It seems like the FOSS community is continuing to grow, and FOSS apps keep getting better (Immich reallh blew my mind recently), which is a big win 😎 but there are still many apps I use that I would kill for an open source alternative. I am curious what you guys think? Are there any apps you’d love alternatives for?
Something actually good to replace Google Docs, the current alternatives are either paid or not feature complete (or both).
OnlyOffice
True, I caved for Proton Drive for lack of a better option right now. Even then it is not feature complete. However I’m happy enough with Google not mining my data anymore
YouTube
Oblivion as there currently exists the Open Source Version of Morrowind
Discord. It’s extremely popular and has no direct alternatives (Matrix spaces thing isn’t ready at all yet)
Honestly i never enjoyed discord It is messy and difficult to find information once its a few days old
Id much rather use a decent forum really
This is more of a hammer as a screwdriver problem, where everyone decided to use chat software as a forum.
almost every hobby has moved to facebook and it’s the same damn thing. utterly useless for the purpose people try to use it for.
i don’t know what the fuck is wrong with people, but this is definitely one of the pinnacles.
They want to use a single account for everything and have the most people possible.
That is it really. They don’t want to have to make 50 new accounts where every account has to deal with getting past the spam policies and filters only to find that their potential base is 1/10 of that on other platforms
That’s why reddit became the de-facto forum for many things also. 1 interface, 1 account, people can trace your account across different “forums” and it was searchable (on search engines, not shit reddit search).
Especially with the upcoming implementation of ads. Really sucks that many communities and software support (who should have just had forums) are deeply embedded into it and will have to start from scratch and lose any and all helpful content. Its hard to see big communities moving to anything else anytime soon, even of there was a great Foss alternative. It would indeed be amazing to have one in the first place
I think what’s even worse than ads is many channels now require verification through a phone number if you want to write something. Not sure when that became a thing but I just recently ran into this roadblock and noped tf out.
I thought the Discord ads drama was an April Fools joke?
You had me for a second, lol. Unfortunately it is not an April fools joke :/ luckily for us though, the worse the application gets, the higher a chance a Foss alternative will emerge from a madlad who was sick of discord’s shit
https://adguard.com/en/blog/ads-discord-blocking-adguard.html
Adoption is always the main issue, as we can see here on the Fediverse. It’s crazy how even technically-inclined people flock to discord. So many 3d printing communities are on there, people who install custom debian distros on raspberry pis, solder wires, crimp connectors and assemble open source machines, still fall into the trap.
Matrix is also extremely complicated to sign up for. I tried getting some tech savvy friends to sign up for Matrix the other day. Even for someone tech-savvy it is waaaaaaaay too complicated. Many of the clients don’t even have a sign up option, you need to sign up elsewhere first.
@SorteKanin I’d like to see that. I have already onboarded about 35 students and my whole family to matrix, nobody had any problems with signup. Bigger problem is later if they get the infamous “Unable to decrypt message” error.
There are instances that are not very hard to sign up for. The main issue with Matrix is instability and performance, especially when communicating with users/groups on different instances. It’s really not a great experience. And the inability to properly delete messages can be a big deal too
Many of the clients don’t even have a sign up option, you need to sign up elsewhere first.
It’s inconvenient, sure, but think of it as an assurance that you’re not locked in with one app.
That said, I completely agree that Matrix and Element need to work on UX, particularly making it easy for new users to adopt it as well as verification/device switching.
Yeah…for many of these programs the onboarding is so daunting, even for those who are tech savvy. Laymen don’t stand a chance with something that is that complicated. It doesn’t often seem to be a technical issue either, more-so a user experience or design problem
It doesn’t often seem to be a technical issue either, more-so a user experience or design problem
Oh 100%. The problem is that there’s a lack of UX designers and such in the Open Source community. There’s technical people building stuff but they often don’t know how to make a good user experience (or in some cases they don’t care to).
IDK why this always gets downvoted. UI/UX some of the biggest issues with FOSS software, and is a massive barrier to entry to someone who isn’t a massive computer nerd willing to put up with that shit.
