this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2025
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No Stupid Questions

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A big one for me is Microsoft office (desktop), Libreoffice and other FOSS alternatives just simply don't come close, and feature wise are 20 years behind. Especially since I basically mastered MS office 2007+'s drawing features, which the FOSS alternatives don't replicate very well.

And of course Microsoft loves to push Office 365. I don't pay for that and just use desktop office, but Microsoft prefers you don't know that you can do this.

And I'm going to get shit on by Lemmy big time for this but while Linux is great and has made vast improvements in recent years, I still use Windows, not only because of MS office, but because a lot of games tend to only support Windows. I know that wine and proton exist but they're not perfect and don't feel quite the same as running native.

I wish an operating system existed with a hybridized Linux and clone NT kernel (using code from FOSS Wine and ReactOS of course) so that the numerous back catalog of NT software can run similar to as intended while also interacting with Linux programs better and using a shared environment. Since it would probably become vulnerable to viruses for windows as well, maybe? (my programming knowledge is extremely rusty) an antivirus similar to Windows defender is bundled with the operating system. Hopefully if someone makes such an operating system it can be a Windows killer and would switch immediately

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[–] brax@sh.itjust.works 13 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I'm not sure I follow. LibreOffice is at least as good (if not better) than Offics365 unless maybe if you're doing advanced shit in Excel, or need specifically coded macros.

Considering Microsoft's push to make everything into a webwrapped application, I think LibreOffice is only going to be a better and better alternative as time moves on.

[–] InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

I mean LO is pretty good, but it is a bit rough to find what you want. At a min its more difficult to format your sheets in LO.

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[–] cubeofcheese@mstdn.social 11 points 1 week ago (6 children)

@VirusMaster3073 music DAWs. I think the only real option is Ardour, but I tried it and was struggling to just figure out how to create a couple instrument tracks. Could be skill issue, but honestly I'm pretty good at figuring out UIs so if I was struggling a lot with the basics, it's probably not just me. So I'm still on garageband for now which doesn't get in my way when I'm trying to make music

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[–] Maven@lemmy.zip 9 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Adobe After Effects!! PLEASE DEAR GOD

This is the singular thing still keeping me using Adobe software. If this was replaced then I could be FREEE

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[–] AnimalsDream@slrpnk.net 8 points 1 week ago (4 children)

I'd like to see an open-source decentralized game store, like a competitor to Steam, GOG, etc. However, I think it should also target emulators. There's still an unfounded stigma toward emulation even though emulators themselves are legal, and even though the big AAA game companies themselves are now using them as a lazy way to repackage and resell their old games on new platforms.

One of the biggest barriers to entry into emulation is the setup. Even with super user-friendly frontends like Emulation Station, people are still required to either go out of their way to either legally backup the games they already own, or told to "do some searches," because of legal issues. Nevermind how this exposes new users to potential malware.

But people still make new games for these old systems. It's entirely possible to make a store that can sell ROMs legally - one already exists, itch.io. But imagine a federated open-source game store, one where game makers can choose to legally sell their own games, and then create plugins for the emulation frontends to allow people to buy roms directly from those interfaces. It would turn emulation into a fully complete console-like experience, all while being available on more platforms than any console could ever hope to be (including those same consoles when they're jailbroken!)

I also think it would be the final puzzle piece that legitimizes emulation.

[–] Bacano@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

This sounds dreamy

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[–] Glitterkoe@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

Hmm, LibreOffice may not be the prettiest, but it works. For my own documents and presentations I use Typst nowadays. That's a blazing fast modern typesetting alternative to LaTeX. That being said, I can't stand WYSIWIG stuff but that might not be everybody's cup of tea.

I mostly run into stubborn manufacturers like Roland that only release their musical instrument companion apps for Mac/Win and leave Linux Digital Audio Workstations hanging.

[–] ParetoOptimalDev 7 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I heard https://www.onlyoffice.com/ is good, but have no personal experience.

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[–] wjrii@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

FreeCAD still crashes for me a lot, across versions and distros and different PCs. I just don't know what the deal is; maybe bad luck.

Then, its kernel, being the only truly viable open source one, is understandable but also has some limitations commercial tools don't, and I'm just talking about super basic stuff like giving up on a fillet or chamfer as soon as two vertices touch.

The workflow is much improved, as are the heuristics for user intention (yes, yes, the "crutches") and to mitigate toponaming, but I still get frustrated trying to use it for my stupid keyboard and other 3D printing projects. I have Alibre Design on my Windows partition, and with the improvements in Linux gaming (seriously OP, it's WAY better these days), CAD is the main reason I even bothered to keep my old SSD with Windows.

