It seems like the FOSS community is continuing to grow, and FOSS apps keep getting better (Immich reallh blew my mind recently), which is a big win 😎 but there are still many apps I use that I would kill for an open source alternative. I am curious what you guys think? Are there any apps you’d love alternatives for?
Streamlabs, Streamelements and Elgato, Logitech and Razer’s software. Typically applications for streaming and content creation
All my installed apps are FOSS
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For macOS, I recommend UTM.
For RSS I recommend twine—not sure if it’s available on Mac os though. That’s always going to be a struggle with foss stuff, support for Mac is lacking because the people making them tend not to use macs
Vivaldi is open source I guess.
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Of the three layers, only the UI layer is closed-source. This means that roughly 92% of the browser’s code is open-source coming from Chromium, 3% is open-source coming from us and only 5% is our UI closed-source code.
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For X/Twittwr there are many options but Mastodon(mastodon.social instance specifically) it’s my favorite, it also works as an alternative to Facebook.
I just feel a lot better with Mastodon rather than X/Twitter
Parallel Desktop
There are several FOSS alternatives. All of them are more popular that Parallels.
are you talking wine, virtual box, quemu and such? Im pretty sure he is looking for usage like parallels so dual booting a mac and then running it from the mac side. I mean im not sure but thinking from a parallels user perspective that is my guess at the ask.
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YouTube
Photoshop.
And yeah, no, please, don’t come over and mention Gimp and Kryta and all the others. I get it, they’re cool for the stuff they do. They just aren’t the all in one package that Photoshop is or have as powerful tools specifically for photo editing. Photoshop would require a Blender-style major effort to replicate and Gimp just isn’t up to it. I wish it were. Photoshop is at the perfect intersection of being uniquely capable and walled off behind the single crappiest ecosystem in software.
Nobody likes Adobe, nobody wants to work with Adobe. Nobody can avoid Photoshop. That’s just the world we live in and I don’t like it.
Well, counterpoint: Photoshop tries to be an “everything for everybody” app, and GIMP/Krita don’t need to compare to that, as little as any user needs all the features of Photoshop.
Nobody can avoid Photoshop
Call me nobody, then. I worked with the Adobe suite professionally for 15+ years, haven’t touched it for the past six. You won’t find a single 1:1 replacement. It’s just a matter of quitting and accepting the individual limits of different alternatives.
this pretty much. Everytime i see people bitching about editors and editing, it’s almost always keybinds. Which is literally a skill issue. Or something will be organized slightly differently, also a skill issue. Or it’s feature set will be like, marginally different.
It’s almost never something that’s going to stop you from doing what you wanted originally. Your visions change, your tools change, your ways adapt, it’s how the world works, it’s how we work. It’s how everything has always been.
It’s a groupthink issue anyways. 3DSmax/Maya was the same for a long time, and “everyone” was saying Blender is not an alternative. And then some big companies switched to Blender and suddenly people stopped complaining about it. And while Blender did improve during that time, it did not improve so substantially that it really made all the difference.
It’s absolutely that, like the office admin workers who swear by Microsoft Office over open alternatives no matter how insidious Windows becomes. “I know this one tool and you will have to wring it from my cold dead hands”…
“I find your conditions… acceptable”
I agree that it depends on your use case. If you’re an artist or illustrator you can make do with a number of alternatives and just go elsewhere for photo editing, and if you’re just doing basic adjustments to photos rather than detailed edits you can figure it out as well.
Photohop is harder to bypass if you’re a jack-of-all-trades user mostly doing image editing but also dabbling in the other options from time to time. That’s not to say you can’t do it if you try, but it’s going to be less convenient and add friction to your workflow.
Yeah, Jack-of-all-trades here as well. For sure it’s less convenient to have to switch programs for different purposes but there is also the added convenience of not having to find pirated and cracked Adobe warez.
Based. Just curious, what do you use for vector editing software? (For Illustrator-type work)
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Not much, honestly. Fortunately I was never very reliant on vector graphics.
Inkscape IMO never really matured to a working solution, certainly not comparable to Illustrator, but I know others have better experiences.
Actually, I’d much prefer a FOSS alternative of Affinity Photo instead of Photoshop.
