KDE

I am super impressed by Blender, but there's not really a substitute for After Effects yet, open source or otherwise.

It's really not that bad. Depending on what you are doing. Personally I always seem to be learning new software, My goal is to not pay a monthly sub. I'm mostly using Clip Studio, which... yes, it's a sub, so... dumb. But GIMP isn't super user friendly, it does get a lot done though.

@bufalo1973 I've gotten some mixed feedback by the community in the past that was discouraging enough to dissuade getting involved, but I'm reconsidering it now. Thanks for the input!

The issue comes when trying to convince many people used to the old tools to adopt the new one. Having to un- and relearn your skills is a massive UX hurdle. That's not an issue of the users, but of the application not catering to that use case (encouraging people to switch and easing them into the new environment). Every difficulty, every extra step you have to take, every workflow habit you have to adapt is a detriment.

The tools can be great in a vacuum, but when we're talking about people switching, they're no longer in a vacuum.

hi! this is a way of reacting to criticism that I feel very often, but this is misleading to me because it does not consider the most important structural factor, that is the environment in which it "grows", also digitally. you are inhabited since young people to use the pc in a certain way, to use programs in a certain way. for me the FOSS software is a political issue, if it is important that people approach you should mediate through interfaces and beautiful workflows to see (and imo current ones are not beautiful) and easy to adopt for those coming from the most mainstream programs.

if it is believed that the software foss is official remains in the niche in which it is locate (so that people outside the FOSS or should not approach or can do it hard to get used to a new way of using IT means, thus invisible the structural action of society and responsibilities and culpritizing the individual people without doing a collective and broad analysis, typical discussion brought by non-politicized or liberal people) while the rest of society is devoured by multinationals I understand it but I do not agree: I consider it part of a political struggle also anti-capitalist

@Bro666 i appreciate your reply! I'll link you to my response to a different post here outlining a bit more of my experience. tl;dr, I've used multiple programs in personal and academic settings. Some FOSS options are great and comparable! Some miss the mark, even if they get close. It's not for lack of trying, it's that out of the multiple programs I've learned over the years, the FOSS options tend to be the odd ones out.

https://woof.tech/@crocodisle/112579981685976482

Even blender is guity of this with its default control scheme being the odd one out among Maya, Unity, and Substance, but it can be modified enough to make up for this and has other attractive aspects to make it a worthy contender. Digital tools tend to be used in an ecosystem that they are integrated with. Learning new workflows if fine, but there's value in being able to do what's already being done well in a similar way without much fuss.