A website for debloated open source alternatives
debloat.dev157 points by ryanvogel 4 hours ago
157 points by ryanvogel 4 hours ago
I've been a big fan of https://alternativeto.net/ and using their "open source" and "self-hosted" filters. Even looking through the non-FOSS alternatives for a particular application/site can be helpful; sometimes a for-profit company will take a different approach to solving a problem and it will give me other ideas to consider.
FWIW, this site is fast, works perfectly with a text-only browser, e.g., links (1.4MB static binary), elinks, or without a (blooated) browser, e.g., retrieve all the pages, catenate and read as a single HTML file or convert it to, e.g., SQL, CSV or a plain text file
All the /p/ URLs are in the sitemap, all the site's pages can be retrieved over a single TCP connection
https://debloat.dev/sitemap.xml
This results in a 1.9MB HTML file
I think in general maintainers would be better served by declaring Performance is a Feature earlier in their projects and rejecting contributions that add surface area to the API at the expense of throughput on the existing surface area.
Wrapping modules to expose additional functionality for a niche in a problem domain is tricky. You will end up with some code duplication and some predictability issues with your timelines, but the end result will be better for it.
Long ago someone convinced me that 'Strangling a Service' could also be applied to APIs. The base module should be as simple as possible but no simpler, and more esoteric features should be shunted off to another module. And then in the case when features are antagonistic to each other, they can live in parallel in separate wrappers.
The tricky part there is writing unit tests in the base to defend the negative space that these features fit into. This feature depends on an invariant in the base API that will break everything if merged.
Not able to access the site on Firefox "Error Code: SSL_ERROR_INTERNAL_ERROR_ALERT"
Seems to be overloaded.
I wonder if the site needs a bit more bloat to handle the load, or a bit less.
Same, it's not just you. I'm wondering if this is an exotic symptom of the site running out of capacity.
Same here, but it works on chromium, eww and lynx.
Failing on chrome for me. I dont think it is a browser issue, but is a load issue
Cool site, though browsing through “most popular” I absolutely wouldn’t call Nextcloud “debloated.”
Sign in with Google or Github only? No, thank you.
In the TV and Media section (https://debloat.dev/c/tv-media) there are 11 recommendations and 4 of them are XBMC.
There used to be so many options for media centres. What happened?
I think it's just a pretty consolidated space? Kind of like ebook management, which was dominated by Calibre for so many years (this changed recently).
But unlike ebooks, media centre management is a fair bit more complex since it involves supporting many different media formats and many forms of acceleration or transcoding.
So the big projects - Kodi for local media and Jellyfin for streaming - have a lot of inertia because they tend to support whatever you throw at them.
It’s not that difficult to be honest. VLC / ffmpeg can do most of the heavy lifting. And there’s no shortage of libraries for rendering in a UI.
There used to be dozens of options to choose from. Multiple different XBMC forks. Multiples different Subsonic forks. Multiple different DNLA servers. Multitudes of web-based servers. CLI MP3 servers. Independent media centres for a variety of different consoles.
Maybe that’s still available and just not indexed on that site. But I noticed the choices had shrank significantly last year when I was looking for Plex alternatives compared with when I last built a media centre approximately 15 years ago.
Maybe smart TVs have reduced people’s desire here?
I would love to see an Open Source media center that supports streaming services. I wouldn't care if the services say "we only support 1080p for browsers / open source, anything more needs a locked-down device". (Perhaps the project could have some add-on you can buy that's a physical hardware dongle for doing 4k HDR and emitting HDCPed HDMI.) I already live with that for watching on my laptop. Just having watchable basic-resolution streaming would make it a one-stop-shop.
If streaming through a browser/open source / not the locked down app supported 1080p I would be a lot happier. My understanding from the last time i looked is that it actually only supports 720p
You can coax Netflix into giving you 1080p in ordinary Firefox by setting the right user-agent. That's good enough for me, and if it stops working I'll be motivated to stop paying those assholes anyway.
Would still live with that, to have a single system that's no worse than my laptop.
> It’s not that difficult to be honest.
Sounds easy if all you have to do is write a short comment about it. People who actually did it, like the recently retired lead of the Jellyfin project, didn't make it sound like it's "not that difficult".
If you want ot vibe code a project for yourself it's probably reasonable amount of effort. But if you want to build a product, something with polish, something not held together by spit and scotch tape, something reliable, it won't be easy.
I think I understand how to use about 20 of the command line options for ffmpeg and the companion utilities like ffprobe. Which is to say; I understand about 0.5% of the total options they provide and am likely a world leading expert in it. I'm mostly joking -- as in, overstating how many of them I understand.
Understanding ffmpeg borders on a specialization in itself. No big surprise that so many of the alternatives have fallen away over the years as people realize the absolute scope of that piece of software.
