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
Hmm, LibreOffice may not be the prettiest, but it works. For my own documents and presentations I use Typst nowadays. That’s a blazing fast modern typesetting alternative to LaTeX. That being said, I can’t stand WYSIWIG stuff but that might not be everybody’s cup of tea.
I mostly run into stubborn manufacturers like Roland that only release their musical instrument companion apps for Mac/Win and leave Linux Digital Audio Workstations hanging.
https://www.visidata.org/ is way, way, way, way better than excel and it’s FOSS.
As for the rest:
- I don’t really miss Word because WYSIWYG editing is just kinda bad across the board. Much better to write with markup rather than fighting an auto-formatter all the time.
- I thankfully have not needed to make much of any PowerPoints, but I think I would probably feel similarly about them and want them in some kind of markup language as well.
- Teams just sucks ass compared to many other alternatives, though I’m admittedly not familiar with good FOSS ones
- Outlook is basically just a dinosaur and there’s a million ways to do email better. Frankly, FOSS has it beat by a huge margin
The rest of Office isn’t really even worth talking about tbh.
Microsoft Access. I have one database that I need that’s written in Access, and although I suppose I could convert it to some other system it would be a chore and I’m not that driven to make the change.
I’ve moved almost everything else onto Linux.
One of the most frustrating programs for me is digiKam. On paper, it’s the perfect DAM/photo manager. But it’s kinda slow for day-to-day use. The user interface is janky in a lot of ways. It doesn’t see constant refinement either. It doesn’t even speak to me as a metadata nerd because I don’t want to turn my metadata into a janky mess. Yeah, you have a powerful metadata editor. It’s like a welding torch without any eye protection.
I’m using ACDSee on Windows, because it’s operating on pretty much the same principle (image file metadata is canonical, app database is just for indexing), but it’s faster and smoother to use. Not perfect, it has its mild limitations (like why the hell doesn’t it support OpenStreetMap - Google Maps kinda sucks for nature trails, you’d think photographers would have pointed this out), but it’s just so much more efficient. If digiKam ever gets a huge UI overhaul, switching over will probably be fairly easy though.
Also about a decade ago, I would have said that as far as novel writing software/large structured document word processors go, nothing beats Scrivener. Scrivener is still probably the best software in its niche, but it looks like a bunch of open source word processors in this niche have come a long way. Currently looking at novelWriter, which seems really rad.
I have to ask you about metadata nerd status…
I have a bunch of exported Google Photos and icloud Photos… photos… what’s the best way to fix the metadata as the “date taken” keeps using export date.
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’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.
@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
Give reaper a shot. I honestly don’t know if it’s FOSS but it runs in donations and is pretty good imo
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 heard https://www.onlyoffice.com/ is good, but have no personal experience.
I have tested power point & word of only office. Its nicer to use than what libre office offers, has more effects than word but the thing thats missing is moving objects around.
I think its a solid replacement for word, not entirely feature complete but in exchange some nice features.
It has pricing whick can be an instant no but i think the pricing is fair for what is offered (especcially when compared to word)
but i think some program like calc/excel is missing so you have to get another program!
but i think what other libre programs offer there is nice so no real problemIsnt it unmaintaned?
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Sound quality will be exactly the same among any of the services that offer lossless files (ie all of the ones that aren’t Spotify). That’s literally the point of lossless.
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If they sound different they’re not lossless. (Or they’re different masters)
I’d love to see a user-friendly, easily-implemented FOSS alternative to the entire Android system.
The options that exist now often can’t get past all the defenses that Android and phone manufacturers put into systems to secure their own data collection/revenue. I have an older Motorola phone that I literally can’t install another operating system on.
We desperately need a stable, user-friendly, and hardware-adaptive replacement for Android. I don’t want that shit on my phones any longer.
You might be interested in postmarketOS They try to mainline older Android devices. It works pretty well on the PinePhone, too.
As far as I understand, the hardware-adaptive part is difficult to implement because ARM systems do not have automatic hardware detection like x86/x64 PCs do, so the hardware list (tree) has to be known for each device, that hardware is mostly proprietary and requires proprietary drivers. All of which results in Android phones using different per-phone-model kernels.
Its sort of a thing. Pine phones use open source linux. I think the main problem is development of apps to run on a linux phone isn’t popular so its pretty bare bones as a system. Havent used one myself though.
