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Free and Open Source Software @beehaw.org

John_Coomsumer @beehaw.org

2y ago

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

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

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

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

233 comments

Whatsapp
And no, I can't simply stop using or ask friends to move to an alternative. I'm from Brazil and that thing is so popular and mainstream, that even stores or public services use it.
Just this week, I had to report an animal abuse case to the authorities, and the official communication channel I had to use was through whatsapp.
It's sad to see how dependent of a single proprietary service for something so important we allowed ourselves to become...
- You can use a FOSS app at your end to chat with WhatsApp users, if this isn't something you're already aware of. Element.io plus a bridge. Beeper.com is a turnkey platform that sorts it all out for you.
  It doesn't help replace WhatsApp as a platform, but perhaps it would suit you?
  
  I have been looking at this possibility, but running a bridge means that I will need to self host a service, which adds one more point of failure, while not really removing whatsapp from my life, so I'm not convinced it's a good alternative.
- Likewise from Brazil and likewise would rather see whatsapp gone from my devices. Sadly, I still need it for work and other official matters. Still, I'm slowly but surely abandoning whatsapp, by either convincing people I talk to to migrate to other, less anti-consumer services, migrating myself to sister groups or alternatives in other services, and/or abandoning a group or chat altogether. And all the while being vocal about it by raising my concerns about whatsapp (just saying "I don't like it and you should move too" can be pretty counter-intuitive with our countrymen). Hopefully, this way, I can drop it altogether once it becomes clearly irrelevant.
  But this reminds me I haven't deleted/left any chats for a few days, so I'll take the opportunity to do just that.
  
  But what do you do when services and institutions in general require you to use whatsapp? That's what is mostly keeping me from deleting that app.
- Well on the bright side, you helped an animal and that is awesome! Yall brazillians in general are pretty awesome peoples.
  
  Someone hasn't watched many gore videos
- I second this . It’s really frustrating having 5 or more different messaging apps
- The web client on desktop is not terrible. Not great, but not terrible.
  
  Honestly the current windows desktop app is fairly decent, it’s what makes it bearable to use for me.
- I can confirm, sort of. I'm not from there nor have I been to Brazil specifically but I've been to South American and Asian countries where it's nearly as ubiquitous as using native calls and texting in the US.
- @fulano Oh my, that's terrible! At least they should give another option to communicate!
  
  Sometimes they do, but then they will take much more time to give you a response.
  Sometimes, they simply don't have n alternative, like my city's local service for reporting broken streetlights.

Discord. God I hate that program, but everyone I know uses it.
- Same as Reddit; it's network affect. There are different applications out there for various purposes that work better/nicer than Discord. But not enough people are using them so everyone goes where everyone else is at.
  
  Geddit is not bad front end. No reddit account needed
  
  Honestly I can’t replace discord with something that doesn’t have the streaming feature. I use that waaaay too much
- I decided to be the change I want to see, so I got my gaming group a Mumbe server for audio chat. I self-host, but commercial ones are dirt cheap. Sound quality is better than Discord. We use Matrix for text, pictures, etc.
- Discord on Linux is one of the biggest reasons I stopped trying to switch to Linux. Not the only, and I know web apps are a thing. But I hate setting literally a web app when there’s a “native” app, but their native app was doubling all my back/forward button inputs, and high was a massive disruption.
  It was far from the only reason, more like the final straw in a growing list of frustrating shit that ALMOST worked right.
  
  Windows Discord is also a web app.
  
  That's weird, I've never had that issue
  
  Just gotta say, I didn't expect to see emojis in a username, and I am both appalled and impressed

- I'd be a little scared of showing my friends the matrix channel directory with how sus some of those channels are. I think that's gonna be one of it's biggest hindrance in being adopted by non-tech users, not even its UI or lack of features. Some of those channels are pretty bad.
- Yeah I would love a Discord alternative that I could actually convince my friends to use.
- At least there's a matrix bridge for discord. You're still connecting to discord from your matrix client, but at least you don't have to install the discord client or access the website.