You don’t need to understand much of ffmpeg to build a media centre. Your requirements here are extremely simplified and there are hundreds of guides online on how to use it for very simple transcoding.
But if you don’t want to use ffmpeg directly then use one of the many ffmpeg wrappers. Or a different lib entirely like gstreamer or VLC.
Around 15 years ago I built a media centre for my car and the media playback part turned out to be the easiest part of the project.
Do you still maintain it?
No. It was built before Android / Apple integrations existed and was built around tactile controls and voice interactions. But I think Apple Car play is a far far more useful product these days than anything I built 15 years ago. Even if their touch controls are an ergonomic step backwards.
i had media center powered by a few perl script that would transcode all videos into formats that ps3 supported in 2007-ish. Yes ffmpeg had a lot of options, 99% of them does not matter, there really only 3 ways to stream to client: as is, repack streams into something client support (i.e. your source is mkv) or transcode into something client support (clients know which formats they support).
People that run these services don't want "dynamic stream quality selection".
It's logical, but the low variety is disappointing nonetheless and makes it more likely than none of the available options are well-suited to one's needs/desires.
In the case of media management, ffmpeg is easily usable with just about every programming language in existence and its usage is extremely well-trodden at this point, which makes the vacuum of newer alternatives to the XBMC lineage all the more puzzling.
You know that recent social media trend where you name 100 women? Try naming 100 ffmpeg command line options.
ffmpeg is a beast, not gonna argue that. As another commenter noted however, only a small fraction of those options are necessary to cover a media center project, especially if you're not beholden to supporting esoteric/archaic formats, aren’t bothered with trying to make broken/corrupted files play, etc. Being willing to specialize can also help reduce scope.
Someone should add Kanboard for project management tools (like Trello): https://kanboard.org/
Really lightweight and nice!
How is “bloat” measured here? Or is this simply a list of open source alternatives to commercial products?
The inclusion of Tailscale here was a little surprising to me. I'm betting on the latter.
I like Tailscale, but it's difficult to argue with a straight face that it's not seriously suffered from product creep.
This is the inherent problem with tech start-ups. Once they solve the problem they were founded to solve, then what? It's feature complete, but investors insist that the line must go up. Can you imagine if `sed` or `vim` was brought to market by a venture-backed company?
IMHO, capitalism and FOSS are fundamentally incompatible.
To be fair to tailscale, I think all the feature creep is stuff that enterprises actually need to have solved. Without it it’s a product that 99% of users would just use free tier and never pay a dime for.
Perhaps it would have been better to split the product into a simple consumer thing and then a separate enterprise product suite.
> IMHO, capitalism and FOSS are fundamentally incompatible.
A bold statement to make given the world we live in today contains plenty of both, working together, in harmony.
Nice collection. I've been using some of these for a while, G-Helper is a lifesaver if you own an Asus laptop and Immich is probably the best Google Photos replacement out there right now.
Website doesnt connect for me.
I want a debloated (electric) car.
There are a lot of electric cars that are relatively normal, usually from more traditional auto manufacturers.
Toyota bZ/bZ Woodland, the entire Hyundai/Kia lineup, Honda Prologue, Jaguar i-pace, original Audi e-tron
I haven’t seen the newer Nissan infotainment system, not sure about that one.
Are these without tech? No, not at all, but they do have fast and simple interfaces that are designed to dump you into CarPlay/Android Auto with ease, and a good amount of them retain separated climate controls that live outside the screen.
Obviously if you want something like a 2008 Accord that’s not really going to be a thing, but almost everyone who isn’t Tesla or Rivian is surprisingly conventional. If you haven’t done much EV shopping and your impression of EVs is “they’re all like Tesla where everything is in the screen” that isn’t true at all. For example, Kia/Hyundai EV models have absolutely zero difference between the gas models and EVs in terms of control design. Toyota’s latest infotainment system is as basic and straightforward as it gets.
Slate? Or just remove the cellular modem from a Tesla and you have a more or less "dumb" car.
I like the retro ebay style page design.
suckless.org?
"Use /* */ for comments, not //."
I find stuff like this hilarious. No software project has ever failed, or even slow down one iota, because of the comment style. This is just someone's personal "ick" masquerading as "coding standards."
EDIT: I think it has actually been becoming a dad of two boys that has absolutely killed my patience for this kind of thing. A lot of it is so similar to how my children argue with each other over absolutely trivial things. Add in the way they say "I don't like that" as "that's not fair" (my children) or "that's not consistent" (the bike shedding nerds) and it just makes me want to scream, "stop whining!"
Whilst I do agree with you on that specific example, it’s worth noting that code standards as a whole are a somewhat blurry line that can be extremely subjective at times.
I actually don't think it's worth noting. I think, if a particular code standard issue is really of value, it will be obvious. You will propose it and nobody will argue. I think the fact that code standards are contentious is proof they are extremely low value. Subtle effects are indistinguishable from superstition.
