It’s the same as with Linux, GIMP, LibreOffice or OnlyOffice. Some people are so used to their routines that they expect everything to work the same and get easily pissed when not.
I am a reddit refugee and just down for fun ride on the bleeding edge. I am finding a lot of the same communities here and I am happy that Lemmy is here to fill the void.
same as it ever was, if they are so hung up on thier particular flow then they should likely just go back and check in later, the software will evolve.
freedom is work…shocker.
Exactly, the world will never have a shortage of people who want all the privileges but none of the responsibilities.
This is why I have 4 different apps to surf Lemmy. When one app is acting up I just switch to another. For example I was just barely scrolling in Jerboa but getting a bunch of network errors so I switched to Connect which is where I’m posting this comment. I’m totally down with being patient with Lemmy for the time being. Anything to get away from R*****
Have you tried Liftoff? I think it’s the best one so far for Android.
I haven’t. I’ll have to check it out while I wait for Sync
I keep switching between Liftoff and Connect because they both have some issues that are resolved in the other.
Connect seems to work better with showing all federated content than Liftoff, but Liftoff allows multiple instances to be logged in at once. Connect has notifications, and Liftoff does not. Liftoff has more user-centered features like actual profile pages that show a background image, bio, and avatar; connect does not.
Neither one have any tools for moderation, though. I am now a mod for Humor (BTW, come post! Let’s make it better than /r/funny ever was!) and I’ve only been able to do actual mod things on the website itself, which is tedious to do on mobile.
Liftoff is what I’m using and probably what I’ll stick with until Boost or Sync for Lemmy is released. Hell, I might stick with it even after that. Development is progressing quickly and it’s the smoothest out of any of the apps I’ve tried.
I’m currently rotating between liftoff and summit. Slide is what I can’t wait for. I was an avid slide for reddit user for years.
I’m personally waiting for Slide for Lemmy to be released
I am also waiting, but for Boost for Lemmy.
In the meantime wefwef works well.
Wefwef is too Apple-esque for my tastes.
They are working on an Android theme. Yes, it looks weird, but works well.
I still can’t figure out why I can upvote posts in Memmy but not in Liftoff. I’m Liftoff it keeps responding that I need to be logged into the server but Memmy just lets me upvote. It’s definitely something I am doing wrong but showcases the immense value of app choice.
Have you checked that you’re browsing from your instance? Liftoff has different feeds for different instances and if you go to a post through an instance you don’t have an account on, you won’t be able to vote.
Just go to the homepage and select the feed from the drop-down at the top on an instance you have an account in. I used to face the same problem until I realised what’s going wrong.
Have you checked that you’re browsing from your instance? Liftoff has different feeds for different instances and if you go to a post through an instance you don’t have an account on, you won’t be able to vote.
Just go to the homepage and select the feed from the drop-down at the top on an instance you have an account in. I used to face the same problem until I realised what’s going wrong.
I still can’t figure out why I can upvote posts in Memmy but not in Liftoff. I’m Liftoff it keeps responding that I need to be logged into the server but Memmy just lets me upvote. It’s definitely something I am doing wrong but showcases the immense value of app choice.
Odd, I haven’t had this issue at all. Upvoting works just fine for me in Liftoff.
I made a post on the Liftoff community precisely because it renders it unusable if I cannot interact with (almost) anything that’s shown to me
Probably due to the version of Lemmy on the server. I think it’s because Memmy works with 0.17 but Liftoff doesn’t (fully).
The Lemmy devs made some fundamental changes in how just about everything works in 0.18. Since a lot of apps started development right around 0.18 came out they might not support “the new way” just yet.
It’s another one of those things where you just have to “give it time”. The Lemmy server operators need to upgrade (many were holding off because of missing CAPTCHA support in 0.18) and the app developers still have a lot of kinks to work out. Liftoff has only been out for what? A week now? LOL
Unfortunately they marked that as 18+ in Google Play store so the download button is disabled, at least in my ‘normal’ UK Google account.
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I’m doing the same thing. I have no allegiance like I did with RiF. If one isn’t working, I’ll just move. Give them some time to work out the kinks.
Hey, some of us like kinks.
Kinks mean the process is working.
No kink shaming!!
Go on?
😳
Its gonna take some time for the apps to become more polished, the network just got a good boost in users and if the project is able to maintain those users I’m decently sure the platform will also be maturing at an accelerated rate.
Try wefwef.app (go to this website and install it as an app/add it to your homescreen), it’s simply amazing.
