Honestly, its gotta be the MS Office suite.
Yes if you're just writing your own simple documents libreoffice/OpenOffice will work, but if you have to do anything more complex than a single page spreadsheet, text-on-white presentations, or 3 page MLA book reports.... or, even worse, have to interact with documents and spreadsheets created by basically any other person on the planet, I've just never had a good consistent experience with any of the free options.
Disagree. Libreoffice is pretty capable for most use cases nowadays.
Compatibility is also pretty good with Microsoft formats despite Microsoft‘s best efforts.
OpenOffice is dead.
unfortunately "pretty good" is not "guaranteed", which is often what I need for both work and school. I tried to make myself use only libre options for like a week and just about every assignment I opened was broken in some way or another so I always ended up back in Word.
I'll still use the libreoffice options if i'm, say, already logged into my Linux install and don't want to bother going back to Windows. But since I get Office for free thru work and school, and so does everyone else, well... I just use it.
it's pretty capable in term of most functionalities but you can't get the formatting, e. g. word docs, exactly one-to-one with its MS office version counterpart. So it would be difficult to share to multiplatforms users.
And Microsoft intentionally introduce bugs in its files design so that certain functionalities will be extremely difficult to replicate.
Not sure how it is nowadays, but back in 2018 Libreoffice Calc was struggling to handle even a single sheet of data entries, performance-wise, let alone multiple sheets.
I'm not expecting it to have every feature imaginable, but I do expect it to not freeze when processing even a relatively small dataset.
As someone that despises MS Office, LibreOffice is even worse. All I wanted to do was create a simple database of contact info, donation info, and reservation scheduling for a small nonprofit. Something I could do in minutes in Access. Let me tell you the database part of LibreOffice SUCKS. You can’t even import csv’s! Best you can do is copy paste cells into fields and Hope all the formatting and data types work. And connecting to other external data sources is an incredible pain. I found MS Office on sale for $35 and threw LibreOffice in the trash where it belongs.
If you have to interact with documents created by others it would be better to use open formats not proprietary shit designed to be not cross compatible
Unfortunately industry and academia does not view it in such a manner... those microsoft contracts are too appealing for them lol
Eh, beamer is more than enough for most presentations. If your slideshow needs to be that flashy, you probably need more substance.
git puts track changes to shame.
You're absolutely right about compatibility though.
If you're using git to track document changes then you're almost certainly in the tech industry and are quite familiar with the inner workings of your computer.
For 90% of people using computers right now, asking them to use git to do version management on their day to day work flow would be like asking me to fly a rocket ship to work.
I agree with the OP here, for what it does office is leaps and bounds ahead of any of the other software I've used to try to replace it and I always end up landing back on it.
There are many non-technical people in the world of mathematics and they manage to use LaTeX just fine. Overleaf offers synchronization without needing to touch Git.
Imo using a text based tool for presentations is really counterproductive because presentations should use as little text as possible.
For me currently, libreoffice impress is actually the best option because it has all the necessary features (wysiwyg style editing, svg support, latex equations, some animations).
I don't need office much but when I do, I hate that I can never find what I'm looking for in that stupid ribbon. I also don't know any good MS Access alternative.
Whatsapp. Everyone in India uses it. Its like the imessage situation in the US. So widespread.
Schools, college, friend groups, family groups all are on whatsapp.
there's a kerala lemmy? thats neat
telegram is used a lot in slav countries, i feel like its pretty decent
Thanks. May I ask what is so cool about the instance that I am on? ;)
How am I supposed to message people when the only messaging app they use is whatsapp and facebook messenger (which I don't use)?
I guess the only easy alternative is to use SMS and email since everyone use it. But it is not safe.
I am always open to alternatives like Signal, Element,etc. But no one use them. I am not going to force people to use a messaging app.
That’s what I came here to post. People always think that other software are actual options. If you are using drools rules then other software can’t even follow the xlsx standard properly enough to even allow drools to compile correctly. It sucks because I’d rather not have to get licenses for my whole team to use excel when there’s plenty of free options and we don’t even use it that much, but it’s just so far into another league it isn’t even close.