Bloody banking apps. I'm sick of them not exposing any API to make third party apps.
- If you just want to set up viewing transactions you can setup Actual Budget

My laptops BIOS

The financial system. If i could i would use monero all the time since its FOSS money. Banking software, visa, slavercard, discover, etc APIs all proprietary.
- Eh, i dont think the ship has sailed. The people who stay in crypto during "crypto winters" are generally the real ones who actually want to see a world where governmyth monopoly money fails.
  
  People don't hate crypto because of NFTs, they hate crypto because it's all smoke and mirrors. Crypto isn't money, it's a speculation market with an excellent ad campaign. You can't buy things with crypto.
  Want to spend money without the government tracking your every purchase? Just use cash.

The whole Adobe creative suite. The options out there absolutely are not replacements, either in functionality or usability. Most of them are UX nightmares and feel actively hostile to the user
- I even tried replacing Lightroom, which if you read the recommendations, people love the various FOSS options out there, but they were all garbage at onboarding or finding functionality or just even setting up a simple library with events and albums to group together and edit.

Mechanical CAD. Something like SolidWorks or Fusion 360.
FreeCAD just isn't there yet. They're still struggling with the topological naming problem. However, Blender was like this in the field of 3D animations. Now it's the standard. That gives me hope for FreeCAD. Anyway, MCAD is very important. I'm learning modern C++ and the FreeCAD code base in order to contribute.
I also wish there was a better CAD kernel than OpenCASCADE.
- I have been experimenting with using Inkscape and OpenSCAD for 3d modeling, and it seems to work for what I do, but I know quite a few people prefer a more graphical interface than OpenSCAD.
  
  OpenSCAD is a good take on CAD. My primary workflow is also based on plaintext (text configs, code, org-mode, latex, etc) and keyboard (no mouse). It's easy to manage and back it up with version control tools like git. However, there are a few fields that I feel are inherently visual and need a very interactive tool. CAD is one of them. Others are 3D animation and art.

My central and autonomic nervous systems. Mine are shite and have been since I was wee. Even a clean reinstall of the original operating system would likely help a ton, but if the open source community could go through the files and find the all the bugs, who knows what I could make of my life. At the very least I'd be able to work again.
- OH FUCK
  Brain is running proprietary shitware
  Theres no hope for us, but for our kids...
  Lets flash something worthy into their heads moment they are getting birth
  
  You jest but with the upcoming brain chips that might actually be a thing.
- We are trying, but the bootloader seems to be unlockabe, and that's pushing us back.

Autocad. This is the main (only?) reason I continue to use Windows. Professional 2d cad for architectural drafting has been lacking in Linux for a long time. There are a few commercial alternatives, Bricscad being the big one, but due to (cheap) grandfathered licensing cost for Autocad, I"ve been unable to push for a purchase. Qcad (professional) was another option I looked at but, despite being a good program at an amazing cost, had enough differences in work flow that I couldn't find a good way to integrate it into a shared workflow.
Every once in a while I switch to Linux and either run a W10 vm or RDP just to work around the issue but, inevitably, get frustrated with performance. Freecad and Blender both seem to be working on the problem -but- from a BIM perspective, not detailed drafting . . .
- So much this! And with the connectivity between Rhino/Archivad, Revit and TwinMotion I fear a solution is far away. Which surprises me because all of our professional software works fine natively on Mac, which is also Unix based. Isn't there an easy way to emulate from that direction?
- Tried a bit of bricscad, have to say it's wonderful just not using autodesk evil ooze. Maybe you can try emailing them so they can give you a discount?
  Anyway, here with inventor, a horrible choice I'm stuck with
  
  I hant heard of this before ... It has Ubuntu and opensuse as supported plattform, and a one-time buy option?! This sounds amazing!
- What's wrong with the Arch workbench in FreeCAD?

Microsoft Office. If you need to do any kind of professional documentation for external organizations, it's basically impossible to use anything else.
- The lack of good support for MS Office formats in FOSS tools is Microsoft's fault. Office itself often creates files that are slightly incompatible with their own published OOXML standard. FOSS tools are left chasing these inconsistencies. I wish the world had settled on ODF instead of OOXML for documents.
- Definitely agree with this one, though I will say you can replace one proprietary bit of software (Microsoft Office) with another (Google Drive/Docs) and get a large portion of the way in some industries. Really depends on what you need to do.
  But alas, still no widely accepted FOSS alternatives.
- Pro tip: If you draft documents in Markdown, lots of programs have a "preview" that renders perfect formatted text to paste into a Word document.
  I find it saves me a ton of hassle to leave Word to the very last step, when .docx is required.
- Yeah I've been seeing this reasoning for many years now, but as someone who lives in Word and Excel for office work, it's actually been a really long time since I couldn't use Pages/Numbers/LibreOffice in place of Office just as effectively.

