Photoshop is easier to use than gimp. I don’t pay for photoshop, but if I needed something like that I would.
I wouldn’t say Photoshop is easy but Gimp is horrendous.
It’s usable with photogimp, but Photoshop still has better tools and filters.
Hard to compare.
The two apps just have a different workflow…
Well yeah I was answering for me though, not the whole internet.
Gimp has a work flow that I can’t get into, photoshop clicks better. For you, it could be the opposite and that’s great.
I’m not selling photoshop, I don’t even use either anymore. It would be stupid not to try to make gimp work for you first.
Depends if you learn gimp or PS first.
Like if you start life with Linux, windows seems weird
Idk, I learned GIMP first for years, and kept being annoying how unintuitive it was.
Then I tried Photoshop on a friend’s computer for a week, and found how much easier it was to use.
I don’t use Photoshop though since I use Linux
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They aim to introduce that in version 3.0, which they say will be a complete overhaul of the app.
Non-destructive editing through live adjustment layers is definitely the single most useful feature any editing software can have.
That alone makes life so much easier.
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I remember people saying “3.0 is right around the corner” several years ago.
I categorize GIMP 3.0 the same as ASOIAF, Star Citizen, and the Google Drive client for Linux. I’ll be pleasantly surprised if I see it, but I ain’t holding my breath.
I imagine by the time it releases I’ll have bought Affinity v3 already
If you’re talking about general ergonomy (as opposed to functionality), you may find Affinity Photo to be a breath of fresh air. It’s close to Ps (on purpose) but it is so much better thought out, the way you interact with your documents. Really worth trying
Same with Inkscape vs Affinity Designer.
I really wanted Inkscape to work for me, though I was constantly fighting the UI and some weird artifacting Inkscape produced exporting SVG files.
Affinity Designer was, and still is, especially since their licenses are perpetual/non-subscription, well worth the price and is a dream to use.
Same with Lightroom vs Darktable.
Darktable is pretty much a Lightroom replica in terms of the workflow. Its main issue is that Darktable reacts to slider changes in an unpredictable way. Small value differences lead to overblown changes to the image. Fine tuning the result is near impossible.
How does Rawtherapee compare to that? Many people seem to prefer it over Darktable
I tried it once a very long time ago. It was super slow and buggy. It’s easier to get used to Darktable quirks.
It’s very good and I prefer it to Darktable.
Ah, might be! It’s been 10+ years since I tried it. Back then I found it very hard to navigate
Does it have a good panorama sticker or HDR merger? Those are the tools I absolutely need from Lightroom
Not sure, never used these features.
Krita is closer to Photoshop than Gimp, although still not up to it. Just in case you ever need PS, try krita first.
Thanks I’ll remember that just in case!
Krita is excellent for painting, not very good for image editing though.
Photoshop is one i cannot shake too. If I need to make a graphic to post on social media for my shop, Photoshop does it. If I need to edit a picture, Photoshop.
I’ve had a pretty good experience using photopea as a photoshop replacement. Definitely not quite as powerful, but it has more than enough features for your average user
Consider Photoshop Elements for a similar UI and one time payment to use forever.
Thanks for the tip I didn’t know about that.
Honestly, its gotta be the MS Office suite.
Yes if you’re just writing your own simple documents libreoffice/OpenOffice will work, but if you have to do anything more complex than a single page spreadsheet, text-on-white presentations, or 3 page MLA book reports… or, even worse, have to interact with documents and spreadsheets created by basically any other person on the planet, I’ve just never had a good consistent experience with any of the free options.
Disagree. Libreoffice is pretty capable for most use cases nowadays.
Compatibility is also pretty good with Microsoft formats despite Microsoft‘s best efforts.
OpenOffice is dead.
it’s pretty capable in term of most functionalities but you can’t get the formatting, e. g. word docs, exactly one-to-one with its MS office version counterpart. So it would be difficult to share to multiplatforms users.
And Microsoft intentionally introduce bugs in its files design so that certain functionalities will be extremely difficult to replicate.
unfortunately “pretty good” is not “guaranteed”, which is often what I need for both work and school. I tried to make myself use only libre options for like a week and just about every assignment I opened was broken in some way or another so I always ended up back in Word.
I’ll still use the libreoffice options if i’m, say, already logged into my Linux install and don’t want to bother going back to Windows. But since I get Office for free thru work and school, and so does everyone else, well… I just use it.
