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.
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?
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
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.
Eh, beamer is more than enough for most presentations. If your slideshow needs to be that flashy, you probably need more substance.
git puts track changes to shame.
You’re absolutely right about compatibility though.
If you’re using git to track document changes then you’re almost certainly in the tech industry and are quite familiar with the inner workings of your computer.
For 90% of people using computers right now, asking them to use git to do version management on their day to day work flow would be like asking me to fly a rocket ship to work.
I agree with the OP here, for what it does office is leaps and bounds ahead of any of the other software I’ve used to try to replace it and I always end up landing back on it.
There are many non-technical people in the world of mathematics and they manage to use LaTeX just fine. Overleaf offers synchronization without needing to touch Git.
Not only mathematics, pretty much everyone in the world of science/academia uses LaTeX. For git, I’ve seen some stuff, but most researchers that program a decent amount are reasonably familiar with git as well.
That’s still a far higher degree of technical competence than is possessed by the target audience for PowerPoint, Google Slides, or LibreOffice present. Also, claiming someone isn’t technical just because they’re not a computer programmer is a little odd. Most programmers I know don’t go anywhere near LaTeX because it’s so confusing and the spec is so complicated. They use powerpoint, Miro, or markdown slides when they want to present something.
Git diff will look pretty terrible for docx or similar files. The thing with the builtin change tracking is that it’ll actually show you what changed in the document view
The comment you’re replying to was talking about LaTeX, not .docx.
Ah, I took it so that they mentioned beamer / LaTeX as a separate thing from change tracking, which is usually more of a document editor feature than a presentation editor feature.
Imo using a text based tool for presentations is really counterproductive because presentations should use as little text as possible.
For me currently, libreoffice impress is actually the best option because it has all the necessary features (wysiwyg style editing, svg support, latex equations, some animations).
Photoshop is easier to use than gimp. I don’t pay for photoshop, but if I needed something like that I would.
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!
Photopea is good for most tasks
Krita is excellent for painting, not very good for image editing though.
Hard disagree. I use it all the time for photo editing.
Well, there’s better tools out there
Again, just my opinion, but I prefer Krita to any FLOSS alternative. I’ve been designing professionally for over a decade, using Adobe for most of it; Krita is my preferred FLOSS tool for photo editing, and I’ve tried them all.
Krita has g’mic and it’s open source. It’s photoshop that is still not up to there
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
GIMP doesn’t support non-destructive editing, which is a major PITA tbh
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.
I’m still rooting for them, but I know it’s a lot of work to ask from volunteers. As a casual user of the GIMP I feel like it hasn’t changed that drastically in the last 15 years. The biggest change I can remember is them migrating from separate windows to a unified window.
Well yeah, that’s the whole point. It’s harder to learn another workflow when you’re already in the mindset of the other.
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
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
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
Also Photoshop, along with DxO PureRaw.
My camera supports 10 bit/channel color. My monitor does too. GIMP only supports sRGB, so 8-bit color. It’s unsuitable for editing, and even worse for printing.
Consider Photoshop Elements for a similar UI and one time payment to use forever.
The Jetbrains suite of IDE’s. Particularly Jetbrains Rider. The platform ~~they are all ~~ many of them are built on is open source though, and you can get free licenses for all of their products if you are using them to develop open source software!
DataGrip is the one JetBrains IDE I can’t work without and continue to pay for. I’d love to find a pure OSS alternative, but there’s nothing else like it.
It’s fucking open source??? Does that me we can build from source to have it for free?
I have the last version you can use free forever (and I’m the reason they fixed it, by the way)
The underlying intelliJ platform is, not the entire IDE. I did edit the post though, as I realized not all of them are built on that platform.
If you are working on open source, you can still grab free licenses. You just have to renew them each year (completely free, just requires proof of FOSS contribution)
Why do you find jetbrains better than VS Code?
deleted by creator
are there any good open source alternatives for VSCode for people that don’t want to learn emacs/vim? I’ve been looking for a good code editor to replace it but I haven’t been impressed elsewhere
VSCode is open (MIT) but it is packaged by MS to include some tracking/telemetry and they are distributed under a non-free license.
You can use VSCodium for a telemetry free and MIT licensed binary or you are free to build the source where the default config is no telemetry and MIT license.
deleted by creator
There is always Eclipse IDE. It’s not as polished as Jetbrain’s apps for sure but it’s still very capable. It’s published under the Eclipse Public License. I think the language server code that’s used in VSCode is from Eclipse, it can be used for developing many languages and there are lots of plugins and other add-ons to enhance the experience.
