opensource

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TCB13, in Open source devs: please, please add screenshots...
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

Dear open source app user: feel free to improve the README file of the projects you come across by adding a few screenshots you believe are relevant.

TCB13,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

Although I understand the OP’s perspective open-source is a community effort and people should have a more proactive attitude and contribute when they feel things aren’t okay. Most open-source developers aren’t focused / don’t have time for how things look (or at least not on the beginning). If you’re a regular user and you can spend an hour taking a bunch of screenshots and improving a readme you’ll be making more for the future the project that you might think.

jecxjo,
@jecxjo@midwest.social avatar

When the last big Twitter migration to Mastodon occurred there were a lot new users complaining about things like documentation, bugs, etc. Old users and FLOSS supporters kept pushing the “its open source, write a doc or fill out a bug ticket” and evem included documentation on how to do those tasks.

Most people just continued to complain. /facepalm

OrnateLuna,

We just don’t live in a world where making the changes you want are encouraged. We have been thought to just accept whatever changes happen or at most file a suggestion that almost noone will listen to. Obviously open source is different but it’s still such a tiny minority compared to how the rest of the world functions

jecxjo,
@jecxjo@midwest.social avatar

The big difference here is there is already this “learning curve” about the whole fediverse that people were struggling with that many of us wrote blog posts and had toot chains we’d forward explaining how this universe works. Adding in links and screen shots and templates for how to submit a bug…

…I hate saying this but the vast majority of people are just lazy. It’s not a culture issue or not something too difficult. People like to complain and not put in effort to things. People expect others to do things for them and don’t get that free comes with a cost.

FOSS isn’t really that small, it’s just that most people don’t do any type of investigation into what they use for technology. Much of what you use may have a for-profit company in front of it but huge parts of their products are open source andnyou can directly influence the products by actually engaging the projects themselves.

OrnateLuna,

Yeah people are very much lazy and that’s fine, you just have to work around that and well culture is one way of getting people to do what should be done.

As you say Foss does impact quite a lot of those company products however what is the important part of the casual user is what and how they interact directly with the products and well at no point are they expected to directly impact the project, it’s just you use what you are given. That is why they have that people will do things for me mindset bc that is what happens with almost everything the use

urshanabi,
@urshanabi@lemmygrad.ml avatar

I think this is interesting, certainly screenshots and giving an idea of how something works is important. It seems more important to many users rather than say developers. I guess developers have a different set of priorities, maybe it does make more sense for users to add screenshots or contribute as it is in their interest whereas maintaining and fixing critical bugs is more within the interest of the developer?

How would this even be communicated effectively to users? I find that most calls to support are vague and maybe if they were broken down by interest or skill set it would help people understand that they too could do something.

E.g. Having a headline that says contribute, and like a table with icons for different professions or areas people could contribute with different processes for each. I have friends who are good typesetters or editors, but they would not put in the effort to use github, they would prefer to use something closer to social media or word/docs at the most. It feels like github samples from only a subset of the population and is actively trying to ensure the comfort and curation of that community to the expense of others and collaborative work in general.

dogebread,

This mentality explains a lot of open source.

jelloeater85,
@jelloeater85@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah, and please have EASY setup instructions or complied binaries.

Ricaz,
@Ricaz@lemmy.world avatar

Why is your name red?

jelloeater85,
@jelloeater85@lemmy.world avatar

Site mod, I mostly do the infra tho ❤️

TCB13,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

So… can you unblock !piracy and !piracy so we can have free speech again? lemmy.world/post/3193108

Rooki, (edited )
@Rooki@lemmy.world avatar

lemmy.world/legal

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/5af38920-4849-47c8-9ab4-3d32a35105b5.png

Please read the first line of the “Principles that Guide Us”

IceMan,

As both user and developer - user CAN contribute but the developer/maintainer SHOULD add the screenshots.

southsamurai,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

There’s both an ignorance and fear barrier to that.

A lot of people don’t know they can, and don’t know how. And even the ones that do know, often worry their contributions would be shit.

And there’s folks that just don’t think the project would accept that kind of submission.

I’m not contradicting your suggestion! It’s a great thing to let people know that they can contribute without knowing how to code. Just adding in both an explanation as to why it’s so rare, and hopefully allaying some of those worries for passersby.

Zalack,
@Zalack@startrek.website avatar

I think it depends on the project. Some projects are the author’s personal tools that they’ve put online in the off-chance it will be useful to others, not projects they are really trying to promote.

I don’t think we should expect that authors of repos go too out of their way in those cases as the alternative would just be not to publish them at all.

southsamurai,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

Totally agree

RickyRigatoni,
@RickyRigatoni@lemmy.ml avatar

What if I do a PR for a program that isn’t even related to Linux and Linus still sniffs it out to tell me I’m a dingus :(

OrnateLuna,

NGL I actually didn’t know that I can do such a thing. I do still kinda have a closed source mindset in that anything I use I cannot change or Influence. Like I knew that other people can do that but I didn’t know I can do that

southsamurai,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

Yeah, it’s a thing :)

I’ve only done it once, and it wasn’t pictures, it was rewriting a horrible section about how to install a program my cousin was trying to build. He abandoned it three months later, but still.

From what I’ve heard from people that code, it’s polite to approach whoever is maintaining the project before jumping in, and it makes sense so that nobody wastes resources on something that isn’t going to get used.

KevonLooney,

If the app sucks, few people will add the screenshots. Therefore, most apps without screenshots will suck. So new apps will need the developer to add screenshots, or people will assume it sucks.

And we’re back to square one. The developer has extra responsibility to highlight the features.

s20,

This is good advice, but having a screenie there in the first place might make someone more likely to try it out.

Rakn,

One thing though: I’m likely not to stop and consider looking closer at an app if I can’t judge if it’s going to be what I’m looking for. I’m not going to go over random GitHub repositories and create screenshots for their projects. So if the assumption is that the user contributes screenshots I don’t think it will ever change anything for the majority of projects.

atlasraven31, in What are some FOSS programs that you think are a far better user experience than their counterparts?

