For me, Google video search, Google books (Internet Archive is good, but doesn’t always have the same stuff), Adobe InDesign (but in the process of learning LaTeX), and Typewise. As for the Google stuff, I liked Whoogle a lot, but almost all their instances seem to have been blocked or shut down. Also, apologies if this is repeating an earlier post.
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Obsidian. Plain text files with as many or as few plugins as you want. All versions of the app look and behave the same (other than mobile, but at least android is kinda close). Nothing stored in a database file, no manipulation of the text files themselves (looking at you, Joplin). I’m open to another option but so far, nothing is as elegant and platform agnostic as Obsidian.
I don’t understand why we spend so much time praising proprietary software in these communities.
As to your question, I have a separate Windows machine for gaming, but that’s it. I keep one foot in the free world and one in the proprietary. As for productivity tools I can’t think of a proprietary tool I “can’t quit” or that I would pick in favor of a free tool.
Fans of proprietary software have this weird belief that free software users choose inferior tools for purist or idealist reasons. This is offensively ignorant. No one chooses bad tools on purpose; we just consider freedom to be part of the criteria of a good tool.
That sounds like an idealist reason to me lol
This. Freedom is part of the quality of a program.
Most of the times -for me anyway- not only are the tools free (as in freedom) and free (as in beer) but also simply vastly superior to paid alternatives. I never get why people pay and then put up with shit, or use some SaaS platform where they are the product and get spied on and still put up with so much shit that they would be double better off by switching to something open
A tool with fewer features that is harder to use is by definition an inferior tool.
we just consider freedom to be part of the criteria of a good tool.
You just described choosing an inferior tool for ideological reasons.
Steam
.
It is, yes, but arg! Its toolbar buttons are too small!
Games, Discord and games
Google Maps. It sucks, and stores randomly pop in and out while you’re trying to zoom in past the McDonalds ad that’s showing despite you searching “shoe store”, but it has so much more info than the competitors that they don’t compare.
Just want to add this comparison between Google Maps and OpenStreetMap. Google Maps is definitely better in some areas and OSM is better in others.
Yeah, this is a cool discussion. Thank you.
Tried Openstreetmap? OSMAnd? Organic maps? Both of which use OSM. HERE maps (not open source)?
I’ve used organic maps, and maybe osmand? It’s good! And progress is fast. But it’s not quite there yet for me.
This conversation is making me realize that it may have been a year since I last tried it? Guess I’m due!
The user generated data on google maps is really useful though.
OSMAnd is good in many ways (and has come a long way too), but the app suffers from too many settings and too much menu diving for my taste. OrganicMaps is good because it’s like having “OSMAnd lite.” Used to be that without Google Services that there was no voice navigation, but now I’m able to use RH Voice with Organic Maps. MagicEarth is another map navigation app, but not open source.
I’ve really enjoyed using MagicEarth. I’d probably move to Organic Maps if they implemented routing for other public transport besides trains.
I also run a lot of proprietary stuff like Discord or Instagram due to peer pressure but I let it slide and put my hopes on Android sandboxing the apps and GrapheneOS tweaks. In my opinion, making sure that proprietary app can’t reliably access your data and never giving it anything sensitive yourself is a decent risk model.
The only proprietary software I use and somewhat trust is Obdisian. Honestly, it’s just excellent and I can’t see myself moving away from it anytime soon.
chrome, the android os and platform and all the apps therein. I mainly use firefox, but some things only work in chrome.
Steam
Just games. And I am thankful for all the open source implementations as they are almost always vastly superior to the original releases.
Thank you John Carmack for releasing the sources to your games!
I wanted to fully switch to Linux and FOSS for a while now but specialised software like CAD and image editing are either non existent or completely useless for professional purposes in their FOSS versions. What angers me most is that most is them could run on wine easily if the developers did some minor changes so it seems intentional.
same, everything i use is foss apart from games
QuickBooks. F that software. Give me any double entry accounting software that you can use with multiple companies.
I’m not familiar with what exactly you need but have you taken a look at KMyMoney? (Or is this for accounting for an actual company and not for yourself? Not sure how it holds up there)
There are a bunch. There are fewer that are multiuser. Search alternativeto. Thing is people want more then double entry accounting. Electronic payment processing, reporting, payroll, AR, tax… Then how does it work with the professionals you hire.