I guess they take any criticism of open source as if you are against the whole movement. I don’t understand either.
personally when it comes to the onboarding im more on the side of “self host your own onboarding, for friends and family and shit, and then federate out from there if needed.”
Theoretically doing a clean onboarding shouldn’t be very difficult. More involved i suppose, but if you don’t have the time to figure out how a federated instance works, (or to properly document it) you shouldn’t be on the internet, you have more pressing matters to attend to.
Can’t relate. It’s not harder to get your hands on a matrix account in comparison to a mail account. And for those that want it even easier, just download Element and you are guided through the default registration at matrix.org
If you’re talking about voice channels specifically, then there is Mumble.
If you’re talking about chat rooms, old school solution is IRC and we have XMPP that works fine for most people.
No I meant an app that looks similar and contains most of the features (servers specifically) so it’s easier for not tech savvy users to get into. Someone suggested revolt but its privacy (as in sending the data to not privacy respecting third parties) is questionable so idk if I can consider it a good enough alternative
Something like Revolt could maybe be a replacement for discord
Lol
There is a project, but it’s really early in it’s development. It’s called Cabal. Has a nice desktop client, looks kinda like Discord. It’s p2p, so no server required. BUT AGAIN, VERY EARLY IN DEVELOPMENT.
Not something you should use, but look out for how the development is going.
Mumble needs a server, iirc
I let you in on a secret: Discord also needs a server 🙃
… Ok I’ll let you have that ‘technical correct’ smug satisfaction, you bastard.
But for real, if you can’t / don’t want to host your own server, just use any server from hundreds of available servers.
Oh I’s been a while. My clan hosted our own mumble server, back in the day. Didn’t know there was a lot of public ones nowadays…
There are even services that give you free temporary servers. I don’t know why anyone would use that instead of just finding any server and use a free room if you just want to talk with friends, but well, it exists.
You go to a service like that, press a button, it generates you some random port number and password, then you connect to that server with mumble and become an admin of it. The server is temporary and gets automatically destroyed after some fixed period (usually something like 24 hours).
Also what I tried to do with my friends is run Yggdrasil and connect directly via IPv6 (so I run Yggdrasil and launch a mumble server, and all my friends enter my IPv6 address) and that works too, so no need to have public IPs or domain names to use Mumble anymore.
Yggdrasil is such a cool thing, loving it.
yeah, host one. It’s not expensive. Certainly cheaper than paying for discord nitro (which you don’t have to do if you want shitty audio/video streaming quality and no emojus features)
I recently ran into that very issue, leading to me downloading foss third party clients for discord which are privacy focused. As long as discord is still the place to be I have to be there too, but I can certainly limit the data they can gather about me. I found
- goofcord for desktop (supports plugins too)
- aliucord for android
Perhaps they are an option for you too
Didn’t know those existed.
Aliucord looks like a modified client tho, so not really open source.
Revolt is very promising, not ready yet but already feels very similar to Discord
The privacy policy of their app’s captcha solution is horrendous so no thank you
Doesn’t seem that bad, when you go to log in it checks your IP, length of time on the site and mouse movements.
hCaptcha
This section has been adapted from hCaptcha’s documentation.
We use the hCaptcha anti-bot service (hereinafter “hCaptcha”) on our website. This service is provided by Intuition Machines, Inc., a Delaware US Corporation (“IMI”). hCaptcha is used to check whether the data entered on our website (such as on a login page or contact form) has been entered by a human or by an automated program. To do this, hCaptcha analyzes the behavior of the website or mobile app visitor based on various characteristics. This analysis starts automatically as soon as the website or mobile app visitor enters a part of the website or app with hCaptcha enabled.
When using the Revolt App, hCaptcha will only begin analysis when you:
Submit a login request. Submit a registration request. Submit a password reset / email resend request.For the analysis, hCaptcha evaluates various information (e.g. IP address, how long the visitor has been on the website or app, or mouse movements made by the user). The data collected during the analysis will be forwarded to IMI.
Data processing is based on Art. 6(1)(f) of the GDPR (DSGVO): the website or mobile app operator has a legitimate interest in protecting its site from abusive automated crawling and spam. IMI acts as a “data processor” acting on behalf of its customers as defined under the GDPR, and a “service provider” for the purposes of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). For more information about hCaptcha and IMI’s privacy policy and terms of use, please visit the following links: https://hcaptcha.com/privacy/ and https://hcaptcha.com/terms.
