What non-FOSS software have you been unable to quit?

hedge@beehaw.org to Free and Open Source Software@beehaw.org – 90 points –

For me, Google video search, Google books (Internet Archive is good, but doesn't always have the same stuff), Adobe InDesign (but in the process of learning LaTeX), and Typewise. As for the Google stuff, I liked Whoogle a lot, but almost all their instances seem to have been blocked or shut down. Also, apologies if this is repeating an earlier post.

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Just games. And I am thankful for all the open source implementations as they are almost always vastly superior to the original releases.

Thank you John Carmack for releasing the sources to your games!

I wanted to fully switch to Linux and FOSS for a while now but specialised software like CAD and image editing are either non existent or completely useless for professional purposes in their FOSS versions. What angers me most is that most is them could run on wine easily if the developers did some minor changes so it seems intentional.

Steam, because most my games are on there.

Discord, because most my friends and social groups are on there.

Google Maps. It sucks, and stores randomly pop in and out while you're trying to zoom in past the McDonalds ad that's showing despite you searching "shoe store", but it has so much more info than the competitors that they don't compare.

Just want to add this comparison between Google Maps and OpenStreetMap. Google Maps is definitely better in some areas and OSM is better in others.

Yeah, this is a cool discussion. Thank you.

Tried Openstreetmap? OSMAnd? Organic maps? Both of which use OSM. HERE maps (not open source)?

I've used organic maps, and maybe osmand? It's good! And progress is fast. But it's not quite there yet for me.

This conversation is making me realize that it may have been a year since I last tried it? Guess I'm due!

The user generated data on google maps is really useful though.

OSMAnd is good in many ways (and has come a long way too), but the app suffers from too many settings and too much menu diving for my taste. OrganicMaps is good because it's like having "OSMAnd lite." Used to be that without Google Services that there was no voice navigation, but now I'm able to use RH Voice with Organic Maps. MagicEarth is another map navigation app, but not open source.

I’ve really enjoyed using MagicEarth. I’d probably move to Organic Maps if they implemented routing for other public transport besides trains.

the FOSS options are terrible in my area

Unfortunately OSM won't be able to compete with user reviews for example (except if we steal those from Google). Also a bunch of shops can't be seen there, which is crucial for me to discover cheap restaurants.

But OSM's bike routes are 10/10.

WhatsApp: I have been unable to convince my family and friends to use any other platform. Plus. in alot of countries, having WhatsApp becomes a must. Office 365: The only option I can use for work including Outlook and Teams. Google Maps: I keep trying to use OsmAnd+ but it is almost impossible to search for addresses.

I'm not off Google Maps either, but the closest to replacing it for me is Organic Maps, FWIW.

Magic earth has been good for directions, ime.

I just grabbed it. The dash cam features might possibly be useful on a bike (?). But I tried and tried and couldn't find the magic zoom level for it to show me the name of the street I'm on, got frustrated, and uninstalled.

Very fair. I've noticed that google maps really nails the zoom level when you slow down and speed up, to show you the right amoynt of information, whereas Magic Earth doesn't. I'll be zoomed in on the motorway at 120 and later zoomed out in a city centre at 30, those two are incompatible.

i dream of the death of whatsapp so we can finally move to something better, anything really, my standards are on the floor.

ill take telegram? discord?? smoke signals???

can some kind hardworking hacker collective kill it or something? please??

tbf discord is worse than whatsapp

in alot of countries, having WhatsApp becomes a must.

Why is this? I hear this a lot, but I don't understand

In some countries, government employees themselves use WhatsApp to communicate on their work phones. You have a query? Schedule an in-person visit in 6 weeks, or fire up WhatsApp, your choice. Fortunately some also use email, but WhatsApp still tends to be quicker.

It gets slightly worse when you're looking for a job, and the only way to get hired, is to talk to someone through WhatsApp. Don't want to? No job for you; next!

Yeah, WhatsApp is amlove hate relationship for me.

