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Yes “but” how do expect open alternatives to become better? Contribute to a project (with a very low bar for “contribute”, anything from “file a bug” to “fix t

Yes “but” how do expect open alternatives to become better? Contribute to a project (with a very low bar for “contribute”, anything from “file a bug” to “fix the documentation” to “make artwork”). Yes, some big companies also push Linux forward but individuals who want good alternatives can do something to make those alternatives happen.

falcolas 9y ago
An open source project for external customers (i.e. us) operated by a bunch of unpaid volunteers will never really be able to compete with an application with paid developers, invested users, and the supporting departments. I'm not saying that open source projects can't get better, that they can't be good, but they will never be as good. For a corollary: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/936629310785437696 https://twitter.com/patio11/status/936629310785437696
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
  >I'm not saying that open source projects can't get better, that they can't be good, but they will never be as good. Hah, this is rich. Many open source products are far better than their proprietary alternatives, especially developer oriented products (which is natural considering that developers tend to use open source and tend to improve their own tools).
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    On the other hand, when it comes to categories like games, video game console emulators, office productivity applications, document publishing, etc., the open-source alternatives are generally way worse.
    - Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
      >games See pretty much every other reply in this thread for my take on this >video game console emulators Wrong, most emulators are open source, support Linux, and work great. >office productivity applications "way worse" is a bit harsh for describing LibreOffice. It works quite well in my experience. >document publishing I don't know what this is supposed to be. LaTeX is pretty good, though.
      - emodendroket 9y ago
        > Wrong, most emulators are open source, support Linux, and work great. As I said to the other guy, for a number of systems there's no emulator except the one on Windows. > "way worse" is a bit harsh for describing LibreOffice. It works quite well in my experience. Yeah, because your experience doesn't involve using the advanced features that have no analogue and you aren't overly concerned that the formatting will look totally different if someone opens it in MSOffice.
        Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
        >As I said to the other guy, for a number of systems there's no emulator except the one on Windows. The only one that comes to mind is that one Wii U emulator. Xenia doesn't support Linux but it's open source and the lack of support more a reflection of its relative immaturity than not being possible (I'm certain a Linux port will come eventually, I was even working on it myself for a while). >Yeah, because your experience doesn't involve using the advanced features that have no analogue and you aren't overly concerned that the formatting will look totally different if someone opens it in MSOffice. If the formatting of a docx looks wrong in LibreOffice that's not really a big deal if you can still read the content, which is usually the case. Writing new documents should use ODF, which MSWord supports fine (often transparently, non-technical users will probably see a file with the same MSWord icon and no file extension).
        emodendroket 9y ago
        In some contexts it is a big deal, though. I suppose the answer to that is that everyone who uses Word should learn to use Latex instead but that's not realistic.
        Maert 9y ago
        > If the formatting of a docx looks wrong in LibreOffice that's not really a big deal if you can still read the content, which is usually the case. You sound like someone who never collaborated on an Office file with someone from another company. If a company wants to be taken seriously, and some of their work involves exchanging and collaborating on presentations, text documents or tabular files, you cannot not use MS Office.
    - badsectoracula 9y ago
      Open source video game console emulators are certainly not worse. If anything, the best by far emulator (Dolphin) is open source, but even beyond that almost every open source VGC emulator is also open source and those emulators tend to be the most long running ones (almost always because the developers of the closed source emulators lose interest). For some systems, you have only open source emulators.
      - emodendroket 9y ago
