whatever the default is.
I typically also substitute OnlyOffice for Libra Office.
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.
Doas has a readable config file and it is easier to add an user. To answer your question On an MX install.
Xfwm -> bspwm
Dont remember -> nsxiv
Don’t remember -> mpv
Featherpad -> Mousepad
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 replace Spectacle with Flameshot.
I choose what I want when I install. I use Arch btw
cat > bat
ls > exa
(h)top > btop
whatever terminal > alacritty
whatever browser > librewolf + brave
cli editor > micro
app launcher > albert
vlc > mpv
Similar to yours:
bash > fish
cat > bat -p
ls > lsd
df > dysk
top > glances
firefox > qutebrowser
cd > zoxide
didn’t know about that one, thank you
Why hate for librewolf?
read carefully, he’s replacing whatever browser with librewolf or brave
ups, stupid me, but why then love for brave?
I’m wondering moreso why everyone is running both LibreWolf and Brave.
Firefox >>>>>>> Chrome so LibreWolf > Brave, no?
Idk what people need Brave for, the only Chromium-only site I came across this entire year was the GrapheneOS web installer. LibreWolf is completely free of ads and tracking though so it’s better than Brave. Firefox’s news feed has been suspiciously similar to stuff I’ve browsed and it has ads also so I don’t trust FF either.
Hm now I think of it, I’ve ran into a website telling me to use Chrome or Edge before, but changing the UA string fixed everything.
Seems like websites are discriminate against browsers sooner then that they actually don’t work on one.
Firefox based browsers don’t as far as I know support protocols direct to usb connections, so if you’re using a web app based application (for example, some keyboard software) to flash your layouts you need a chromium based browser, and people generally choose brave over chrome (though I think it would be 100% fine to use chromium with hardening but that’s difficult with some of the upstream changes making chrome extension store less helpful — built in mitigations upstream as found in brave may be helpful in this regard, and faster).
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. :)
I still haven’t found a web service that really needs a chrome browser or that you cant’ just trick with changing the user agent
Everything else works just fine, unless the distro made an insane choice like having XTerm as the default terminal emulator.
If you haven’t tried it the repl python is pretty in a pretty good calculator. Use “_” to use the output value.
I don’t use calc for much more than basic calculations. Even speedcrunch was too much for my taste. Honestly, I’d use bc if it wasn’t for the complicated syntax.
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.
Yeah, I just meant I switch the default from Kate to KWrite
I use MPV as movie and general media player with my custom config as well as auto-crop and URI copy/paste scripts. It works better than any other media player I tried in the last 10 years. I only use VLC for DVD menus, but it sucks even at that task, because the cursor gets stuck and the menus lag even when playing from SSD folder.
I use Tauon Music Box as music player because of its design, easy playlist/library customizability and Jellyfin integration. I also pay for spotify and use spicetify with custom skins if the songs are available there.
Kröhnkite as real auto-tiling solution with KDE Plasma.
But I’m on Arch btw., so there is not much default software apart from what the KDE meta packages contain.
VLC player with mpv
Firefox with (used to) Vivaldi, but now Zen Oh. That’s it. Everything else for me is default
I replace ARCH with Windows 11 bloat edition. I use windows 11 BTW
I use Windows 11 inside of a Gentoo vm inside of Windows 10 on my ipad.
Huh I bare metal run proxmox virtualising my LFS to start a gentoo VM where I have my XP VM I remote into with my phone
Yasuke for Terminal because he was a sole black man in Japan of his time. Just like Terminal program is solely black as compared to most other apps.
Most people dont use dark mode on Linux because most apps look horrible in Linux under dark mode
Oh wow, cool story about Yasuke. Is that where Yakuake got its name from?
Among my friends, dark mode users hugely outnumber light mode users, I really don’t have any apps that struggle to support it. LibreOffice used to be really bad, but I don’t really edit documents anymore, so I don’t use it often, but when I do, I don’t see issues (although the document background is white, because paper, so the contrast is a bit weird). I’m curious about which apps didn’t work for you.
Code::Blocks is the worst offender
What I heard is that it comes from Yet Another Quake (terminal), which comes from a tradition in programming of naming an application “Yet Another (something)”, and they changed the Q to a K because KDE.
When I installed MX KDE on my laptop, I found out about yakuake as it was installed by default. I always use it almost immediately whenever I log in to run my update script. Saves a few extra seconds to just press f4 rather than click the terminal icon and then type. Absolutely love it.
Wait? Why cat needs replacing? Do you have a link for bat?
Here you go.
Interesting.
I wonder if it’ll work with lsp, when it sends data to pager. I’ll start testing this out.
EDIT: Whoa… 23megs for cat clone. Rust projects do have a whole lot of dependecies. I counted crates 128 for this.
Oh well. I’ll start compiling.
I replace the <default, slow, annoying to use> image viewer with qimgv, which is ergonomic and very fast.
First thing I install is git, followed by emacs.
Then I download my init.el and my PC setup is complete.
I didn’t see this one yet:
apt -> nala
Though I think it’s technically just a wrapper, the colour support and formatting makes things much easier to parse (visually)
It’s not quite as fancy as nala, but apt also has colour support since 2.9.
Mind blown!
Firefox -> Zen Browser
Default terminal -> Kitty
I think one of the few default things I’ve technically replaced on my laptop right now is Libreoffice’s powerpoint software with the OpenOffice one because I am too dumb to figure out how to make it so Libreoffice’s powerpoint software doesn’t immediately default to every character having basically 0 spacing between each other every time I either make a new document or slide. That, and I can almost never find the right number of points to make the text look good no matter the font.
Also, I do have the Librewolf appimage, but I use it a little less than my slightly tweaked default Firefox install.
Otherwise I’m normally fine with defaults, besides installing gridplayer to watch things off my external HD so I can watch and resize my shows in a way I can’t with other video players.
Defaults hehe
I use arch btw
well arch defaults are just a terminal with very little tooling
Bash with fish and GCC with Clang.
Kinda in the Pop!_OS - NixOS club but Zen Browser here.
Arch master race: you don’t have to replace defaults if nom defaults are isntalled in the first place and you choose everything our own anyways.
Bahah as other dude said I don’t replace anything cus I’m on arch btw, but I often tend to remove the default web browser whenever i run a vm or somethinf cus base Firefox isn’t my thing, its far too dull for me. I rock ff forks like zen browser, librewolf, icecat, and mullvad. Currently on zen.
On Ubuntu, replacing Firefox/Thunderbird snap version with actual deb version.
I don’t. I install a distro with sane defaults and get to work.
KDE Neon - I replace the Firefox deb with the snap.
sysvinitwithopenrc-initelogindwithseatdYes. I run Gentoo.
Replaced alacritty with ghostty
Fish With Zsh (Fish not being posix got annoying)
The distro am using comes with not too much apps so yeah thats it
I also replace Firefox with LibreWolf and Brave! I don’t do much more than that though; I used to replace GNOME Software with Warehouse, but I eventually found it easier to just remove PackageKit and use Software to install my flatpaks (I still use Warehouse for changing flatpak settings).
i keep rhythmbox honestly because it helps me in organizing all my audio and music files and plus i don’t have to keep opening the file manager to change the music, i can just press the forward button and it changes track!!