Honestly, I haven't found anything that can replace Google Maps for route planning with public transportation. I really wish for crowdsourced timetables hosted on OSM...
- You can use Gmaps WV to use GMaps without an Google account at least
- Have you checked out Transportr btw?
  
  Oh yeah, I did try it a year or so ago. I'm giving it another try but it still doesn't work. I'll try to get involved, thanks for the suggestion.

Photography software in general.
Photo Mechanic, On1 plugins, and Capture One - there isn't a single piece of FOSS photography software that is remotely useful for my use cases.
High volume tethered shooting with automatic application of edits and adjustments in separate layers is basically impossible.
Fast culling of hundreds or thousands of images along with applying metadata with templates is also not really possible.
Darktable and Digikam are okay Lightroom replacements, but they don't come close to touching what is available in the proprietary world. Rawtherapee doesn't do tethering at all, and isn't very good at what it does do compared to On1 Photo Raw or Capture One.
- I am planning on writing a graphical interface for gphoto2 (a Linux camera remote library) which will allow for tethered shooting and some other neat things (like using a computer as an intervalometer). I might also write a web interface for it, so it will allow for using a table or phone to remote control a camera and allow the user to check on timelapses, but it will take a while to get it all to work.

OneNote on my foldable laptop. I use it to take notes in uni simply because it's the best option out of all the ones I've tried. I like OneNote's stabilization and infinite canvas. What annoys me tho is that you cannot set the canvas to paged, so if you're planning on exporting to pdf you have no idea where the page boundaries are.
With the last Windows 11 update they fucked it up tho and now the app is garbage anyways
- Notesnook is free, e2ee, nice ui, and has cloud sync. Recommmend
  
  Not really the same thing at all if there's no handwriting support.
- Joplin.
- Rnote is pretty good for handwritten notes, the canvas can be paged too.
  
  I'll give that a shot! OneNote is literally unusable since the last Windows update because the on-screen keyboard keeps popping up everytime I touch the screen. then it goes away immediately and leaves a bugged white rectangle on the canvas
- I use OneNote at work and Joplin, saved to a cloud drive, at home. It's not as good, but close enough for my needs. I can access my personal notes on all my pcs and my phone.
- Not FOSS, but I'm a big One Note user for work and wanted to find something for my personal life and most likely will use it for my next professional role in at least some capacity...Notion is by far the most customizable and complete solution that's also user friendly because of existing user templates. I've been SERIOUSLY impressed and I've been trying everything I can find.
  Best part is that the phone and computer apps are both very capable. One Note on phone is the worst companion app.
  
  notion is also not FOSS though. and i had bad experiences with the mobile app when cell service is bad.
  
  AnyType is an open-source alternative to Notion which recently launched:
  https://anytype.io/

DuoLingo
- Same. "Ik leer Nederlands" :)
  But this one is tough since first you would have to crowd source a ton of user contributed lessons. Not sure how that could work...
  
  Whoever undertook that would need to have a lot of time and personal resources to dedicate to the vetting process. The sheer amount of quality differences that would come in... Not saying you need the FLACs from a professional studio, but you know you'd get someone recording on a HAM radio from the frozen wastes.
  
  Ik lees de krant en een olifant eet een boterham.

For me it's Adobe After Effects. Yeah, I can do most of what it does in a combination of blender, natron, gmic, etc.. but I really like the workflow of AFX. Not having that tool was one of the hardest parts of cancelling my Adobe subscription. Nowadays I would even settle for a non-foss alternative. As long as it's running on Linux. But so far, that has not happened (I use other non Foss tools that work great, like resolve/fusion and Houdini.. but I still miss AFX)
Edit: yeah, I missed a detail in the question: I do not currently use AFX but used it a lot in the past and am now trying to replicate workflows I based on it with other tools.. still miss it a lot and would give a lot to have a solid alternative...