But to be fair, the plugin capabilities for VS code are incredible. Of course its a lot more work but you can pretty much replicate the VS experience
Refactoring and code cleanup utilities in Rider are exceptional right now. And that’s not small. It’s massive in value.
Don’t get me wrong, I want codium to have this, but the extensions that compare, especially for .net, are not in the same league.
Sounds like I should give rider another try. Doing a lot of refactoring right now
deleted by creator
Yeah. My work machine is Windows and I haven’t even installed vs. Rider is just superior for the vast majority of .net work.
Msft needs to realize that they no longer own the best ide for their stack and do something to improve the .net vs code experience. That recent c# plugin needs a lot more power.
VS Code is not an IDE. There’s no comparison.
That’s a bit of a silly statement. Once you’ve installed a few extensions for your language (a language server and linting at minimum), it is effectively an IDE with a reasonably powerful debugger included. Just because it’s modular and not “batteries included” doesn’t make it incomparable.
Have you ever used JetBrains products for any serious development?
Yes, I’ve made heavy use of PyCharm, IntelliJ and Datagrip and I’m a huge fan of them all.
Microsoft straight up says it’s not an IDE.
Sure. But I didn’t say it was either. I only pointed out that it’s silly to say “there’s no comparison”, when most functionality is easily achievable on both. And depending on language, it’s not even difficult.
Edit: In fairness, I did say “it’s effectively an IDE”, but I stand by the point that after a few extensions - what is the difference? If I can debug, refactor, and and get complete intellisense (including finding declarations etc), I’m doing more or less everything I would in a dedicated IDE.
Edit 2: I feel I’ve gone to far the other way. I have used am am aware of some of the capabilities that a fill fledged IDE has over something like VSCode. Especially for languages like those of the C-family. But I do take issue with implying they’re not comparable. For many usecases and languages, they’re totally comparable.
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.
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
It definitely looks promising, but I still don’t think Jellyfin and Reiverr are quite ready to compete with Plex yet.
I agree about Plex. But I don’t get the love for Sync.
It feels kind of clunky and it lacks 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.
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?
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.
That’s funny because I switched off of plex to Jellyfin because of how bad the experience on plex was.
Whatsapp. Everyone in India uses it. Its like the imessage situation in the US. So widespread.
Schools, college, friend groups, family groups all are on whatsapp.
Can second this for Germany, too.
I tried to degoogle and to only use FOSS apps and services, but ditching WhatsApp would throw me in a black hole.
deleted by creator
I have ONE contact who uses Signal. Yes, it’s a shame but at this point I think that I could convert more people to using Linux than to switching to Signal.
deleted by creator
Same here. I wonder if there is an easy way to leave an old phone with whatsapp at home and forward the messages to my daily driver. Would prevent the zuck from reading out my contact list at minimum. I know he still has everybody else’s but still.
Matrix bridge?
Cool instance you are on.
Thanks. May I ask what is so cool about the instance that I am on? ;)
Did not know we have our own instance
there’s a kerala lemmy? thats neat
telegram is used a lot in slav countries, i feel like its pretty decent
deleted by creator
So you prefer it because everyone use it? This doesn’t sound smart
How am I supposed to message people when the only messaging app they use is whatsapp and facebook messenger (which I don’t use)?
I guess the only easy alternative is to use SMS and email since everyone use it. But it is not safe.
I am always open to alternatives like Signal, Element,etc. But no one use them. I am not going to force people to use a messaging app.
As a workaround, you can bridge most services to Matrix. I currently bridge Telegram, Signal and SMS to my Matrix server and only need Element on my phone and desktop.
Unfortunately Element is fairly focused on business users, would be cool if they could host bridges for individuals to make the barrier of entry easier.
There are no good open source CAD systems at all.
For electrical engineering there is KiCad, which is pretty good overall. Only reason I’m still using proprietary software is because I’d have to recreate my libraries and it will be a huge pita.
For mechanical design there is FreeCad, which is usable for simple geometries, but if you come from a proprietary CAD software you may find it lacking.
I got into the 3D printing hobby a few months ago and FreeCAD is pretty much useless. I can be more productive by writing JavaScript code with Three.js library, lol.
For 3D printing, did you try OpenSCAD? If you’re already a programmer it’s much easier to get into than it is to get into any classic CAD software.