VLC absolutely wrecked Windows Media Player. Firefox was the same with IE.

cwagner,

deleted_by_author

  • Loading...
  • raptir,

    What do you feel makes it better?

    cwagner,

    deleted_by_author

  • Loading...
  • newIdentity,

    Better auto-handling of subtitles, including automatically downloading them

    VLC can do that too as far as I know. I haven’t used it in a while since I use the default media player on Arch and MXExplorer on Android and for my Movies/Series I use Jellyfin

    olafurp,

    Did you know that MS now charges for you to play some codecs with windows media player?

    atlasraven31,

    I read that news. It was an out of season April Fools’ joke, right?

    glimse,

    They’re wrong, see my reply above

    glimse,

    Unless something has changed recently, that’s not exactly true. They charge 99c for the distribution of it through the windows store (or whatever it’s called) but you can install them the traditional way no problem

    I think it’s still dumb but it’s a distinction worth making. I think the description even links the website where you can download it

    olafurp,

    looked it up, you’re right. The payment is for the codec out itself which is normally done by GPU companies and often can be downloaded for free.

    My bad for not reading text on a window from Windows with a “$ please”.

    Polar,

    So you admit you didn’t read it, but then you happily go around spreading misinformation?

    Why do you guys do that?

    olafurp,

    You can still pay 1$ for playing a codec in WMP. It’s still 90% correct.

    Old_Dude,

    People have been asking this same question since the existence of the internet.

    Schmeckinger,

    You can even install the free oem istaller in the windows store thats hidden iirc.

    dditty,

    I tried that recently on a few machines and it didn’t work.

    onlooker,
    @onlooker@lemmy.ml avatar

    Windows Media Player wrecked its own dumb self. It was good right up to Windows 2000 and Windows ME (which is a whole other kettle of fish), and then it got bloated, unintuitive and it kept nagging you for random shit. VLC is a great app, don’t get me wrong, the bar was not all that high is what I’m saying.

    Blaze, in It's time to take advantage of Reddit's decline
    @Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    Have a look at this post, we had a similar discussion there: lemmy.world/post/3074361

    Long story short, the platform still needs a bit of work before being able to really move communities. Some examples exist (lemdro.id, piracy, startrek) but those are tech savvy audiences, there would be a lot more friction with more generalist communities

    Merwyn,

    I fully agree with you. And I want to emphasize that the main issue is that if you start advertising Lemmy like OP suggest before it’s “fully ready” to give the best experience to this people, they will decide now that lemmy is not for them and after that it’s very difficult to make they try again and change their mind.

    Hazzard,

    Exactly the mistake threads just made, trying to capitalize on twitter’s rate limiting fiasco. The “general public” is extremely fickle, and Reddit will give us more opportunities.

    deweydecibel,

    I don’t know, I feel like the issue (at least part of it) with Threads wasn’t that it needed more time in the oven, but that it was birthed pre-shitified. Remember the steps: good to the users, then good to the advertisers, then good to themselves. Threads basically tried to skip step 1. It felt every bit as manipulative as the Facebook feed, because it effectively was.

    It didn’t come through feeling like a breath of fresh air from Twitter in any way except (to your point) the lack of rate limiting. But even without that, the mindset and motivation behind Threads makes it dead on arrival. It has nothing to offer except being “not Twitter”, and the cold, corporate hand is very evident. Turning off the rate limiting, Twitter got those users back.

    The lesson there is you have to have something the entrenched platform doesn’t if you want to keep the users. Lemmy is already ahead in that department simply by having 3rd party apps.

    ToadCultist,

    I do agree, however I would argue that an increased user base would help accelerate progress on improving lemmy

    Blaze,
    @Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    To be honest, people who are tech savvy and bug tolerant enough to be on Lemmy are probably already here. There were quite a few discussions about it (and still now on Reddit)

    LazaroFilm,
    @LazaroFilm@lemmy.world avatar

    Server issues and quits need to be addressed, and mobile apps Ned to be polished. If the UX isn’t at least on par with Reddit, then it will only hurt to advertise now to the general public.

    mifan,
    @mifan@feddit.dk avatar

    One thing that annoys me coming from Reddit is, that there isn’t just one group of each theme. You have for example gaming groups on several instances and you can either chose to subscribe to a number of those or chose the one you like.

    But in the end, one will be the go-to group, and wouldn’t that centralize the most popular groups?

    (Honest question, I’m new to Lemmy and the thoughts behind it)

    Mereo,

    instances are like countries with their own constitution (rules) and police (mods). This means that two communities in different instances may seem the same, but they are not, because they have to follow the rules and culture of their instance.

    Just like a Technology club in Japan will not be the same as the Technology club in the US because they will be culturally different. I think it will take some time for the Fediverse to think this way.

    For me, this is better. Instead of having one giant technology community where your comments and posts are drowned out, we can have different technology communities with their own culture and norms, just like we visit different countries. Your comment and posts will be not drowned out.

    It is a different paradigm to the centralised one of Reddit.

    Mr_Blott,

    Yep, if you’re not from the US, instances are vastly superior.

    Imagine all the times people from around the world asked for plumbing help on Reddit and got hit with “that ain’t up to code, buddy, get to ass down to Howm Deeepo” 😂

    Americans do tend to assume the internet revolves around them, as they’re a bit insular and don’t see that it really, really, really doesn’t

    TexMexBazooka,

    A lot of that is social media/algorithmic too. It wasn’t until I start migrating to Lemmy (specifically lemm.ee) that I started seeing a lot of varied content.

    Raddnaar,

    Seriously? Aren’t the anti-USA comments getting a bit tired by now?

    Mereo,

    This is not an anti-American comment, but a fact. The USA is a superpower and a big country. As a superpower, americans don’t need to be informed about what happens in the world because it doesn’t affect them. Their country is the source of world power. And Americans tend to travel within their country because it’s big and full of tourist attractions.

    Compare that with Canada, which has 40 million people. We need to be aware of every single decision the US makes so that the country can adapt. There is a famous quote from Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau: “Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”

    Raddnaar,

    Yes, the USA is a big country and a superpower.