On my phone: a FOSS "find-my-phone" function
On my computer: a FOSS way to access Teams for work. Just give me a Weechat plugin please.
- KDE Connect can find your phone, as long as it's on the same network (basically, only at home). It's not perfect but it's something.
- findmydevice on fdroid
- Look at owntrack. Send position data to your own server
  
  That's an interesting idea
- Access Teams? Do you need anything more than opening the Teams web app in a browser?
  
  That is what I do...but I work for 4 companies that all use Teams and it would be nice to have all the profiles in one place.

Less software and more driverware. My headphones (arctis nova pro wireless) have some really nice customizations available with the sonar software. Nvidia drivers are more customizable but the issue is mostly support for vrr through gsync, dlss, hdr, and Nvidia broadcast. I know AMD is supposedly bounds and leaps ahead of Nvidia but that's what I have for current hardware because of how useful and ubiquitous the software is.
- If by Arctis nova pro you mean SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7 then this repo might interest you: github.com/Sapd/HeadsetControl it's basically software that allows you to change afew settings for headset inside a terminal.
  
  It's not everything but it's enough that I might get by with it! Thanks stranger

Windows, banking app, Discord, and my router firmware.
- Can help with all of them. But check out opnsense.
- Since gaming on linux has made ridiculous improvements im running it fulltime on my desktop machine. But I ran it on my laptops as sole OS for about 15 years now.
  For router firmware i bought an archer c7 v5 last year (50€) and am running OpenWRT now. It's sitting behind my ISPs router, but for that i don't care.
  Banking App would be really difficult since this is a huge security operation with liabilities. And discord would be nice to replace since it just fucks you and steals your data without giving it a second thought but there is no conpetitor i know of.

- I'm curious what "basic settings" require you to touch the command line. My elderly mum and dad - who aren't very tech savvy btw - have been running Linux for nearly a decade now (Xubuntu previously, now Zorin) and haven't had any major issues in all this time. Admittedly their requirements are pretty basic, but they do all your tasks a typical basic PC user would - surf the web, check emails, work on documents, print and scan stuff, backup files from their phones/USB drives, video chat etc. In fact, the entire reason why I got them onto Linux in the first place was because Windows wasn't really stable for them - I got tired of having to troubleshoot or reinstall Windows for them all the time. They'd complain about how an update broke something, or how the system was becoming slower etc. But no such issues with Linux. Occasionally I might get a call asking "how do I do this", but after a few years, these support calls have all but vanished. Linux "just works" for them, it's rock solid, the GUI is intuitive (at least for Xububtu/Zorin) and they never had to touch the command line.
  
  In my experience most problems with linux are at the intermediate level, i.e. things like setting up university/work vpn, installing games (with wine), getting used to different applications for office stuff. This is all stuff that many people have to do that can be hard to achieve if you only have guides for windows/mac
- If you haven't checked out Pop!_OS I'd recommend giving it a try. While I'm using a system76 laptop so they guarantee hardware compatibility, it's been one of the smoothest and most functional DE/guis I've used. Ive never had to resort to a command line* and aaalllmost everything you'd expect to find exists in the gui.
  *caveat. Except for some really esoteric problems, which are usually a result of my own tinerking
- Basically the longstanding issue of having "total control". There needs to be a middle ground between having total control and being forced to use it (while for the most part having no limitations but are either not very straightforward or are far too straightforward) and being given the illusion of control (while for the most part not having limitations until you do, then you can't get around them).
  The Steam Deck has been the most accessible Linux desktop and it still has been frustrating at times.

I am currently using the proprietary Nvidia driver, simply because nouveau isn’t performant enough. I can’t wait for NVK though, maybe that driver will finally be viable for us Nvidia-users.
- This is a big one for me, I currently have NVIDIA gpus on all my machines, (i am going to avoid them in the future, the corporate price gouging is unacceptable) but at the moment that makes switching to linux for my gaming pc quite a bit more obnoxious.

Notion
- The dream.
  At least give me better widgets on Android so I can ditch TickTick.