As for network errors, try switching to an instance close to your house with a low ping, it’ll make a big difference. Go to https://fediverse.observer/map and select Lemmy instances.
I also currently have accounts on two different instances (one being kbin and one a lemmy instance) to better be able to switch to whatever features I most want (right now, Lemmy gets pretty much all the apps and has collapsible comments, so I’m leaning towards it) and also to switch between during downtime. The small size of individual instances means downtime is inevitible.
(Though I sure hope we get a better way to do this in the future – even just syncing your subscriptions is currently a pain.)
I have accounts on 5 instances… you kinda need multiple accounts IMHO.
I’m doing the same thing. I have no allegiance like I did with RiF. If one isn’t working, I’ll just move. Give them some time to work out the kinks.
Literally here posting from Connect because of constant issues with Jerboa lately.
I have four apps installed just for this. Reminds me of when I first played around with a bunch of Reddit apps before I honed in on my favorite.
Connect was ok. Give liftoff and/or summit a try.
Lemmy and jerboa are extremely polished compared to a lot of the free software I’ve used, albeit a lot less complex. FreeCAD is one that comes to mind whose UI and interaction actively fights you just to do simple things
FreeCad is a tough nut to crack
Yeah, but freecad has also improved by leaps and bounds over the years.
I’m sure it has, but trying to use it still frustrating. For example, when creating constraints, if you don’t explicitly select everything or nothing it pops up an error over what you’re doing and plays an annoying sound. They at least improved it a bit since I last tried it and now you can select the tool and then the points and lines, but if you have anything selected at all but not everything (e.g. point onto object and you only have a point or the line) then it still throws the error instead of trying to interpret. Its extremely jarring when you’re trying to do basic things and completely turns me off of using it. If it works with both all relevant objects selected, no objects selected, and can determine when an invalid number or types of objects are selected, then it stands to reason that it should be able to interpret what is missing and just let you select that, but instead it throws a tantrum.
Fusion 360 is so much easier to use but its a huge application, runs slow, and dies on complex parts. I also use it because it has more control schemes, which is what made it impossible for me to get used to Inventor. I find the elitism of expecting people to just memorize what order to click in to not have the application scream at you, or people saying to get a special mouse to use CAD or use the applications particular flavor of control scheme to be stupid.
Yeah, but when I tried to use freecad in college just getting it to run and doing anything required python scripting. It is still very early days for freecad. It is going to take a while before you can use it without being familiar with how it performs constraint resolution, which if you are a pro CAD user, you should know that anyway.
It is a really difficult problem, and open source UI just hasn’t caught up yet. I am currently pleasantly surprised with how far along freecad is.
I have used LibreCalc for years, and I always grumble about how I wish it worked the same as excel. Then back in 2018 at my old job I had to purchase 3 licenses for MS Office and due to my boss’ inability to reply to my emails were purchased under my personal email address (I did not yet have a work email). When I lost that job in 2020 I decided to install excel on my personal laptop. After using it for a few hours I uninitiated Ava went back to libre, which is either better or I am just better at using than excel.
I’m using the browser from my laptop (phone screens are too small when the laptop’s there) and lemmy is surprisingly good in all aspects. The only UI issue noticeable to me is that it doesn’t remember my previous position in the feed when I press back, but that’s also the case in many large platforms, lol.
So I just use tabs
If there was a setting to open posts in a new tab life would be perfect.
Can kinda achieve this with keyboard shortcuts.
Windows: Control + click
Mac: Command + click
How about using a phone? I hope they add “the open in new tab” any link by one click
TIL you can just open a new tab by using
CTRL+[Clicking]instead of dragging the whole thing to the top.
So here’s something I learned about two years ago. GIMP sucks.
Hate on me all you like, but paint.net is the superior program.
Open office is fine. I got it to write up resumes and the few odd things. It did it’s job fine.
Spreadsheets is a different thing because I only use Excel at work and haven’t looked into it past that.
GIMP sucks so much that I prefer installing a virtual Windows machine running Photoshop to using GIMP.
Have you tried newer versions of Gimp? It’s taken major strides forward.
As it may have, there‘s still no equivalent to PS’ smart objects, unfortunately. That’s by far the biggest deal breaker to me.
Yes and no, most of the free/open software has the problem of being very not-user-friendly (even if it’s only for the first time set-up) and the documentation (even the youtube tutorials) are written in a “you should know all this already” way, which is cool if you do, but if this is the first time you are doing this or if it’s the only time you are gonna use that knowledge then it’s absurd to expected someone to learn it only for one time.