    But things that happen in the world do have major impact on the country and all of its citizens. The need to be up to date and aware of world events is critical. Everyone should be educated. It is the only way to make informed decisions.

    You may not have meant it as an anti-American trope but it came off that way. Even the comment you attribute to Trudeau is a thinly veiled insult to our country. That is not lost on me or others here in the fediverse or other American citizens. The anti-USA bashing has become hackneyed and decidedly juvenile.

    I expect better from you.

    YaaAsantewaa,

    They are tiring honestly, I agree

    Mr_Blott,

    These two comments prove my last sentence

    You don’t notice the “anti”-everything comments, only the ones you perceive as “America-hate”

    And by the way, nobody hates you, you’re just really bad at dealing with sarcasm

    Raddnaar,

    No, they don’t. I was addressing specifically the anti-American sentiment that seems to be the “hip thing to do”. Nothing more, nothing less.

    Just because I did not mention any other energy wasting hate speech does not mean I am not aware.

    I still expect better from you.

    TexMexBazooka,

    I predict it will be the mobile apps that get us over that hump

    Blaze,
    @Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    Definitely. Sync and Boost will bring the largest users influx

    ljdawson,
    @ljdawson@lemmy.world avatar

    45k users in a week with sync.

    Blaze,
    @Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    That’s impressive

    southernwolf,
    @southernwolf@pawb.social avatar

    Infinity too.

    Blaze,
    @Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    Indeed

    morrowind,
    @morrowind@lemmy.ml avatar

    Which is unfortunate imo. More mobile users means less effort and lower quality content

    socsa,

    It also needs about 1000% less hostility when it comes to anything beyond superficial discussion. Basically every news thread just gets brigaded by idiots trolling with pictures of pig shit. I get it, internet is not serious business, but in terms of actual discourse at the moment, this place is worse than Facebook.

    SnowdenHeroOfOurTime,

    Wow, my experience is very opposite this. It sounds like you’re describing reddit to me honestly. I’ve seen way less hostility here compared with Reddit

    socsa,

    It depends on what content you consume I guess. On Reddit, news subs generally enforce decorum pretty strongly which really eliminates outright trolling. On lemmy there is the opposite of this in many places - lemmygrad and hexbear openly state that it is their goal to shit up threads to deny “shit libs” a platform, and the mods on several major instances seem to openly allow it.

    So if you never consume that kind of content on either platform, you’d never notice the relative toxicity of lemmy.

    gabe,

    Wait, do you any links to them admitting that? I believe you, but it’s a good idea to have that saved.

    socsa,
    gabe,

    I say this as someone who hates tankies just as much as the next dude, but that community isn’t really productive nor helpful. If you seriously have an issue with lemmygrad there are many instances that have defederated from them (i think sh.itjust.works is?). A community like that does nothing but to bring drama within the lemmyverse. Yes, their views are at times abhorrent but you are just provoking a community that already has major issue with large portions of the lemmyverse. We really should leave that toxic drama stirring behind.

    socsa,

    Didn’t you just say “it’s a good idea to have this stuff saved”

    goat,

    You just asked for evidence.

    EremesZorn,

    That’s why instances need to defederate and block lemmygrad and hexbear, to discourage that behavior.
    This is neither here nor there, but the only thing I hate with a burning passion more than right wingers is the tankie filth that pervades those instances.

    goat,

    the mods on several major instances seem to openly allow it.

    Mods AND Lemmy developers.

    rm_dash_r_star,
    @rm_dash_r_star@lemm.ee avatar

    I don’t see that either. People have disagreed with me politely and intelligently here which is just good conversation.

    Dimok,

    Yeah, I’ve run into this here. I posted a question to one of the posts asking why it was such a big deal, and all the sudden I’m a corporate defender. I don’t think this is a reddit, lemmy, or anything issue, it’s just internet and echo chambers. If you don’t reply with a “OMG YES SO TRUE OMG” then you are a dissident.

    goat,

    Come visit !worldnews if you want quality discussion!

    Meowoem,

    Yeah, people say we should use small instances to keep things spread out but two of the ones I tried have major posting issues that stop comments working, We really need to stress test and big squish before we really push it to everyone, some of the issues I’ve seen have been fixed and on general it’s very stable so I don’t think it’s got far to go

    Blaze,
    @Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    Which were those, out of curiosity?

    Meowoem,

    Discuss.online and slrpnk both good communities but issues with syncing

    Blaze,
    @Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    Thanks!

    Claidheamh,

    Have had absolutely zero issues on slrpnk even after the big Reddit migrations.

    Die4Ever,
    @Die4Ever@programming.dev avatar

    Mirror for that lemmy.world post since they’re currently down…

    programming.dev/post/1625433

    Blaze,
    @Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    Thanks!

    csm10495,
    @csm10495@sh.itjust.works avatar

    The fact that large instances hit more downtime than something like reddit will always be a detriment.

    Die4Ever,
    @Die4Ever@programming.dev avatar

    lemmy.world really needs to close signups and the creation of new communities, until they can improve their uptime

    or they should at least be removed from join-lemmy.org/instances maybe it could track the uptime and use that to build the list?

    but Reddit actually does go down pretty often too

    southernwolf,
    @southernwolf@pawb.social avatar

    They said themselves the issue isn’t signups or server capacity, it’s that they’ve been under multiple rounds of DDoS attacks.

    Die4Ever,
    @Die4Ever@programming.dev avatar

    Yeah but why give new users a bad experience, you’re just gonna drive them away from Lemmy and they never come back

    Also we’re overly centralized on them, we need to decentralize better, both users and communities

    southernwolf,
    @southernwolf@pawb.social avatar

    I mean, that could happen to any other Lemmy instance too, unfortunately. And even if you do decentralize, a server going down still deprives the rest of us of that content, so it’s never not going to cause some issues. So I wouldn’t hold this against Lemmy.world.

