this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2025
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No Stupid Questions

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A big one for me is Microsoft office (desktop), Libreoffice and other FOSS alternatives just simply don't come close, and feature wise are 20 years behind. Especially since I basically mastered MS office 2007+'s drawing features, which the FOSS alternatives don't replicate very well.

And of course Microsoft loves to push Office 365. I don't pay for that and just use desktop office, but Microsoft prefers you don't know that you can do this.

And I'm going to get shit on by Lemmy big time for this but while Linux is great and has made vast improvements in recent years, I still use Windows, not only because of MS office, but because a lot of games tend to only support Windows. I know that wine and proton exist but they're not perfect and don't feel quite the same as running native.

I wish an operating system existed with a hybridized Linux and clone NT kernel (using code from FOSS Wine and ReactOS of course) so that the numerous back catalog of NT software can run similar to as intended while also interacting with Linux programs better and using a shared environment. Since it would probably become vulnerable to viruses for windows as well, maybe? (my programming knowledge is extremely rusty) an antivirus similar to Windows defender is bundled with the operating system. Hopefully if someone makes such an operating system it can be a Windows killer and would switch immediately

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

I'm not sure I follow. LibreOffice is at least as good (if not better) than Offics365 unless maybe if you're doing advanced shit in Excel, or need specifically coded macros.

Considering Microsoft's push to make everything into a webwrapped application, I think LibreOffice is only going to be a better and better alternative as time moves on.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago

I mean LO is pretty good, but it is a bit rough to find what you want. At a min its more difficult to format your sheets in LO.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 hours ago

@VirusMaster3073 music DAWs. I think the only real option is Ardour, but I tried it and was struggling to just figure out how to create a couple instrument tracks. Could be skill issue, but honestly I'm pretty good at figuring out UIs so if I was struggling a lot with the basics, it's probably not just me. So I'm still on garageband for now which doesn't get in my way when I'm trying to make music

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I'd like to see an open-source decentralized game store, like a competitor to Steam, GOG, etc. However, I think it should also target emulators. There's still an unfounded stigma toward emulation even though emulators themselves are legal, and even though the big AAA game companies themselves are now using them as a lazy way to repackage and resell their old games on new platforms.

One of the biggest barriers to entry into emulation is the setup. Even with super user-friendly frontends like Emulation Station, people are still required to either go out of their way to either legally backup the games they already own, or told to "do some searches," because of legal issues. Nevermind how this exposes new users to potential malware.

But people still make new games for these old systems. It's entirely possible to make a store that can sell ROMs legally - one already exists, itch.io. But imagine a federated open-source game store, one where game makers can choose to legally sell their own games, and then create plugins for the emulation frontends to allow people to buy roms directly from those interfaces. It would turn emulation into a fully complete console-like experience, all while being available on more platforms than any console could ever hope to be (including those same consoles when they're jailbroken!)

I also think it would be the final puzzle piece that legitimizes emulation.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago

This sounds dreamy

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 hours ago

Xodo pdf annotator

It seems all pdf annotators are allergic to letting me have

  1. The ability to change the text I've highlighted without deleting the entire highlight
  2. Several different highlighter colours and opacities

They seem like really silly requirements, but they make a huge difference to how long it takes me to get through my readings for class.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Adobe After Effects!! PLEASE DEAR GOD

This is the singular thing still keeping me using Adobe software. If this was replaced then I could be FREEE

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago

I'm curious how DaVinci resolve's fusion page compares?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

MS Office isn’t better than LibreOffice and OnlyOffice, they all do the same task of making docs, spreadsheets, and presentations with very similar UI. It’s a no brainer to use the one that doesn’t bug you to use OneDrive.