I’d be happy if the Affinity suite worked on Linux :(
yeah, I’d totally pay for it.
Just like MS Office.
Exactly… easily replaceable but you have an endless whining of users that imagine they might somehow in the future need this one feature that office has but alternatives don’t.
That’s an increasingly small number, if only because now Google is in that market, too.
However, there is a second reason you need Office, and that’s compatibility. I don’t use Office for work normally, but I still have an Office account (which, annoyingly, is how you pay for Office now), because I have clients who want to work on their formats and it doesn’t make sense for me to work around compatibility and have an argument about it instead of just paying for the damn thing and working with whatever software other people want to work.
But if I was by myself and didn’t need to work with anyone else ever? Yeah, I would not miss much from Office, honestly.
But if I was by myself and didn’t need to work with anyone else ever? Yeah, I would not miss much from Office, honestly.
That’s my position as well. But there are certain features that I do require for work and other integrations with other MS products that you can’t get elsewhere.
As you said if one lives in a bubble and doesn’t to collaborate with others then native Linux apps might work and might even deliver a decent workflow. Once collaboration with Windows/Mac users is required then it’s game over – the “alternatives” aren’t just up to it.
Windows/Office licenses are “cheap” and things work out of the box. Software runs fine, all vendors support whatever you’re trying to do and you’re productive from day zero. Sure, there are annoyances from time to time, but for most people they’re way fewer and simpler to deal with than the hoops you’ve to go through to get a minimal and viable/productive FOSS-only experience. It all comes down to a question of how much time (days? months?) you want to spend fixing things and dealing with small compatibility issues that simply work out of the box under MS for a minimal fee. For most people paying for MS and doing their job right away delivers a better ROI than going FOSS and then doing their job while dealing with the small details.
I object to that “work out of the box” comment. I have lost more work hours to OneDrive being terrible than to any single other technical reason. Office has at least as many quirks and inefficiencies as any of its alternatives.
It’s a bit of a standard and it doesn’t… not… work? So yeah, it’s the go-to you have to have as a fallback for things to not get annoying when you work with multiple other people outside your same organization on something. Alternatives are as good or better, though, especially if you consider commercial ones as well as FOSS ones.
But yeah, it’s priced just so that it makes sense to pay for it and not use it over not having it ready to go when you need it. On purpose. Which sucks.
Windows is a different story. Quirky and annoying yes, but not more so than the alternatives and definitely the standard for big chunks of things in ways that it’s not trivial to replace.
Teams is also the meeting system furthest from “just works” in my experience. Not sure where all the Microsoft apologists get those ideas that stuff made by Microsoft “just works”.
But yeah, it’s priced just so that it makes sense to pay for it and not use it over not having it ready to go when you need it. On purpose. Which sucks.
Yes, marketing. Microsoft is good at it.
I don’t even know if I give them that. I guess pricing things just at the edge of you begrudgingly buying them instead of going elsewhere is “marketing” if you squint. I mean, by all accounts they’re worse at branding than Apple and worse at PR than literally everybody else in their competing markets. After a certain critical mass it probably doesn’t matter much, I suppose. At least not short term.
Nobody likes Adobe, nobody wants to work with Adobe. Nobody can avoid Photoshop. That’s just the world we live in and I don’t like it.
This sounds like Stockholm syndrome. You are just too familiar with Photoshop, so using anything else is hard and less efficient.
In photography there is this mantra about “the most important part is right behind the camera”. A good photographer is not a good Nikon user, or good Canon user. A good photographer can deliver decent pictures with a potato camera if needed.
Sure, a potato camera is less efficient for any work that an actual good one. So it’s good to invest in a good brand. But the point is: if you are not capable to make average results with a potato software, the problem is not in the software.
You know why the person themselves is the important part of this equation?
Because they know what tools to use for which purpose.
For example, GIMP is only now getting non-destructive editing through adjustment layers, which is such an indispensable feature for important projectsFor example, GIMP is only now getting non-destructive editing through adjustment layers, which is such an indispensable feature for important projects
it’s not like you could ever just copy layers or something. That’s never been a feature in gimp, not once.