    Die4Ever,
    @Die4Ever@programming.dev avatar

    I don’t hold it against them, it’s just unfortunate that they’ve been having so much downtime recently, certainly more than most other good instances

    morrowind,
    @morrowind@lemmy.ml avatar

    Why are they being DDoS’d though? I thought it was because they’re the biggest instance and thus shutting down still helps

    southernwolf,
    @southernwolf@pawb.social avatar

    Well, by that logic, if they shut down, the the next largest will be targeted, and then the next largest, etc. That’s not a winning game for anyone involved…

    morrowind,
    @morrowind@lemmy.ml avatar

    Right but we’ll be more decentralized so any such attack won’t affect the threadiverse as much. Right now every time .world goes down the entire fediverse feels half dead because it’s so large.

    But if this happens 7 times and there’s now 7 major instances, each will only take up like 10% of the total and attacking it won’t affect much.

    In that sense, getting more decentralized is basically a natural evolution of the big instances being attacked. I’m just trying to speed it up.

    Lettuceeatlettuce, in What are some FOSS programs that you think are a far better user experience than their counterparts?

    Bitwarden password manager. I’ve used several proprietary PW managers, Bitwarden is by far the most stable, intuitive, and functional IMO.

    BoneALisa,
    @BoneALisa@lemm.ee avatar

    Bitwarden is so good. I cant be bothered to self host it tbh, but ill gladly throw money their way for premium for having the best cloud-hosted PW manager

    LUHG_HANI,
    @LUHG_HANI@lemmy.world avatar

    My argument for self host of something that needs to be ultra secure is, they will do a better job at it than me.

    BastingChemina,

    For me the argument is more that there is always a point where I duck up my self hosting infrastructure and at this point I will need passwords to fix it.

    drekly,

    It is great and I do use it, and it was super easy to export from lastpass

    BUT the autofill is so unreliable in comparison, it’s annoying

    4am,

    Yeah that could definitely be improved. There’s been talk on GitHub issues about adding support to fill Shadow DOM fields, honestly don’t know if they’ve done it yet but that would be a big help for web apps like HomeAssistant.

    MrTHXcertified,

    Try the AutoFill keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Shift-L (or Cmd-Shift-L on Mac). Works well enough for me.

    beteljuice,

    Sucks on Android tho

    Send_me_nude_girls,
    @Send_me_nude_girls@feddit.de avatar

    If you opened it once, so a process exists, it usually will work with it’s autofill. At least on my Samsung it does after opening it once.

    It sucks for login like Twitter X though.

    Claidheamh,

    Works perfectly on mine.

    drekly,

    But that’s only auto after a manual button press, that’s half the auto! In lastpass when I visited a page, it would just fill it in and log in for me without any input.

    Sometimes bit warden doesn’t even realise it has a password for the site because it’s looking for a specific URL rather than a wildcard match to the domain.

    cujo,
    @cujo@sh.itjust.works avatar

    I’ve been looking for a good password manager, and I’ve heard a LOT of good things about Bitwarden… guess I’ll have to bite and see what all the fuss is about!

    Ineocla,

    Pro tip : if you self host use vaultwarden. It’s 100℅ compatible with all bitwarden clients but has many more features and is lighter weight

    janguv,

    Yeah it is pretty solid. I used to use KeepassX, which while also a very cool project, was a bit more tinkering than needed. I hosted the database on a mainstream cloud provider though, and figured at that point, you might as well use the cloud storage of a company with a great security reputation instead and just bundle all together. And so BitWarden.

    Lettuceeatlettuce,

    Yeah, I just went with Bitwarden’s own cloud because it was so affordable, accessible, and easy.

    And their integrations are really solid too.

    portside,

    Also KeePass, I’ve switched from bitwarden to KeePassDX on mobile and set up syncing to nextcloud and google drive. Aegis for time based OTP’s.

    dessalines,

    Keepass can also do TOTPs.

    xtremeownage,

    Bitwarden / VaultWarden also does totp

    aksdb,

    I used Bitwarden a lot but it pissed me off that I couldn’t add new entries while offline, that accessing attachments requires me to be online as well, and that attachments are not part of the backup.

    I switched back to Enpass due to that, which has even a slightly better UX IMHO. It’s not FOSS though, but uses the FOSS sqlcipher library for storage. So if push comes to shove, I can still exfiltrate my data without relying on the vendor.

    Disgusted_Tadpole,
    @Disgusted_Tadpole@lemmy.ml avatar

    Bitwarden is to me the simplest and most effective PW manager, just perfect at what it does. I however switched from Bitwarden to Proton Pass only because the latter has a mail aliases generation integrated (with Proton Unlimited)

    43dc92z0,

    You can setup anonaddy or duckduckgo with bitwarden to generate alias emails automatically. The best setup we get for free.

    directive0, in What are some FOSS programs that you think are a far better user experience than their counterparts?
    @directive0@lemmy.world avatar

    Blender. I feel pretty confident in saying that there is simply nothing like it in the commercial world. Its feature set is unreal; its like the swiss army knife of 3D modelling programs. I can’t say enough good things about Blender. It has replaced so many secondary programs in my workflow and is slowly dominating to become my entire workflow.

    It used to suck to use in the late 2010s and then work was done to overhaul its space-shuttle cockpit interface, and now it actually feels concise and usable. I freaking love blender now. Big time blender fanboy right here.

    rem26_art,
    @rem26_art@kbin.social avatar

    Im always amazed at the amount of stuff Blender can do. It's just so nice to be able to have software that lets you learn a useful skill that isnt behind a paywall or crazy license

    bobs_monkey,

    I like to mess around with architectural CAD as a hobby, with the likes of Revit and Chief Architect, but I ain’t about sink enterprise levels of money for something I play with.

    There’s always the open seas. That said, if you make money with something, pay for it, either via their revenue channels or donations to FOSS projects.

    nooneescapesthelaw,

    Just a warning when it comes to this type of software, in some cases like solidworks they will catch you and sue you for every dime.

    bobs_monkey,

    I’ve heard that too, Autodesk doesn’t fuck around either. I keep any no-no software firewalled to hell and looped on localhost as best I can.

    PM_Your_Nudes_Please,

    As someone who gave up on Blender back in the 2010’s, I may need to revisit it.

