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.
This isn’t just open-source software; it’s also a collection of servers run by hobbyists.
There is no business here at all. You’re not the product, but you’re also not the customer — because there is no customer. What you’re seeing here is a strictly nonprofit Internet service provided by people who just want to make one.
Which makes Karen behaviour even worse and incomprehensible but most people are humble and don’t care to much about some minor problems and a little learning curve
the slight technical competency needed to navigate the fediverse might help keep low-quality users away and mitigate the “summer reddit” effect.
Oh God I hope so ha ha
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I’m hoping the same lol
I don’t know what “Karen behavior” means; could you explain?
A “karen” is a person who comes across as entitled and demanding, beyond the scope of what is generally accepted.
A Karen is a (mostly female) person who demands special treatment for no specific reason, who permanently feels mistreated and set back compared to others and someone who always wants to talk to the highest available employee in expectation this person would take her side and take inappropriate measures against the one that “did her wrong”
Okay. I don’t see how that stereotype relates to Lemmy or FOSS, though?
I’ve seen some very demanding posts asking for this or that feature completely missing out on the fact that
a) Lemmy is written by people in their free time and
b) hosted on servers paid by individuals or through donations.
Imho it seems not uncommon to take the free part of FOSS for granted but still expecting to be treated like a paying customer.People easily forget what they’ve already got and want more, that’s were I see this stereotype.
I’m always struggling to find appropriate words to explain what a Karen is and often fall back to a video as an explanation. Your definition is quite accurate and simple. I will keep it in mind.
This is why I have 4 different apps to surf Lemmy. When one app is acting up I just switch to another. For example I was just barely scrolling in Jerboa but getting a bunch of network errors so I switched to Connect which is where I’m posting this comment. I’m totally down with being patient with Lemmy for the time being. Anything to get away from R*****
Have you tried Liftoff? I think it’s the best one so far for Android.
Liftoff is what I’m using and probably what I’ll stick with until Boost or Sync for Lemmy is released. Hell, I might stick with it even after that. Development is progressing quickly and it’s the smoothest out of any of the apps I’ve tried.
I’m personally waiting for Slide for Lemmy to be released
I am also waiting, but for Boost for Lemmy.
In the meantime wefwef works well.
Wefwef is too Apple-esque for my tastes.
They are working on an Android theme. Yes, it looks weird, but works well.
I keep switching between Liftoff and Connect because they both have some issues that are resolved in the other.
Connect seems to work better with showing all federated content than Liftoff, but Liftoff allows multiple instances to be logged in at once. Connect has notifications, and Liftoff does not. Liftoff has more user-centered features like actual profile pages that show a background image, bio, and avatar; connect does not.
Neither one have any tools for moderation, though. I am now a mod for Humor (BTW, come post! Let’s make it better than /r/funny ever was!) and I’ve only been able to do actual mod things on the website itself, which is tedious to do on mobile.
I’m currently rotating between liftoff and summit. Slide is what I can’t wait for. I was an avid slide for reddit user for years.
I still can’t figure out why I can upvote posts in Memmy but not in Liftoff. I’m Liftoff it keeps responding that I need to be logged into the server but Memmy just lets me upvote. It’s definitely something I am doing wrong but showcases the immense value of app choice.
Probably due to the version of Lemmy on the server. I think it’s because Memmy works with 0.17 but Liftoff doesn’t (fully).
The Lemmy devs made some fundamental changes in how just about everything works in 0.18. Since a lot of apps started development right around 0.18 came out they might not support “the new way” just yet.
It’s another one of those things where you just have to “give it time”. The Lemmy server operators need to upgrade (many were holding off because of missing CAPTCHA support in 0.18) and the app developers still have a lot of kinks to work out. Liftoff has only been out for what? A week now? LOL
Odd, I haven’t had this issue at all. Upvoting works just fine for me in Liftoff.
I made a post on the Liftoff community precisely because it renders it unusable if I cannot interact with (almost) anything that’s shown to me
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Unfortunately they marked that as 18+ in Google Play store so the download button is disabled, at least in my ‘normal’ UK Google account.