I mean, maybe, but that doesn't really change anything. Excel is better for a lot of use cases and whether that's due to terrible antitrust violations or not doesn't really change the fact of the matter. I honestly would love to use Libre or Open office, and it's literally the first thing I tried, it just doesn't work for most of the things I would need it for.
MacOS instead of some Linux distro. Mostly because of the hardware that comes with it, making a neat integrated product.
Discord over Matrix. The range of features plus the style of the client. I like soundboard and emotes. its easy to setup a server and invite people.
You cannot setup servers on Discord.
https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/discord
While that is true, that's also not what people mean when they say 'servers' in this context. No of course they're not actual servers, but that's what they're called and I don't think anyone is under the impression they're actually servers
I find a lot of admins forget or neglect bridges which can be frustrating
The only real problem with affinity is lack of Linux support. Otherwise I love it.
Absolutely, Affinity Photo is really good. Publisher is okay (buggy and slow, though, at least in 1.2 it was, haven't tried 2.0), but Designer is miles behind Inkscape in my experience. It has just so little functionality. I'm not exactly a heavy vector user so I could be wrong too.
I've tried with open source DAWs but audio software is still decades behind in the open source world. I'm on Reaper and Ableton but I would love to ditch them. Toontrack products on linux is a pipe dream too. I've had nothing but issues over the years so still need to dual boot.
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Discord (proprietary) vs. Matrix (open-source)
- Reason: for its search functionality.
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Steam (proprietary) vs. GameVault (open-source)
- Reason: Steam offers a polished user experience, a large library of games, and a well-established community.
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Spotify (proprietary) vs. Funkwhale (open-source)
- Reason: Spotify offers a more polished user interface, a larger library of music, and personalized recommendations.
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Strong or Hevy (proprietary) vs. ? (open-source)
- Reason: offers a user-friendly interface and a wide range of features for tracking workouts.
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Moon+ Reader Pro (proprietary) vs. FBReader (open-source)
- Reason: for its intuitive interface and customizable reading experience.
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Sleep as Android (proprietary) vs. ? (open-source)
- Reason: for the variety of features and integrations with other devices.
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Google Maps (proprietary) vs. OpenStreetMap (open-source)
- Reason: for its accurate maps, real-time traffic updates, and extensive points of interest.
Will try it, thanks. https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.koreader.launcher.fdroid/
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Excel. There's just basic stuff with LibreOffice and OnlyOffice that work like crap. Like why in LibreOffice when I type =sum then hit tab does it think I'm done with the formula instead of adding the ( and letting me put in the first input. It's awful.
Libre office's filtering is far better though- being able to apply actual regex instead of Excel's weird proprietary pattern matching is just so much better that I opt for it most of the time.
I'm not usually doing any filtering of information. I'm doing calculation based analysis on tax returns for commercial loan underwriting.
Honestly anything I can't do easily in Google docs probably means I should just do it in Python anyway.
I need spreadsheets for work in commercial loan underwriting. We don't have a commercial underwriting system yet so all our templates are excel based. I waited to move to Linux solely because of Excel when working from home. During COVID though my work finally gave everyone laptops so I didn't need to do work on my personal rig anymore.
I am a big fan of LibreOffice in general and there is not much I need that I cannot do. That said, I agree that Calc has lots of little usability paper cuts like the one you describe that make using Excel a lot more pleasant.
Visual studio code. There's nothing else that's anywhere near as good that doesn't cost money. Those annoying terminal text editors just don't do it for me. I need code autocomplete and do not understand how there exist people who have the patience to get by without it. I do not have the time to be switching tabs 20 times a second because I can't remember function parameter overloads. That intellisense autocomplete is just too good.
both GNU emacs and vim can have autocompletion powered by the same language servers that vscode uses. They support the same features (jump to definition, rename symbol under cursor etc etc) as well.
If you go with vim you might also want to consider using neovim specifically
Youtube, newpipe doesnt feels good to me No playlist No comment replies
So no🙁No playlist? Wdym? There's a fork called PipePipe which has comment replies.
You actually use the comment section on YouTube?
It’s one of the worst and least informative in my opinion.
