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What programs do you wish a good FOSS alternative existed, but doesn't or most of the FOSS alternatives simply aren't good?

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

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  • I wish there was a good FOSS (or just works on Linux) alternative to adobe lightroom so I could stop fixing broken windows shit on my wife's computer.

    She's a photographer and does a lot of heavy editing stuff. I know there's some alternatives but she says nothing comes close for what she needs to do, and from the few examples she showed me I agree.

    I don't know what the fuck Microsoft is doing but almost everytime there's an update something breaks on her laptop. The only thing she does is use lightroom, occasionally Photoshop and Firefox.

    I recently had to use her laptop to make a windows installer USB for someone and Rufus was cool. When installing windows though it just didn't see any of the drives in the laptop? Apparently I had to load storage drivers specific to that laptop, which weren't available anywhere online I could find. I managed to get it working by loading a bunch of unrelated drivers for a different HP model laptop, none of them related to storage. I think it was the Bluetooth driver that got it working, after it installed nothing was working, no mouse, speakers, USB ports. I had to install all of those same drivers again for some reason. Before that just to make sure the drive wasn't bad I installed Debian on there and what do you know, it just did it, because of course it did, and everything worked.

    I got way off topic, but again what the fuck is microsoft doing?

  • 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 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.

    • This sounds dreamy

  • 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)
  • 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 dearly miss Playnite on Linux. Having Games from a lot of different sources, only Lutris supports more than Steam/Epic/GoG, and it's missing a lot of features from Playnite and it's plugins. Managing my Gamelibrary without it sucks.

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