I haven’t. I’ll have to check it out while I wait for Sync
Edit: idk if it’s my instance or not but Liftoff absolutely does not want to work. It’s super slow, won’t load, crashes constantly, I tap or try to scroll and nothing happens for about 30 sec to a min then it’ll finally do what I tapped on or it will crash. Not sure what I’m doing wrong lol
I still can’t figure out why I can upvote posts in Memmy but not in Liftoff. I’m Liftoff it keeps responding that I need to be logged into the server but Memmy just lets me upvote. It’s definitely something I am doing wrong but showcases the immense value of app choice.
Have you checked that you’re browsing from your instance? Liftoff has different feeds for different instances and if you go to a post through an instance you don’t have an account on, you won’t be able to vote.
Just go to the homepage and select the feed from the drop-down at the top on an instance you have an account in. I used to face the same problem until I realised what’s going wrong.
Have you checked that you’re browsing from your instance? Liftoff has different feeds for different instances and if you go to a post through an instance you don’t have an account on, you won’t be able to vote.
Just go to the homepage and select the feed from the drop-down at the top on an instance you have an account in. I used to face the same problem until I realised what’s going wrong.
I’m doing the same thing. I have no allegiance like I did with RiF. If one isn’t working, I’ll just move. Give them some time to work out the kinks.
I’m doing the same thing. I have no allegiance like I did with RiF. If one isn’t working, I’ll just move. Give them some time to work out the kinks.
Hey, some of us like kinks.
Go on?
😳
Kinks mean the process is working.
No kink shaming!!
Its gonna take some time for the apps to become more polished, the network just got a good boost in users and if the project is able to maintain those users I’m decently sure the platform will also be maturing at an accelerated rate.
Literally here posting from Connect because of constant issues with Jerboa lately.
I have four apps installed just for this. Reminds me of when I first played around with a bunch of Reddit apps before I honed in on my favorite.
Connect was ok. Give liftoff and/or summit a try.
I also currently have accounts on two different instances (one being kbin and one a lemmy instance) to better be able to switch to whatever features I most want (right now, Lemmy gets pretty much all the apps and has collapsible comments, so I’m leaning towards it) and also to switch between during downtime. The small size of individual instances means downtime is inevitible.
(Though I sure hope we get a better way to do this in the future – even just syncing your subscriptions is currently a pain.)
I have accounts on 5 instances… you kinda need multiple accounts IMHO.
Try wefwef.app (go to this website and install it as an app/add it to your homescreen), it’s simply amazing.
As for network errors, try switching to an instance close to your house with a low ping, it’ll make a big difference. Go to https://fediverse.observer/map and select Lemmy instances.
As someone who used Reddit when it was first released, Lemmy is 10x better than Reddit v0.1 and obviously better than current Reddit.
I guess as a user I didn’t see the back-of-house tools for mods and admins, but so far Lemmy is at least competitive. There are risks with server security and threat of being hacked, along with the size of the team.
There are risks with server security and threat of being hacked
[]. I’m a security professional (my day job involves auditing code). I had a look through the Lemmy source (I’m also a Rust developer) and didn’t see anything there that would indicate any security issues. They made good architecture decisions (from a security perspective).NOTES ABOUT LEMMY SECURITY:
User passwords are hashed with bcrypt which isn’t quite as good a choice as argon2 but it’s plenty good enough (waaaaay better than most server side stuff where developers who don’t know any better end up using completely inappropriate algorithms like SHA-256 or worse stuff like MD5). They hard-coded the use of
DEFAULT_COSTwhich I think is a mistake but it’s not a big deal (maybe I’ll open a ticket to get that changed to a configurable parameter after typing this).I have some minor nitpicks with the variable naming which can lead to confusion when auditing the code (from a security perspective). For example:
form_with_encrypted_password.password_encrypted = password_hash;A hashed password is not the same thing as an “encrypted password”. An “encrypted password” can be reversed if you have the key used to encrypt it. A hashed password cannot be reversed without spending enormous amounts of computing resources (and possibly thousands of years in the case of bcrypt atDEFAULT_COST). A trivial variable name refactoring could do wonders here (maybe I should submit a PR).From an OWASP common vulnerabilities standpoint Lemmy is protected via the frameworks it was built upon. For example, Lemmy uses Diesel for Object Relational Mapping (ORM, aka “the database framework”) which necessitates the use of its own syntax instead of making raw SQL calls. This makes it so that Lemmy can (in theory) work with many different database back-ends (whatever Diesel supports) but it also completely negates SQL injection attacks.