        There are several systems where your only option is Windows, unless the situation has changed drastically since I last looked into it. I remember Dreamcast, Saturn, DS, PSP, and PS2 being in this category, and also the options for N64/PSX not being very good, the last time I was interested. Of course, someone can respond to arguments about any program being missing with "well, I don't care about those," but you can't expect anyone to find that persuasive if they're not already converted.
        badsectoracula 9y ago
        There are emulators on Linux in active development for all the systems you've mentioned, most even being available in Debian (and derivative) repositories.
        emodendroket 9y ago
        I mean, great, but I don't want something that will maybe work in a few years when there's something that works well now.
        Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
        Dreamcast: https://github.com/reicast/reicast-emulator https://github.com/reicast/reicast-emulator Saturn: https://yabause.org/ https://yabause.org/ DS: https://desmume.org/ https://desmume.org/ PSP: http://www.ppsspp.org/index.html http://www.ppsspp.org/index.html PS2: https://pcsx2.net/ https://pcsx2.net/ All of these are open source, support Linux, and have good compatability.
  - falcolas 9y ago
    I'll give you (some) software development tools. Still, things like Sublime Text, Visual Studio, and the entire Jet Brains lineup which give lie to the "especially" part of the developer orientated toolset. But... Gimp is far better than Photoshop and Illustrator? Blender is far better than 3DS Max and Maya? Libre Office is far better than Microsoft Office? Darkroom is far better than Lightroom? Honestly, I can't even think of an open source CAD one that can even compare favorably to SketchUp, let alone AutoCad. If you have to, there are many tools available to do a job on Linux, with a backup of VMs and Wine. They are not, however, "far better".
    - majormajor 9y ago
      Yeah. Making software to sell forces you to listen to the market (not the same thing as just listening to your existing customers) if you want to grow your sales. Emacs is more powerful than IntelliJ, say, but it's vastly inferior in terms of learning curve and UX. There are some things I'd rather do in it than in IntelliJ, but it's not what I'm going to use for day to day Android dev, say. Or what I'd point newcomers at.
      - emodendroket 9y ago
        > Emacs is more powerful than IntelliJ, say Depends how you define "powerful;" IntelliJ understands a lot more about your code than most Emacs plug-ins.
- thomastjeffery 9y ago
  > An open source project ... will never be able to compete with ... pays developers ... There are plenty of examples where they have done just that. Blender is probably the most obvious.
  - gmueckl 9y ago
    Blender is just the worst example that you could have picked. It is a tiny toy compared to the commercial packages in that field. It is like GIMP: just enough for those with simple needs. KDE 3 would have been a much better example. But these days are gone, too. What about R and Jenkins? Are there paid developers working on these?
    - thomastjeffery 9y ago
      > It is a tiny toy compared to the commercial packages in that field. How so?
      - falcolas 9y ago
        To be honest, it can be summed up with one sentence: Blender is striving to meet the features and capabilities of Maya and 3ds Studio, not the other way around. A more "business" orientated sentence: Blender is required to to split its focus to provide a complete movie/game making package including a movie editor, shader editor (i.e. photoshop), and animation editor, an audio editor, a physics editor, a compositing editor, and a game editor; Maya and 3ds Studio do not. Blender just can't keep up. It's a good tool, no doubt about it, but few professional users will end up using it to make money.
        thomastjeffery 9y ago
        I can comprehend what you are saying, but I disagree. Over the past decade or so, Blender has been on par, and even ahead of "industry standard" tools. It isn't required to split its focus. It is able to. That is something proprietary software from a company would fail at. It's something that free software and collaboration succeed at. The biggest benefit is that it has all of these tools in a cohesive environment. Instead of a photoshop/GIMP-like menu of functions, Blender is a cohesive manageable UI. There are, in fact, a wide variety of professionals using Blender to make money. You don't hear about it, because telling you what they use is not their perogative. What features to Maya/Max/etc. have that Blender is really behind on today? I can't think of any.
Retra 9y ago
I think if you make development of portable software much easier, then people'll have no excuse for not building software that works on multiple platforms except "we specifically choose to not target that platform."
- emodendroket 9y ago
  Java's been around for a long time.
emodendroket 9y ago
It's great that people are willing to do this but it seems like kind of an absurd bar to just doing general computing.