I understand your point, but to act like that is the sole thing stopping people from using, is kinda silly. (idk maybe i’m wrong and adjustment layers are this incredible feature, with never before discovered productivity benefits or something, i’m assuming not though)
They make things so much easier, having to make copies of every layer every time just to keep the original in case you need to re-do something half an hour later is super annoying.
Especially if you do multiple different things with a layer. Do you really have the patience to make backuo copies of a layer after every little edit you apply to it?
And then let’s say step 2 of 5 didn’t turn out like you want. Backup copies or not, you still have to re-do everything from 2 to 5 because of GIMPs destructive nature as of right now
oh so it’s basically like a COW fs but for graphics editing? That’s pretty slick. I’m sure you could implement something fairly similar to that natively, though it would be a decent bit of work.
It’s going to be part of the 3.0 release, after what feels like an eternity. The 2.99 dev release has it already, I might try that
Photopea. Not foss, but a free clone of photoshop.
Also would be nice to have open source ecosystem with blender ,then open source pro level video editing like da vinci and open source photoshop.
I’m happy to give Black Magic Design my money.
I literally wouldn’t piss on Adobe if it was on fire.
I haven’t gone back to Blender’s built in editor and postprocessing suite. I hear they did some stuff to it in 4.0.
Still, yeah, I end up going to DaVinci because Blender editing is more like Gimp Photoshopping than it is like Blender 3D modelling and rendering.
It does seem like a hopeless situation sometimes. I used to be a graphic designer and honestly it is very difficult to switch to any other program that is cohesive. Especially with the addition of AI features in Photoshop (keyword, I know, but generative fill can be extremely helpful in some cases). The Affinity suite is barely even able to keep up, and they have employees that are paid. Cross-compatibility and file type standards are a massive issue too, let alone the functionality itself
idk honestly i just don’t think i really believe this take.
The only really objective aspect of it is going to be user complacency. It’s possible you’ve been using PS for 10-20 years now. And switching seems like an impossibility. But honestly, given the feature set, or the non existing feature set, i don’t think it really matters.
Ultimately you can still do graphics editing in GIMP, and you can still do graphics editing in PS, it’s more about your adaptability and flexibility, rather than skill set, and software. I’ve used both photoshop, gimp, and photopea. They all do the same thing, photopea is worse than either. GIMP is more featured, and doesn’t come with adobe, PS has AI editing, and probably like 2 other features, and also the copyrighted color pack that you have to pay ransom for.
They all work fine, stop complaining, you’ll live. Maybe that’s just the doomerism peaking through or something, but honestly, it’s such a vapid complaint IMO.
- Digital wallets (for things like cc, ID, coupons)
- Map apps (like google maps)
- Dating apps
For maps, there is already OpenStreetMap and its ecosystem. I particularly like OrganicMaps which is available for Android, iOS and Linux (beta).
OrganicMaps works really well even with Apple Carplay. I’m now a 100% relying on it.
OsmAnd
“Maps”: as others have suggested: OsmAnd and OrganicMaps (I use OsmAnd as it covers my needs better than Google Maps or other apps)
“Dating Apps”: There is Alovoa
but the problem is who you will find on there, as everyone is on other apps
I know them all but they can’t hold up with their proprietary counterparts both by userbase and features.
Haven’t tried Alovoa, but think of it differently; if someone is on Alovoa, they maybe are more similar-minded to you, because they too probably like open source stuff.
I like your “the glass is half full” attitude, however their signup seems to be broken.
Ah, rip, that may be an issue😆
Catima for a digital wallet
That doesn’t seem to support credit cards
Spotify.
An open source music streaming service where I can financially support artists but where I’m not forced to put up with annoying advertisements (even when paying membership fees!), and which allows me to use whatever app I want to play the music I listen to. It is annoying AF that I need to switch between apps to listen to music because Spotify’s shitty native app is inferior in every possible way with the single exception of offering more content.
For desktop there’s ncspot, which is a Spotify TUI client written in Rust. Not exactly what you were asking for, but it does work well
I use spicetify just to get an improved shuffle function.
How does that fix the shuffling? I thought it was just a UI tweak.
