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 install the minimal version and go from there.
- Firefox -> Edge
- Libreoffice -> Gsuite PWAs
- kernel -> Azure Linux kernel (added trust of Microsoft)
- nano -> vim
- vi -> Emacs
- GNOME -> Deepin
- Bash -> Powershell >=7.0
nano -> vim
This one is extremely consistent with the others because once you have made the switch, it becomes harder to escape.
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!
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
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)
I usually replace these:
- Bash with Fish
- Neofetch (if there is) with Fastfetch+Hyfetch
- Firefox with Floorp
- Mkinitcpio with Dracut
- GRUB with systemd-boot
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.
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.
- Clementine - music player
- yakuake - terminal
- fish - command line
- Geany - text editor
- eza - replacement for ls
- zoxide - replacement for cd
- bat - replacement for cat
- Librewolf - replacement for Firefox
- Brave - replacement for Chromium
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.
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?
Most people dont use dark mode on Linux because most apps look horrible in Linux under dark mode
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.
Arch, so pretty much nothing.
Except maybe ZSH (but it’s ‘added’, I guess; not ‘replaced’).
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!)
pdf reader with okular
Love to replace Systemd. What.a.piece.of.shit.
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.
I’ve recently started using https://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
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 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!
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.
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.