As someone that despises MS Office, LibreOffice is even worse. All I wanted to do was create a simple database of contact info, donation info, and reservation scheduling for a small nonprofit. Something I could do in minutes in Access. Let me tell you the database part of LibreOffice SUCKS. You can’t even import csv’s! Best you can do is copy paste cells into fields and Hope all the formatting and data types work. And connecting to other external data sources is an incredible pain. I found MS Office on sale for $35 and threw LibreOffice in the trash where it belongs.
I hate Office365 with passion. It’s extremely unproductive and alternatives like Quip are much better.
I’m surprised to see quip here, honestly it’s never been for me (even with it’s salesforce integration). What do you like about it compared to gdocs / word?
Quip is very lightweight. It’s not clogged with 200 features I’m never going to use.
That’s why I don’t use any of the real “365” web apps, only their desktop apps which do keep the bullshit to some minimum.
I’ve found OnlyOffice (not to be confused with OpenOffice) is very compatible with Microsoft’s Office document format. I can open and edit docx files created by other people with no problem.
I don’t need office much but when I do, I hate that I can never find what I’m looking for in that stupid ribbon. I also don’t know any good MS Access alternative.
Disagree but collaboration is horrible. Online Office sucks too though, they dont even try. They want people to use Windows.
Oh yeah 365 online simultaneous “collaboration” is absolutely useless. If I really need multiple people inside the same document I’ll use Google docs and then export it to finish off the formatting.
Yeah wow thats not better. Never used that, but finishing off formatting on a complex Paper is not really possible
If you have to interact with documents created by others it would be better to use open formats not proprietary shit designed to be not cross compatible
Steam. The support they have for multiplatform almost feels open source and they have been invaluable for the adoption of desktop Linux
Absolutely, making proton open source made me respect them more than any other major tech company
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The most recent one is, of course, Sync for Lemmy. It may just be muscle memory at this point, but I find the experience a step improvement in browsing.
On my home server front, I would mention Plex despite Jellyfin’s massive improvements over the past 2 years. Plexamp is just a magical piece of software.
For the most part, though, I think I’d reverse the question. Most of the time, I prefer OSS.
I agree about Plex. But I don’t get the love for Sync.
It feels kind of clunky and it lacks some features many of the other apps have. Personally, I’m liking Thunder right now, but I’m excited for Boost to come out.
Sync has ads unless you pay, it’s not open source, and I haven’t actually found anything superior about it.
That’s funny because I switched off of plex to Jellyfin because of how bad the experience on plex was.
Same here. And especially for watch parties Jellyfin has been great.
Such a cool feature to self host
Yep! Just need faster internet so I can share with more friends 😭
I’m glad I used Infinity for Reddit, which was always FOSS, and there is now a new fork Eternity for Lemmy.
I use Navidrome over Jellyfin for music hosting. The open source music clients for the subsonic API are a little more varied.
If you’re happy using closed apps, Symfonium supports both Jellyfin and Subsonic.
So i bought plex pass a while ago and i keep hearing about plexamp, I dont really understand why is it considered so good, could you elaborate on why you like it? Does it do more than play music from my home server?
Try reiverr, its a jellyfin ui made by a lemmy user that integrates with the arr suite and tvmd so you can easily find new things to watch https://github.com/aleksilassila/reiverr
I just switched from Plex to Jellyfin. Aside from a few minor features like intro skipping, I don’t miss it.
I love Jellyfin and mainly use it and recommend it where possible these days, but man, the download situation sucks. Hate having to download files without compressing them, especially since I keep my media lossless. Its the main reason I’ve still kept Plex running on my server. Also sometimes the clients can be wonky, I’ve found Jellyfin works best for me with Kodi as the player for most things, which is interesting. But overall I do like Jellyfin and support it and its mission, hopefully gets better in these aspects in time.
Microsoft Excel
Hah, with no attempt to explain because it’s very self explanatory.
Ha yeah but to explain, without my excel vba scripts the place I work at would fall apart. Too many systems with varying formats from our clients and excel is the middleman, for better or worse. Nothing else does the job, only excel.
Libre calc is a great replacement imo. It has support for excel vba macros, but you can also make macros in Python, JavaScript, and their own macro language. For the most part it’s cross compatible with excel, but doesn’t support their xlsm file type as far as I know.
I mean, I tried.
Problem is, I have only limited power in an enterprise led decision. I argued to have Notepad++ enabled on my login for my purposes and they accepted it - but excel is so engrained in everyone’s offices I simply cannot change.