It's seriously the best app out there, it just works, works nice and intuitive, has a web version (holy crap can't go without) and almost everyone is on there.

I'd love a Foss federated solution, but good luck with that if no one uses it

At least here in Germany it is like that. if you got a new number or whatever you are 99,9% certain that number is on WhatsApp it's inevitable its the main source for chatting for everyone. So if you'd want to switch platforms youd have to convince a lot of people and most would not be ready to do that since why bother when you can just use WhatsApp?

As much as I try to encourage alternatives, most people where I'm from use WhatsApp for everything these days and has been that way for the last ~5 years. I might get about 10 SMS messages a year but possibly thousands of WhatsApp messages.

Can't speak for any country but my own (Brazil)

The reason WhatsApp is such a thing here is an interesting little historical path.

See, texting never really took off here in Brazil. Because phone service providers would charge per individual message. And while the charge was like 5 cents per message, that shit builds up. So unless you're rich... You won't be texting.

So when smartphones, and with them, data plans (that offered very little data, around 4 gigs is the average nowadays, it was a few megs back then) came around, internet-based messaging services became our texting. Because if you have, idk, 512 megs of data in your plan, that's not a lot but it is more than enough for messaging over an app.

WhatsApp was the one that got popular, no idea why.

It was popular with the youths(tm) first in the early 10s, then families hopped on, dragged in by their young-adult kids no doubt, and then... Everything! Because once the Boomers had learned how to use this one app, every business under the sun realised it could serve their purposes as well. And eventually... So did the government.

You want to order pizza? WhatsApp. Want to contact a government agency? WhatsApp. Want to schedule a doctor's appointment? WhatsApp.

Now, I got my friends and family on Telegram, largely because Telegram has nicer features (still closed source though grumble grumble) but I still need WhatsApp for work. It's how I talk to everyone: The team, the boss, the contacts, etc.

I don't understand why we spend so much time praising proprietary software in these communities.

As to your question, I have a separate Windows machine for gaming, but that's it. I keep one foot in the free world and one in the proprietary. As for productivity tools I can't think of a proprietary tool I "can't quit" or that I would pick in favor of a free tool.

Fans of proprietary software have this weird belief that free software users choose inferior tools for purist or idealist reasons. This is offensively ignorant. No one chooses bad tools on purpose; we just consider freedom to be part of the criteria of a good tool.

This. Freedom is part of the quality of a program.

That sounds like an idealist reason to me lol

Most of the times -for me anyway- not only are the tools free (as in freedom) and free (as in beer) but also simply vastly superior to paid alternatives. I never get why people pay and then put up with shit, or use some SaaS platform where they are the product and get spied on and still put up with so much shit that they would be double better off by switching to something open

A tool with fewer features that is harder to use is by definition an inferior tool.

we just consider freedom to be part of the criteria of a good tool.

You just described choosing an inferior tool for ideological reasons.

A tool with fewer features that is harder to use is by definition an inferior tool.

That's only your opinion, not an objective truth, and I only partially agree with it. Having the most features is not as important as having just the right set of features, and there are anti-features to consider as well. Feature creep can actually impact the usability of a tool, so these two criteria are sometimes in contradiction.

Ease of use is subjective and depends on the user, because users' needs, ability, tastes, and concerns differ. Of course, I don't think anyone deliberately chooses a tool because it is hard to use.

I don't agree that freeness is purely an ideological concern. I don't think a tool that works against me, or imposes arbitrary restrictions on me is a good tool by any measure. A good tool doesn't enshittify, or spy on its user, or refuse to work for arbitrary reasons. If a tool doesn't work and you are legally not allowed to fix it (as in the printer which inspired the movement in the 1980s), it's not a good tool. If a tool punishes you for something you didn't even do (as BitKeeper did to the Linux developers) it's not a good tool, even if it has the right features.

I don't tell you that your opinion is wrong, only that I don't agree with it. We are told our concerns are invalid and don't matter.

Google Earth and Google Street View.