Edit: For personal stuff, my wife and I use GNUCash. It does have small company features. I do not think it is concurrent though, but it can be used with an SQL backend though. We do not use the database mode so no experience with it.
Discord has friends locked in. IRCcloud is so convenient. Tap to pay app is too useful. The app that controls my heat and AC is going to be a big project to replace. Spotify has family locked in. All the garbage running on my car would be nearly impossible to change.
GBoard is one I’ve tried to ditch a few times and end up coming back to. :(
Tried AnySoft keyboard?
I’ve never understood the appeal of Spotify; I’m used to owning CDs, FLAC, or mp3 albums.
Convenient. Haven’t run into music it doesn’t have. I didn’t use it for years but a few months ago got roped in and now I’m stuck lol
I’ve never understood the appeal of Spotify
- Tap search
- Select artist/album/song
- Play anywhere instantly
I also like having physical copies/my own files organized for my home server. But to not even understand why people use Spotify…?
I’m just old I guess, and rather set in my ways. I remember not being able to search their catalog to see what they had or didn’t have without signing up, but that was quite a long time ago. I think Spotify may short change its artists, but at the same time I’m guessing it’s probably a lot cheaper than buying albums.
Can’t you also do 1,2,&3 with YouTube as well?
Youtube doesn’t let you listen to videos if you navigate away from the app or lock your screen. You have to pay for YT music to be able to do that.
And I agree with you about not using spotify, but again, there are certainly advantages to it. The pros just don’t outweigh the cons/match our values.
I think you can do that with Invidious or FreeTube…? NewPipe will let you do that, I’m pretty sure.
Sure but they are not as effortless/not as feature rich as spotify and can be tricky to run on iOS. Google et al are also actively trying to break those projects these days. I say this as a daily freetube user.
I’ll give it another try. It’s been a year or more.
I could switch away from Spotify but family wouldn’t like it and we share a plan.
Solidworks - A reliable FOSS 3D CAD package would be amazing… Parametric Blender? Photoshop/Illustrator - I know how to do 50% of what I need to in GIMP/Inkscape, but I lean on Adobe usually!
FreeCAD is the best FOSS program I know for solid modeling. Librecad works for 2D.
Man, I tried to learn FreeCAD, but coming from the Inventor/Solidworks paradigm it was hard.
I used to use Solidworks and NX some. I think there are similarities. That is sketch based. I admit though, not really learned FreeCAD either. On my list some day.
There is also ondsel, which is basically freecad with some polish maybe. It looks the same to me. But one day when they solve the topology renaming thing and when they have an interface that’s not openly hostile I’d love to try it
I would agree that FreeCAD is the best, but it’s not slick and doesn’t feel particularly robust. Don’t get me wrong, I have no rose tinted glasses on when it comes to Solidworks, but it’s generally very usable and very powerful.
Actually Solidworks is consider low to mid market. NX and whatever PTC calls their high end now are the main stream CAD systems as far as I know.
I worked with Creo for years, and ProE before that. I still have nightmares about the cascading unresolved reference screens. I’ve never used NX, but my understanding is it is AAA, though not super user friendly by default. I’ve pretty much exclusively used Solidworks for over a decade now, and I have to say that it’s generally pretty well behaved, and I’ve never really found I couldn’t do what I wanted to in it. Thus it has become my crutch.
Nice thing about Solidworks is I think is used the ACIS kernel. Means it is directly compatible with a lot of other software.
Solvespace is a FLOSS light weight 3D CAD alternative. Although it lacks the advanced features of Solidworks works really great for most of my 3d designs.
Games, for everything else I’ve found a foss alternative that I prefer. I will do a google search once every couple of days if I’m really struggling to find something but even as a last resort search engine it’s been getting worse - I heard they put an ad person in charge of search… so that would probably explain that descent.
Just gave it a try. It’s okay, but there’s no way to scrobble from iOS (where I normally listen to music). I’m getting an Android at some point, but for now I need to work with what I’ve got.
I think it would depend on the music player? There is listenbrainz-ios, but I assume it’s banned by Apple because it’s opensource? That would make iOS pretty bad if you want to go opensource with stuff. But if you’re in the EU, that might change soon thanks to the DMA which will force Apple to allow third-party stores of which probably a few opensource ones will pop up.
There’s a TestFlight link. Thanks!
I haven’t tried last.fm but I like ListenBrainz for that stuff.