Linux gaming has come a long way, especially with the introduction of things like Proton and popularisation of it by the Steam Deck. If you can play games on the Steam Deck, those games run on Linux :D

The main reasons (mind you, not only reasons) why people don’t just switch to Linux is:

  • it’s different (humans naturally gravitate towards things they are familiar with)
  • partly because Linux has a few things that are unintuitive to the average user (e.g. using terminal), but distros like Mint have mostly solved this issue
  • Switching itself is really annoying (I would say I’m in this boat, but I’ve installed Linux on my old computers and will definitely do it again if I ever get a new computer)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 12 hours ago

The entire phone-based ecosystem.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 12 hours ago

One of the most frustrating programs for me is digiKam. On paper, it's the perfect DAM/photo manager. But it's kinda slow for day-to-day use. The user interface is janky in a lot of ways. It doesn't see constant refinement either. It doesn't even speak to me as a metadata nerd because I don't want to turn my metadata into a janky mess. Yeah, you have a powerful metadata editor. It's like a welding torch without any eye protection.

I'm using ACDSee on Windows, because it's operating on pretty much the same principle (image file metadata is canonical, app database is just for indexing), but it's faster and smoother to use. Not perfect, it has its mild limitations (like why the hell doesn't it support OpenStreetMap - Google Maps kinda sucks for nature trails, you'd think photographers would have pointed this out), but it's just so much more efficient. If digiKam ever gets a huge UI overhaul, switching over will probably be fairly easy though.

Also about a decade ago, I would have said that as far as novel writing software/large structured document word processors go, nothing beats Scrivener. Scrivener is still probably the best software in its niche, but it looks like a bunch of open source word processors in this niche have come a long way. Currently looking at novelWriter, which seems really rad.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

I have still quite literally found no other tool, even paid products, that can interior-crop the way IrfanView can (select row/column Y in XYZ if the entire image was XYZ, and crop out that inner part and auto-tuck X and Z directly against each other). And it's had this feature for decades, I think.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

Not exactly the same, but similar: when working with sprites for games, I often run into situations where I realize way too late that I need the size of each frame to be slightly larger than what I had been working with it. You'd think that having the ability to resize an image by adding extra padding to each individual frame would be a pretty common feature in image editing software these days, but nope. I ended up writing a small tool specifically for that just so I wouldn't have to adjust frame by frame ever again.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago

The thing that used to always piss me off was when you tried to upscale stuff in Photoshop and it looked perfect. Then you bit enter and it anti-aliases the absolute fuck out of it. Like what?!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 13 hours ago

ImageJ is great for stuff like that. Fiji is probably a better route for less fuss (Fiji Is Just ImageJ, plus some popular plugins)

[–] [email protected] 14 points 19 hours ago

I'm sorry but... 20 years behind? What new features has, say, Word even offered in the past 20 years beside that damn ribbon?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 23 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 minutes ago

It's the only reason I keep a windows VM around. Windows is getting so naggy though. Every time I boot it up, it wants me to update it, install virus scanner and ser up my user on microsoft vs local.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That's amusing to me. Back around 2010, I used a lot of state legal forms that they only released as PDF files, but not fillable. It was annoying to print them and fill them by hand, and terribly fiddly to use the PDF annotation tool on the computer.

So I just used OpenOffice.org to create almost-pixel-perfect versions of the forms, with fillable text boxes, then exported them as PDF. Word couldn't do it at the time.

Now, at work, I use Microsoft365 because that's what everyone uses because of the site license. I wish we'd switch to something else, because Outlook fails so hard at basic email stuff.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago

With all the political shit going on these days, it baffles me why companies continue to use anything that stores data in cloud servers owned by American companies. I don't care where the data centres actually are, the parent company is foreign and aside from "trust me bro" I'm not sure what else is preventing them from snooping sensitive information.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Microsoft Access. I have one database that I need that's written in Access, and although I suppose I could convert it to some other system it would be a chore and I'm not that driven to make the change.

I've moved almost everything else onto Linux.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I heard https://www.onlyoffice.com/ is good, but have no personal experience.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 14 hours ago

I have tested power point & word of only office. Its nicer to use than what libre office offers, has more effects than word but the thing thats missing is moving objects around.

I think its a solid replacement for word, not entirely feature complete but in exchange some nice features.

It has pricing whick can be an instant no but i think the pricing is fair for what is offered (especcially when compared to word)

but i think some program like calc/excel is missing so you have to get another program!
but i think what other libre programs offer there is nice so no real problem

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 14 hours ago

no
At least not as far as i know
https://www.onlyoffice.com/blog/2025/02/onlyoffice-docs-8-3-released
But closed source i think

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