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Ask HN: what are examples of successful "open-source alternatives"?

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Re: Ask HN: what are examples of successful "open-source alternatives"?

#81

Post by mrcsharp »

ray_v wrote: post #80
mrcsharp wrote: post #77

With how anti-consumer the recent Plex moves have been, Jellyfin [1] has gotten really popular among self-hosting community. It is arguably the best alternative to Plex in terms of features and the amount of freedom given to the user. [1] https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin

Plex really does have a lot going for it with the really nice Apps -- Plexamp works especially well with large music libraries. I hadn't used Jellyfin in some time, but I went to set it up last week, and it's still not as simple as Plex is. Really wish the Jellyfin folks would put together a docker compose setup that run nginx and lets encrypt for example.

Jellyfin has its own apps plus a few other community-built ones like finamp[1] and findroid[2] which I personally use a lot.

I would argue that setting up nginx or other reverse proxy servers is outside the scope of Jellyfin. That is an infrastructure concern that is usually going to be very unique to your setup.

I, for example, use Traefik as my reverse proxy which requires a different set of configurations to get it working with Jellyfin. I don't expect the Jellyfin team to provide a guide for every reverse proxy. It would be nice, but I can see how this is out of their scope.

[1] https://github.com/jmshrv/finamp [2] https://github.com/jarnedemeulemeester/findroid

Re: Ask HN: what are examples of successful "open-source alternatives"?

#82

Post by poikroequ »

ray_v wrote: post #80
mrcsharp wrote: post #77

With how anti-consumer the recent Plex moves have been, Jellyfin [1] has gotten really popular among self-hosting community. It is arguably the best alternative to Plex in terms of features and the amount of freedom given to the user. [1] https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin

Plex really does have a lot going for it with the really nice Apps -- Plexamp works especially well with large music libraries. I hadn't used Jellyfin in some time, but I went to set it up last week, and it's still not as simple as Plex is. Really wish the Jellyfin folks would put together a docker compose setup that run nginx and lets encrypt for example.

Look up a container called SWAG, it has an nginx template for jellyfin and lots of other services.

Re: Ask HN: what are examples of successful "open-source alternatives"?

#84

Post by poikroequ »

haunter wrote: post #61

Early days torrent scene ran on proprietary adware clients like BitTorrent itself, µTorrent, and BitComet but nowadays open source clients are more popular and recommended by most trackers. I'm on a pretty big private tracker and almost everyone (+95%) is using qBittorrent, Transmission, or rTorrent. Though Vuze was also one of the earliest clients and it's also open source for some reasons it never really became pop…

While it's been known as Vuze for a long time now, it was originally known as Azureus. It was pretty popular at one point. Then uTorrent came out which was super lightweight in comparison, so it quickly gained popularity... at least before it became riddled with adware.

Java clients were typically very bloated on older PCs, and Vuze was no exception.

Re: Ask HN: what are examples of successful "open-source alternatives"?

#85

Post by coffeebeqn »

constantinum wrote: post #79

For photo editing and manipulation 1) https://www.gimp.org/ 2) https://www.digikam.org/ 3) https://www.darktable.org/ Vector based editing tool 1) https://inkscape.org/ Desktop publishing https://www.scribus.net/

Fairly well known on HN by now but Krita is also excellent lightweight and simple image editor and painting app like Photoshop was 20 years ago https://krita.org/en/

Re: Ask HN: what are examples of successful "open-source alternatives"?

#89

Post by thecrash »

alganet wrote: post #60

A "SaaS app" is something rather new. In the old times (early 2000s), you would buy some proprietary server code and get a consultant to install/maintain it for you. I think vBulletin still operates on this model, although they now offer it as a service too. phpBB is the oldest alternative to vBulletin, there are plenty. Eventually all these CMSs from the 2000s were cloned and freed in some way or another. Our "SaaS"…

It's because the SaaS offerings are free and good quality. Reddit, Slack, Medium, Etsy, etc are better experiences than self hosting for most use cases.

This isn't permanent, though - these services are getting enshittified and the FOSS alternatives are gradually improving. I think you're right that it takes time and a tipping point will eventually be reached just as it was in the 2010s.

Re: Ask HN: what are examples of successful "open-source alternatives"?

#90

Post by entrepy123 »

MitPitt wrote: post #37
entrepy123 wrote: post #28

DokuWiki. This database-free FOSS wiki engine [1] with a focus on simplicity is 19 years old, still gets updated, has useful plugins [2] for additional features, is a great choice for many uses, has adopters that use and love it, and has an estimated 50,000-250,000 installations [3]. As someone wrote, "DokuWiki is and will remain king for many simple reasons" [4]. [1] https://www.dokuwiki.org [2] https://www.dokuwiki…

How does it compare to MediaWiki, another very old and very extensive engine?

They are just different animals.

Compared to MediaWiki, DokuWiki is "simpler" all around and more lightweight. Simpler in visual design, simpler in how data is stored, simpler in most regards.

But in practical use, they are actually pretty close in many ways. DokuWiki is almost like a thoughtfully pared-down (from the start) MediaWiki-like wiki system.

DokuWiki still sticks pretty closely to normative wiki conventions about how a wiki "should" (is expected to) work (a la MediaWiki or maybe even as far back as WikiWikiWeb). Visit a non-existing address allows to create a new page; pages use some succinct syntax (which maybe can be replaced for Markdown using some plugin); pages look just fine on web or mobile; etc.

Also, the stored data of MediaWiki is arguably more immediately portable (and perhaps more immediately accessible just after a disaster, so long as there was a backup), since it is just a hierarchy of text files. There is no database to administrate in DokuWiki.

Granted, MediaWiki is a de facto standard. But this does not make it the only sane choice.

If you spin up and make some content in 2 or 3 different wikis, you will see that they have different strengths and weaknesses. There are a lot of interesting and great wiki systems. MediaWiki and DokuWiki are among the greats. There are obviously others, too, and people love different ones, which is wonderful. The more the better.

Some a fair-ish comparisons seem to be at https://www.wikimatrix.org/compare/dokuwiki+mediawiki and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wiki_software

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