A big one for me is Microsoft office (desktop), Libreoffice and other FOSS alternatives just simply don’t come close, and feature wise are 20 years behind. Especially since I basically mastered MS office 2007+'s drawing features, which the FOSS alternatives don’t replicate very well.
And of course Microsoft loves to push Office 365. I don’t pay for that and just use desktop office, but Microsoft prefers you don’t know that you can do this.
And I’m going to get shit on by Lemmy big time for this but while Linux is great and has made vast improvements in recent years, I still use Windows, not only because of MS office, but because a lot of games tend to only support Windows. I know that wine and proton exist but they’re not perfect and don’t feel quite the same as running native.
I wish an operating system existed with a hybridized Linux and clone NT kernel (using code from FOSS Wine and ReactOS of course) so that the numerous back catalog of NT software can run similar to as intended while also interacting with Linux programs better and using a shared environment. Since it would probably become vulnerable to viruses for windows as well, maybe? (my programming knowledge is extremely rusty) an antivirus similar to Windows defender is bundled with the operating system. Hopefully if someone makes such an operating system it can be a Windows killer and would switch immediately
The entire phone-based ecosystem.
I’m not sure I follow. LibreOffice is at least as good (if not better) than Offics365 unless maybe if you’re doing advanced shit in Excel, or need specifically coded macros.
Considering Microsoft’s push to make everything into a webwrapped application, I think LibreOffice is only going to be a better and better alternative as time moves on.
I mean LO is pretty good, but it is a bit rough to find what you want. At a min its more difficult to format your sheets in LO.
For excel stuff, https://www.visidata.org/ is way, way better than excel assuming the data is tabular (which, frankly, it should be anyway). Like it’s not even close.
I’m sorry but… 20 years behind? What new features has, say, Word even offered in the past 20 years beside that damn ribbon?
@VirusMaster3073 music DAWs. I think the only real option is Ardour, but I tried it and was struggling to just figure out how to create a couple instrument tracks. Could be skill issue, but honestly I’m pretty good at figuring out UIs so if I was struggling a lot with the basics, it’s probably not just me. So I’m still on garageband for now which doesn’t get in my way when I’m trying to make music
Reaper is awesome. It is dirt cheap. Also runs on linux. But then you have the VST issue
@RouxBru oh VSTs don’t work on Linux?
I don’t use Linux, so very limited knowledge. But there are workarounds. Apparently Yabridge works on most, but not all VSTs
Give reaper a shot. I honestly don’t know if it’s FOSS but it runs in donations and is pretty good imo
Hmm I think the issue is that Ardour is more focused on recording than electronic music production … There’s more intuitive DAWs out there but I suppose in terms of what it can do it doesn’t have to stand back … compared to ProTools I’d say it’s still quite intuitive (not a high bar for sure).
Totally agree. The DAW space is depressingly neglected as FOSS and I can’t imagine why. 15 years ago I was certain there would one day be a FOSS DAW that had the same love put into it as Blender.
Tax filing software
This seems like asking for faster horses. Your taxes should just be filed for you, then you can verify it, no?
It’s the only reason I keep a windows VM around. Windows is getting so naggy though. Every time I boot it up, it wants me to update it, install virus scanner and ser up my user on microsoft vs local.
Adobe After Effects!! PLEASE DEAR GOD
This is the singular thing still keeping me using Adobe software. If this was replaced then I could be FREEE
I’m curious how DaVinci resolve’s fusion page compares?
I can’t answer that, but the reason I’m typing this from Windows is that getting DiVinci to reliably work in linux has been a pain in my ass.
Oh yes. I can’t comment but I’ve heard that from other sources as well. Bummer
I had it working, upgraded Mint, and it broke. I had already been fighting to get that upgrade done for a couple hours at that point (there were issues), so I was just over it after researching and trying a few things. People have got it working but, as a dude with two jobs, I ain’t got time for that.
Yea of course. As professionals our window to do tech support is limited.
Obd2 software so I can diagnose and repair my car. This is more than a dtc scanner, I need to be able to trend values and flash/program modules without a $15k tablet with $50k of yearly software.