Even after all these years of using them, I'm still amazed.

https://www.instantstreetview.com/

What proprierary Javascript is needed for core functionality? 😅

Any reason you prefer noscript to unlock Origin?

I find it easy to use and use both, Noscript for Javascript (all opt-in), UBlock for adblock (badness enumeration) and "cookie autodelete" (on mobile, for opt-in keeping cookies and deleting the rest)

Affinity was an affordable and featured alternative to the Adobe suite, but just sold to canva so yay capitalism

If it was open source then it still is. You simply clone the sources to a new project and continue

Noooooo that is so disappointing to hear.

They've said they're committing to keeping perpetual licensing and are using Canva's resources to speed up development though. So far, seems okay to me. At least for now. Unless anyone knows otherwise?

Solidworks - A reliable FOSS 3D CAD package would be amazing... Parametric Blender? Photoshop/Illustrator - I know how to do 50% of what I need to in GIMP/Inkscape, but I lean on Adobe usually!

FreeCAD is the best FOSS program I know for solid modeling. Librecad works for 2D.

Man, I tried to learn FreeCAD, but coming from the Inventor/Solidworks paradigm it was hard.

I used to use Solidworks and NX some. I think there are similarities. That is sketch based. I admit though, not really learned FreeCAD either. On my list some day.

There is also ondsel, which is basically freecad with some polish maybe. It looks the same to me. But one day when they solve the topology renaming thing and when they have an interface that's not openly hostile I'd love to try it

I would agree that FreeCAD is the best, but it's not slick and doesn't feel particularly robust. Don't get me wrong, I have no rose tinted glasses on when it comes to Solidworks, but it's generally very usable and very powerful.

Actually Solidworks is consider low to mid market. NX and whatever PTC calls their high end now are the main stream CAD systems as far as I know.

I worked with Creo for years, and ProE before that. I still have nightmares about the cascading unresolved reference screens. I've never used NX, but my understanding is it is AAA, though not super user friendly by default. I've pretty much exclusively used Solidworks for over a decade now, and I have to say that it's generally pretty well behaved, and I've never really found I couldn't do what I wanted to in it. Thus it has become my crutch.

Nice thing about Solidworks is I think is used the ACIS kernel. Means it is directly compatible with a lot of other software.

Solvespace is a FLOSS light weight 3D CAD alternative. Although it lacks the advanced features of Solidworks works really great for most of my 3d designs.

Google maps, venmo, and lyft are my last real holdouts.

I tried Osmand~ but it like using your dads Garmin from 2005. The last two have been hard to find good alternatives to. Would be nice if signal payments were in a stable coin instead of a shitcoin.

OsmAnd is a maps app, not a navigation app

Serious question - aren't maps for navigation? I've heard this rhetoric a few times and I just... don't entirely follow the logic. Like I do to an extent, insofar as Open Street Map data is for information like rivers, buildings, updating cell data (used to do updates here and there in my city.)

But to me all of these maps, and initially starting out, maps are for... navigating?

Idk lol, not judging, mostly just confused at the intention. "We plot out maps! But dare to try and follow it to get where you are going at your own peril."

Maps are for documenting the location of things in the real world relative to each other. It could be anything, like roads and buildings, or rivers and bodies of water, or electrical lines.

Then there is all the information that is added to all those objects; adding names to the roads, buildings having an addtess and what type of building they are, the direction a river is flowing and how many rivers flow into or out if a lake.

All of that is just information, where an what things are, it doesn't actually do anything. That is a map.

Navigation software takes the information about the roads and how they are connected together along with their names and combines it with addresses to show you how to get from one address to another.

You could also have software that simulates the ecological effects of rerouting a river from a lake, or damming a river.

You could take data from a map to show you all the power lines that are near trees that will need to be trimmed and give estimates to your employer on how many people to hire for tree trimming, and then combine that with a map of buildings to show how many customers would be without power if a tree branch triggers a circuit to open.