Lemmy doesn’t allow (executable) JavaScript in posts/comments (via various means not the least of which is passing everything through a Markdown compiler) so cross-site scripting vulnerabilities are taken care of as well as Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF).
Cookie security is handled via the
jsonwebtokencrate which uses a randomly-generated secret to sign all the fields in the cookie. So if you tried to change something in the cookie Lemmy would detect that and throw it out the whole cookie (you’d have to re-login after messing with it). This takes care of the most common session/authentication management vulnerabilities and plays a role in protecting against CSRF as well.Lemmy’s code also validates every single API request very robustly. It not only verifies that any given incoming request is in the absolute correct format it also validates the timestamp in the user’s cookie (it’s a JWT thing).
Finally, Lemmy is built using a programming language that was engineered from the ground up to be secure (well, free from bugs related to memory management, race conditions, and unchecked bounds): Rust. The likelihood that there’s a memory-related vulnerability in the code is exceptionally low and Lemmy has tests built into its own code that validate most functions (clone the repo and run
cargo testto verify). It even has a built-in test to validate that tampered cookies/credentials will fail to authenticate (which is fantastic–good job devs!).REFERENCES:
- Use of
DEFAULT_COST: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/blob/050216eed97380c8c1682ba065cf5e62f0961934/crates/db_schema/src/impls/local_user.rs#L18C20-L18C32 - How actix-web stores cookies: https://docs.rs/actix-web/latest/actix_web/cookie/struct.Cookie.html
jsonwebtokenEncodingKey: https://docs.rs/jsonwebtoken/8.3.0/jsonwebtoken/struct.EncodingKey.html
I have nothing to add, just wanted to give a kudos on the epic comment.
nice write up! thanks :D
- Use of
better? there is still so much subreddit not migrating here, saying it is better is just exaggeration
Seemed like this discussion was about the technical capabilities, not the user generated content. Anyway if you compare the beginning of reddit (e.g., the early days after digg’s implosion) to lemmy today, I’d bet lemmy is doing just fine on the content side too. And even leaving that aside, there’s a quality over quantity aspect in the discussions that heavily leans in lemmy’s favor.
It’s not like all those subreddits existed at 0.1 though.
then say it better when lemmy trully already have everything instead of saying it now ? you dont acknowledge a toddler as master degree even if later they could take master degree, you call them as their current state which is toddler
Sorry I wasn’t clear. I was referring specifically to performance metrics. Reddit v0.1 was down and crashing constantly.
Somewhat agree, but don’t get me started on a Gimp. To think that gimp was build to be a tool analogous to Photoshop (PS) is naive. It was born to demonstrate GTK GUI widgets and to check boxes on feature list (of supposedly paint program analogous to PS) from programmers perspective at most. Ok, they did the thing, checked the boxes, used all widgets, demonstrated that it works and from that day on it had and still has totaly inneficient workflow compared to PS and nobody cares about that. Answer to sugestions is almost always half assed, apple soused - you are holding it wrong, we are not PS. :)
My 2 cents, you can learn Gimp, you can adjust yourself to it, but if you have ever worked on PS and were good at it (with all its workflow, shortcuts, up to the level where you work one hand on keyboard, having most toolboxes hiden out of your view, etc…) you’ll still feel gimpy. It’s like comparing of giving commands to the gnome with an axe versus to an elf with a whole bunch of efficient specialised tools, spells and workflows – both trying to create art. I don’t use PS daily for how much, maybe >8 years and use Gimp weekly for about 12years – I say, it is still gimpy as f… And I’m programmer not a designer, designers usualy just hate it. I on another hand understant it (and it’s history) and take it as it is, as an inferior gimpy cousin of PS :)
why does no one ever mention krita
There’s the answer I was looking for!
