Lemmy faces the same expectations problems as every free/libre software
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.
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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
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.