I think the particular choice of coding standards is low value, but I think the consistency they bring has a lot of value, at least potentially.
As a father of two boys myself, I know exactly where you're coming from. Like some adults, they'll argue over pointless details and miss the entire thrust of the discussion.
No, to repeat what I said, I think "consistency" to a programmer is like "fairness" to a child: it's not what you think it is and it probably doesn't apply to whatever situation it's being invoked.
Oh, interesting.
> No, to repeat what I said, I think "consistency" to a programmer is like "fairness" to a child
I tend to pride myself on my ability to read and comprehend things, and I feel like I never saw you say this. I see now it was an edit to an earlier comment that I didn't catch the meaning of. It seems to say that you think consistency is childish, maybe because it's a naive ideal of some kind? I value it highly, so your perspective is interesting (in the vein of "Symmetry is a complexity-reducing concept. Seek it everywhere.")
That aside, you're advocating for projects that have wildly different coding styles from file to file and function to function?
I guess I've never really worked on a project like that. I can imagine it would feel very messy and would make manual refactors difficult but might not be such a problem for AI?
"you're advocating for projects that have wildly different coding styles from file to file and function to function?"
I'm advocating for giving up in style as a thing you delude yourself into thinking matters. The opposite of "enforcing consistent style" is not "bedlam and mayhem." I'm saying just let people work on their things and focus on real metrics like testing and algorithmic analysis.
This idea that code should be "consistent" is a gigantic question begging practice. Consistent with what? As according to whom? For what purpose? I will go out on a very short, very thick limb and say that nobody has ever demonstrated a good definition of "consistency," say nothing of the value of adhering to that definition.
It is the way of no way. It does not imply doing things in a stupid way. It implies the narrow minded focus demonstrated by others is an impediment to excellence.
I'm getting rate limited do to an ancient slow-ban I picked up years ago and probably redemonstrate the need for on a regular basis, but I think tacking this text intended as a reply to another person into the end of this comment makes sense.
I suspect if Bruce Lee had ever tried to work as a martial arts instructor in a school as his primary form of living, he'd have found that he couldn't communicate with the other instructors in his school, that they would be insistent that the rigid forms were the only way to achieve true mastery. The value in Bruce Lee being an actor was that he never had to really have that argument with a cadre of fellow instructors. He was able to build his own cult of personality and start his own school. Which, of course now, the art of Jeet Kun Do was ossified into a series of predefined patterns for how to operate, completely missing the point.
Oh, interesting. So you're advocating for projects that have wildly different styles encoding from file to file?
I guess I've never really worked on a project like that. I can imagine it would feel very messy and would make manual refactors difficult but might not be such a problem for AI?
I think you’re underestimating how opinionated developers are.
The fact that we are disagreeing on this point is great evidence that there isn’t an easy to define, proverbial line in the sand.
I know very well how opinionated other developers are. I'm explicitly saying it's a waste of energy to be that picky about code style.
There is an easy to define line: there is no line. It's not a boundary where "over here is good code" and "over there, not" we just don't have a good idea of where the line is. No. There is absolutely no line.
> I know very well how opinionated other developers are. I'm explicitly saying it's a waste of energy to be that picky about code style.
To be honest, I completely agree with you.
The point I make is that not everyone would. And that disagreement alone results in a blurry line as to what some would consider important and what others would not.
But personally, I honestly do wish more people had the same opinion as you.
Actually think the suckless people would hate this. Google login and nothing there looks light weight in the suckless spirit.
I mean, if the suckless crowd were actually serious they'd offer their website only in gopher or something like that instead of bloated HTML (/s)
Something seems not right with that website, even aside from the SSL problem.
I first thought I’m on old eBay webpage lol
this website is so old school
Is there a marker to know if any of these tools are AI generated slop here?
That would be a good feature here.
How do you define "AI generated slop"?
There's also an implicit judgment in your question. Is well-designed, well-tested AI-generated code worse than poorly written, but hand-typed code?
Here we go: as soon as you ask for any kind of definition or rigor around AI development, people will work hard to shut you up.
You're asking an extremely reasonable question, IMHO, especially given these are projects with limited resources going up against generally larger, better-resourced projects. AI is an obvious point of leverage in such a situation, and so there is a lot of potential to reverse engineer using AI and get good results.
What all of these requests fundamentally come down to is "How are you filtering for quality?", which is an extremely difficult question given the state of, for example, the app stores.
> Here we go: as soon as you ask for any kind of definition or rigor around AI development, people will work hard to shut you up.
Heh. I was essentially run out of lobsters for repeatedly asking that question. Not even kidding. At some point I became the second most flagged user in the entire forum. The site itself invited me to delete my account.
After a while I simply asked Claude to define "slop" and posted the answer. To this day it's still the only coherent definition of "slop" in the entire site.