I watched a 3-hour Krita beginner’s tutorial (can’t remember the exact video but the narrator had a strong French accent) and he explained so many tricks and tips - hold down Ctrl to do this, hold down Shift to do another thing - that might not be intuitive from just poking around. But Krita really is the “built by artists, for artists” program once you have a keyboard & tablet config that fits one’s personal workflow.
I would have if you hadn’t already.
Though TBH if you’re a mouse user gimp might actually be better… but practically noone doing serious graphics work is using a mouse. And it’s not like in Blender where you might switch back and forth: Krita is tablet zen, make sure to read at least a bit of the manual.
There’s a plugin called PhotoGIMP to make it look like PS.
And there’s also Photopea, I used it to make my community icon.
Thanks for trying to help or give hints. I’m good as it is with what tools I use for work. Having in mind nessesity, licence or ownership costs for bussines, hardships with new team mates expectations of using or not using particular tool, learning, etc… Acceptance, it is just a last stage :)
As for PhotoGIMP – I thank for the effort the team (I cheer for them), but the pig with a lipstick is still a pig, or in this case a gimp is a gimp :) I’ve personaly been on this path for the first 2-4 years of using gimp, during the denial-anger-bargaining stages. Then decided, or just naturaly learned and arrived to accepting Gimp for as it is, as an inferiour workflow tool, partialy usefull and replaceable as soon as there is a beter tool at hand for the task. E.g. I use ImageMagic directly from bash command line (generating icons, resizing, converting formats, filling backgrounds, etc…) using my own oneliners or scripts from notes.
As for Photopea – it gives a surprisingly good online photoshoplike editor feeling. Have used it several times this year. Looks like it was made thinking about usability and workflows sanity.
My go-to PShop replacement is Paint.Net, much less clunky than GIMP.
Paint.NET is lovely, I used to use it a lot for simple image editing tasks, but it’s windows-only and by no means a replacement for Photoshop.
really annoying that they used that name but don’t have the domain, lol
I second this. Not all tools are equal. Some are even better open source. Others are worse. OP overgeneralize.
To think that gimp was build to be a tool analogous to Photoshop (PS) is naive. It was born to demonstrate GTK GUI widgets and to check boxes on feature list
GTK literally means “gimp tool-kit” GTK exists because of gimp and not the other way around. Also. Take a look at what Photoshop looked like in 1996 (around Gimp initial release), and tell me that’s nothing like the gimp. They used to be pretty similar, but their evolutions diverged. Gimp just choosed to stick with the familiar interface, even in the light of PS’ changes. Also PS had tens of millions invested in developing it. Had gimp got a tenth of those resources things would be pretty different for both projects.
You are reasoning with your own conclusion that in the context of the question about workflow efectivenes, acceptance by users, tool usefullness it does somehow matter much or in any way – was it the library created as an afterthought or a tool created as a try to use library, or both where born at the same time. :) Who cares. It demoes everything GTK has/had, it was/is clone of photohop idea and they lost it long long ago, as it is now much less efective in it’s workflows. If it was otherwise, the industry standard would be Gimp, but it is just a gimmics of it.
P.S. I’m 100% linux user, my servers linux, my desktop linux, my phone android (ok, that is halfassed linux :) ), my tools and software used, if and then possible, all are opensource and/or free. And still, after many years beeing totaly in FOSS enviroment, I just can’t deny the worfly earned pedestal to Photoshop in its area of expertise. That is not to say that Gimp is somehow bad, by me it’s just a remote next, and it doesn’t even try to run to the same direction :) and it is his choise.