The Affinity suite. Truth is, I don't want to replace them because I really like how they work; I just wish there was a native Linux version, because it's almost impossible to get it to run in Wine. Have to use a VM for the time being.
Stream Deck is another one I miss, and the FOSS alternatives just don't cut it in terms of functionality.

Shazam

@JohnCoomsumer Besides the mentioned Nvidia drivers, I use Steam. Steam isn't bad by any means, but I wish it was at least an Open Source GUI that uses it's proprietary backend service. This way we could have such a variety in Steam GUIs. Actually impressive that almost everything is Free and Libre software on my system!

Paraphrasing our Lord and saviour Mental Outlaw, convincing normies to use Signal is the hard part. And so I have to use ZuckApp

Fusion 360. It's the only thing that makes me boot into windows. I've lazily tried to make do with some 3D CAD on Linux, but no.
- FreeCAD feels like it's where Blender was before version 2.8. The core functionality is there but the UI feels almost user hostile.
  
  If freecad could get the same level of support as blender it would be a huge push towards "the year of the Linux desktop"
  
  FreeCAD is "almost" there, but the inconsistent face renaming when editing previous steps, is still a huge PITA.
  I don't even mind the UI that much, it takes some getting used to, but unless it crashes, once you realize how the "workbenches" work, it's not much of a problem, and it makes sense when they're each a separate module, like having 30 programs in one, that share some base elements, but otherwise are separate programs running through a single UI.

I really wish that you could install a clean AOSP on any Android phone, just like you can install FOSS OS'es on most laptops.
Last Android phone I bought had a few strange "vendor apps" (one with Chinese characters only in its name), and if I disabled Google Play Services the SMS app would go crazy and show error messages (as notifications) all the time. To add, "adb uninstall" was blocked by the vendor and there was no unofficial ROM.
I prefer small phones, so the market of phones is really really small for me :( Otherwise, I would have bought a Fairphone.

Google Play Services
- Microg?
  
  Or sandboxed Google play on GrapheneOS

Paradox of Windows 10 MS will soon end support and my cpu is "too old" for update to win11 so Ill be forced by Microsoft to use linux
Also Google Play Services, because my phone didnt allow me to flash MicroG
- For android you have f-droid
  
  I know
  I have deleted all google's dogshit "system" apps and replaced ones I need with fdroid alternatives
  The thing is I had to keep play services so some unavoidable apps still work:
  Gmaps - google has monopoly
  YT - find video>share>newpipe>enjoy
  Play Store - give back aurora 😭
  
  I know
  I have deleted all google's dogshit "system" apps and replaced some of them with fdroid alternatives
  The thing is I had to keep play services so some unavoidable apps still work: Gmaps YT
- On that matter, if you haven't dug on the topic yet and if I may suggest, look for Linux systems ("distros") with either the Xfce or Wayland desktop environments, since they're some of the lightest around (Xfce being the most stable of the two, but Wayland seems pretty promising already).
- About the Cpu being "too old", did you launch the update app in windows 10, or did you create a USB stick? I just installed Windows 11 on my first gen Ryzen using a USB, even though the Windows 10 updater told me it's too old
  
  My pc has i7 4470k and its not listed on supported by wondows 11
  https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/minimum/supported/windows-11-supported-intel-processors
  
  I'm running W11 on a first-gen i7-930, no TPM.
- Did you try microg installer revived?

Windows+Visual Studio. I run them in a VM, and for a while managed to keep it at 50GB, but combine it with a moderately large hit repo and you can just give that up. And yes, I know vscode is a thing, but there always ends up being some legacy/COM/platform specific library that makes it non-compatible.
- I believe there is Code OSS for VS
  
  VisualStudio is different from VSCode.
- The only ide that's a heavy enough hitter to compare to full on vs would be kdevelop. The gnome ide just isn't at the same level

Ableton Live, Presonus Studio One and about a million VST plugins. Digital audio workstations and software instruments/effects are an area where open-source has made only limited inroads. Ardour was decent last time I used it, but since I got into Ableton Live with Push it's hard to go back to other things.
- It's not FOSS or free, but Reaper at least has a native Linux version, and it's a great DAW.
  