My first ever smartphone (in 2015) was a BQ Aquaris 4.5 Ubuntu Edition that came with Ubuntu Phone pre-installed … a lightweight, 4.5" smartphone … there wasn’t much of an app ecosystem at the time but I didn’t miss it because up to that date I used a dumb phone, and the smartphone allowed me to do eMail and use a browser, which was enough for me.
At some point I accidentially dropped it on a hard floor and it broke, and I was quite unhappy that the company didn’t continue that line :(
A manufacturer phone pre-installed with LineageOS would be awesome.
Pixel + GrapheneOS is a dream.
And they’re even working on releasing phones that come with GrapheneOS preinstalled
Ooh, neat.
Who is? Google? Do know if I’d be able to trust that
The GrapheneOS team is working on finding a suitable OEM that would be able to release flagship hardware with security comparable to a Pixel, and GrapheneOS preinstalled.
huh, i much prefer libreoffice to msoffice, i can’t even think of a reason why anyone could prefer msoffice.
Im a but gobsmacked at the notion.
what do you use the drawing for?
memeoffice.
didn’t think msoffice would be the easiest platform to build memes/diagrams on.
I actually didn’t even know office could build something that complicated.
thanks
It might be able to do it but it’s absolutely the wrong tool for the job. That’s Adobe Illustrator territory for sure and maybe inkscape can do it (not familiar enough with it to be able to say) but vector art creation tools are what you really want for this kind of thing.
Problem with MS word is you can’t really put vector images in it externally without it being weird. I think that’s why people are used to drawing it in the software.
The only thing I can think of that Word does better, is making equations. LibreOffice works ok, but it’s more clunky. I still use it over Word because it runs much faster on my PC
I’m with you on the “FOSS office alternatives are shit”, but unfortunately MS office is also shit. Google is the closest I have found to a good office suite but even that is becoming a bit chaotic and awkward. LyX is a promising word processor but also pretty awkward to use in its own way. I’ve got nothing, there.
As far as gaming, this sound less kind than intended but you deserve any shit you get for saying Linux gaming is bad these days. Apart from a few AAA games with anti-cheat where the devs just don’t want to, basically every game just works without any extra effort. Even obscure indie games. I can’t think of the last game I wanted to play that didn’t run on Linux, and often it is better under proton than Windows or native.
I made the jump recently, and although there are clear issues, I don’t see any reason to use windows as my primary gaming OS anymore. Some games still require some fiddling with proton versions, extra command line arguments, environment variables, etc. That is bad for the average user that just wants to click play and play. Also, I noticed that at least on my setup (alienware laptop with nvidia gpu), some games have clear performance issues compared to windows, mainly some UE games. But it’s not so bad to make me want to boot windows again.
And just some extra two cents: I’m still keeping a windows partition for those games that simply cannot run on linux, and it’s possible to keep your main library on the linux partition (I’m using btreefs) and use that same library on windows. You just have to install a driver on windows, and it works beautifully. Haven’t had any issues so far.
Business Accounting software under FOSS is abysmal. Poor quality, poor documentation, poor functionality, limited locale support and limited local support.
CAM software under FOSS is limited to three axis at best, but most is two and a half axis.
Office functionality is covered with LibreOffice. Your assertion that it’s 20 years behind is in my experience not based in fact.
Source: I’ve been using FOSS for over a quarter of a century.
I’ve been using Plain Text Accounting for the past two years and have mostly enjoyed my experience. I’ve found hledger both well documented and well supported. I don’t know the space very well, so which applications and/or packages have you tried?
Plain text accounting (and all the variants) sounds great, right until you need to use it to generate invoices, or depreciate assets, or do a monthly Business Activity Statement, or convert a currency, track repayments, etc.
All of those things require that you write software to achieve that, which means that now instead of solving problems and writing software for my clients, I’m burning hours writing software so I can run my business.
Even if I did that, I’d have no way to validate the processes, short of becoming an accountant.
GNUcash, held up as an example by anyone you ask has no documentation for importing data, has no sample company datasets, has no Business Activity Statement, continues to prefer using an XML file as a database and is unreadable on a 4k monitor.
Kmymoney is fine for home users, but specifically not for business.