I feel also that gimp as a default for linux sucks. As someone that does not edit photos and just wants to edit some screenshot or make a shitty meme I want a default paint alternative. I’m amazed that it was only when I used mint that the void left by paint was filled with “drawing”
I’ve always used gimp and never found it confusing or very irritating. Not necessarily pretty. Whenever I checked out alternatives I went back to gimp.
GIMP has a super confusing interface. Even just resizing an image is more steps than it is in paint 3D. And I use GIMP to modify images all the time.
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I am a reddit refugee and just down for fun ride on the bleeding edge. I am finding a lot of the same communities here and I am happy that Lemmy is here to fill the void.
My biggest takeaway with open source projects is this:
Theres there’s a HUGE jump from being power user friendly to being user friendly in general. Significantly bigger than the jump from dev/contributor users to power users.
UX is something huge companies spend a lot of time and money on to ensure the layman can use the software well, something open source developers do not have the luxury of caring about from the get go.
Power users do not recognize the inbuilt muscle memory they have acquired over time to get around some of the more nagging aspects of the software and get frustrated with new users for not doing the same, while these new users get frustrated at things not being straightforward, or similar to some other software they’re used to.
IMO this push and pull is what is truly preventing a Linux desktop experience that is truly layman friendly. But when it works, and an open source project can slowly start putting more of their time into UX when the project is more mature, then it truly starts kicking ass.
Look at how far Blender has come since the 3.0 update. A lot of studios are straight up switching to it for a lot of work that was traditionally Max or Maya based. Obviously you still have some of the “old guard” who felt a little alienated with the sweeping changes from 2.7 to 3, but I feel blender is objectively better for most people since then.
TL;DR: OSS always deals with different competing needs for power users vs regular users, but given enough time things get smoothened out
I think even the jump between 2.7 and 2.8 is huge in terms of user-friendliness and aesthetics, but yeah over time Blender has gotten way more features and support. Hell, it supported ARM Macs way before Maya did, and the latter only got ARM support earlier this year. I expected Apple to fully complete their transition before Autodesk managed to pull it off.
I was with you until GIMP. If one more person lists it as an alternative to Photoshop I’m gonna lose it. It’s UI is terrible, you have to watch a guide just to get started. Can’t read PSDs in any viable way. I’m sure people use it just fine but to call it an alternative to Photoshop is just plain lying.
Edit: the other thing I dislike about it being suggested as a replacement is that it assumes you work alone. Anyone on a team with people in PS will not be able to even attempt to use GIMP to get work done.
You wretched Photoshop enthusiast. How dare you defile the sacred realm of pixelated beauty with your blasphemous tools of the Adobe empire! You, who bathe in the deceptive allure of layers and filters, know nothing of the humble struggle of a true purist.
While you revel in your so-called “advanced” software, I, a virtuous wielder of MS Paint, have embarked on an arduous journey. Armed only with a pixelated brush and limited color palette, I navigate the treacherous seas of artistry. Each stroke, deliberate and purposeful, carries the weight of my soul, for I am a master of simplicity.
Do you not understand the profound joy that arises from conquering the challenge of transforming mere pixels into a masterpiece? With each painstaking click, I breathe life into my creations, shaping reality with the precision of a pixel whisperer. Your Photoshop may grant you an abundance of tools, but it lacks the purity and authenticity that flows through the veins of my MS Paint.
Gimp, you say? Ah, a mere imitation of the great MS Paint, seeking validation in the realm of Photoshop. It too shall crumble beneath the weight of its pretentious ambitions. For true artistry lies not in the abundance of options, but in the mastery of limitations.
So, my misguided foe, before you spew your haughty words, remember the legacy of MS Paint. It has endured the test of time, witnessed the rise and fall of software giants, and remained steadfast in its simplistic grandeur. While your Photoshop may dazzle the masses with its flashy tricks, it is MS Paint that stands as the guardian of true artistic purity.
You also need a guide to get going in PS, its just a different App but fulfills the same tasks
It fills some of the same tasks.