  Yes, credit to Reaper. It's excellent and amazingly affordable compared to other DAWs.
- Here it is. Mostly the sunk cost of VST products with miserable DRM. It seems like it can be done, but I have zero interest in mixing that headache into a creative space.
- I haven't found a FOSS Ableton/Bitwig replacement either, but the FOSS audio world has many wonderful synths a effects.
  
  Zrythm is close, but definitely not there yet
  https://github.com/zrythm/zrythm
  
  Synths? Effects??
  https://www.bespokesynth.com/ https://github.com/DISTRHO/Cardinal
  I’ll leave these here :)
- 100% this.

Adobe After Effects. Despite being an unstable spaghetti code nightmare, there is no other viable option for professional motion graphics designers.
- Agree. But just letting you know about natron in case you haven't seen it.

I want to jump to linux, but the prospect of starting from scratch on a new OS (or even a reinstall of windows) is just not feasible right now.
- Dual boot? I used to do this before moving my daily driver over. Haven't looked back since.
  
  I've though about it, I might just wait until I need to upgrade my platform and therefore need to reinstall anyway. Does Intel vs AMD and Nvidia vs AMD even really matter anymore btw?
- I'm in the process of getting my hands on a cheap laptop to at least use Linux so the eventual transition is easier, though.
- Tl;Dr: it's not as hard as you think.
  I just jumped over to Linux in June. I booted into the Debian Live USB with KDE Plasma as the desktop environment. In general, make sure you have an Ethernet connection available for the first install. I basically tried it out in the live environment for a few days and I fell in love with it, in particular KDE Plasma. I picked Debian because I prefer not to update my PC very often (or at all on my music production computer), plus I had a nice time with the Raspberry Pi, which uses a derivative of Debian. If I really need the absolute newest version of any specific software, I have no problem installing it from a .deb and I can usually compile from source if the project is decently documented, but if you absolutely do not want to do that, you might want to pick a different distro. Whatever distro you pick, you'll be able to install KDE Plasma later. KDE had all the features I actually liked from Windows 10, but just better and more customizable. You can really make KDE work for almost any workflow.
  I ended up installing it onto my music PC in a dual-boot configuration with my existing Windows 7 install. Unfortunately, I cannot afford to migrate my music production projects off Windows 7 because I was sloppy over the course of a decade with project directory structures and multiple drives, so I probably can't move these projects to any OS until I put in a few weeks of work to actually organize all those files. Oh well; everything else can work with Linux.
  I've gotten pretty far so far by just installing Wine and Proton and using my existing Windows programs through those compatibility layers.
  I also dropped Debian onto my school/work laptop in a dual-boot configuration with Windows 10. Except for the background, which I decided to make different, KDE is almost indistinguishable from Windows 10 until I start to use it, which reminds me how much nicer KDE is to use.
  Most distros have live USBs with easy installers that make the whole process really painless. I basically installed Debian in the background while watching TV (Invidious), all inside the live install.
  I also put Debian with LXQT on the remains of my old highschool PC, basically just a motherboard with integrated graphics, RAM, CPU, and case; no hard drive, no external graphics. I just put Debian onto a microSD card [1] and told the BIOS to look there for bootable drives. No commitment. As much as I love KDE, it does require non-trivial resources to exist. Since that hardware is over a decade old now, I really can't afford to give any of it to a desktop environment.
  So if you really can't commit to Linux, you can slap it onto a large microSD and tell your BIOS/UEFI to boot it. It's a little slower than putting on a drive, but sufficient to give Linux an extended test-drive.
  You could also try installing it in a virtual machine. Linux plays very nicely with Virtualbox. I picked LXQT for my old PC by installing a virtual machine with Debian and installing a bunch of desktop environments onto the system. Then, I cut back the number of cores, processor speed, and RAM available to see how they acted.
  My point is, I really think it's a good idea to try Linux now. It really will not take very long to get a great, usablr system, and you can make it yours by making little changes as you go along.
  [1] Meaning, I used a live install USB to install to a separate microSD card. A live install loads the entire OS and any programs you install into RAM. In general, the content of the live USB isn't changed, and it's difficult to do so. What I did was to treat the microSD card as a hard drive and install a normal system.
  