Google Maps, there is not even 1 good alternative for maps osm is there but it will take a lot more users and volunteers to perform as well as google maps and i dont think thats gonna happen Google maps don't have any foss frontend too and i dont know if its possible to make one
Depending on location probably, my experience is that OSM is much better in Europe than gmaps.
The only issue is missing traffic but that can not happen without tracking anyway.
Most of the time here it isn't even that the base data is bad, it's just that UIs behave horribly. Especially stuff like searching for things.
Then there's also that real-time data is just.. missing. No info on live traffic or even longer term stuff like construction.
Steam and Discord, but mainly Steam.
If you told me I had to go 100% FOSS tomorrow, I could do it pretty easily, except for those two apps.
95% of my games are through Steam, and 95% of all my friends, family, and online community are in Discord. I could probably even dump Discord and convince some of my closest friends and FAM to switch to a Matrix client or something. But giving up Steam would mean I would basically be giving up nearly all gaming in my life.
And contrary to many other FOSS enthusiasts, I actually think Steam and Discord are great apps. I've rarely had issues with them, especially Steam. The UI is decent, the features are great, (Steam game join, Workshop mods, etc.) And Discord works really well on Linux for me, and GrapheneOS on my phone.
Of those two, I'd rather dump Discord. Valve is generally a very FOSS friendly company and pretty consumer friendly compared to most multi-billion dollar corpos. And what they've done recently for Linux gaming over the last few years with Proton, the Steam Deck, etc has has made gaming on Linux a wonderful experience for me.
Recently I have been trying to get into more FOSS games and GoG DRM-free games as an insurance policy for what I know is coming down the line one day. Gabe will either retire, pass away, or be bought out by a corpo/capital investment firm and Valve will become victim to the enshitification effect like all other proprietary software.
There is a small hope I have, idk if this is even possible, but what if Gabe chooses to open source some or all of the Steam code instead of letting it get bought out or taken over by somebody else? That would allow for the FOSS community to fork it and build a FOSS Steam.
Like I said though, a pipe dream for now. Long live FOSS!
I could probably dump discord, but there's just no alternative to Steam. It succeeded, where literally every other publisher failed, to unify game distribution on the PC. Even if valve made steam itself FOSS and let anyone clone it, there's no chance in hell they'll get anyone but the most indi of studios to launch anything on it, let alone exclusively.
Of all the proprietary codebases and their companies, Steam and Valve are the only ones I respect.
(Also Slack, but I'm forced to use that for work)
OSM over HERE/Apple/Google maps. It has much much better mapping of footpaths, which makes it much more useful for planning runs/walks/hikes.
Join our community: !openstreetmap@lemmy.ml
Also, you answered the question backwards, but I don't mind XD
Photoshop over Gimp Krita, etc. Just too many features and years ahead nearest competitor
Photoshop, Fences, Plex, Steam, Unraid. I just highly prefer them to any alternatives I have tried. And believe me, I have tried every alternative to Photoshop and Fences that I could find. They just don't do it. And because of those two in particular, I have to add Windows to the list.
Oh, and I guess Sync for Lemmy. The only reason I even know what Lemmy is, is the fact that the Sync for Reddit app stopped working and basically said, "Yeah, move to Lemmy, idiot."
Decent list though I actually prefer Jellyfin to Plex.
I don’t get Steam really. I guess it could be Open Source but the whole concept is essentially commercial by definition. It is an App Store for games.
Totally valid to add Windows if it is the only things that runs the other programs you need. Photoshop is one of the few mainstream apps that has no true competitor on Linux.
Check out Affinity Photo. Doesn't do everything Photoshop does, but it's a hell of a lot cheaper and lighter.
Spotify. I've wanted to use Funkwhale since it's self-hosted and federated but I couldn't give up all that Spotify offers.
Took me a while but I'm happy with navidrome/symfonium/slskd/tailscale in place of spotify.
Could you expand a bit on how your setup works? I think I get the big picture, but not sure how tailscale fits into it.
Tailscale just so everything works out and about with minimal effort.
I have Navidrome on my pi4 streaming/transcoding to my Android with Symfonium.
Slskd runs on my pi and can be access via my phone browser.
Makes it simple to acress slsk anywhere, download flac and stream it right back as mp3.