Excel just works…there’s no fuss or stress or drama with admins. It just fucking works. I’m getting too old for hassle, so office it is.
It’s fine if you never leave Calc. If you’re trying to use Calc at home and Excel at work, it’s absolutely awful. Key bindings aren’t the same. Basic things like auto completing formulas is different. It’s terrible to flip between the two.
Why excel? For most things I wouldnt say Libreoffice is worse. Impress though is something to learn.
But now I can use Impress and Writer, Calc too but the graphs are shit. Thats fair to say, graphs in Calc are horrible. The rest should be pretty much the same… I guess, havent used Excel in years
That’s what I came here to post. People always think that other software are actual options. If you are using drools rules then other software can’t even follow the xlsx standard properly enough to even allow drools to compile correctly. It sucks because I’d rather not have to get licenses for my whole team to use excel when there’s plenty of free options and we don’t even use it that much, but it’s just so far into another league it isn’t even close.
What are drools rules? All the pages I’m reading are very high level “bueiness rules” what does that even mean?
oh sorry, forgot I wasn’t on a programming community. It’s a software for writing rules for business operation. Not relevant to the majority of people on the planet.
There are no good open source CAD systems at all.
I wonder, what makes a good CAD system?
I had this idea for a while to build a Frankenstein monster of a 3D software that uses real time graphics and has a multi step build process covering CAD, wireframe manipulation and voxel workflows. If I ever actually make it, your concerns will be heard despite being probably not the best softwsre to do your work in :)
CAD system must be reliable. It is simply unacceptable to have math issues which cause unpredictable geometries.
CAD system should have a good UI. This is a big issue for open source software in general as UI and UX is usually an afterthought.
CAD system should be fast and use hardware acceleration. Running single threaded python scripts on CPU to do complex computations kills the productivity. Designing real life objects is already a mentally taxing task, the whole purpose of CAD is to remove the computational bottleneck of a human.
CAD should be object aware. If I draw two gears and put them next to each other, I should be able to rotate one and see the other moving accordingly.
This is a bare minimum, I’m not even talking about computational modelling, stress testing, etc.
Proper math and an intuitive interface, the opensource alternatives really struggle with some basic functions
Modern day, proper parametric modeling with robust and intuitive constraints.
That is a question too hard to answer in a comment and one that depends on the use case of the software. Few users need the power and features of CATIA or NX, but those who need it can’t accept anything lesser. SolidWorks is a good spot in terms of flexibility and features if it could be easier for the average person to use. You need proper accurate parametric modeling (e.g. a NURBS kernel) for solid models and surfacing. Hearing things like wireframe and voxel indicates it isn’t suitable to me.
I got a maker sub to solidworks. I couldn’t keep up with 360’s oddities and feature changes.
Maybe some day.
Once you get the basics down it’s pretty much all transferable. There are some minor workflow changes, but the functionality isn’t all too different.
Ok, good to know!
Blender ;)
Blender is not CAD.
Youtube, it just has way more content than any libre platform
There why we use ReVanced YouTube and YouTube ad block extensions.
ReVanced? I used to use Vanced, but I guess it was shut down. I’ve been looking for an alternative (but clearly not very hard).
ReVanced is pretty much exactly same thing as Vanced, except it works still and is kept updated.
ReVanced is a godsend. Just please find it on GitHub, not on google where the first five links are scams. https://github.com/ReVanced The process of getting ReVanced is a little bit more complicated that Vanced.
- download ReVanced Manager from GitHub
- go to Patcher > select application > YouTube
- you will see recommended version
- find that exact version on ApkMirror
- download it, it have to be the APK version, not the SplitAPK one.
- go to ReVanced Manager > patcher > select app > from storage > select your APK from ApkMirror
- select patches you want (I highly recommend reading what they do and deciding if you want it)
- click patch and wait for it to patch. On my phone, I have to leave the phone on with the ReVanced manager open, otherwise the patching process resets. It may take few minutes.
- install the app and open it, go to settings, some patches have to be configured/turned on.
- if you want to login with google, you have to install Vanced MicroG (If you used Vanced, you should have it already installed)
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Inkscape works good on Windows too, but its UI… It’s like it was made by monkeys for dinosaurs. I’m not sure that Inkscape devs ever tried to use it themselves.
The UI isn’t the best, but is it really that bad? I’ve used some adobe software as well, and I don’t really find Inkscape’s UI that hard to use in comparison. Whether it’s pretty is another question.