  LXQT
  Not much lighter than kde outside of ram usage. (consider lxde, or just a wm)
- If you don't want to start from scratch just use it but don't install it on the pc!
  You can get familiar with the os by trying it on a virtual machine or in a live usb, and the windows partition will always remain untouched!

Sublime text. It is just so fucking good! Much more performant than even nvim.
- Exacty hows it more performant than nvim? Sure has some GUI functionalities but nvim supports many mouse actions even.
  I've mostly used ST as my primary choice for quick edits or other raedom files thats not part of my project files. I use NVim while working on the CLI and dont need to do large rapid edits. If I need I can learn some advanced commands of nvim to make better use of it or set up some good key binds.
  In terms of plugins, they both have all basic ones for daily dev needs. Nvim honestly have a bunch of useful integrations thats very easy to do if using something like astrovim.
  Haven't seen any performance drops in either with bunch of extensions. On that note vscode has even more extensive plugins available for most setup needs without too much of a performance hit. I've only seen it perform bad on a 6th gen i3 with 8gb ram when run along with eclipse, dozen chrome tabs and postman. Thats the reason I chose ST initially.
- Umm, no. Nvim setup properly will smoke sublime. Check out one of the pre-built ide like versions like Astro or Lunar. Stock to stock, nvim will be faster. Configured to configured, nvim will be faster.
  
  No. I have tested it extensively and sublime is just smoother. Try just doing a snippet and you will notice the difference in smoothness. Sublime is butter smooth.

Onenote! I use it for school and work, and love the syncing capability and the flexibility in structuring and organizing my notes. I also like the keyboard shortcuts and the way it can dock to a side of the screen to keep the main content visible
- I'm loving joplin
  
  Missouri?!?
- Would https://anytype.io/ be a replacement? It's very new so you might not have heard of it. It's designed like Notion, but it might have everything you need.
  If your needs are more simple, https://notesnook.com/ could be worth looking into.
  Other FOSS options are Joplin and Logseq. I'm an Obsidian user myself; not FOSS but the storage format is completely open which is the most important to me.
  
  I adore obsidian, but would love to see an open source software that is on the same level. The extensibility and keyboard-shortcut driven nature of Obsidian makes it a dream to use!

firmware/drivers

Nationwide banking.

Pretty much anything on my phone. Though I have recently found f-droid, and through that I found Phonograph. I wish open street maps could replace google maps, but I really don't know what it's trying to do.
- I prefer Organic Maps as an OSM Android App, I've found it to be a bit easier to use and more reliable than OsmAnd!
- OSM has much better coverage in Europe as more volunteers contibute. I heard it's not that great in the US.
- You should also check out Droid-ify if you like F-Droid. Has more sources, notably those apps on Github which aren't on F-Droid. Since it can grab apps from Github directly, it gets updates much faster than F-Droid.
  
  Ooo that sounds swell!

Nvidia drivers. Back in 2019, I was looking to replace my Nvidia card with an AMD one, but decided I could put that off for a few months. Then COVID happened along with the cryptocurrency boom and prices skyrocketed to unreasonable levels. Nvidia drivers are honestly the last holdout on my machine barring perhaps some firmware somewhere.

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

Intuit software, specifically TurboTax. This also may become obsolete to replace if the IRS will give out free software as rumored for next year, but I'm surprised nothing as intuitive ^pun ^heh or user-friendly has popped up. Maybe I need to do more research, not sure.

Hmm interesting, I would have thought digital forensics would be a space that lots of FOSS would exist in.
For me, it's Discord and Steam. There are some good alternatives for Steam in the sense of being a game launcher, but not with all the modding and friend join features, which I use quite a lot.
Discord is worse for me though, because Valve is a least a FOSS friendly company, but Discord isn't the same. all my friends and family are on Discord and have no interest in leaving. There aren't any FOSS alternatives that have all the core features that Discord has and work well.
And contrary to a lot of FOSS enthusiasts, I actually really like Discord, it works well most of the time for me.

BattlEye, the sole reason why I still need Windows for gaming purposes.