So far I’ve just been using the basic obd2 Bluetooth things but the apps available are very limited. I’ve been able to do some custom PIDs for some of my vehicles, and others you can often find tools that allow you to do some specific programming but it lacks a lot. I’ve been considering some of the ones you can find for around $400 from China but I’m not sure if those are anywhere near the same level as the 10k snap on ones.
I’d like to see an open-source decentralized game store, like a competitor to Steam, GOG, etc. However, I think it should also target emulators. There’s still an unfounded stigma toward emulation even though emulators themselves are legal, and even though the big AAA game companies themselves are now using them as a lazy way to repackage and resell their old games on new platforms.
One of the biggest barriers to entry into emulation is the setup. Even with super user-friendly frontends like Emulation Station, people are still required to either go out of their way to either legally backup the games they already own, or told to “do some searches,” because of legal issues. Nevermind how this exposes new users to potential malware.
But people still make new games for these old systems. It’s entirely possible to make a store that can sell ROMs legally - one already exists, itch.io. But imagine a federated open-source game store, one where game makers can choose to legally sell their own games, and then create plugins for the emulation frontends to allow people to buy roms directly from those interfaces. It would turn emulation into a fully complete console-like experience, all while being available on more platforms than any console could ever hope to be (including those same consoles when they’re jailbroken!)
I also think it would be the final puzzle piece that legitimizes emulation.
This sounds dreamy
This will never happen. The problem with decentralized stuff is that anyone can put anything, so piracy will be omnipresent there, why would you pay for a game when the seller next store is giving it away for free (or much cheaper), and how would you distinguish between “EA” selling the Sims 1 there and “TheRealEA” selling the Sims 1 there for the same price. Also decentralized card information is a bad idea, so you would either need a centralized paying hub, setup your card with every seller, or only be able to use crypto to pay, all of those are bad in their own way. But it’s a nice dream
This will never happen.
15 or so years ago people were saying the same thing about decentralized social media. Yet here we are.
The problem with decentralized stuff is that anyone can put anything, so piracy will be omnipresent there
This isn’t unique to decentralized platforms. Piracy is omnipresent. Yet people still buy stuff. But to address your question more concretely, imagine the store system is designed to be federated. Any instance owner can decide to what degree they would enforce anti-piracy measures. DMCA law requires a good faith effort on the part of a site owner to stop piracy, so any instance owner who wants to run a legitimate shop must properly vet game submissions to make sure they aren’t infringing copyright, and aren’t plagiarizing. They would also have to defederate from all pirate instances, but they would not be responsible for instances that have nothing to do with their own. People who choose to use the instances for piracy would be off on the margins of the internet, just like they are now.
why would you pay for a game when the seller next store is giving it away for free (or much cheaper)
Good question, since you already have that option for virtually all games, why do you pay for them? My reasons are because I generally do want to support the creators I like, as well as because a lot of pirated content is questionable in quality (ie., potential malware). Why do people pay for Red Hat Enterprise Linux when they can get the same OS for free, even legally? Continuing support in that case. Point is, people buy because they believe the value of buying is greater than what’s available for free, whatever reasons those might be.
and how would you distinguish between “EA” selling the Sims 1 there and “TheRealEA” selling the Sims 1 there for the same price.
I dunno dude, how do we do this now? A stupid checkmark? There’s gotta be better ways than a stupid checkmark. PGP signatures would probably be a good start. Maybe incorporate a web of trust implementation? How does Valve do it? I’m not an expert on the subject, here’s a Wikipedia page about the topic.
Also decentralized card information is a bad idea, so you would either need a centralized paying hub, setup your card with every seller, or only be able to use crypto to pay, all of those are bad in their own way.
Yeah, let that be a problem for the person who wants to decentralize payment systems. A more practical solution? Just include the popular payment methods that already exist. Except crypto currencies, that shit can fuck off.
You gave all these explanations for why a decentralized game shop couldn’t work, but all of them are not only not especially hard to solve for such a platform, but are also just common challenges for all of the internet. It’s like the 90s all over again when people insisted that open-source software itself couldn’t work. Yet, again, here we are.