OpenSCAD has its uses, but would hardly classify it as full CAD software. Prusa, I believe, used OpenSCAD for a while but they even moved to Fusion360. FreeCAD would be great if the devs would stop trying to reinvent the wheel in their UI. There is a ton of potential, but it simply isn’t where it needs to be yet.
Fusion360 or SolidWorks are very well established in that space and their shitty license models reflect that.
Still, as a free alternative, FreeCAD is where it’s at. You just really need to understand if it will suit all of your needs and for me, it doesn’t.
Yeah, it’s quite bad as well. I’m using Fusion360 now.
I’ve made some great and somewhat complex designs using freecad, it’s certainly capable.
I eventually switched to fusion 360 because of the UI and it’s more easy to find help. And less need to find help
For that you can also use Blender
Yeah, it’s a great tool for the job. Not as good as Zbrush, but I used it for print prep several times and it just has all the tools you might need.
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.
deleted by creator
Hah, with no attempt to explain because it’s very self explanatory.
deleted by creator
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.
deleted by creator
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?
DaVinci Resolve is much better than any open source NLE. Generally, most closed source media production software is better than their open source counterparts except Blender. Blender is incredible and it gives me hope that other open source software can be just as successful in the media industry.
DaVinci is better, but it also provides licence for life. So it’s proprietary but have a good relationship with the customers.
‘Generally’ is a really wide word. Better for what? For who? When? That’s the all question…
Huh. DaVinci is OSS isn’t it?
No. It’s free to use for the standard version with most features available for free. There’s a paid “studio” license which unlocks all the features. Neither have their source code available for the public.
Don’t get fooled by what’s popular, open source it’s better by design and it’s there to stay. You can do color correction on Blender too
Dude, you’re completely ignoring the entire point of the post.
deleted by creator
I use klogg for browsing massive text files, it works pretty good for me
I use lnav for this, it works very well and the search and filtering etc are great.
UltraEdit is probably the oldest editor which was designed specifically for editing super large files. It has no limits, but it is also proprietary.
deleted by creator
Re: JetBrains - isn’t VS Code oss?
deleted by creator
He said full IDE. You ever used a full IDE?
Dude’s getting downvoted but there’s not much of an integrated development environment in a glorified text editor with plugins once you realize the competition really gives you all the tools you need to never ever really need to leave the environment.
Most of the competition is modular with plugins as well.
It’s okay, most of these users are kids editing python scripts in vs code anyway.
VS code isn’t an IDE.
Do you mind expanding a little on Directory Opus ? I always have four or five explorer windows open and I am constantly annoyed with the clunkiness of Windows explorer. I know there are a few alternatives but not sure how they compare.
I still donate to Inkscape each month (please do the same at https://inkscape.org/support-us/donate/), but it became unusable for me on macOS, unfortunately. I now use Serif Affinity.
Inkscape is fantastic on Linux. I’d highly recommend it!
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.
+1 for Affinity, but am hoping that Inkscape’s UX improves. Would be cool to have mature vector editing on Linux.
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
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).Inkscape is my go-to for creating decals for 3D assets.
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!).
Discord over Matrix. The range of features plus the style of the client. I like soundboard and emotes. its easy to setup a server and invite people.
At the start of the pandemic Discord had the killer feature unmatched: active voice room discovery. You could see where people where, and how many were talking at a glance before you joined a room.
That’s the single most useful feature of discord, but recently element integrated jitsi rooms and showed active participants. I think matrix is now good enough “enough” to replace discord.
Have you tried Revolt?
I find a lot of admins forget or neglect bridges which can be frustrating
Yeah I feel the same way. I just can’t get any matrix client to give me the same experience I get with discord. I know they’re two different programs, and that if I started with matrix, discord would be weird, but still. It’s annoying
You cannot setup servers on Discord.
While that is true, that’s also not what people mean when they say ‘servers’ in this context. No of course they’re not actual servers, but that’s what they’re called and I don’t think anyone is under the impression they’re actually servers
Removed by mod
Server sounds better. Guilds sound dumb.
Removed by mod
Jetbrains suite
Can’t imagine working without PyCharm Pro. Some may say I’m a shitty dev, but it just makes thing so much easier for a lone developer.
Youtube, newpipe doesnt feels good to me No playlist No comment replies
So no🙁You might like LibreTube!
I’m waiting for future release of freetube i like it Its also on linux
newpipe definitely has playlists
I’m talking about playlist made by youtube channels
I use revanced can i count it as open source?
Not really. It’s a reverse-engineered and hacked YouTube app.
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.
