What non-FOSS software are you using that you wish you could replace?

For me its honestly a ton of my work software (digital forensics), shit is too niche to be replaced by good FOSS options. Cellebrite, Magnet Axiom, etc. Autopsy is great and free and has a linux version but it simply cannot get the same level of data without a pretty nutty level of custom code.

And the biggest side effect of this is FUCKING WINDOWS. God I would replace this nightmare OS in a heartbeat if the aforementioned work software would make linux compatible versions. We have legitimately wasted 10k hours dealing with windows bullshit that would not be a problem in linux. Though im sure linux would take a different 10k for its own problems.

What about you guys? Doesn’t have to be work related, thats just the thorn in my side right now.

jabjoe,
@jabjoe@feddit.uk avatar

For home and work, none, locally. The problem now is Google and MS Teams, LinkedIn, Github, etc. That’s the new battle ground. They would make us thin clients to their mainframe and that we must rent access.

RotatingParts,

Any program that communicates with USB connected hardware via a non-standard, Windows only USB driver as provided by the hardware vendor. In other words, you can’t just plug a device into any OS and start programing it via a standard USB driver.

_TK,

Photo editing software. My wife didn’t want to pay for Lightroom anymore, so we switched to a software with a one time payment, Luminar. There are some FOSS alternatives, but none of them have been a hit with her. All of them are missing something or are intended to compete with a different line of product like Photoshop, Illustrator, or ProCreate.

emr,
@emr@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Reason. It’s got a unique workflow that is hard to break from. I even tried Renoise, but it’s hard to switch.

citizenserious,

Shazam

samuellb,

I really wish that you could install a clean AOSP on any Android phone, just like you can install FOSS OS’es on most laptops.

Last Android phone I bought had a few strange “vendor apps” (one with Chinese characters only in its name), and if I disabled Google Play Services the SMS app would go crazy and show error messages (as notifications) all the time. To add, “adb uninstall” was blocked by the vendor and there was no unofficial ROM.

I prefer small phones, so the market of phones is really really small for me :( Otherwise, I would have bought a Fairphone.

guissou,

Notion

Saintzillla,

The dream.

At least give me better widgets on Android so I can ditch TickTick.

ReK_,
@ReK_@lm.bittervets.org avatar

Microsoft Office. If you need to do any kind of professional documentation for external organizations, it’s basically impossible to use anything else.

SomeRandomWords,

Definitely agree with this one, though I will say you can replace one proprietary bit of software (Microsoft Office) with another (Google Drive/Docs) and get a large portion of the way in some industries. Really depends on what you need to do.

But alas, still no widely accepted FOSS alternatives.

tesseract,

The lack of good support for MS Office formats in FOSS tools is Microsoft’s fault. Office itself often creates files that are slightly incompatible with their own published OOXML standard. FOSS tools are left chasing these inconsistencies. I wish the world had settled on ODF instead of OOXML for documents.

SemioticStandard,
@SemioticStandard@beehaw.org avatar

Yeah I’ve been seeing this reasoning for many years now, but as someone who lives in Word and Excel for office work, it’s actually been a really long time since I couldn’t use Pages/Numbers/LibreOffice in place of Office just as effectively.

Zapp,

Pro tip: If you draft documents in Markdown, lots of programs have a “preview” that renders perfect formatted text to paste into a Word document.

I find it saves me a ton of hassle to leave Word to the very last step, when .docx is required.

tesseract,

Mechanical CAD. Something like SolidWorks or Fusion 360.

FreeCAD just isn’t there yet. They’re still struggling with the topological naming problem. However, Blender was like this in the field of 3D animations. Now it’s the standard. That gives me hope for FreeCAD. Anyway, MCAD is very important. I’m learning modern C++ and the FreeCAD code base in order to contribute.

I also wish there was a better CAD kernel than OpenCASCADE.

CoffeeDev,
@CoffeeDev@lemmy.studio avatar

I have been experimenting with using Inkscape and OpenSCAD for 3d modeling, and it seems to work for what I do, but I know quite a few people prefer a more graphical interface than OpenSCAD.

tesseract,

OpenSCAD is a good take on CAD. My primary workflow is also based on plaintext (text configs, code, org-mode, latex, etc) and keyboard (no mouse). It’s easy to manage and back it up with version control tools like git. However, there are a few fields that I feel are inherently visual and need a very interactive tool. CAD is one of them. Others are 3D animation and art.

sounddrill,

Winapps moment?