15 or so years ago people were saying the same thing about decentralized social media. Yet here we are.
No we weren’t, Email has been a thing for much longer than that. Everyone always knew decentralized social platforms were possible.
In any case you’re only scratching the surface of my points which is why you think they’re shallow, you haven’t answered a single one of them in any satisfactory way. Your answers get it 80% of the way there (which is the easy part that anyone knows how to do), but the last 20% is what makes this impossible in any practical sense of the word.
The main problem that Steam/GoG/Itch/etc solve is not selling games, but providing a secure validated platform where games can be sold. And this is the hard problem to solve on decentralized platforms. To answer you question, why do I buy games? there are 2 main points:
- It’s convenient
- I want to support the devs
Neither of those points work on a decentralized platform. It’s not convenient because of the payment hassle and trying to figure out if something is legit or not. When you buy stuff at Amazon even if it’s sold by someone else you’re safe that if you get scammed you will get your money back, on a decentralized platform that’s not the case, you will need to be extremely aware of who’s the seller, which instance is it being sold on, etc, etc. This alone completely obliterates the convenience of pressing a button and getting a game, so in this any decentralized platform will be worse. And the second point also is related, I can’t know if I’m supporting the devs or some random person who’s re-uploaded the game. Sure, PGP signatures would be nice, and we can use that to add a checkmark next to someone, except you need a centralized PGP public signature registry, so you’re no longer fully decentralized, and if you add a solution to it (e.g. blockchain of public PGP signatures of known sellers) it’s still possible to simply create another seller with a similar enough name, or create the official name before the official entity does it so you look more official than the actual official site.
In short people would not easily know if they’re buying from a pirate or from the devs, so that takes away convenience and support for the devs, the only two reasons I buy games. Valve/GoG/etc manage this very easily because they’re a centralized platform that control what gets on their store, so they can easily validate if the thing they’re selling is being sold by the actual dev, and even so there have been cases of indy games getting plagiarized and re uploaded by a different party. But in those cases, Valve took the loss, refunded the users and took the game off the store, in a decentralized platform that won’t be possible because the scammer is the only person with the power to do that, so again, less convenient, less secure.
Which leads me to payment, you think that just integrating something like Paypal is enough? first of all the moment you do that you loss the decentralized battle, now everything is centralized on the payment method and they can arbitrate stuff, so you haven’t solved anything by being decentralized.
Finally with all of this if you’re a company developing games why would you choose this platform? it provides nothing to you and there’s a 100% chance that anything you sell there will immediately be copied and resold by someone else. Which means that on corpo-mind if they wanted to get in there, they would strengthen their DRM policies to try to prevent this.
It’s a nice dream, but there are too many things that make this very difficult if not impossible to happen. Proving ownership of external stuff in fully decentralized systems is simply impossible, which is why stuff like HTTPS relies on centralized nodes for validation and why NFTs while a great idea on paper are synonym with scams on most people’s mind. Even if someone was able to create such a platform, no one would use it, so it’s just pointless. Which is not to say that there aren’t strives we can make in that direction, e.g. trying to enforce a common protocol for APIs which would allow multiple stores to be accessed from a single app is a nice start, a blockchain for ownership of games that can be part of that API used by stores to allow to cross-buy is another interesting idea (although the store would probably still charge something to activate the product, but essentially we’re moving the fee from the publisher to the customer in exchange to allow him to only pay a fee to activate the same game on multiple systems). Etc, etc, etc, there are plenty of nice ideas on how the situation can be improved, but a fully decentralized store should not be the end goal.
PS: The fact that you didn’t mentioned OpenBazaar in your reply is a relatively good indicator that you haven’t given this problem enough thought to understand the pitfalls you’re missing.
Screenreaders.
The one half-decent libre screenreader is Orca, and it only works by hacking X into doing things X was never intended to do. Wayland is much cleaner and more sensible, which means that Orca doesn’t work on it at all. This means blind and visually impaired users are physically unable to use modern Linuxes or BSDs.