Navigation is just one part of what a map could be used for, and probably one of the only parts that most people would use a map for.

OpenStreetMap started out just being a map of streets, hence the name, but it has grown to be this massive collection of information. Then there is all of tools that decide what to do with the information. OsmAnd is a good tool for simply displaying the data. It can provide navigation but it's not the best.

Consider a map of all cell towers. Or consider a map of all power substations. Or a map of all dams.

None of those.maps are useful for navigating.

Likewise, good luck using a navigation app (like Google Maps) to produce the above maps. They're different tools for different jobs.

Uh no. I have been using it for navigation for the past 5 years, probably even longer. It is hit and miss in some areas but it works OK.

I've been using Organic Maps for my navigation. It uses the same OpenStreetMap data, but navigation (as well as searching for e.g. "food" as opposed to a specific place) works flawlessly and routing happens offline.

Seems ok, but seems to struggle w/ long distances. Works better than osmand tho, thanks

Discord, Steam and Obsidian.

I'm really liking Logseq. I started on it instead of Obsidian since Logseq is FOSS. I understand it's not too hard to switch over since they both use markdown files, granted some scripts need to be run to convert markdown differences between the two.

Logseq's business model is to charge $5/mo for syncing on their (fully encrypted with a private key) server, but you can use a FOSS syncing solution (or a property one) if you prefer. I pay to support the project and to simplify sync on work devices I don't have administrator rights on (so most other sync solutions wouldn't work well.)

I tried Logseq, but it was slower than Obsidian and it's section/block oriented and I want it to be note oriented (Obsidian). It is a decent alternative tho.

I love logseq conceptually but constantly use org-roam because logseq is prone to performance breakdowns on my hardware

I started on it instead of Obsidian

This is the way. I started on Obsidian, and Logseq is painful in comparison. It's a good product, but I got accustomed to too many nice conveniences over the past couple of years.

Proprietary firmware on Google Pixel, blobs in Dasharo Coreboot.

On Android there are tons of video and image editors embedded in Whatsapp, Telegram, Instagram, Snapchat, Tiktok etc. but nothing comparable.

I find Desktop video editors confusing but I use Footage (GNOME) and "OpenVideoEdit" on Android.

Discord. As a chat platform, it is by far the most user-friendly one out there despite its proprietary nature and lack of respect for privacy.

Messaging platforms are so hard to replace since there's a social traction aspect. I can pick out the most secure and private messaging service, and then have no one to message on it

Games, for everything else I've found a foss alternative that I prefer. I will do a google search once every couple of days if I'm really struggling to find something but even as a last resort search engine it's been getting worse - I heard they put an ad person in charge of search... so that would probably explain that descent.

Plex. I'm not sure if Jellyfin is foss, but if it is, I haven't felt like converting my library. I've put a lot of work into making it just right.

Steam, obviously.

other than video games, I think that's really it. I still use some others, like Spotify, but not primarily, I just like to have options.

Jellyfin is FOSS. You can by the way just install it and point it at your library to see if it recognises everything. It won't change your file layout. If you have your movies named "title (year)“ and series in a folder format like "series title/season x/s0xe0x" (x being season and episode numbers), it should actually automatically recognise it all.

But I admit, if you have deviations from that you would need to correct those first and it seems from what I read that Plex is not as picky with that as Jellyfin is.

Misidentification is easy to fix in Jellyfin, with a couple clicks you can completely fix all metadata if it gets something wrong.

+1 for Plex. Basically perfect and so much more polished than JF (which I tried on three separate occasions to force myself to like).

Just a comment -- for InDesign-type work, I find something like Inkscape (or Scribus) easier to work with than LaTeX. I usually only use LaTeX for things where the layout needs to be pretty but not customized. Its possible to use it for design, but not a good use of time.

Sublime Text, Google Photos, Google Maps (partially)

I've found Cudatext a good alternative for light editing tasks.

I really wanted to switch to Cuda, but there are a few small features missing which is super infuriating to me.

I can't think of any off the top of my head right now though.

