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> Meanwhile, in other niches, Microsoft Office still beats open source office suites like LibreOffice; Photoshop isn't about to give up its crown to GIMP; Light

by btreecat 11mo ago

> Meanwhile, in other niches, Microsoft Office still beats open source office suites like LibreOffice; Photoshop isn't about to give up its crown to GIMP; Lightroom isn't losing to Darktable; and FreeCAD isn't even in the rear view mirror of Solidworks. Tbf, everything starts somewhere and all the proprietary apps you listed were not instant market leaders. I can and do use all those FOSS tools just fine both as a hobbyist and professionally, my needs are meet. Others may not find the same, but I suspect there's just a lot of stickyness preventing even trying new workflows.

HKH2 11mo ago
LibreOffice, GIMP, FreeCAD and Inkscape all have their quirks (and bugs), but they're probably seen as features by their core users so they won't change.
- legends2k 11mo ago
  Not sure about FreeCAD but got a lot done with Gimp, Inkscape and LibreOffice in my personal projects. Totally worth my time!
  - HKH2 11mo ago
    Me too. I guess a majority of people don't have the patience to work around counterintuitive things nor do they want to take measures to avoid bugs. On the other hand, Blender and Krita seem to give UX a higher priority, so they're more likely to catch on.
  - Mashimo 11mo ago
    I dislike using Gimp. Always have. There is just something about it that does not click with me. Just selecting a foreground object even when the background was almost white never worked for me. Just so fiddly. I can get stuff done with it.
    - wltr 11mo ago
      Try PhotoGimp plugin, it solves some annoyances for me by introducing the shortcuts I used to, and a slightly more familiar interface. The rest, I just got used to, and actually now I like Gimp more than Photoshop (which I don’t like too much, even though I know it for two decades now).
- btreecat 11mo ago
  > LibreOffice, GIMP, FreeCAD and Inkscape all have their quirks (and bugs), but they're probably seen as features by their core users so they won't change. I wouldn't say that, there's bugs in Freecad that drive me bonkers but I would be dishonest if I said it hadn't gotten more stable and better supports my Nvidia card today compared to previous releases
crote 11mo ago
> I can and do use all those FOSS tools just fine both as a hobbyist and professionally, my needs are meet. Mine aren't: GIMP is okay, FreeCAD is a complete joke. It is painfully obvious that their development is done primarily by F/LOSS enthusiasts rather than by industry professionals and UX designers. They are closer to being a random collection of features than a professional workhorse. You might eventually get the job done, but compared to the proprietary competition it is woefully incomplete, overly complicated, and significantly buggier. The poor quality of FreeCAD is the main reason my 3D printer is collecting dust. As a Linux-only user the proprietary alternatives mostly aren't available to me, and FreeCAD is bad enough that I'd rather not do CAD at all. The Ondsel fork was looking promising for a while, but sadly that died off.
- etrautmann 11mo ago
  Maybe try OnShape, which is browser based and quite professional?
  - zargon 11mo ago
    Seconded, OnShape is my favorite CAD package. I passed it over for a long time because I had poor expectations of a browser-based CAD. Just wish I could justify the commercial license.
  - taneq 11mo ago
    The free tier is non-commercial only, and makes anything you design available publicly, so it might not be suitable for some users. It's also pricey, the first paid tier is $1500/year (compared with Fusion which is $680/year).
- nextaccountic 11mo ago
  won't solidworks run on wine? i used it for just one semester in a class, but it sparks joy to this day. and even though it's not a cad program, i wish blender had parametric tools
- rf15 11mo ago
  Had to learn FreeCAD last week, and yes, what an embarrassment. For my current work (cnc) you can't really get anywhere without the third-party lib OCL, which they just... fully interface with, but you still have to integrate/install manually? I generally agree with the observation that the developers care too little for quality or usability, considering e.g. the logs constantly throw python errors in your face. Edit: oh, it was even worse before? I hope they keep going in this direction then
raw_anon_1111 11mo ago
I don’t know if you can really say that Photoshop wasn’t a market leader from day one. It basically created the market on the Mac when it was introduced in 1990 and has been the market leader since. If you want to limit standard Office productivity to ones that were written with the GUI in mind, MS Office was the leader on the Mac before it came to PCs and crushed WordPerfect and Lotus early on.