falcolas 9y ago

An open source project for external customers (i.e. us) operated by a bunch of unpaid volunteers will never really be able to compete with an application with paid developers, invested users, and the supporting departments. I'm not saying that open source projects can't get better, that they can't be good, but they will never be as good. For a corollary: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/936629310785437696 https://twitter.com/patio11/status/936629310785437696

Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
>I'm not saying that open source projects can't get better, that they can't be good, but they will never be as good. Hah, this is rich. Many open source products are far better than their proprietary alternatives, especially developer oriented products (which is natural considering that developers tend to use open source and tend to improve their own tools).
- emodendroket 9y ago
  On the other hand, when it comes to categories like games, video game console emulators, office productivity applications, document publishing, etc., the open-source alternatives are generally way worse.
  - Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
    >games See pretty much every other reply in this thread for my take on this >video game console emulators Wrong, most emulators are open source, support Linux, and work great. >office productivity applications "way worse" is a bit harsh for describing LibreOffice. It works quite well in my experience. >document publishing I don't know what this is supposed to be. LaTeX is pretty good, though.
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      > Wrong, most emulators are open source, support Linux, and work great. As I said to the other guy, for a number of systems there's no emulator except the one on Windows. > "way worse" is a bit harsh for describing LibreOffice. It works quite well in my experience. Yeah, because your experience doesn't involve using the advanced features that have no analogue and you aren't overly concerned that the formatting will look totally different if someone opens it in MSOffice.
      - Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
        >As I said to the other guy, for a number of systems there's no emulator except the one on Windows. The only one that comes to mind is that one Wii U emulator. Xenia doesn't support Linux but it's open source and the lack of support more a reflection of its relative immaturity than not being possible (I'm certain a Linux port will come eventually, I was even working on it myself for a while). >Yeah, because your experience doesn't involve using the advanced features that have no analogue and you aren't overly concerned that the formatting will look totally different if someone opens it in MSOffice. If the formatting of a docx looks wrong in LibreOffice that's not really a big deal if you can still read the content, which is usually the case. Writing new documents should use ODF, which MSWord supports fine (often transparently, non-technical users will probably see a file with the same MSWord icon and no file extension).
        emodendroket 9y ago
        In some contexts it is a big deal, though. I suppose the answer to that is that everyone who uses Word should learn to use Latex instead but that's not realistic.
        Maert 9y ago
        > If the formatting of a docx looks wrong in LibreOffice that's not really a big deal if you can still read the content, which is usually the case. You sound like someone who never collaborated on an Office file with someone from another company. If a company wants to be taken seriously, and some of their work involves exchanging and collaborating on presentations, text documents or tabular files, you cannot not use MS Office.
  - badsectoracula 9y ago
    Open source video game console emulators are certainly not worse. If anything, the best by far emulator (Dolphin) is open source, but even beyond that almost every open source VGC emulator is also open source and those emulators tend to be the most long running ones (almost always because the developers of the closed source emulators lose interest). For some systems, you have only open source emulators.
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      There are several systems where your only option is Windows, unless the situation has changed drastically since I last looked into it. I remember Dreamcast, Saturn, DS, PSP, and PS2 being in this category, and also the options for N64/PSX not being very good, the last time I was interested. Of course, someone can respond to arguments about any program being missing with "well, I don't care about those," but you can't expect anyone to find that persuasive if they're not already converted.
      - badsectoracula 9y ago
        There are emulators on Linux in active development for all the systems you've mentioned, most even being available in Debian (and derivative) repositories.
        emodendroket 9y ago
        I mean, great, but I don't want something that will maybe work in a few years when there's something that works well now.
      - Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
        Dreamcast: https://github.com/reicast/reicast-emulator https://github.com/reicast/reicast-emulator Saturn: https://yabause.org/ https://yabause.org/ DS: https://desmume.org/ https://desmume.org/ PSP: http://www.ppsspp.org/index.html http://www.ppsspp.org/index.html PS2: https://pcsx2.net/ https://pcsx2.net/ All of these are open source, support Linux, and have good compatability.
- falcolas 9y ago
  I'll give you (some) software development tools. Still, things like Sublime Text, Visual Studio, and the entire Jet Brains lineup which give lie to the "especially" part of the developer orientated toolset. But... Gimp is far better than Photoshop and Illustrator? Blender is far better than 3DS Max and Maya? Libre Office is far better than Microsoft Office? Darkroom is far better than Lightroom? Honestly, I can't even think of an open source CAD one that can even compare favorably to SketchUp, let alone AutoCad. If you have to, there are many tools available to do a job on Linux, with a backup of VMs and Wine. They are not, however, "far better".
  - majormajor 9y ago
    Yeah. Making software to sell forces you to listen to the market (not the same thing as just listening to your existing customers) if you want to grow your sales. Emacs is more powerful than IntelliJ, say, but it's vastly inferior in terms of learning curve and UX. There are some things I'd rather do in it than in IntelliJ, but it's not what I'm going to use for day to day Android dev, say. Or what I'd point newcomers at.
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      > Emacs is more powerful than IntelliJ, say Depends how you define "powerful;" IntelliJ understands a lot more about your code than most Emacs plug-ins.
thomastjeffery 9y ago
> An open source project ... will never be able to compete with ... pays developers ... There are plenty of examples where they have done just that. Blender is probably the most obvious.
- gmueckl 9y ago
  Blender is just the worst example that you could have picked. It is a tiny toy compared to the commercial packages in that field. It is like GIMP: just enough for those with simple needs. KDE 3 would have been a much better example. But these days are gone, too. What about R and Jenkins? Are there paid developers working on these?
  - thomastjeffery 9y ago
    > It is a tiny toy compared to the commercial packages in that field. How so?
    - falcolas 9y ago
      To be honest, it can be summed up with one sentence: Blender is striving to meet the features and capabilities of Maya and 3ds Studio, not the other way around. A more "business" orientated sentence: Blender is required to to split its focus to provide a complete movie/game making package including a movie editor, shader editor (i.e. photoshop), and animation editor, an audio editor, a physics editor, a compositing editor, and a game editor; Maya and 3ds Studio do not. Blender just can't keep up. It's a good tool, no doubt about it, but few professional users will end up using it to make money.
      - thomastjeffery 9y ago
        I can comprehend what you are saying, but I disagree. Over the past decade or so, Blender has been on par, and even ahead of "industry standard" tools. It isn't required to split its focus. It is able to. That is something proprietary software from a company would fail at. It's something that free software and collaboration succeed at. The biggest benefit is that it has all of these tools in a cohesive environment. Instead of a photoshop/GIMP-like menu of functions, Blender is a cohesive manageable UI. There are, in fact, a wide variety of professionals using Blender to make money. You don't hear about it, because telling you what they use is not their perogative. What features to Maya/Max/etc. have that Blender is really behind on today? I can't think of any.

Retra 9y ago

I think if you make development of portable software much easier, then people'll have no excuse for not building software that works on multiple platforms except "we specifically choose to not target that platform."

emodendroket 9y ago
Java's been around for a long time.

emodendroket 9y ago

It's great that people are willing to do this but it seems like kind of an absurd bar to just doing general computing.