The Revolt’s policy is not that bad. Look at the hCaptcha’s one
That’s the part of hCaptchas policy that’s relevant to Revolt.
For the analysis, hCaptcha evaluates various information (e.g. IP address, how long the visitor has been on the website or app, or mouse movements made by the user). The data collected during the analysis will be forwarded to IMI.
Did you miss these parts or are they inapplicable?
How We Use Information We use the information we collect for the following purposes: To administer Integrator and Customer accounts and provide the Service. We use Personal Information in order to associate specific accounts with Integrators and Customers and to provide them the Service, to respond to requests or inquiries, to provide support or technical assistance, and to facilitate payments. To improve to Site and the Service. We use Analytics Information to improve our existing and develop new services and offerings and to customize existing and future product offerings. To derive market insights. We use Analytics Information to analyze the market and conduct business analyses related to the Site and our Services, and for other research purposes. To provide a market for Labeled Data. Our Service enables high volume data labeling and human review for machine learning systems as a service to website owners and companies who need help getting their data labeled. To that end, we disclose Labeled Data to our Customers interested in acquiring Labeled Data. To secure our services and systems. We use Analytics Information to secure our systems by identifying potential threats and vulnerabilities, and to otherwise protect the information we collect. For any legitimate business purpose, provided that the information is de-identified or aggregated such that it cannot be reasonably tied to an individual.
How We Share Information We share or disclose personal information in the following cases: Upon direct request from an Integrator to identify the fraud risk of a specific CAPTCHA challenge request or IP address, or otherwise where specific consent was given. With vendors we engage to provide essential aspects of the Sites and the Service, such as data storage, hosting, and Analytics, and only for those purposes. As necessary to comply with applicable law, including governmental requests, law enforcement requests, and otherwise to public and private entities in order to protect the rights, privacy, safety, or property of you, us, or others. With others for any legitimate business purpose, provided the information is de-identifiedor aggregated such that it cannot be reasonably tied to an individual.
Disclosure Regarding “Sales” of Personal Information under the CCPA. In the preceding twelve months, IMI has not “sold” any Personal Information (as defined by the CCPA), nor does IMI have actual knowledge of any “sale” of Personal Information of minors under 16 years of age (so they do sell information of people over 16). Disclosure Regarding “Sharing” for “Cross-Context Behavioral Advertising” under the CCPA. In the preceding twelve months, IMI has not “shared” any Personal Information for “cross-context behavioral advertising” (as such terms are defined in the CCPA), nor does IMI have actual knowledge of any “sharing” of Personal Information of minors under 16 years of age for “cross-context behavioral advertising”.
I based my assumptions on the parts in Revolts privacy policy, since reading the privacy policy of hCatpcha it alludes that each ‘vendor’ can select how much data they’d like to collect I assumed that Revolt only allowed them to collect IP, length of time on site and mouse movements. While they do sell information, they claim it to be anonymised and I contacted support to see how they did that for IP addresses.
Which is why I don’t really mind. The information they have of me is at most how my cursor moved, how long I took to Submit a login request, Submit a registration request, Submit a password reset / email resend request and an obfuscated IP. Seems OK to me.
I keep hearing people recommend signal messenger as an alternative to discord, and honestly that’s the most obvious sign you don’t actually use discord
Yeah signal is amazing for one to one or small groups, but not for what discord servers are used for.
But to be honest, many discord servers are used for things they really shouldn’t be used for… Like code documentation and bug tracking
Well some people use Discord as a messenger for some reason and for them Signal is probably the best but yea it’s not a Discord alternative at all
https://zulip.com/ is likely your best alternative. It’s more a Slack copy than Discord but the features are there
s/one/thing/
An alternative to iTunes so that I don’t need a Windows VM to backup my company iPhone. But I know it’s never gonna happen because Apple is the devil.