    XPost3000,

    You definitely should, it is lightyears improved

    4am,

    It’s like the opposite of GIMP

    XPost3000,

    And LMMS

    Zacryon,

    A lightyear is a distance. Not a time.

    cyberwolfie,

    Isn’t distance more suitable to describe an improvement than time? Don’t find anything wrong with that comment.

    “It is better by a mile” vs “It is better by three hours”

    Zacryon,

    Good point. I guess it depends on the interpretation. If you consider that developments take time, be it developments in software, technology, research or whatever, then saying something like “this software is years ahead of its time” sounds appropriate.

    That’s how I read the comment. Additionally, given that it’s a common misconception that a lightyear describes a timespan, I felt the urge to be a smartass.

    aksdb,

    But you typically can’t influence time, while you can influence distance travelled. The faster car will get you further in the same time than a slower car. So IMO distance (travelled) is the better measurement.

    joeldebruijn,

    Your argument is leaps and bounds ahead 😎

    Zacryon,

    To continue dissecting this, since I don’t have anything better to do right now:

    What you do in that time depends. If you drive a faster car, sure, you’ll travel a further distance in less time than a slower car. If you use the same car however, the distance is as meaningful as the time for a symbol of progress. Since technological and scientific advancements in general don’t depend on people driving around in cars, but on people investing a lot of time and effort, I would prefer time as a measurement.

    Usually, if we think about scientific, technological or cultural progress, we tend to judge based on time and not on distance. For example, consider some indigenous cultures which live their lifes isolated from the rest of the world. They are often compared to primitive “stoneage”-like cultures. We specifically use time as a measure.

    However, I am not completely opposed to agreeing with you. I think it depends on what you want to emphasize. A distance can be useful for reflecting some aspects in which, e.g., a software, takes the lead compared to alternatives. Then again, time would be better suited to highlight very innovative features or significant futuristic advancements which may have groundbreaking qualities.

    And if someone is already using “lightyears” as a measure, I think that’s already an amount of improvement which deserves a time-based phrasing.

    Anyway, I see good points for both and I am no longer interested in this. Take it or leave it. I don’t care anymore.

    danwardvs,

    They had a big push and update a few years back focusing on redoing the UI to make it more friendly to beginners. Although I haven’t personally used it a ton since then.

    drekly,

    I used 3dsmax until I started uni and was forced to use Maya. Then trying to learn zbrush and mudbox. And then marmoset, and then early 2000s blender, it was too much for my poor brain to wrap around so many different UIs with so many different workflows.

    Then my uni lied to me about how much I’d learn, then about overseas exchange, and then about getting a work placement (they just gave me an email address for a modeller who didn’t respond) and left me with no useful skills so I gave up completely.

    I have so much wasted useless 15 year old 3d knowledge in my brain.

    WagnasT,

    every few years i make a donut, it gets easier every time. Someday i’ll do something creative with it. Donut tutorial guy, if you’re out there, gday mate.

    FLX,

    every few years i make a donut, it gets easier every time

    Deep

    miss_brainfart,
    @miss_brainfart@lemmy.ml avatar

    Make a bagel next time. I believe in you.

    _number8_,

    i tried to explore it in the 10s but it seemed designed to be complicated and hard to learn. every obvious starting step required like 5 non obvious clicks

    fubo, in What are some FOSS programs that you think are a far better user experience than their counterparts?

    My Pop!_OS system has never shown me ads for Candy Crush.

    elouboub,
    @elouboub@kbin.social avatar

    And KDE looks so much better than windows' DE. It's also more versatile.

    Gnome just copied Apple, which I guess somebody had to do in order to have them switch to something that looks familiar.

    cujo,
    @cujo@sh.itjust.works avatar

    elementaryOS has tried so hard to fill that niche, and they got so far. I just always run into the weirdest issues when I try and daily drive their distro.

    Altomes,

    Honestly I love pantheon, feels more natural to me than aqua at this point

    datavoid,

    Honestly in the end it probably doesn’t even matter

    nutbutter,

    Actually, Apple copied GNOME.

    nottheengineer,

    Also the part where they remove some features with every release to dumb it down?

    elouboub,
    @elouboub@kbin.social avatar

    Wouldn't surprise me. The AppStore isn't the first thing that Apple copied.

    Still relevant 11 years later: Has Apple Really Ever Invented Anything?

    panicnow,

    I just installed Ubuntu server on my little home server which has faithfully run Windows 10 Pro since it came out. I didn’t want to deal with the ads on Windows 11. I ssh into the Ubuntu install and there is an ad in the terminal!

    bort,

    there is an ad in the terminal!

    you mean the “longer security updates with ubuntu pro” thing?

    panicnow,

    No. I got that too. I’m talking about:

    “ Strictly confined Kubernetes makes edge and IoT secure. Learn how MicroK8s just raised the bar for easy, resilient and secure K8s cluster deployment. ubuntu.com/engage/secure-kubernetes-at-the-edge”

    jaybone,

    You see this when you ssh in??? I’ve never heard of this. What Ubuntu version is this?

    qaz,

    It’s part of the motd, I’ve seen it too.

    kif,

    Also see this on my 20.04 LTS servers.

    nottheengineer,

    It might be time to consider using a distro that isn’t ubuntu.

    panicnow,

    Contemplated it, but dealing with infrastructure bores me. So I think I will just put up with the ad and the lowered expectations.

    weedazz, in Mozilla.ai is a new startup and community funded with 30M from Mozilla that aims to build trustworthy and open-source AI ecosystem

    My mind immediately went to a horizon zero dawn like dystopia where the Mozilla AI is the only thing left protecting humans from various malevolent AIs bent on consuming the human race

    Bombastic,

    Mozilla is Gaia, ChatGPT is hades?

    weedazz, (edited )

    I think by that point ChatGPT would be more like Apollo, keeping the knowledge of humanity. I feel like one of the more corporate AIs will go full HADES, I’m thinking Bard. It will get a mysterious signal from space that switches it’s core protocol from “don’t be evil” to “be evil.”