Pretty bad in my opinion. Especially when you’re working on more than one document at a time.
I agree that it’s bad for editing anything more than a page, didn’t think of that as I only really use it to make figures, which I think it’s pretty great for.
Idk about you but I thought this was the case as well, since the last time I used Inkscape was probably like 6 years ago, and at the time, the UI was super dated looking (don’t get me wrong, it was still functional).
The different is night and day now, I honestly couldn’t tell that it was the same software. UI looks super clean and modern.
I used fresh Inkscape installation to fix some SVG files last month. Its UI is still cancer from 1990-s.
gf
Version 1.3 has introduced a shape builder tool, always nice to have that. Overall, it seems that is has improved quite a bit in the last few years, so that’s good to see
They revamped the entire interface, it’s based on GTK3 and feels honestly very modern. I don’t use it every day so take my feedback with a grain of salt
Inkscape is my go-to for creating decals for 3D assets.
Yeah they are full GTK now, on Windows it looked weird too
What issues have you run into on macOS? I use inkscape on my quite new mac very often, and don’t have any issues. The command line tools for inkscape are also pretty good I think, and work without any issues (I get some
critical warning’s every now and then though, but nothing has affected output yet).
MacOS instead of some Linux distro. Mostly because of the hardware that comes with it, making a neat integrated product.
I agree, love the intervonnectivity with iOS, especially AirDrop. And it’s still more comfortable to use than Windows IMO (no forced updates that slow down the shutting down process!).
I agree, love the intervonnectivity with iOS, especially AirDrop.
To me, that sort of “feature” is nothing more than a security vulnerability waiting to be exploited.
Maybe I just think that because of past trauma from Microsoft products and IoT devices being blatantly insecure, but…
Photoshop, Fences, Plex, Steam, Unraid. I just highly prefer them to any alternatives I have tried. And believe me, I have tried every alternative to Photoshop and Fences that I could find. They just don’t do it. And because of those two in particular, I have to add Windows to the list.
Oh, and I guess Sync for Lemmy. The only reason I even know what Lemmy is, is the fact that the Sync for Reddit app stopped working and basically said, “Yeah, move to Lemmy, idiot.”
Obsidian for note taking, Bitwig studio for audio recording and processing.
TIL Obsidian isn’t FOSS!
Obsidian is amazing. It also feels open-source lol; I thought it was at first.
Maybe because the plugins are, and the notes you make with it are plain markdown files.
It absolutely feels like FOSS. But it’s actually not. Closed source, but free for personal use.
Absolutely love Obsidian.
Did you check logseq? It’s on flathub
logseq definitely coming along. I tried their donation only sync and it seems to mostly work.
That said nothing has beaten Standardnotes for me. Standardnotes can be found on flathub, fdroid etc. The only drawback is to get the important features you need to either selfhost or buy the plan. The free service is very barebones
I am using logseq at work, as I don’t have a license there. I prefer Obsidian over all alternatives I’ve tried so far. Major points are:
- Plugins, which obsidian offers a lot
- File structure, obsidian stores all notes in a directory tree of markdown files. You can sync this with any service you like: GIT, Syncthing, manually, whatever you like.
- I don’t really get the journaling format of logseq, why does every note have to be a point in a hierarchy?
Logseq has genuinely made me a less stupid person. It’s confusing to learn, but the ceiling for articulating and organising your thoughts and knowledge base is insanely high. Other apps kind of feel like I’m fighting the limitations of my tools in order to organise a mental library of where to find information.
isn’t obsidian open source?
Nope it’s not. It’s free, but you can only look at part of the source code and can’t look at the proprietary parts. Logseq is completely FOSS though
damn, that’s kind of a bummer since i love it so much. logseq looks exciting, how does it compare to obsidian feature-wise?
Tbh, it’s a different philosophy for taking notes. There is overlap in features, but also a lot of differences.
In obsidian, everything is file based, you manage the folder system, and you primarily link files together.
In logseq, it’s more based around blocks which are indented portions of the content. You can still make files and link to the file itself rather than a block, but a lot of your notes will be on your journal pages and link to other blocks/days/content/tags, etc. I prefer logseq to obsidian, but it’s a very different file setup type than normal since you normally don’t worry about individual files and keeping track of them, you can just link to the content later. You can still make separate files though, and they work well. The focus is just on blocks rather than files
Both have note linking and embedding (logseqs is better imo), graph view, searching, plugins, themes, etc. I’d say they’re on par in terms of features, it’s just whichever notes system you prefer and work better with tbh
It is closed source. I haven seen any partial source code anywhere either. Licensing is very generous: free forever for personal use, you only need to get a license at 50$ per year if you are a commercial user. There is also a 2 week trial for commercial users.