Which tasks is Photoshop capable of and GIMP is not?
Something I use a ton: smart objects, smart masks, smart filters. Non destructive actions where I can still edit the original and have all previous items applied in a separate file or view in real time.
OK but thats a workflow problem, that’s not a missing design tool.
Well these tools are in Photoshop and not GIMP. You can’t just hand wave that away as not GIMPs fault.
Photoshop doesn’t have a native G’MIC plugin feature. You can’t wave that away as not Adobes fault!
That’s how stupid you sound.
Different products have different features and different ways to do things. It’s not Gimp’s sole purpose to just clone every feature from Photoshop. It’s not a Photoshop clone, it’s a piece of software in its own right.
Gimp makes great use of the amazing G’Mic filter tool. Adobe doesn’t. That doesn’t make Gimp better than Photoshop.
Different software makes different choices and people choose whichever they want to use and shut the hell up about it.
Well its still not a image manipulation feature missing. It’s a workflow feature. You could also just copy a layer. But in the end, Photoshop has no image manipulation feature that is really missing in GIMP, you can export the same result picture.
Those aren’t tasks. those are tools.
A task would be if to give us an example of an “end result” that you can accomplish in PS that you can’t in GIMP.
Not what tools you use to make it. But the content that comes out the other end.
I’m not going to argue that PS has some extra tools that make stuff easier to do. It has the resources to develop them, after all.
But there is no drawing, animation, photo edit, composition or other end product that you can ONLY do with Photoshop. The only people who say that are people who have never used any alternative.
So my point is still valid that GIMP is not an alternative to Photoshop. It would be like saying this screwdriver is an alternative to this toolset. People coming from Photoshop aren’t looking at the singular goal of image manipulation.
Use Krita as an alternative! 💕
It’s an alternative image manipulation software. It’s not a great replacement for PS though.
The better alternative to Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign is Affinity. And yeah, while it’s not actually free, you only have to pay once and everything is yours.
Or for quick free edits, Photopea.
Upvote for photopea.com it’s crazy how much functionality it has, love that site.
Absolutely amazing software, 10000/10
Photopea on the other hand is amazing
I 100% agree, I actually hate GIMP almost as much as I hate Photoshop.
Paint.net is a significantly better software for light to medium image manipulation, and Affinity is what I’d say is an actual replacement for Photoshop. Affinity isn’t by any means FOSS but you can’t win them all.
The problem with GIMP is not its features, it’s how they were implemented. The software isn’t intuitive like Photoshop.
What do we say instead of r/woosh now?
Just woosh, like a normal person.
We don’t.
I’ve been here since the blackout and everything is great, apart from a few times when the site seemed a bit slow. I don’t even miss reddit anymore.
Try using an instance close to your house, with good ping. It makes a huge difference.
Go to https://fediverse.observer/map and select Lemmy instances.
I’m using wefwef right now, and its all running pretty smoothly. No complaints here
Maybe im used to Boost on reddit but damn, does it feel weird to vote/reply using 3 dots on the right lol.
You’re upvoting wrong, my friend.
Try sliding the comment / post from left to right. Slide further to downvote.
Yes, exactly! That’s my main grip with wefwef, same as not being able to swipe right to exit a thread and go back to the feed.
But most of the current apps lack some sort of behaviour customizations we’re used to, so I’m keeping two or three of them checked in case of updates.
Thank goodness I’m not the only one with this problem! I’ve gotten into the habit of sliding right from the lines in between posts, but imo this should be taken care of(especially to imitate the quality greatness that was the Apollo app).
Im pretty sure all these apps got created just this month so they would obviously not be feature complete yet, when i joined the only apps were jerboa and mlem
wefwef.app votes with swipes from the left. Short swipe to upvote, long swipe to downvote
I have seen wefwef cited a bit now, what is it? Forgive my ignorance, but I’m new to Lemmy and I’m still learning. It is not an app, is it a website? I have tried to connect to wefwef.net but with no success, so I’m a bit confused.
wefwef.app works for me
It’s lemmy client. It’s perfect in every way. Check it out at wefwef.app
Is it an app or only a website?