    Doombot1,

    A “mysterious signal from space” being just the fact that it’s owned by Google

    elbarto777,

    Its* core.

    angrymouse,

    SPOOOOOILER

    clanginator,

    Imagining the Mozilla AI as a personified Firefox and Thunderbird fighting off Cortana, some BARD (sorry) and a bunch of generic evil corporate AIs just makes me excited that Mozilla would be the one fending everyone off.

    larmicon, in GitHub is slowly rolling in 2FA. Any good open source apps that will enable me to activate 2FA token on android?
    @larmicon@feddit.de avatar

    Aegis authenticator. Beats all proprietary apps I’ve tried so far

    morrowind,
    @morrowind@lemmy.ml avatar

    One of those apps that just does its job, does it well and I never have to worry about it

    cynber,
    @cynber@lemmy.ca avatar

    Yep, it works perfectly

    Bitwarden has it too, but eggs in one basket etc.

    ReversalHatchery,

    Also, for bitwarden it’s either a paid feature or you have to self host it

    pacjo,

    I’m leaving links here in case anyone needs them

    It supports importing data from various 2FA apps and even allows you to generate Steamguard codes.

    miss_brainfart,
    @miss_brainfart@lemmy.ml avatar

    Steamguard? Since when? That’s awesome!

    pacjo,

    I honestly don’t know. I set it up with steamguard-cli few months ago and it’s working like a charm.

    miss_brainfart,
    @miss_brainfart@lemmy.ml avatar

    Nothing to worry about when doing that? I’d love to have Valve support 3rd party 2FA apps officially, but oh well

    ReversalHatchery,

    It’s been there for quite a few years, I think

    miss_brainfart,
    @miss_brainfart@lemmy.ml avatar

    But Steam itself doesn’t officially support doing that?

    ReversalHatchery,

    Yes, it doesn’t. Or at least they didn’t when I started using Aegis for it, I had to import the key from the steam app, because they didn’t show any QR codes or such. Not sure if it has changed since then, though.

    BearPear,
    @BearPear@lemmy.world avatar

    This is the best option. Love the app. But always remember to keep a backup of your tokens.

    There is also ente.io authenticator app. It is available on fdroid. I think it supoorts cloud synchronisation as well.

    darklamer,

    Thank you!

    I’d been a happy user of andOTP for many years, unaware until now that it had been abandoned and that I therefore needed ro replace it. I looked through the recommendations posted here and came to the conclusion that Aegis indeed was the best recommendation.

    Migrating from andOTP to Aegis by exporting an encrypted backup file from andOTP to the local filesystem and importing it in Aegis worked flawlessly.

    One thing that I really liked in andOTP that Aegis doesn’t have was the PGP export, it was just very nice to get encrypted backup files that I could decrypt directly using standard software that I already have and know how to use, entirely independent from any particular app. Aegis instead provides the decrypt.py script to decode and decrypt its own encrypted backup file format and while I’ve tested and verified that this works fine, simply using standard PGP was nicer.

    But that’s a minor detail. All in all, Aegis seems to do everything I need, and does it well.

    flameguy21, in What are some FOSS programs that you think are a far better user experience than their counterparts?

    OBS is so good that I don’t know why anyone would ever use X-split.

    cujo,
    @cujo@sh.itjust.works avatar

    I adore OBS. I’ve been teaching my friends the basics on how to use it, as they’ve all been using some proprietary crap that makes their lives marginally easier in one or two areas but adds a huge headache in others.

    erogenouswarzone,
    @erogenouswarzone@lemmy.ml avatar

    Do you have any videos? Can you record tracks and musical production type stuff?

    cujo,
    @cujo@sh.itjust.works avatar

    I am by no means a master at OBS, and I wouldn’t know where to point you to learn. Everything I know I’ve learned by either poking around in the software or googling specific questions, i.e. “how to overlay twitch chat in OBS”. As you can probably guess, I used to use it to stream to twitch. Not very suddenly, mind, but I did it. Lol!

    OBS is designed for streaming out and recording video, not really for music production. I’m sure there are some FOSS music production softwares worth checking out, though!

    erogenouswarzone,
    @erogenouswarzone@lemmy.ml avatar

    Thanks!

    _s10e,

    Obs?

    Robmart,

    Software for recording and live streaming. Stands for Open Broadcasting Software. It is the industry standard at this point.

    Theharpyeagle,

    God, remember Fraps?

    JJROKCZ,

    I try not to

    Khrux,

    That ugly yellow FPS counter gives me such a genuine feeling of nostalgia.

    _number8_,

    OBS is lifechanging, i watch TV through it so i can cut out the garbage graphics that are often onscreen during live sports and actually focus on the game and appreciate the beauty of the camerawork

    FordPrefect,
    @FordPrefect@startrek.website avatar

    I’m pretty sure that the masking features of OBS (potentially even VLC) could be paired with a camera aimed at the display, to crop interlopers out of a projected image, so that they don’t get painted\blinded with projected light. Very niche utility, but I’m not aware of any hardware-only solutions for it, & its potentially show\life-saving

    OsrsNeedsF2P, in Open source devs: please, please add screenshots...

    While we’re at it, I love that you let me customize the settings via a config, but for the love of god make the default config the best it can possibly be

    TheHobbyist,

    This. It should be the most sane configuration and fit most use cases and lead to an experience working out of the box.

    charliespider,

    I contribute to OS projects and work on one full time. EVERYBODY thinks that their obscure use case is the most common (not saying this is what you are doing).

    We get users that are completely flabbergasted that our software doesn’t offer some feature that is totally specific to their industry and has never been requested even once by anyone else previously. We’ll show them our feature request form on our site where you can also view and upvote other requests, and point out that the feature they want has never been requested. They will literally come up with some bs excuse why that is and then insist that we get on it and build out this custom functionality that they need or else they’re going to slander us on social media.

    Your app doesn’t integrate with “didLr”? OMG any decent app integrates with “didLr”!

    TheHobbyist,

    I understand the developer POV too. It’s clear that getting the right config for most use cases is a UX problem, which may involve user studies, telemetry to be setup. Perhaps out of scope for most small scale individual projects.

    Additionally, I also fully understand that many, if not most of these projects are hobby projects and expectations from users should align with the scope of the project and the resources committed. It’s so easy to feel entitled and deserving of high quality projects but they are so time consuming.