AngryHippy,

Photography software in general.

Photo Mechanic, On1 plugins, and Capture One - there isn’t a single piece of FOSS photography software that is remotely useful for my use cases.

High volume tethered shooting with automatic application of edits and adjustments in separate layers is basically impossible.

Fast culling of hundreds or thousands of images along with applying metadata with templates is also not really possible.

Darktable and Digikam are okay Lightroom replacements, but they don’t come close to touching what is available in the proprietary world. Rawtherapee doesn’t do tethering at all, and isn’t very good at what it does do compared to On1 Photo Raw or Capture One.

CoffeeDev,
@CoffeeDev@lemmy.studio avatar

I am planning on writing a graphical interface for gphoto2 (a Linux camera remote library) which will allow for tethered shooting and some other neat things (like using a computer as an intervalometer). I might also write a web interface for it, so it will allow for using a table or phone to remote control a camera and allow the user to check on timelapses, but it will take a while to get it all to work.

hellishharlot,

Less software and more driverware. My headphones (arctis nova pro wireless) have some really nice customizations available with the sonar software. Nvidia drivers are more customizable but the issue is mostly support for vrr through gsync, dlss, hdr, and Nvidia broadcast. I know AMD is supposedly bounds and leaps ahead of Nvidia but that’s what I have for current hardware because of how useful and ubiquitous the software is.

Aio,

If by Arctis nova pro you mean SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7 then this repo might interest you: github.com/Sapd/HeadsetControlit’s basically software that allows you to change afew settings for headset inside a terminal.

hellishharlot,

It’s not everything but it’s enough that I might get by with it! Thanks stranger

Aio,

No problem :)

itchy_lizard,

DuoLingo

perishthethought,

Same. “Ik leer Nederlands” :)

But this one is tough since first you would have to crowd source a ton of user contributed lessons. Not sure how that could work…

NakariLexfortaine, (edited )

Whoever undertook that would need to have a lot of time and personal resources to dedicate to the vetting process. The sheer amount of quality differences that would come in… Not saying you need the FLACs from a professional studio, but you know you’d get someone recording on a HAM radio from the frozen wastes.

ErwinLottemann,

Ik lees de krant en een olifant eet een boterham.

perishthethought,

/shudder…

LunarLoony,
@LunarLoony@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

The Affinity suite. Truth is, I don’t want to replace them because I really like how they work; I just wish there was a native Linux version, because it’s almost impossible to get it to run in Wine. Have to use a VM for the time being.

Stream Deck is another one I miss, and the FOSS alternatives just don’t cut it in terms of functionality.

Lauchmelder,

OneNote on my foldable laptop. I use it to take notes in uni simply because it’s the best option out of all the ones I’ve tried. I like OneNote’s stabilization and infinite canvas. What annoys me tho is that you cannot set the canvas to paged, so if you’re planning on exporting to pdf you have no idea where the page boundaries are.

With the last Windows 11 update they fucked it up tho and now the app is garbage anyways

Saintzillla,

Not FOSS, but I’m a big One Note user for work and wanted to find something for my personal life and most likely will use it for my next professional role in at least some capacity…Notion is by far the most customizable and complete solution that’s also user friendly because of existing user templates. I’ve been SERIOUSLY impressed and I’ve been trying everything I can find.

Best part is that the phone and computer apps are both very capable. One Note on phone is the worst companion app.

Masterkraft0r,

notion is also not FOSS though. and i had bad experiences with the mobile app when cell service is bad.

asap,
@asap@feddit.de avatar

AnyType is an open-source alternative to Notion which recently launched:

anytype.io

perishthethought,

I use OneNote at work and Joplin, saved to a cloud drive, at home. It’s not as good, but close enough for my needs. I can access my personal notes on all my pcs and my phone.

d4r1us_drk,
@d4r1us_drk@beehaw.org avatar

Rnote is pretty good for handwritten notes, the canvas can be paged too.

Lauchmelder,

I’ll give that a shot! OneNote is literally unusable since the last Windows update because the on-screen keyboard keeps popping up everytime I touch the screen. then it goes away immediately and leaves a bugged white rectangle on the canvas

Lemongrab,
@Lemongrab@lemmy.one avatar

Notesnook is free, e2ee, nice ui, and has cloud sync. Recommmend

dkt,

Not really the same thing at all if there’s no handwriting support.

DarkHeartDom,

Joplin.

t_uxio,

Take a look at https://github.com/zadam/trilium

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