Good news, Apple has the solution for you. You don’t need iTunes anymore.
https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9np83lwlpz9k?hl=en-US&gl=US
Yeah but I’d still need an Apple program and a Windows VM, so it wouldn’t change a thing 😅
Just so you know, libimobiledevice can backup iPhones with their idevicebackup utility. It’s CLI only, so maybe not as easy to get into as iTunes but it has worked pretty well for years on my end.
Yeah thanks I’ve read about it but the terminal part is probably above my really modest Linux knowledge for now.
honestly terminal isn’t that complicated, if you’re surviving using a VM at the moment, you could probably manage to comprehend a terminal for long enough to figure out how that software works (and as a benefit, also figure out how basically every other CLI application works)
Thanks for the advice, but, for now, I can’t picture myself managing a professional phone backup without a GUI.
Had it been just a tinkering phone maybe, but not my professional one😇
My phone firmware
god i fucking hate android, i await the day linux on mobile actually functions with great anticipation.
That was 2004. They made a Linux phone not was troll tech or something.
No one bought it.
Android may be ‘meh’ to you. I like it, but only because it’s good enough for what I need. Fair. But it’s got something the green Linux phone never had: massive presence.
Droid is a bad Linux with a huge ecosystem, and that’s why this may be the best we can hope for. We could have a perfect phone, but without that massive presence to get the apps and the dedicated devs, anything with less presence will suffer.
Think about it. It’s a sad fact, but you know it’s a fact.
That’s like how Xz didn’t get trojanned because it was a nothing project: it is a crucial part of everything. It lost its presence and when the sole Dev was deep in burnout he was hoodwinked. Ya need the eyeballs, and that’s a popularity game for foss.
My 2c.
I’ve been so excited anytime I see updates from gnome-mobile. It’s looks much cleaner than phosh
i’m just waiting until someone inevitably ports something like i3wm or sway over and it’s actually pretty usable. That’s all i need to be happy in life.
FOSS CAD softwares. I know FreeCAD exists but it’s very unintuitive compared to the proprietary ones. I am thankful that it exists but it’s a long way apart to become a household name like Blender.
I wish I could start writing one but I don’t have a clear picture of requirements to plan and start writing one. If anyone is expert in this field please link some research papers and guidelines for someone to start fresh.
Check out Ondsel. They’re working on improving FreeCAD and making the workflow not suck.
Still definitely a work in progress, but the dimension/constraint tools and 3D feature naming are already lightyears better in their version.
Thank you. I’ll check it out.
I think FreeCAD is still the best bet, it does.seem to be making a few strides recently. Topo naming and sketcher workbench are both getting updates. For me personally it’s definitely usable for personal projects. I want better FreeCAD rather than an alternative new thing.
Yeah I should look up some tutorials for it. I jumped in thinking I could figure it out after working with Creo, Solidworks and AutoCAD but I should have RTFM.
Haha, I’m in an awkward place with FreeCAD, I love it for what it is, but I’m definitely not saying it’s without its shortcomings. The latest dev build seemingly has some great QoL upgrades for the sketcher. The topo naming issue is an absolute pain and the various assembly workbenches can be excruciating to work with at times. Everything takes longer than bigger CAD packages too.
I can normally get there in the end though. The principals are the same, sketch/pad/pocket/fillet etc. there are definite issues with the underlying CAD kernel as well, fillets are just batshit sometimes (like, it won’t round an edge, let’s you round an exact mirror of the edge on the other side of the model, you close the program and open it again and now you can round the edge).
Honestly, I think they can get there - probably more direction in the project would get it further and more paid devs working on core components would help (for instance there’s a guitar design workbench but no midpoint constraint in sketcher, but it’s open source and someone wanted to build a guitar design workbench and that’s that) I suspect they don’t get anything like the funding Blender does (160k+ pcm) which is probably needed for a number of years to get it where it needs to be.
I would love a FOSS version of Rhino3D.
Most definitely - Especially for woodworking FreeCAD is horrible and inefficient - even a friend who has been a contributor takes longer for some things than I do in Fusion360 as an occasional user. As a maker I love the idea of FreeCAD and the implications it has for third world countries, the amateur maker scene,etc. But I hate it for what it is. Which is so sad.
softwares
Software, like traffic and sheep and e-mail, don’t get an S when talking about a lot.