    My comments were not for those projects but rather mature ones. And contributing to the projects is often the most appreciated way when proposing changes.

    In all cases, for any free project, it is always acceptable to answer that something is out of scope, that resources don’t allow for the feature to be implemented or that additional help on implementing it are welcome.

    People demanding something in exchange for nothing are obviously not the most welcome users :)

    Kraivo,

    Krita and not having hotkeys ಠ_ಠ

    GenderNeutralBro,

    There’s a real problem here with backwards compatibility. If you add an option for something, it makes sense to make the default match the functionality of old versions, even if it’s not the best for general use cases. That way any tools built on top of it can safely update.

    charliespider,

    Ding ding ding!

    That said, the solution is to set new defaults for new installations only and not change existing configs. Users lose their minds (rightfully so) if you modify their existing configs.

    RickyRigatoni,
    @RickyRigatoni@lemmy.ml avatar

    I prefer the simple, sane defaults that work for everyone with a heavily commented config file giving detailed information on what each value for each option does, personally. Like MPV’s config file.

    ccdfa,

    I haven’t even touched MPVs config file because I just assumed it would be empty like so much other software I use. Looks like I know what I’m doing tonight.

    ininewcrow, in It's time to take advantage of Reddit's decline
    @ininewcrow@lemmy.ca avatar

    How about we just forget about trying to beat anyone and just get on to using the platform.

    Reddit won’t die anytime soon.

    Lemmy won’t become popular anytime soon.

    It took Reddit years before it became a major platform known by millions. It will take Lemmy years to gain notoriety among millions. Give it time, enjoy what it so now because in a year, two years or three or four years from now, we’ll all be wishing for the good old days when Lemmy just started and we were able to enjoy the simple system it is now.

    Lunarsight,

    Reddit really did benefit from the fall of Digg though - this was about just shy of 20 years ago? Digg was where Reddit is now, thoroughly upsetting its user base with wholesale changes to the content of the site that nobody liked, and Reddit capitalized on that, and stole Digg’s thunder.

    I think Lemmy can potentially do the same. For a second, it looked like Squabbles/Squabblr was going to be the winner, but the last I checked, they imploded after some controversy.

    (I came here from Reddit, incidentally - the user interface is very intuitive.)

    triclops6,

    Agreed, lots of naysayers here for some reason

    Durotar,
    @Durotar@lemmy.ml avatar

    I know right? People think that Lemmy will grow “naturally”, but Lemmy is not a plant, there is nothing natural about this process. If people want it to grow, actions must be taken just like the OP proposed.

    Bluescluestoothpaste,

    Naturally meaning make lemmy a good experience and people will come. Begging redditors to come won’t help anything. Hell, OP and anyone else is free to just set up an instance where a bot reposts whatever gets posted to reddit front page, or a specific sub. That’s a fine idea i think to help lemmy grow, as is any idea that will improve the Lemmy experience. But there’s no need to spam reddit mods and ask them to help grow lemmy.

    Durotar,
    @Durotar@lemmy.ml avatar

    Naturally meaning make lemmy a good experience and people will come.

    They can’t come if they don’t know about Lemmy. I came here, because I’d seen many posts about it on Reddit. You probably heard about it from someone too. We’re on the internet in 2023: people don’t go beyond first few links on Google, they rarely leave big platforms and aggregators like Facebook and Reddit. While I agree that this particular strategy raises questions (I don’t see why Reddit mods would care), I support the cause.

    Bluescluestoothpaste,

    They’ll know about it when it’s a good product. And , they do know about it, every fuck spez thread had lemmy memtioned as an alternative. At this point, any redditors who cared about the api changes know about lemmy. And that’s fine if you want to go on reddit and spam lemmy links.

    But it makes no sense to go to current reddit mods who are committed to volunteering for reddit six weeks after all this shit went down. They like reddit and dont plan on leaving, if they did they would have six weeks ago.

    Blaze,
    @Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    People know about it already, they find it confusing, hard to use, you cannot block an instance, there are no multireddits, Sync is still in beta, the main instance is down half of the time.

    All of these points should be addressed for Lemmy to become mainstream

    Durotar,
    @Durotar@lemmy.ml avatar

    You make it sound like one blocks another, but we already have a lot of people and there’s no reason why we can’t attract more. You’re here despite these issues.

    Blaze,
    @Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    I am, but I’m very tolerant for bugs and this kind of issues.

    Early adopters are probably all here. To convince more picky users to join, those issues have to be fixed.

    Undearius,
    @Undearius@lemmy.ca avatar

    free to just set up an instance where a bot reposts whatever gets posted to reddit front page, or a specific sub.

    lemmit.online is that instance

    Auli,

    Doesn’t seem like most Reddit users care. There is still way more activity on Reddit then here, and that probably isn’t changing anytime soon. And right now Reddit still has better content since it seems mostly Lemmy is just posts about Reddit.

    Blaze,
    @Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    Look at the comments per day of any major subs such as

    subredditstats.com/r/AskReddit

    The 3rd party apps shutdown made a huge impact on the number of comments. Activity is still there, but much less

    Bluescluestoothpaste,

    Yeah lemmy can do the same, but begging redditors to switch won’t help anything. I was part of the digg migration, nobody on reddit ever posted on digg to go switch. I just searched for something else, and reddit was there. I certainly didn’t spend a second thinking about digg afterwards, and i wont think about reddit either.

    marco,
    @marco@beehaw.org avatar

    Critical mass has high inertia.

    gammasfor, in How to bypass GPL (easy tutorial)

    Let’s be honest this is how it actually usually plays out:

    1. Be a huge company
    2. Make your employees sign an NDA
    3. Make your code closed source
    4. Use GPL code and not give a shit because you’re a huge company with a legal team bigger than your Dev team
    pivot_root,

    Larry, is that you?

    auf, in FOSS Microsoft Office for Linux

    Get used to LibreOffice. It’s the most actively maintained, well-made opensource office software.

    mp3,
    @mp3@lemmy.ca avatar

    An underrated feature of LibreOffice is the ability to insert the original document inside a PDF when exporting. If you reopen that PDF in LibreOffice, it will grab the embedded copy for editing instead of trying to guess how to convert the PDF into its original.