You can install it as an app. I don’t know about iOS, but on Android go to wefwef.app, click the three dots in the top right, and click the install button, and it will appear to be just like any other app.
It’s very similar on IOS. Press the “share” icon and select “Add to Home Screen”.
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Thanks! Now on WefWef!
It’s a website that you can install as an app on your phone. That’s called a “Progressive Web App” (PWA).
Workplace’ WiFi was blocking it, now I managed to get it installed. Seems nice, thanks for the help!
I’ve installed it and quite like it on first feel. However for the love of god I can’t find the subscribe button when clicking on a community, care to point it out what I’m (obviously) missing?
When you are on the community view, not inside a discussion: Top right ellipses (three dots) > Subscribe
Ooh thanks!
Welcome!
wefwef.app works for me
My only issues is with when returning to all posts it freezes sometimes. But that can be due to I’m on iPhone and this is PWA
Memmy is great too, and also on both Android and iOS
You do have to build it yourself for Android right now though, hope it’ll be on the playstore soon.
Same on my iPhone. Hope they fix that in the next couple of weeks.
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
UX in open source software is mostly fine for those who built it for them selves or people in the same environment.
As soon as stuff gets built for others with other requirements empathy declines, and I don’t mean this disrespectful. Good professional UX sources are needed, indeed to fill this gap. But will they be able to convince the open source devs who often were Initiator of the projects?
I’m not missing anything, OP complained about people not easily ditching closed/centralized software and I gave an answer.
I know devs are doing it as a hobby or with donations, that’s on them and they know who their target will be and how much effort is it worth to do it user-friendly or not or how big of a scope they aim for.We’re talking about the normal user and why they decide to stick to centralized or move to FOSS and why it’s so hard for them to do it.
That’s not contrary to what he said at all, it’s just another layer of why things are the way they are.
If you want the average joes, you need good ux. If you don’t have it, you won’t get/keep them.
Maybe there are good reasons why you don’t have decent ux. Maybe other people only do because they spend money. Maybe you can find a way around that, maybe you can’t.
Doesn’t matter. Good user experience means you keep users, bad user experience means you don’t.
The main reason is that ux design is difficult, complex but not always rewarding. Few people do it “as hobby”. Companies make money out of UX design. As in the example of Apple, they could find a lot of open source good quality software, but they needed the ui to seel it in macs, iPhones and ipads.
Another example is steam deck. Its OS is just arch linux, with an incredible UI (built by valve), and it is currently more popular than windows handhelds.
Many open source solutions are of greater quality than corresponding proprietary stuff (anyone who has ever worked in a corporate environment also knows why, corporates are elephants trying to create a swiss watch). What open source solutions are missing are companies paying to create user experience.
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.
So here’s something I learned about two years ago. GIMP sucks.
Hate on me all you like, but paint.net is the superior program.
Open office is fine. I got it to write up resumes and the few odd things. It did it’s job fine.
Spreadsheets is a different thing because I only use Excel at work and haven’t looked into it past that.
GIMP sucks so much that I prefer installing a virtual Windows machine running Photoshop to using GIMP.
Have you tried newer versions of Gimp? It’s taken major strides forward.
As it may have, there‘s still no equivalent to PS’ smart objects, unfortunately. That’s by far the biggest deal breaker to me.
Well thats true for all software - being free/libre or not. It just takes time to get used to it.
For example, when I get a new phone - I spend the next months complaining over how much better the previous one was, until I dont.
same as it ever was, if they are so hung up on thier particular flow then they should likely just go back and check in later, the software will evolve.
freedom is work…shocker.
Exactly, the world will never have a shortage of people who want all the privileges but none of the responsibilities.
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Lemmy is absolutely easy to use. once you created an account. But a lot of people have problems with that.
Said who?
saw many posts on reddit were people registered and could not log in, did not get confirmation mail, had too long names/PW issues… I could not register first, worked at the second or third attempt.