I hate Spotify’s shuffling so I’m all ears
I use Ymusic it is android, but shouldn’t be hard to run on Linux
Reminds me how librivox and others publish their audiobooks as podcasts. I guess artists could upload their albums like this?
there’s this really cool alternative to streaming, called you buy their shit directly. Or if you like me, don’t really care, just finding a way to throw money at them, in their general direction sometimes works. Spotify actually works so little, that the only party that makes money, is the music publishers that spotify allows on their platform, the artists and spotify generally don’t make much money, or make very little money. Gotta love capitalism.
If you’re a music artist, please allow people to just give you money directly, in some way. It’ll incentivize people who don’t pay for it to send you a few dollary doos.
there’s this really cool alternative to streaming, called you buy their shit directly.
Wow, mind blown! I had no idea money could be used to buy things directly! /s
Seriously though, buying music from artists you already know is easy for artists that actually provide this as an option, but it doesn’t help when trying to find new artists and songs to listen to. Spotify is brilliant for discovering new content and can’t be replaced by ‘buying shit directly’.
i suppose that’s fair, but it’s not like spotify is the only service that has music on it. Personally i’ve been enjoying nabbing music that other people use in media that i consume, or just bumping across something that seems interesting on the net somewhere.
I’ve gone from liking like two albums from a certain band, to liking their entire discography, just because i’ve downloaded it. You can absolutely still find music, it just requires some effort, and it’s well placed effort i think.
There seems like a lot of potential for an app like this with the mixture of decentralization/encryption/verification/blockchain/etc. Easily verify artists, get the artists paid with a determined currency or by merch and donations, have it federated or decentralized so artists have more control and a company can’t take percentages… I don’t know. There has to be something there. It seems possible and almost a necessity in the future for artists to make money and corporations to not enshittify each app that is released. For example, spotify adding features to try to be like TikTok, or recently they were trying to add “educational courses” to the app
my personal favorite is the one where the band or artist hosts their own site, and then you can just buy shit from it.
A clean redshift application for Android, like redmoon. I found something but it’s not quite there.
I would love to see a good Lightroom alternative in terms of ease of use.
Darktable is great and the results are good, but it’s pretty complex to use and has a really steep learning curve. And it doesn’t do photo management other than a few basics. Even after months of use I still struggle to replicate what I can do in Lightroom.
AirPlay projecting to other devices. I only see a tool to receive projections
SnagIt!
Flameshot is great, but it lacks too many features I’ve come to depend on from SnagIt! and I would absolutely pay for a Linux port even if it isn’t FOSS
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they did? totally slipped past me…
Is OrganicMaps not a good alternative to OSMAND?
Not happy with OrganicMaps? It’s my personal favourite at least, and completely open source. Probably depends what your needs are. :)
As far as I understand the app menue, tracking is an opt in.
Just don’t check the box?
Organic maps is quite nice.
What and why is Osmand tracking us. Are they actually selling that data. I had completely missed that. Weirdly didn’t get and email…
A decent language learning type app, like dulingo
I wish there were more Open Source games.
I wish we had an opensource game store to sell or donate to opensource games.
Anti Commercial AI thingy
Inserted with a keystroke running this script on linux with X11
#!/usr/bin/env nix-shell #!nix-shell -i bash --packages xautomation xclip sleep 0.2 (echo '::: spoiler Anti Commercial AI thingy [CC BY-NC-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) Inserted with a keystroke running this script on linux with X11 ```bash' cat "$0" echo '``` :::') | xclip -selection clipboard xte "keydown Control_L" "key V" "keyup Control_L"Just wanted to shout out https://osgameclones.com/. It has a pretty decent list of them and source ports.
Perhaps not Foss, but definitely free (beer) , endless sky, available on steam
There: https://mander.xyz/post/11076441
There was a post recently about people’s favourite open source games and it’s been a nice repository of games for me :)
Recently discovered Veloren, maybe you haven’t heard of it
I really liked how Id used to release their old engines as open source, but of course once they got bought out all that stopped. The biggest problem for OSS games is with assets though. There are a few decent open source engines now for a lot of types of games, but it’s a lot harder to find decent looking assets to make games. I wonder if stuff like stable diffusion might help with that going forward.
grindr