Sublime Text? What's missing in other editors that you have in that?

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Some combination of things like performance, non distracting presentation, the minimap, multi cursor that works how I like, some plugins I like, no web browser, the way every open buffer is always safe and saved in some cache without necessarily saving to the edited file, the UX for split view across tabs, minimal fuss to get UI text and colors legible for my bad eyesight, etc.

Rhino for CAD.

However, I have been using OpenSCAD for parametric design more than the Grasshopper extension.

Thankfully, skipped ArcGIS entirely for QGIS and Python GDAL wrappers.

Spotify, Netflix, a bunch of online services, old games, the update software of my car GPS...

I also run a lot of proprietary stuff like Discord or Instagram due to peer pressure but I let it slide and put my hopes on Android sandboxing the apps and GrapheneOS tweaks. In my opinion, making sure that proprietary app can't reliably access your data and never giving it anything sensitive yourself is a decent risk model.

The only proprietary software I use and somewhat trust is Obdisian. Honestly, it's just excellent and I can't see myself moving away from it anytime soon.

Reaper DAW, and I have no plans on replacing because I like it. Also Reason, which I do have plans on replacing, but with what I haven't a clue. Unfortunately, audio continues to lag way behind on Linux and open source. Additionally, VST is unfortunately THE standard for audio plugins, and they are indispensable in audio production.

Well I have separate computer for music production which I don't think has any FOSS software on it, so everything that has to do with that.

Dropping The List here because answering in detail would take ...a very, very long time.

I guess that list could be helpful for some, but for me (and IMO, music production in general), it's woefully inadequate to the point of hilarity.

Pro audio has been a complete mess in Linux for ages, and it's not even close to where it should be in order to be generally usable. Every 7-8 years or so when my old music computer starts to die I try and check if it has made substantial improvement, but apart from Musescore actually being good, it is hard to find any tangible progress from 15 years ago. Pipewire gives me some hope, but it's far from production-ready in Pro audio world. And I'm not really going to get rid of all the VST stuff I've bought in the last 20 years (all of which still works out of the box on a new computer!)

In addition, making music is the one hobby I have to get me away from tinkering with computers. I am not interested if I could make my Linux setup equally good if I spent weeks tinkering on it, when it's literally easier for me to work for a week and buy a Macbook Air (or whatever crappy windows PC), where I get all of my old work ready for action in under a day, and I can trust that everything I do will just work, and work well at that. And it does it while allowing me to work remotely with other musicians since we can all use the same stuff.

I'm pretty sure I'll be in my grave before FOSS Pro Audio ever gets there, unfortunately.

Edit: Ironically, the one FOSS thing I would love to use in my audio stuff is Guitarix, which is then the thing that doesn't interop well with anything else. And I would love to have easy way to do all that I do on (Win/Mac Os) on Linux, but 20 years of disappointment is pretty hard to overcome at this point.

Have you tried Ardour, Bitwig, Reaper or Zrythm? Studio 1 also has a Wayland-native version now, which is paid.

But I get the tinkering part, poorly.

I've tried all of them except Zrythm. In fact, REAPER is my DAW of choice. But while that works on Linux, a lot of the plugins I require do not (or well, I guess it depends on how people define "work"), and REAPER in itself is not FOSS.

I wanted to package an ambisonic VST3 plugin as a Flatpak, really need to learn that as this would make things really easy.

But I have no idea of audio production, find it really cool but its a complex topic.

FolderSync on android. It's the only automatic sync application I've found that syncs to mydrive.ch.

Also a couple of UI apps, BarLauncher, which is a notification thing that let's you put app icons to launch from the notification drop down, and LaunchyWidget, like a scrolling "fence" to dump app icons in on your home screen. They're both so simple, I'm surprised that nobody has built FOSS versions of them.

On my PC I don't use any proprietary software at all.

Last.fm, I guess. I use Libre.fm as well, but I don't quite get the same experience out of it.

Listenbrainz?