I use Blue Iris for capturing IP cameras. I've tried ZoneMinder, iSpy, and Motion (via MotionEyeOS) but just can't find something that works as dependably well. It could definitely be user error (and not getting the alternatives dialed in). But I always go back to Blue Iris. 😔
- I've been liking Shinobi, but I just ordered a Corel USB to try Frigate
- Blue Iris is terrific software. I'm curious though - what tended to go wrong with the alternatives?
  
  Mostly too many false positives from shadows. Its definitely user error, as I know motion detection is completely configurable. What FOSS IP cam software do you guys run that I should commit to trying and sticking with?

Discord and Windows. I have had so many bad experiences whenever I have tried Linux that I am extremely reluctant to give it another go despite all the improvements it has made.
- Pop OS has been a windows killer for me.
  Revolt Chat has a bootstrapping problem like most new social software.
- I love Linux, but it is definitely not for everyone. I'm a software engineer, so debugging weird software issues is just a normal part of my life. Sometimes really weird stuff happens. Recently I had an software update repository that my package manager was pointing to go down, so all software updates were failing. I had to figure out where that repo was being added and remove it. As far as I can tell, it was a default one that was installed with Ubuntu, so not even one that I added. I don't think I can blame myself on this one (usually I can). If the average Windows user had that happen, they would just abandon Linux.
  You basically have to have a personality where you don't mind fidgeting with things constantly to get things to work. If that isn't you, then Linux just isn't for you.
  
  I would note that ChromeOS is mainstream with normal users and it is effectively a well curated, highly-opinionated Linux distribution. Distros like opensuse Aeon and Kalpa, and Fedora Silverblue, are going from well established platforms into the highly curated, highly-opinionated direction as well. Limited set of options that work well out of the box not prone to breaking, and explicitly not for tinkerers. I tend to think that if Linux is ever going to reach mainstream users (outside of ChromeOS), it will be through these bulletproof, opinionated distros that put bubble wrap around the user.
  
  That is exactly the sort of problem that made my experiences with Linux so awful. I also had very bad interactions with other Linux users when I asked for assistance with fixing the problems I was encountering.
  I consider myself decently tech-savvy and I have been building and running Windows machines my entire life, but Linux just feels impenetrable by comparison.

On android, i wish Xplore file manager had an alternative. Didn't find anything to replace it. Dualpane file managers are the best. (btw, its one of the app where donating to dev really feels like he deserves it ).

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

iOS
- I freed myself from these chains years ago now, It was definitely worth it. understandable if you are locked in for work though.
  
  There are jobs that require iphones? Now that sounds like a nightmare (unless you're developing apps for ios or something).

adobe lightroom and photoshop. no, darktable and gimp are not as good. darktable barely functions with a trackpad and gimp is like photoshop from 2010.
- shit, gimp is like photoshop from 2003.
- Affiinity Photo, Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher for me. I can't afford the Adobe stuff, and the Affinity software is pretty decent, but still not OSS.
  
  if affinity had a lightroom competitor i would use that instead. i have affinity photo and its basically on par with photoshop except for edge cases. but yeah as you mentioned not FOSS either.
- ~~Apart from the new Beta features, I've found 90% of my Photoshop workflow is replicated in Photopea~~
  edit: I am an idiot - Photopea is not open source. Although it will help remove a reliance on Windows.
  
  photopea is not open source ☹️

Firmware in all the consumer devices I want to hack, but don’t want to reverse engineer.

Facebook messenger bc of my waterpolo teammates, discord, google maps bc im horrible at using maps and other apps are just too hard for me lol. Spotify bc i have all my liked songs and albums on it and im too lazy to migrate. On the desktop side everything i use is foss basically.
- What FOSS Map apps have you tried?:)
  
  Osmand and orgabic maps. Google maps just feels like home to me.

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

OSX. I miss Ubuntu/Gnome's configurable key bindings so much.
- Karabiner elements if you haven't tried. Had so much fun, customising is with just a json file. Most common layouts and some cool ones are already available on their site for download.
  Honestly had a much better experience with mac than on linux or win simply bcos of that piece of software. Its mac only sadly.
  Looking now it seems to have changed a bunch with more features than when I used it back in 2021. Might not even need to work directly on json files.

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