100%
I put together a list of open source CAD software a couple of years ago, but none of the options are quite there yet.
Blender is not CAD software though, it’s 3D modelling software. They’re not quite the same thing, and they’re intended for (and excel at) different things.
I know. I’m just comparing the reputation and how polished they are wrt to each other. Given they have similar scopes with modeling and graphics and everything.
But they don’t really have similar scopes… One is for technical models, based on extruded 2D drawings, the other is for abstract 3D modelling. Sure in both if them the end product is a 3D model, but they’re achieved in vastly different ways with completely different skillsets and different use cases.
I think you’re missing their point, they weren’t saying that Blender is cad, it’s just a good comparison, as a successful piece of software in the the same broad, general category (3D modeling)
We want what Blender is to mesh modeling, rendering, etc, but for parametric cad, manufacturing, etc. Basically Fusion 360 but open source, without any of Autodesk’s bs. Ideally it would even work together with Blender for rendering.
The comment I originally commented on compared them as if they were similar tool, (before it was edited), which I simply pointed out it is not. It’s like saying a plane and a helicopter are the same, sure they both are able to lift off the ground, but the similarities kind of stop there.
You’re right, not sure why all the down votes. I think people don’t get how big a difference 3d modeling is from technical drawings.
Beeper
Technically this exists, right? It’s just matrix with a bunch of bridges?
The app is closed source, deprived from element.
Right it doesn’t exist because its closed source. That’s why I said wanted an open source alternative
This is correct.
Photoshop.
And yeah, no, please, don’t come over and mention Gimp and Kryta and all the others. I get it, they’re cool for the stuff they do. They just aren’t the all in one package that Photoshop is or have as powerful tools specifically for photo editing. Photoshop would require a Blender-style major effort to replicate and Gimp just isn’t up to it. I wish it were. Photoshop is at the perfect intersection of being uniquely capable and walled off behind the single crappiest ecosystem in software.
Nobody likes Adobe, nobody wants to work with Adobe. Nobody can avoid Photoshop. That’s just the world we live in and I don’t like it.
Photopea. Not foss, but a free clone of photoshop.
Nobody likes Adobe, nobody wants to work with Adobe. Nobody can avoid Photoshop. That’s just the world we live in and I don’t like it.
This sounds like Stockholm syndrome. You are just too familiar with Photoshop, so using anything else is hard and less efficient.
In photography there is this mantra about “the most important part is right behind the camera”. A good photographer is not a good Nikon user, or good Canon user. A good photographer can deliver decent pictures with a potato camera if needed.
Sure, a potato camera is less efficient for any work that an actual good one. So it’s good to invest in a good brand. But the point is: if you are not capable to make average results with a potato software, the problem is not in the software.
You know why the person themselves is the important part of this equation?
Because they know what tools to use for which purpose.
For example, GIMP is only now getting non-destructive editing through adjustment layers, which is such an indispensable feature for important projectsFor example, GIMP is only now getting non-destructive editing through adjustment layers, which is such an indispensable feature for important projects
it’s not like you could ever just copy layers or something. That’s never been a feature in gimp, not once.
I understand your point, but to act like that is the sole thing stopping people from using, is kinda silly. (idk maybe i’m wrong and adjustment layers are this incredible feature, with never before discovered productivity benefits or something, i’m assuming not though)
They make things so much easier, having to make copies of every layer every time just to keep the original in case you need to re-do something half an hour later is super annoying.
Especially if you do multiple different things with a layer. Do you really have the patience to make backuo copies of a layer after every little edit you apply to it?
And then let’s say step 2 of 5 didn’t turn out like you want. Backup copies or not, you still have to re-do everything from 2 to 5 because of GIMPs destructive nature as of right now
oh so it’s basically like a COW fs but for graphics editing? That’s pretty slick. I’m sure you could implement something fairly similar to that natively, though it would be a decent bit of work.
It’s going to be part of the 3.0 release, after what feels like an eternity. The 2.99 dev release has it already, I might try that
Well, counterpoint: Photoshop tries to be an “everything for everybody” app, and GIMP/Krita don’t need to compare to that, as little as any user needs all the features of Photoshop.
