HACKER Q&A
📣 webmaven

What desktop applications would you most like to see “Firefoxed”?


Firefox (originally named Phoenix, then Firebird) was, in 2002, a reaction against the Netscape Suite™'s kitchen-sink approach of piling on features in order to tick marketing checkboxes, and an increasingly complex user interface that wasn't serving users very well.

What desktop software do you wish would (or could) be reborn today as a leaner, simpler alternative?

  👤 zzo38computer Accepted Answer ✓
I may want to see command-line alternatives to some GUI software. What I want is software that is less stupid. Allow use together with other software. Some things may be split into separate programs which can then be piped together, e.g. if you have a NSF music player then they might be:

- Execute the 6502 code in the NSF file and write the register writes and delays to stdout.

- Read the register writes and delays from stdin and use that to generate an audio signal to stdout.

- Play the audio on the speaker, or else encoding it as Opus or recording it on a CD or whatever, can be the third one, which would also be able to apply filters and global volume control and stuff if you want to do.

👤 uberman
For simple image manipulation, I still use a very old copy of paint shop pro (pre corel)

It starts instantly without the irritating delay of even great utilities like gimp.

I wish there was a modern gimp light that reduced the features and start times.

👤 qppo
I don't want desktop apps to be leaner nearly as much as I want web apps to be leaner. Today it took me two minutes to load a link to a meme on Facebook that a friend sent me via messenger on a 2016 MacBook Air.

Two minutes to load a page with a meme and some comments.

👤 znpy
Firefox itself.

FF'S, I love Firefox but stop dumping crap like pockets and containers on me, I just want a lightning fast browser with multicore/multithread performance.

F--k containers, profiles are way better.

Oh and I want tab groups back.

👤 scott31
GNOME Shell