Which default software do you replace after you install your distro?

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.

Defaults hehe

I use arch btw

Default terminal -> Kitty

I replace the <default, slow, annoying to use> image viewer with qimgv, which is ergonomic and very fast.

On Ubuntu, replacing Firefox/Thunderbird snap version with actual deb version.

Kinda in the Pop!_OS - NixOS club but Zen Browser here.

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!!

First thing I install is git, followed by emacs.

Then I download my init.el and my PC setup is complete.

I don’t. I install a distro with sane defaults and get to work.

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.

Firefox -> Zen Browser

Bash with fish and GCC with Clang.

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

• sysvinit with openrc-init
• elogind with seatd

Yes. I run Gentoo.

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.

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).

KDE Neon - I replace the Firefox deb with the snap.

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)

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

And yes, I run Arch btw. :D

• Firefox -> Edge
• Libreoffice -> Gsuite PWAs
• kernel -> Azure Linux kernel (added trust of Microsoft)
• nano -> vim
• vi -> Emacs
• GNOME -> Deepin
• Bash -> Powershell >=7.0

Fish for shell everywhere

I replace ARCH with Windows 11 bloat edition. I use windows 11 BTW

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.

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.

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.

Arch, so pretty much nothing.

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

bash -> fish

cat > bat

ls > exa

(h)top > btop

whatever terminal > alacritty

whatever browser > librewolf + brave

cli editor > micro

app launcher > albert

vlc > mpv

I'm a simple man, I see Brave mentioned in a positive light, I downvote.

• 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

I choose what I want when I install. I use Arch btw

I usually replace these:

1. Bash with Fish
2. Neofetch (if there is) with Fastfetch+Hyfetch
3. Firefox with Floorp
4. Mkinitcpio with Dracut
5. GRUB with systemd-boot

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

https://github.com/boredsquirrel/recommended-flatpak-apps

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 install the minimal version and go from there.

• bash -> fish
• default text editor (like Kate) -> geany
• firefox -> firefox-esr
• chromium -> ungoogled-chromium
• nano -> micro
• top -> htop, btop
• default PDF reader -> Okular

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

Gnome Files with Thunar.

It’s the perfect file manager for a user like me.

VLC player with mpv

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.)

pdf reader with okular

Firefox with (used to) Vivaldi, but now Zen Oh. That's it. Everything else for me is default

I stared using Zen Browser instead of Firefox lately and i find it really good.

Terminal -> foot Text editor -> neovim, or more recently I've been trying Helix.

Those are the biggest two. I also recommend mpv over VLC.

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!)

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

• bash -> zsh
• Gnome terminal -> Ghostty/Alacritty
• Adwaita -> My custom adwaita build with smaller sizes
• Default UI/Mono Font -> Inter/Meslo
• Default browser -> Zen Browser

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.

Konsole - kitty Firefox - librewolf Bash - fish Juk - mpv

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.

I use gentoo: I only install what I like/want/need...

I replace Spectacle with Flameshot.

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. :)

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.

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

1. VLC with SMPlayer. I don't understand why they keep shipping VLC as default. It sucks.
2. Kate with KWrite.
3. Nano with Vim in *buntu variants
4. Elisa, Rhythmbox, etc. with Strawberry. Although I mostly just use Spotify nowadays.
5. Calculator with calc.

Everything else works just fine, unless the distro made an insane choice like having XTerm as the default terminal emulator.

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.

I wonder who's even using these built in video players, no subtitle support, barely any keyboard shortcuts, trash like windows media player

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.

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 just cp -r my 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.

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!

Love to replace Systemd. What.a.piece.of.shit.

I uninstall Firefox and install Brave and Chromium.

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.