HKH2 11mo ago

LibreOffice, GIMP, FreeCAD and Inkscape all have their quirks (and bugs), but they're probably seen as features by their core users so they won't change.

legends2k 11mo ago
Not sure about FreeCAD but got a lot done with Gimp, Inkscape and LibreOffice in my personal projects. Totally worth my time!
- HKH2 11mo ago
  Me too. I guess a majority of people don't have the patience to work around counterintuitive things nor do they want to take measures to avoid bugs. On the other hand, Blender and Krita seem to give UX a higher priority, so they're more likely to catch on.
- Mashimo 11mo ago
  I dislike using Gimp. Always have. There is just something about it that does not click with me. Just selecting a foreground object even when the background was almost white never worked for me. Just so fiddly. I can get stuff done with it.
  - wltr 11mo ago
    Try PhotoGimp plugin, it solves some annoyances for me by introducing the shortcuts I used to, and a slightly more familiar interface. The rest, I just got used to, and actually now I like Gimp more than Photoshop (which I don’t like too much, even though I know it for two decades now).
btreecat 11mo ago
> LibreOffice, GIMP, FreeCAD and Inkscape all have their quirks (and bugs), but they're probably seen as features by their core users so they won't change. I wouldn't say that, there's bugs in Freecad that drive me bonkers but I would be dishonest if I said it hadn't gotten more stable and better supports my Nvidia card today compared to previous releases

crote 11mo ago

> I can and do use all those FOSS tools just fine both as a hobbyist and professionally, my needs are meet. Mine aren't: GIMP is okay, FreeCAD is a complete joke. It is painfully obvious that their development is done primarily by F/LOSS enthusiasts rather than by industry professionals and UX designers. They are closer to being a random collection of features than a professional workhorse. You might eventually get the job done, but compared to the proprietary competition it is woefully incomplete, overly complicated, and significantly buggier. The poor quality of FreeCAD is the main reason my 3D printer is collecting dust. As a Linux-only user the proprietary alternatives mostly aren't available to me, and FreeCAD is bad enough that I'd rather not do CAD at all. The Ondsel fork was looking promising for a while, but sadly that died off.

etrautmann 11mo ago
Maybe try OnShape, which is browser based and quite professional?
- zargon 11mo ago
  Seconded, OnShape is my favorite CAD package. I passed it over for a long time because I had poor expectations of a browser-based CAD. Just wish I could justify the commercial license.
- taneq 11mo ago
  The free tier is non-commercial only, and makes anything you design available publicly, so it might not be suitable for some users. It's also pricey, the first paid tier is $1500/year (compared with Fusion which is $680/year).
nextaccountic 11mo ago
won't solidworks run on wine? i used it for just one semester in a class, but it sparks joy to this day. and even though it's not a cad program, i wish blender had parametric tools
rf15 11mo ago
Had to learn FreeCAD last week, and yes, what an embarrassment. For my current work (cnc) you can't really get anywhere without the third-party lib OCL, which they just... fully interface with, but you still have to integrate/install manually? I generally agree with the observation that the developers care too little for quality or usability, considering e.g. the logs constantly throw python errors in your face. Edit: oh, it was even worse before? I hope they keep going in this direction then

raw_anon_1111 11mo ago

I don’t know if you can really say that Photoshop wasn’t a market leader from day one. It basically created the market on the Mac when it was introduced in 1990 and has been the market leader since. If you want to limit standard Office productivity to ones that were written with the GUI in mind, MS Office was the leader on the Mac before it came to PCs and crushed WordPerfect and Lotus early on.