I used Plex for my home media for almost a year, then it stopped playing nice for reasons I gave up on diagnosing. While looking at alternatives, I found Jellyfin which is much more responsive, IMO, and the UI is much nicer as well.

It gets relegated to playing Fraggle Rock and Bluey on repeat for my kiddo these days, but I am absolutely in love with the software.

What are some other FOSS gems that are a better experience UX/UI-wise than their proprietary counterparts?

EDIT: Autocorrect turned something into “smaller” instead of what I meant it to be when I wrote this post, and I can’t remember what I meant for it to say so it got axed instead.

  • TWeaKEnglish
    15•8 months ago
    1. XBMC forked off into Plex. Plex introduced a far better UI.
    2. XBMC became Kodi. Kodi learned from Plex.
    3. Jellyfin came along and learned from both of them.

    So I don’t think you can really criticise Plex too much here. They were perhaps getting complacent and they’ve definitely been shown up, but they were an important step to where we are now.

    • @cujo@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      3•8 months ago

      I disagree, I think it’s still perfectly reasonable to criticize Plex. Specifically for that complacency. Just because they were an important step to getting where we are does not mean they are above reproach.

      Besides, I wasn’t really criticizing Plex? All I said was that I prefer the UI/UX in Jellyfin, and that Jellyfin is still “Just Working” where Plex failed for reasons unknown. Plex isn’t bad, I enjoyed using it while I did. I just found something FOSS to take it’s place. 🙂

      • TWeaKEnglish
        5•8 months ago

        You definitely can criticise them, but yeah maybe that word is too strong for what we’re describing here. I just meant that it isn’t all that unusual that Plex have fallen behind, there’s an ebb and flow to development - but it’s very nice that the FOSS offering is in the lead.