It is normal for someone to complain that the thing that steals all their data or needs a subscription is better because it’s easier to use (install, pay/register and use, done), compared with how different and difficult usually it’s to install and get to work a FOSS option (download this, install these, run command lines, configure all these, now get all these plugins, etc).
If we want bigger numbers, then it should be at least as easy as the thing we want them to stop using, otherwise we are barking at the wrong tree.
You are missing a point. Closed sourced solutions pay developers a lot… And they focus on the ux. Think about the most famous example, all apple OSes are just like a customized collection of open source stuff, similar to a linux distro, with a user friendly, closed sourced GUI.
Open source solutions that are not user friendly, is just because no one is paid, or there is not enough budget to pay for a high level UX design and implementation
UX in open source software is mostly fine for those who built it for them selves or people in the same environment.
As soon as stuff gets built for others with other requirements empathy declines, and I don’t mean this disrespectful. Good professional UX sources are needed, indeed to fill this gap. But will they be able to convince the open source devs who often were Initiator of the projects?
That’s not contrary to what he said at all, it’s just another layer of why things are the way they are.
If you want the average joes, you need good ux. If you don’t have it, you won’t get/keep them.
Maybe there are good reasons why you don’t have decent ux. Maybe other people only do because they spend money. Maybe you can find a way around that, maybe you can’t.
Doesn’t matter. Good user experience means you keep users, bad user experience means you don’t.
The main reason is that ux design is difficult, complex but not always rewarding. Few people do it “as hobby”. Companies make money out of UX design. As in the example of Apple, they could find a lot of open source good quality software, but they needed the ui to seel it in macs, iPhones and ipads.
Another example is steam deck. Its OS is just arch linux, with an incredible UI (built by valve), and it is currently more popular than windows handhelds.
Many open source solutions are of greater quality than corresponding proprietary stuff (anyone who has ever worked in a corporate environment also knows why, corporates are elephants trying to create a swiss watch). What open source solutions are missing are companies paying to create user experience.
I’m not missing anything, OP complained about people not easily ditching closed/centralized software and I gave an answer.
I know devs are doing it as a hobby or with donations, that’s on them and they know who their target will be and how much effort is it worth to do it user-friendly or not or how big of a scope they aim for.We’re talking about the normal user and why they decide to stick to centralized or move to FOSS and why it’s so hard for them to do it.
I think you’re vastly overgeneralizing the world of software here. Before I make my point here’s two facts:
- There’s vastly more FOSS software than there is commercial software.
- Nearly all commercial software is made for a specific use case or customer.
Just about everyone reading this comment is using FOSS software to do so (Firefox, Chrome/Chromium, or even Edge which is really just customized Chromium). Lemmy itself is FOSS and the majority of websites you visit every day are using FOSS on the back end. Do you feel all this software is “not-user-friendly”?
Let me take a step back from that though and assume you’re not really talking about software in general but are actually referring to software with a GUI that runs on a desktop computer. Someone elsewhere in this thread compared to GIMP to Photoshop so let’s look at that…
Photoshop is not an easy, just-use-it application. To get started most people recommend watching a YouTube tutorial and, having watched a few they definitely start from a place where, “you should know all this already”. For example, if you don’t understand the difference between a JPEG and a PNG file you’re going to have a bad time.
GIMP is also not an easy, just-use-it application. To get started most people recommend watching a YouTube tutorial and, having watched a few they definitely start from a similar, “you should know all this already” place. Except there’s one great big difference: You don’t have to pay anything to obtain or use the GIMP. That’s the biggest difference!
They’re both image editing tools but they were designed with different use cases in mind. Photoshop was made for professional photographers and digital artists working for business. This is why Adobe put great efforts into making sure that certain “workflows” go very smoothly… Because they’re the most common in business.
If you try to use Photoshop with a different workflow than what it was designed for you’re going to have a bad time! For example, let’s say you wanted to perform a series of manipulations and add some text to tens of thousands of photos; a great big directory of .jpeg files. You might search up how to do this in Photoshop (using macros) and you’ll quickly come to realize that it was definitely not made for this task!
However, if you searched for how to do the same thing in GIMP well, it actually was made to support that! It’s another one of those things where you’ll have to learn a new skill but it’s doable. It’s a use case the GIMP developers had in mind when they made it.
From the perspective of batch editing Photoshop is basically useless. Anyone who tries would find it, “very not-user-friendly” because it was made for a specific purpose and that’s not it.
