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.

  • Strit
    110•8 days ago

    I don’t replace anything. I just install what I need from the beginning.

    And yes, I run Arch btw. :D

    • @gi1242@lemmy.world
      16•8 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@programming.dev
        6•8 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.

    • @breezelbub
      2•7 days ago

      switched to nixos after a decade on arch. What does “default software” mean? :D

      • Serge MatveenkoEnglish
        7•7 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:)

      • @flameguy21@lemm.eeEnglish
        2•6 days ago

        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.

  • @Buffalox@lemmy.world
    23•8 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.

  • @helmet91@lemmy.world
    20•8 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
      24•8 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•7 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
        1•7 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)

  • chi-chan~
    19•7 days ago

    Arch, so pretty much nothing.

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

  • Libb
    17•8 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.
      • Libb
        6•8 days ago
        1. I remove the preinstalled version (sudo apt remove yt-dlp)
        2. In my ~/.local, I have a ‘bin’ folder in which to put any manually added app, and in my .bashrc I added that folder to the path. So everything in it is usable.
        3. I download the latest binary from https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp#release-files and moved it to that bin folder.
        4. Done. I can use it like if it was the pre-installed app ;)
          • LibbEnglish
            4•7 days ago

            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.

    • Fonzie!
      2•6 days ago

      Celluloid, with mpv

      Hard agree, also SM Player for the FE

      Whatever the default image viewer is

      xviewer, it’s built on top of eog

      with Pix

      Is 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.

      • LibbEnglish
        2•6 days ago

        s 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 ;)

  • @Knuschberkeks@leminal.space
    16•7 days ago

    cat > bat

    ls > exa

    (h)top > btop

    whatever terminal > alacritty

    whatever browser > librewolf + brave

    cli editor > micro

    app launcher > albert

    vlc > mpv

    • @ams@lemmy.ml
      3•7 days ago

      Similar to yours:

      bash > fish
      cat > bat -p
      ls > lsd
      df > dysk
      top > glances
      firefox > qutebrowser

          • @AliasAKA@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3•6 days ago

            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).

          • Fonzie!
            1•6 days ago

            I’m wondering moreso why everyone is running both LibreWolf and Brave.

            Firefox >>>>>>> Chrome so LibreWolf > Brave, no?

            • @sudoer777@lemmy.ml
              1•6 days ago

              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.

              • Fonzie!
                1•5 days ago

                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.

  • @Matombo@feddit.org
    15•6 days ago

    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.

  • @zarkanian@sh.itjust.works
    14•7 days ago
    • 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
    • Dizzy Devil DuckyEnglish
      1•6 days ago

      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.

    • @cy_narrator@discuss.tchncs.de
      -5•7 days ago

      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

      • Mike
        7•7 days ago

        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.