Odoo, Adiempere, ERPnext and the six or so other ERP tools have poor or non existent documentation, same issues as GNUcash in relation to data and import, and have a poor track record in solving basic issues that are completely unacceptable in a business setting. For example ERPnext didn’t do currency fractions properly (ERPnext uses Centavo instead of Cent for the USD fraction: https://github.com/frappe/frappe/issues/13445, took 13 months to fix).
Last week I evaluated Apache OFbiz. It looks like a product from 1995, and trying to find anything is impossible. For shits and giggles, try setting the global date format to yyyy-mm-dd. There are three different repositories and the Docker installation instructions don’t even bother to include which one to clone in which order. It starts at: “run the docker build command”. Not to mention that it uses a database called Derby. I’ve been writing software for over 40 years and until last week I’d never heard of it. That’s not something you want in business software.
I could go on, I’ve tested dozens. This is just from memory.
Why did I test all these?
Because I’m still running a 25 year old accounting package that doesn’t run on current hardware, isn’t supported, doesn’t run under Linux and has all my data hostage.
First, thank you for the thoughtful and detailed reply. I find it helpful.
Plain text accounting (and all the variants) sounds great, right until you need to use it to generate invoices, or depreciate assets, or do a monthly Business Activity Statement, or convert a currency, track repayments, etc.
All of those things require that you write software to achieve that, which means that now instead of solving problems and writing software for my clients, I’m burning hours writing software so I can run my business
Oddly enough, I feel the opposite: I’m so glad that I have the freedom to use other tools to do what I need and that I can simply write some custom software to achieve that. I always felt locked in by QuickBooks and now I can do anything from messing around in a spreadsheet to writing what I need with jq. Plain text as an interface means that the sky is the limit for flexibility.
It has also made my company’s financial information more accesible to me. Previously, I’d given it over to bookkeepers and accountants and only seen out of date financial statements when it was time to file taxes. Now I know what’s going on whenever I want.
It has also turned bookkeeping into a programming exercise, which made me more interested, not less. I don’t have clients waiting impatiently for me to produce features for them, so I can enjoy this wro instead of having it feel like a distraction.
I’ve been writing software for over 40 years and until last week I’d never heard of it. That’s not something you want in business software.
I feel that!
Because I’m still running a 25 year old accounting package that doesn’t run on current hardware, isn’t supported, doesn’t run under Linux and has all my data hostage.
Our motivations definitely seem compatible, even if our constraints and preferences don’t.
Thanks again. Good luck.
You’re welcome.
I understand that being able to write software and be deliberate about accounting gives you a closer relationship with your financial situation.
For me the issue is that there are no guardrails around the plaintext accounting model, which means that you have the freedom to shoot yourself in the foot.
My current accounting software as rubbish as it is, stops me from making stupid mistakes, credits instead of debits for example. Plaintext accounting won’t.
So either you need to never make a mistake, or have a way to figure it out.
All that kind of safety net doesn’t exist. You can still make the books balance, but at some point you’re going to find a hole and spend weeks fixing it, or the taxman will and you’ll be paying a fine.
I exported the line items from my current software into plaintext accounting, even made it balance and match my actual accounts.
Then I needed to write an invoice and had to make my own, from scratch and manually enter the data twice, once into the invoice, another into plaintext accounting, giving me the chance to make an error twice, perhaps even a different one on either process. And that’s just one invoice.
I have considered writing my own accounting software from scratch, or forking something, but that’s not going to pay for food, so I kept looking instead.
It’s not a great place to be, either from a business perspective, or a mental one, but that’s where I’m at.
Came here to say this. I hate paying for QuickBooks while giving them access to my business finances…
MS Onenote. Nothing comes close to it. With stylus support etc…
Project management. There is one very good but old solution, open project is barely bearable.
I know managers who swore by MS Project (2007 I think?), and I didn’t totally hate it myself. Haven’t really looked for an alternative, but also, haven’t needed to for the most part.
I wonder if it’s just that project management has changed since then, and everything is all Jira/Kanban boards now? I think most of our projects have been laid out in Trello-like software and Git issues/tasks for probably the last 8 or 9 years.
I like being able to create a task with one click, define a dependency to another task and build a complete gantt diagram very fast. Then just add estimates and a plan of who works when to estimate completion. Then just assigne the jobs and track progress relative to the original plan so I can learn to plan more detailed and estimate Better.