The GIMP was made as a much more general-purpose graphics editing tool. So much so that it can be completely re-skinned to make it look like Photoshop or even operated entirely from the command line. You can even automate very sophisticated workflows with GIMP using Python!
This same sort of argument can be made for nearly every open source tool that is commonly bitched about, LOL! They generalize that FOSS isn’t user friendly, completely forgetting or ignoring 7zip, Firefox, VLC, LibreOffice, Notepad++, OBS, Keepass, Greenshot, Ditto, Audacity, etc or any of the many thousands of very popular/common FOSS packages that get used on people’s desktops every day.
Yeah, its human nature. Things get better and people come around eventually. Kde plasma is way more continuous from windows 10 then windows 11 is anyway.
That’s because Windows stole so much from KDE ^^
Oh really? I was unaware lol.
Yes, the KDE twitter account even mocked Microsoft’s for some of their latest ‘innovations’.
Well, ultimately, I’m glad that something open source is wagging the dogs tail, I assumed it was the other way around.
Yes and no, it’s mean that the creativity and innovation of people at KDE is taken without credit. But on the other hand it shows that their features are really great…
BTW they not only copied ideas but also KDE Plasma’s slogan “Simple by default, powerful when needed.”
Yeah, I was reading about that. It’s a shame about the credit, but hey, what do we expect.
Lemmy is absolutely easy to use. once you created an account. But a lot of people have problems with that.
Said who?
saw many posts on reddit were people registered and could not log in, did not get confirmation mail, had too long names/PW issues… I could not register first, worked at the second or third attempt.
Complaints can be valuable user feedback. I’m sure the developers can see past the negativity and know that they can’t make everyone happy. They can still use it to pick up ideas or prioritize what to do next etc. without taking it personally.
Yeah, they probably get a lot of requests and crazy mails, but that’s part of the process even in professional development. At least in open source they’re free to do what they want at any time, compared to professional work where they might be required to follow crazy ideas even if they don’t want to.
I know that feedback is crucial to development and user appeal but the number of “why isn’t X like Y” and “why is Z not there yet” has risen and isn’t helpful.
Most of the feedback is constructive. There is a reason I said “some”.
Meanwhile I’ve been messing around with Linux the past week and it got me installing decentralized apps on my android lol.
It’s a little different, because people tend to get pissed because of the context of their routines. If I am trying to do work for school or for a corp, I’m going to be extra irritated when my software fails and I have to relearn something on top of doing work I already don’t want to do.
Lemmy is just for fun. I think people might be more forgiving.
The software doesn’t fail, it just has another workflow than what ones used to. Learning a new software takes time but what you describe sounds like a stress situation where any irritation would cause delay and therefore more stress.
It fails to do what I want, and that’s basically the same when I’m irritated lol
My point is that Lemmy being different and sometimes frustrating isn’t a big deal because none of us need it to work.
This isn’t just open-source software; it’s also a collection of servers run by hobbyists.
There is no business here at all. You’re not the product, but you’re also not the customer — because there is no customer. What you’re seeing here is a strictly nonprofit Internet service provided by people who just want to make one.
Which makes Karen behaviour even worse and incomprehensible but most people are humble and don’t care to much about some minor problems and a little learning curve
the slight technical competency needed to navigate the fediverse might help keep low-quality users away and mitigate the “summer reddit” effect.
I’m hoping the same lol
Oh God I hope so ha ha
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I don’t know what “Karen behavior” means; could you explain?
A Karen is a (mostly female) person who demands special treatment for no specific reason, who permanently feels mistreated and set back compared to others and someone who always wants to talk to the highest available employee in expectation this person would take her side and take inappropriate measures against the one that “did her wrong”
Okay. I don’t see how that stereotype relates to Lemmy or FOSS, though?
I’ve seen some very demanding posts asking for this or that feature completely missing out on the fact that
a) Lemmy is written by people in their free time and
b) hosted on servers paid by individuals or through donations.
Imho it seems not uncommon to take the free part of FOSS for granted but still expecting to be treated like a paying customer.People easily forget what they’ve already got and want more, that’s were I see this stereotype.
I’m always struggling to find appropriate words to explain what a Karen is and often fall back to a video as an explanation. Your definition is quite accurate and simple. I will keep it in mind.
A “karen” is a person who comes across as entitled and demanding, beyond the scope of what is generally accepted.
People like good software that behaves intuitively, news at 11.
Bad design that is so common you think it’s intuitive is still bad design
Right after our astronomer predictions if the sol star will rise tomorrow.
