What apps would you love to have open-source alternatives for?

ClearCutCoconut@lemmy.world to Open Source@lemmy.ml – 272 points –

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?

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Software for the production of music and audio, like Ardour but for more platforms which more typical people could use more easily, plus plug-ins for that ecosystem. It's a major sticking point how corporate that field is for me.

I've looked at these, especially LMMS, but in my view they aren't enough (or good enough) to completely escape non-FOSS.

Sample Library plugins, my area of interest, are under two or three banners: Kontakt, Decent Sampler and SF. None of these are appropriately free, although Decent Sampler shows the most promise of breaking down the class divide in this area.

Well, for free, community driven, you can test also this one. It works online and include royalty free samplers

https://www.audiotool.com

This is about FOSS and I can't see that Audiotool is FOSS, and Samplers are not Sample Libraries. Sample Libraries are ubiquitous among producers who want a good sounding recreation of a real instrument but cannot afford (or morally support), for example, Pianoteq's modelling algorithms or Spitfire's premium libraries, neither of which are FOSS, or the instrument itself or a session player.

As I said, the most promising multi-sampler or sample library software with an active community was Decent Sampler, which isn't open-source and now supports DRM.

It's clear that Audiotool isn't FOSS, but I put it in because obviously there isn't FOSS which fits your needs, and the next best option is a free community driven app with own samples made by the community, apart of those by default.

At least Reaper has Linux ports, better than nothing.

Live production stuff as well.

So much of the available "industry standard" software is fully proprietary and Apple only.

What do you mean the "live production stuff" exactly?

Most of the apps to interface with pro level mixing consoles and lighting boards are Mac / iPad . Very few for Android, limited Windows options and pretty much nothing for Linux.

You're correct but in my experience everything I've used at a venue is analog, running almost entirely off of the mixing desk, without an external computer running Win/Mac/Linux. And half of these consoles I've used had a USB port which was used for, among other things, storing templates. This allowed for our front-of-house mix engineers and monitor mix engineers to cruise along because most of the work was done at home or in other venues. The software for writing those was Windows/Mac at the least, I don't know if any used Linux and I'm not sure if they were "human-readable" text formats.

At that price point I'm not so motivated to work on something FOSS, I care more for working with the hand-to-mouth musicians than the large institutions.

Before I retired I was also almost entirely analog.

But these days it appears that even the gear targeted at small bar bands is leaning heavily toward a fully digital workflow.