Of course, besides legality, there is nothing stopping you from using obsidian for commercial things, they don’t do any checking for that stuff.
Bitwig is outstanding. I so wish there was an open source DAW that came close in stability and workflow. Zrythm crashes constantly, and the workflow in Ardour is obtuse. I can’t quite figure out how to do anything in LMMS and the other options just look so dated I’m not even tempted to try them.
I’ve heard that many swear by reaper. I once started it and couldn’t figure out the UI at all, and the UI design just felt ancient. Didn’t give it another chance after that.
Affinity is the best non Adobe image editing suite. The Foss stuff just doesn’t compare, imo. Even if feature parity, the UI of Foss image editing softwares is hotshit.
FL studio is beating out LMMS. However, I pirate FL, so it’s still free to me.
FL sucks on Linux. I’d recommend Bigwig studio.
I’ve been using https://photopea.com and it does 99% of everything I would’ve done in Photoshop, in your browser. The only thing I’ve found that’s not up to par with Adobe is the content aware fill… it technically works, but it’s just not very good at it. And it of course doesn’t have any AI assisted features. It’s also free and ad supported, or you can pay $5/month to remove ads.
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Absolutely, Affinity Photo is really good. Publisher is okay (buggy and slow, though, at least in 1.2 it was, haven’t tried 2.0), but Designer is miles behind Inkscape in my experience. It has just so little functionality. I’m not exactly a heavy vector user so I could be wrong too.
I’ve tried with open source DAWs but audio software is still decades behind in the open source world. I’m on Reaper and Ableton but I would love to ditch them. Toontrack products on linux is a pipe dream too. I’ve had nothing but issues over the years so still need to dual boot.
It’s just plain better than any other alternative. Better UI, better UX, better features, better customization, support for Monet… I could go on all day.
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Visual studio code. There’s nothing else that’s anywhere near as good that doesn’t cost money. Those annoying terminal text editors just don’t do it for me. I need code autocomplete and do not understand how there exist people who have the patience to get by without it. I do not have the time to be switching tabs 20 times a second because I can’t remember function parameter overloads. That intellisense autocomplete is just too good.
VSCodium exists. Not sure whether it has intellisense by default but might be worth a try. It is open source and without all the Microsoft telemetry
VSCode is open source though? Although I guess maybe not the plugins?
It’s similar to chrome. Chrome is not open source, its base project chromium is. The VSCode distributable has closed source stuff on top which is mostly telemetry. There’s a purely open source build of VSCode called vscodium.
I use the proprietary version for the remote tools and settings sync.
I can work from home on my windows PC with no loss of productivity compared to my Linux workstation.
And the ability to open any GitHub repo in the browser based Code just by pressing . is a game changer.
What are you talking about? Neovim LSP autocompletion is way faster and smoother than VSCode’s, and one of the reasons I personally have trouble working in the latter nowadays.
He thinks that the ‘annoying’ command line editors can’t do autocomplete…
Obviously not well informed lol.
Exactly
You could just use vs codium as a fully open source option.
Fair enough. I get that it takes to much time to setup. But it definetly is possible to get autocompletion and syntax higlighting etc. In a terminal based editor like vim.
I don’t mind spending a copule of hours setting up my development environment, since I spend so much time coding anyway. So its a trade off. But if VS code works for you, theb definetly stick with that. I used VS code alot myself but tried exploring other tools and switched to vim. But it nerver hurts to try other things out.
Youtube, newpipe doesnt feels good to me No playlist No comment replies
So no🙁newpipe definitely has playlists
I’m talking about playlist made by youtube channels
if you know the url of the playlist you can bookmark it. you can also search for playlists.
Then I guess you need to go to YouTube website, go to the channel, look for what playlists they have, then go on NewPipe and look for it.
See how much of an inconvenience it is compared to just being able to pull up all channel playlists in the app?
Sure, you can type “(channel name) playlist” in the search bar, but then all those playlists are all mixed in with regular video results as well. Noticed that not all of the playlists shows up doing that too.
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I use revanced can i count it as open source?
Not really. It’s a reverse-engineered and hacked YouTube app.
Try youtube revanced
You actually use the comment section on YouTube?
It’s one of the worst and least informative in my opinion.