    Hybrid PDF

    leftzero,

    That’s monstrous. When I send a PDF I don’t want it to be editable, if I wanted an editable format I’d use an editable format. Exporting to PDF is supposed to be a digital equivalent to printing.

    semperverus,
    @semperverus@lemmy.world avatar

    It sounds opt-in.

    Takios,
    @Takios@feddit.de avatar

    I saved many many documents as pdf via libre office and never encountered this feature, so I’d say so too.

    mp3,
    @mp3@lemmy.ca avatar

    It is.

    MummifiedClient5000,

    Exporting to PDF is supposed to be a digital equivalent to printing.

    It really isn’t. Even without this feature (that I’d never heard of before) it is a format that is very easy to edit.

    If you need PDFs to be tamperproof, you can however digitally sign them. (And then the recipient needs your public key to verify).

    Quintus,
    @Quintus@lemmy.ml avatar

    Which is why it’s optional I suppose.

    AnUnusualRelic,
    @AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world avatar

    Then don’t embed the document in the pdf. Easy.

    Oha, in FFmpeg's costly functions are all written in hand optimised assembly
    @Oha@lemmy.ohaa.xyz avatar

    ffmpeg is one of the most based projects ive ever seen

    Schlemmy, in You can and you should contribute - Open Street Map

    I’m addicted to Streetcomplete. I’m 20.000+ edits in. I make about 100 with ease on my commute to work.

    moreeni,

    You are a hero

    merde,

    once you complete every quest on your commute, what do you do?

    parallel streets ✅

    and then?

    Nouveau_Burnswick,

    Not parallel streets.

    merde,

    that turns the commute into a promenade

    Schlemmy,

    That’s exactly what happened. Fortunately I have 4 different offices and I can work from ‘home’ anywhere so sometimes I go work at a friend’s place instead of working at my place.

    CjkOvPDwQw,
    @CjkOvPDwQw@lemmygrad.ml avatar

    You change your job to another location :)

    Schlemmy,

    There’s always more to tag. It’s crazy. But I started talking walks during my break.

    One thing that I haven’t got to is tagging street width and that you can do by using your phones’ camera for measuring.

    apt.izzysoft.de/…/de.westnordost.streetmeasure

    merde, (edited )

    In order to use this app, you will need to have the proprietary Google Play Services for AR app installed on your device as well.

    🤐

    edit: this is for StreetMeasure

    Schlemmy,

    _What are the system requirements of this app?

    StreetComplete requires Android 5.0, and a screen size of at least 4.3" is recommend. Apart from that, any reasonably modern phone (at least 2GB RAM, around 500MB of free space) should support it. It doesn’t require Google Play Services_

    Edit: You were aiming at Streetcomplete, I see now. This is in their FAQ:

    According to our tests, it does work without Google Play Services being installed, but, as said before, the device needs to be compatible.

    wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/StreetComplete/FAQ

    merde,

    i’m using streetComplete without google. It’s streetMeasure that requires Google Play Sevices

    Schlemmy,

    Apparently, per their own FAQ, it is possible to use it without Google Play Services.

    Schlemmy,

    _What are the system requirements of this app?

    StreetComplete requires Android 5.0, and a screen size of at least 4.3" is recommend. Apart from that, any reasonably modern phone (at least 2GB RAM, around 500MB of free space) should support it. It doesn’t require Google Play Services_

    gonzoknowsdotcom1,

    It needs an iOS app

    nexussapphire,

    iOS apps generally require a $100 yearly fee to post to the app store and if they submitted a waiver as a nonprofit apple would probably take years to accept it.

    Also apple has a tendency to quietly kill and/or stall small apps that pose a threat to features they incorporate into their os from what I’ve heard.

    lukecooperatus,

    Ugh yeah the small 4-person worker cooperative I’m part of has been trying to get Apple to let us enroll in their developer program for literally weeks now. Every time we clear some other nonsense requirement, there’s a new one right behind it; and we haven’t even gotten to the “pay $100 for the privilege of undergoing this process” part yet.

    I can’t believe Apple ever managed to build an application ecosystem around their products when they are so unfriendly to developers.

    Rexios,

    What? If you’re going to pay for it you just sign up and pay… If you don’t have your company registered before attempting that that’s on you. And if you’re really desperate you could just use a personal developer account which you can set up in like 1 minute. Not sure how this is an issue for you.

    gonzoknowsdotcom1,

    Donations

    2xsaiko,
    @2xsaiko@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    Check out Go Map!!, it’s also open source and has a similar feature to StreetComplete with its quests, at least from what I’ve heard about how StreetComplete works.

    jabberati,
    @jabberati@social.anoxinon.de avatar

    @gonzoknowsdotcom1 @Schlemmy Maybe not as much fun as StreetComplete, but checkout the Every Door app: https://every-door.app/

    gonzoknowsdotcom1,
    caos,

    @gonzoknowsdotcom1 This app doesn't seem quite as entertaining as , but it is also available for :
    " editor for POIs and entrances."
    every-door.app/
    Furthermore, it is also very easy to edit data with : organicmaps.app/de/
    @Schlemmy

    gonzoknowsdotcom1,

    agreed

    flip0xfff,
    @flip0xfff@mastodon.social avatar

    @caos @Schlemmy @gonzoknowsdotcom1 #EveryDoor is great, I use it alongside #StreetComplete as it has more attributes that can be set. First StreetComplete until no tasks are left, then EveryDoor for more details.

    agent_flounder,
    @agent_flounder@lemmy.one avatar

    I installed it. Judging by the mass of blank info, I guess I’m the only person around here using it lol. 😳

    joeldebruijn,

    I became nr 10 or so in my country just by adding nearly everything SC can ask in … a 10 block radius around my house.😁

    agent_flounder,
    @agent_flounder@lemmy.one avatar

    I am never getting lost in my own neighborhood again!! (Me irl)

    kambusha,

    Cool! Never seen this before. Just downloaded and signed up.

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