Nobody can avoid Photoshop
Call me nobody, then. I worked with the Adobe suite professionally for 15+ years, haven’t touched it for the past six. You won’t find a single 1:1 replacement. It’s just a matter of quitting and accepting the individual limits of different alternatives.
It’s a groupthink issue anyways. 3DSmax/Maya was the same for a long time, and “everyone” was saying Blender is not an alternative. And then some big companies switched to Blender and suddenly people stopped complaining about it. And while Blender did improve during that time, it did not improve so substantially that it really made all the difference.
It’s absolutely that, like the office admin workers who swear by Microsoft Office over open alternatives no matter how insidious Windows becomes. “I know this one tool and you will have to wring it from my cold dead hands”…
“I find your conditions… acceptable”
Based. Just curious, what do you use for vector editing software? (For Illustrator-type work)
Not much, honestly. Fortunately I was never very reliant on vector graphics.
Inkscape IMO never really matured to a working solution, certainly not comparable to Illustrator, but I know others have better experiences.
this pretty much. Everytime i see people bitching about editors and editing, it’s almost always keybinds. Which is literally a skill issue. Or something will be organized slightly differently, also a skill issue. Or it’s feature set will be like, marginally different.
It’s almost never something that’s going to stop you from doing what you wanted originally. Your visions change, your tools change, your ways adapt, it’s how the world works, it’s how we work. It’s how everything has always been.
I agree that it depends on your use case. If you’re an artist or illustrator you can make do with a number of alternatives and just go elsewhere for photo editing, and if you’re just doing basic adjustments to photos rather than detailed edits you can figure it out as well.
Photohop is harder to bypass if you’re a jack-of-all-trades user mostly doing image editing but also dabbling in the other options from time to time. That’s not to say you can’t do it if you try, but it’s going to be less convenient and add friction to your workflow.
Yeah, Jack-of-all-trades here as well. For sure it’s less convenient to have to switch programs for different purposes but there is also the added convenience of not having to find pirated and cracked Adobe warez.
idk honestly i just don’t think i really believe this take.
The only really objective aspect of it is going to be user complacency. It’s possible you’ve been using PS for 10-20 years now. And switching seems like an impossibility. But honestly, given the feature set, or the non existing feature set, i don’t think it really matters.
Ultimately you can still do graphics editing in GIMP, and you can still do graphics editing in PS, it’s more about your adaptability and flexibility, rather than skill set, and software. I’ve used both photoshop, gimp, and photopea. They all do the same thing, photopea is worse than either. GIMP is more featured, and doesn’t come with adobe, PS has AI editing, and probably like 2 other features, and also the copyrighted color pack that you have to pay ransom for.
They all work fine, stop complaining, you’ll live. Maybe that’s just the doomerism peaking through or something, but honestly, it’s such a vapid complaint IMO.
Also would be nice to have open source ecosystem with blender ,then open source pro level video editing like da vinci and open source photoshop.
I’m happy to give Black Magic Design my money.
I literally wouldn’t piss on Adobe if it was on fire.
Just like MS Office.
Exactly… easily replaceable but you have an endless whining of users that imagine they might somehow in the future need this one feature that office has but alternatives don’t.
That’s an increasingly small number, if only because now Google is in that market, too.
However, there is a second reason you need Office, and that’s compatibility. I don’t use Office for work normally, but I still have an Office account (which, annoyingly, is how you pay for Office now), because I have clients who want to work on their formats and it doesn’t make sense for me to work around compatibility and have an argument about it instead of just paying for the damn thing and working on whatever software other people want to work.
But if I was by myself and didn’t need to work with anyone else ever? Yeah, I would not miss much from Office, honestly.
But if I was by myself and didn’t need to work with anyone else ever? Yeah, I would not miss much from Office, honestly.
That’s my position as well. But there are certain features that I do require for work and other integrations with other MS products that you can’t get elsewhere.
As you said if one lives in a bubble and doesn’t to collaborate with others then native Linux apps might work and might even deliver a decent workflow. Once collaboration with Windows/Mac users is required then it’s game over – the “alternatives” aren’t just up to it.