Just gave it a try. It's okay, but there's no way to scrobble from iOS (where I normally listen to music). I'm getting an Android at some point, but for now I need to work with what I've got.

I use gonic to serve up my music collection via subsonic API, then have play:sub and/or substreamer ios apps that use/pull from it. gonic can scrobble for you when clients play songs. Combined that with majola for self-hosted scrobbling for the last 18 months Ive been quite happy with it.

I think it would depend on the music player? There is listenbrainz-ios, but I assume it's banned by Apple because it's opensource? That would make iOS pretty bad if you want to go opensource with stuff. But if you're in the EU, that might change soon thanks to the DMA which will force Apple to allow third-party stores of which probably a few opensource ones will pop up.

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QuickBooks. F that software. Give me any double entry accounting software that you can use with multiple companies.

There are a bunch. There are fewer that are multiuser. Search alternativeto. Thing is people want more then double entry accounting. Electronic payment processing, reporting, payroll, AR, tax... Then how does it work with the professionals you hire.

Edit: For personal stuff, my wife and I use GNUCash. It does have small company features. I do not think it is concurrent though, but it can be used with an SQL backend though. We do not use the database mode so no experience with it.

I'm not familiar with what exactly you need but have you taken a look at KMyMoney? (Or is this for accounting for an actual company and not for yourself? Not sure how it holds up there)

I use GnuCash for two companies and personal accounting. Love it.

LinkedIn. Super useful for OSINT

I would never again install a big social media app on my phone. I am actually just using LinkedIn via a browser shortcut, they keep bugging me about installing the app but that's definitely not going to happen.

Oh, yeah, I wouldn't use the app. I lock that type of shit in special "untrustworthy" VMs so its sandboxes from everything. The VM gets destroyed every time the browser is closed.

But it is closed source software that I do need to use from time to time.

I dont even get asked to install the app. Maybe check your notification settings to turn that off

Its not a notification like that. I open the site in the mobile browser, not a PWA in case you are thinking that.

There is a small "pop-up" at the bottom then that asks you to use their app instead. But its not even layering over the site so you could just leave it be.

If you have firefox mobile and ublock origin installed, open the addon settings and select my filters. Add the following (picked with ublock on desktop):

www.linkedin.com##.z-10.w-full.p-2.left-0.bottom-0.fixed.flex-col.flex.bg-color-background-container.rounded-t-\[20px\].text-left.promo-bottom-sheet__card
www.linkedin.com##.overlay

Then apply changes. You should no longer have that annoying banner at the bottom of the page

makemkv also basically most of my music software

chrome, the android os and platform and all the apps therein. I mainly use firefox, but some things only work in chrome.

Podcast Addict I really want to use AntennaPod, but I can't do without priority podcasts.

Also Feedly. Feeder (FOSS) is so close, but doesn't allow different sorts for different feeds.

Obsidian. Plain text files with as many or as few plugins as you want. All versions of the app look and behave the same (other than mobile, but at least android is kinda close). Nothing stored in a database file, no manipulation of the text files themselves (looking at you, Joplin). I'm open to another option but so far, nothing is as elegant and platform agnostic as Obsidian.

Clip Studio Paint IIt was way ahead than any commercial or FOSS alternative. Especially if you're illustrator or comic artist working in specialized workflow (East Asia and SEA industry).

Tried Krita back then, but still lacks a lot of major important feature and customizable UI layout.

Square Launcher on Android. Tried a whole bunch of other launchers but keep coming back to the windows tile interface. Scrollable vertically and horizontally puts so much within reach so quickly.

I feel LaTeX is not a replacement for inDesign. It would be a replacement for something like word. maybe try scribus?

One thing I really liked but quit because it wasn't FOSS was WorkFlowy. I did try logseq a while back and thought it was ok, but had too many other bells and whistles in addition to what I really wanted which was just a collapsible list with infinite hierarchical depth. I really wish someone would add this functionality to an email client like Thunderbird as part of its tasks.