And Orca was only half-decent.
That’s amusing to me. Back around 2010, I used a lot of state legal forms that they only released as PDF files, but not fillable. It was annoying to print them and fill them by hand, and terribly fiddly to use the PDF annotation tool on the computer.
So I just used OpenOffice.org to create almost-pixel-perfect versions of the forms, with fillable text boxes, then exported them as PDF. Word couldn’t do it at the time.
Now, at work, I use Microsoft365 because that’s what everyone uses because of the site license. I wish we’d switch to something else, because Outlook fails so hard at basic email stuff.
With all the political shit going on these days, it baffles me why companies continue to use anything that stores data in cloud servers owned by American companies. I don’t care where the data centres actually are, the parent company is foreign and aside from “trust me bro” I’m not sure what else is preventing them from snooping sensitive information.
MS Office isn’t better than LibreOffice and OnlyOffice, they all do the same task of making docs, spreadsheets, and presentations with very similar UI. It’s a no brainer to use the one that doesn’t bug you to use OneDrive.
Linux gaming has come a long way, especially with the introduction of things like Proton and popularisation of it by the Steam Deck. If you can play games on the Steam Deck, those games run on Linux :D
The main reasons (mind you, not only reasons) why people don’t just switch to Linux is:
- it’s different (humans naturally gravitate towards things they are familiar with)
- partly because Linux has a few things that are unintuitive to the average user (e.g. using terminal), but distros like Mint have mostly solved this issue
- Switching itself is really annoying (I would say I’m in this boat, but I’ve installed Linux on my old computers and will definitely do it again if I ever get a new computer)
Libreoffice and other FOSS alternatives just simply don’t come close
I really only use Word and Excel, and I find the FOSS alternatives just fine. I can understand if power-users might find the newer features worthwhile, but for basic word processing and spreadsheets the FOSS options are good enough.
It’s not. Writer will start crashing at 50 pages, it become a pretty much unusable as you add more text.
That’s disappointing. Which one has this issue?
Fwiw, I have used OpenOffice and OnlyOffice. I actually haven’t used LibreOffice specifically.
I guess it depends a lot on what you think of as “an alternative”. I’m really happy using FOSS because I generally try to find a different angle on things, and it allows me to do that.
Luckily I’m not dependent on using common office software, the few spreadsheet tasks that I need can be done with online tools, either open or proprietary. For documents I usually use markdown and pandoc. For music making, I use my own software or Ardour for mastering, etc. For modeling and 3D printing I started using OpenSCAD.
There’s also many things that proprietary software just can’t do. Like, my day-to-day workflow is based on a minimalist approach to computing, with the most common operations being very easy to perform (browser, editor, terminal) … MacOS is always hailed for their great UI but honestly, it seems slow and clunky to me even though I used it daily for a long time …
I have still quite literally found no other tool, even paid products, that can interior-crop the way IrfanView can (select row/column Y in XYZ if the entire image was XYZ, and crop out that inner part and auto-tuck X and Z directly against each other). And it’s had this feature for decades, I think.
Not exactly the same, but similar: when working with sprites for games, I often run into situations where I realize way too late that I need the size of each frame to be slightly larger than what I had been working with it. You’d think that having the ability to resize an image by adding extra padding to each individual frame would be a pretty common feature in image editing software these days, but nope. I ended up writing a small tool specifically for that just so I wouldn’t have to adjust frame by frame ever again.
The thing that used to always piss me off was when you tried to upscale stuff in Photoshop and it looked perfect. Then you bit enter and it anti-aliases the absolute fuck out of it. Like what?!
ImageJ is great for stuff like that. Fiji is probably a better route for less fuss (Fiji Is Just ImageJ, plus some popular plugins)
Xodo pdf annotator
It seems all pdf annotators are allergic to letting me have
- The ability to change the text I’ve highlighted without deleting the entire highlight
- Several different highlighter colours and opacities
They seem like really silly requirements, but they make a huge difference to how long it takes me to get through my readings for class.