Windows/Office licenses are “cheap” and things work out of the box. Software runs fine, all vendors support whatever you’re trying to do and you’re productive from day zero. Sure, there are annoyances from time to time, but for most people they’re way fewer and simpler to deal with than the hoops you’ve to go through to get a minimal and viable/productive FOSS-only experience. It all comes down to a question of how much time (days? months?) you want to spend fixing things and dealing with small compatibility issues that simply work out of the box under MS for a minimal fee. For most people paying for MS and doing their job right away delivers a better ROI than going FOSS and then doing their job while dealing with the small details.
I object to that “work out of the box” comment. I have lost more work hours to OneDrive being terrible than to any single other technical reason. Office has at least as many quirks and inefficiencies as any of its alternatives.
It’s a bit of a standard and it doesn’t… not… work? So yeah, it’s the go-to you have to have as a fallback for things to not get annoying when you work with multiple other people outside your same organization on something. Alternatives are as good or better, though, especially if you consider commercial ones as well as FOSS ones.
But yeah, it’s priced just so that it makes sense to pay for it and not use it over not having it ready to go when you need it. On purpose. Which sucks.
Windows is a different story. Quirky and annoying yes, but not more so than the alternatives and definitely the standard for big chunks of things in ways that it’s not trivial to replace.
Teams is also the meeting system furthest from “just works” in my experience. Not sure where all the Microsoft apologists get those ideas that stuff made by Microsoft “just works”.
But yeah, it’s priced just so that it makes sense to pay for it and not use it over not having it ready to go when you need it. On purpose. Which sucks.
Yes, marketing. Microsoft is good at it.
I don’t even know if I give them that. I guess pricing things just at the edge of you begrudgingly buying them instead of going elsewhere is “marketing” if you squint. I mean, by all accounts they’re worse at branding than Apple and worse at PR than literally everybody else in their competing markets. After a certain critical mass it probably doesn’t matter much, I suppose. At least not short term.
Actually, I’d much prefer a FOSS alternative of Affinity Photo instead of Photoshop.
I’d be happy if the Affinity suite worked on Linux :(
yeah, I’d totally pay for it.
Bro… it is a legitimately sad and almost hopeless situation. I used to be a graphic designer and honestly it just isn’t possible to switch to any other program. There is nothing that can even compare as a direct alternative. Especially with the addition of AI features (keyword, I know, but generative fill can be extremely helpful in some cases). The Affinity suite is barely even able to keep up, and they have employees that are paid. Cross-compatibility and file type standards are a massive issue too, let alone the functionality itself
Tiktok
Let’s see if Loops can fill the gap. Not sure if an open source alternative could generate enough hype to be viable - maybe if TikTok is banned in the US or something.
Holy smokes! I was an avid TikTok person for music before they enshittified it with ads and the shop features. Can’t wait for Loops!
My problem with Loops is the same problem I have with Pixelfed. They are both only maintained by the same one guy. No team, no support besides him. Its only a matter of time before they are dead in the water due to burnout or shifting interest.
AirPlay projecting to other devices. I only see a tool to receive projections
OSMAND, since they started tracking users a while ago on the f-droid version.
Is OrganicMaps not a good alternative to OSMAND?
As far as I understand the app menue, tracking is an opt in.
Not happy with OrganicMaps? It’s my personal favourite at least, and completely open source. Probably depends what your needs are. :)
they did? totally slipped past me…
Just don’t check the box?
I would love to see a good Lightroom alternative in terms of ease of use.
Darktable is great and the results are good, but it’s pretty complex to use and has a really steep learning curve. And it doesn’t do photo management other than a few basics. Even after months of use I still struggle to replicate what I can do in Lightroom.
You can complete it with digikam.
Very much not a fan, it’s extremely slow and doesn’t do photo editing so won’t show changes to my RAW files.
It has done photo editing forever, you can even edit with external software.
Maybe it’s slow though. I never noticed but my collection is small.
I would love to see an Open Source alt to AlchemyRPG
I love using their scenes when playing DnD online, but their privacy policy leaves a lot to be desired
