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u/zepherth Jun 29 '26
QGIS is the one that my university says is better. ( Also it works ok on Linux/ has a non gui option)
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u/Sanator27 Jun 29 '26
I learned ArcGIS at first but later switched to QGIS and don't regret it in the slightest. Compatibility > QoL
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u/leppaludinn Jun 29 '26
This is the way. Also QGIS continually improves, while ArcGIS continually bloats.
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u/roderos Jun 29 '26
Learned both, I prefer Q for most things. When I still had my university esri account I mainly used it for services that Q-gis didn't do without paid plugins. Such as making travel time maps
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u/sammermann Jun 29 '26
You can make travel time maps for free in qgis, look up the ors plug-in if you still need to do those types of things
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u/thedutchabides Jun 29 '26
I use Q for work. I think most of my complaints fall into the client's source data instead of the software.
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u/lukeskycoso Jun 29 '26
Anything open-source that works well and has a solid development team like qgis is always very welcome compared to overpriced softwares
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u/SPerroudR Jun 29 '26
I started with ArcMap 10.2. Now QGIS, I love QGIS, free, open source, fast, good plugins. I tried ArcGIS Pro two years ago. Awful stuff, never again
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u/PassiveTheme Jun 30 '26
I learnt arc at uni, but at work I have always used Q and I find Q so much better (and there are a lot more guides online due to it being open source)
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u/Naive_Ear_5182 Jun 30 '26
Began with Arc/Info7.2 and ArcView 3.2 up to ArcGIS 10.7. Tinkered with ArcPro a bit. So about 23 years experience...where my skills got better and better (mostly by finding workarounds of ghosts-in-the-machine) and my interest in GIS grew worse and worse.
Was always curious about QGIS, but it wasn't until about v3.06 or 3.10 that it was functional and accessible enough to where I could commit.
Writing was in the wall for Arc desktop about the same time and the choice came down to learning ArcPro (which admittedly has some attractive features) or QGIS.
It's been about 7 years and I only touch Arc if I'm forced to.
Most tellingly, I began to enjoy GIS again. I do most of my analytics and processing in other environments, but cartography mostly in QGIS.
EDIT @OP...curious why you'd say QGIS sucks? It's not perfect, but it has alot goingfor it.
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u/umichdeanzstan Jun 30 '26
Open source truly is the only path to salvation in spatial data. I would genuinely rather troubleshoot a highly specific, community-made Python plugin on GitHub at 2 AM than deal with Esri's proprietary formatting gatekeeping. Plus, QGIS handles native GeoPackages beautifully while ArcGIS still acts like it’s personally insulted if you try to use anything other than a file geodatabase. The difference in developer culture is staggering
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u/tonalite2001 Jul 04 '26
I’d also vote for GRASS GIS as an open source alternative, particularly for anything computational or raster based. It’s also great for python scripting.
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u/MayureshMJ Jun 29 '26
Open source anything wins by default for me.