There are probably things I do at work in MS Office that Libre would have a hard time with, but frankly I just don't care. :-)

[–] scheep@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

MS Office isn’t better than LibreOffice and OnlyOffice, they all do the same task of making docs, spreadsheets, and presentations with very similar UI. It’s a no brainer to use the one that doesn’t bug you to use OneDrive.

Linux gaming has come a long way, especially with the introduction of things like Proton and popularisation of it by the Steam Deck. If you can play games on the Steam Deck, those games run on Linux :D

The main reasons (mind you, not only reasons) why people don’t just switch to Linux is:

  • it’s different (humans naturally gravitate towards things they are familiar with)
  • partly because Linux has a few things that are unintuitive to the average user (e.g. using terminal), but distros like Mint have mostly solved this issue
  • Switching itself is really annoying (I would say I’m in this boat, but I’ve installed Linux on my old computers and will definitely do it again if I ever get a new computer)
[–] zzffyfajzkzhnsweqm@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

MS Onenote. Nothing comes close to it. With stylus support etc...

[–] Nomad@infosec.pub 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Project management. There is one very good but old solution, open project is barely bearable.

[–] ptz@dubvee.org 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I know managers who swore by MS Project (2007 I think?), and I didn't totally hate it myself. Haven't really looked for an alternative, but also, haven't needed to for the most part.

I wonder if it's just that project management has changed since then, and everything is all Jira/Kanban boards now? I think most of our projects have been laid out in Trello-like software and Git issues/tasks for probably the last 8 or 9 years.

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[–] joshchandra@midwest.social 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I have still quite literally found no other tool, even paid products, that can interior-crop the way IrfanView can (select row/column Y in XYZ if the entire image was XYZ, and crop out that inner part and auto-tuck X and Z directly against each other). And it's had this feature for decades, I think.

[–] Hudell@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Not exactly the same, but similar: when working with sprites for games, I often run into situations where I realize way too late that I need the size of each frame to be slightly larger than what I had been working with it. You'd think that having the ability to resize an image by adding extra padding to each individual frame would be a pretty common feature in image editing software these days, but nope. I ended up writing a small tool specifically for that just so I wouldn't have to adjust frame by frame ever again.

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[–] JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee 5 points 1 week ago (3 children)

The only one I really miss is an NFC payments app, but a local LLM for Android that's FOSS would be cool too - PocketPal is free, but not open source or on F-Droid.

Also LibreOffice for desktop is great, but on mobile there aren't any easy to use ones in the same way Google Docs is, I've tried LibreOffice for Android and Collabora

[–] brokenlcd@feddit.it 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

For local llm i think maid should do the trick, just load a generic assistant card. never really tried it though, my phone is way too weak to hold that up

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[–] Hawke@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I’m with you on the “FOSS office alternatives are shit”, but unfortunately MS office is also shit. Google is the closest I have found to a good office suite but even that is becoming a bit chaotic and awkward. LyX is a promising word processor but also pretty awkward to use in its own way. I’ve got nothing, there.

As far as gaming, this sound less kind than intended but you deserve any shit you get for saying Linux gaming is bad these days. Apart from a few AAA games with anti-cheat where the devs just don’t want to, basically every game just works without any extra effort. Even obscure indie games. I can’t think of the last game I wanted to play that didn’t run on Linux, and often it is better under proton than Windows or native.

[–] pfjarschel@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

I made the jump recently, and although there are clear issues, I don't see any reason to use windows as my primary gaming OS anymore. Some games still require some fiddling with proton versions, extra command line arguments, environment variables, etc. That is bad for the average user that just wants to click play and play. Also, I noticed that at least on my setup (alienware laptop with nvidia gpu), some games have clear performance issues compared to windows, mainly some UE games. But it's not so bad to make me want to boot windows again.

And just some extra two cents: I'm still keeping a windows partition for those games that simply cannot run on linux, and it's possible to keep your main library on the linux partition (I'm using btreefs) and use that same library on windows. You just have to install a driver on windows, and it works beautifully. Haven't had any issues so far.

[–] Cheskaz@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

Xodo pdf annotator

It seems all pdf annotators are allergic to letting me have

  1. The ability to change the text I've highlighted without deleting the entire highlight
  2. Several different highlighter colours and opacities

They seem like really silly requirements, but they make a huge difference to how long it takes me to get through my readings for class.

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