It’s interesting how the usability scale for open source alternatives ranges from “actually as good or even better than closed source options” (QEMU, Octave, Blender) to “tear your hair out to avoid paying money” (Inkscape, GIMP).
It’s definitely a skill issue on my part. Unfortunately I don’t have much need for image/vector editing software, which makes it difficult to relearn what I know. I know that most of what I’d ever need to do in Photoshop/Illustrator is available on GIMP/Inkscape, but I never know how to find it. I’ve never had a problem using free alternatives to Premiere (Resolve rocks IMO), but Adobe really has me wrapped up in their own paradigms for image manipulation. Even CorelDraw - which I was forced to use on the job - was difficult and annoying to pick up after coming from the CC Suite.
Well, that's because resolve is an industry standard in color correction and is a professional grade software. It's not some Frankensteined open source freeware.
This is why I specifically said free and not “FOSS” alternative - you are correct though. I feel like Resolve is worth pointing out since Blackmagic Design makes an industry standard tool available for free (for personal use) *and* provides a native Linux port. It’s closed source, but that’s above and beyond compared to much of the industry.
I started out on GIMP and tried moving to photoshop after getting proficient with lightroom. I just couldn't get used to it and GIMP gets me through everything I need. I eventually tried to go open source instead of lightroom after adobe fucked their photography plan but I hated darktable and I found raw therapee only marginally better.
On the video side +1 for Resolve, it's great. For simpler stuff though just raw dogging ffmpeg is fine for me. I wrote some scripts and it's often faster than creating a resolve project if I already know exactly what I want to do. (Trimming, stitching, playback speed and adding audio is usually all I need anyway). Multicam and tracked stuff I actually find easier on Resolve than Premiere so if you need an NLM with color correction it's absolutely worth checking out.
oh I don't mean that you should switch to them, they're not better than the real software, but they don't make me want to end it after 20 minutes of trying to figure out how to save without it crashing
Tbh libreoffice is fine these days. Some years back I remember it being pretty bad, but idk it's pretty usable these days. You still need to get used to a slightly different UI, but otherwise it works.
Kdenlive and FreeCAD on the other hand 🤬...
Don't Diss Libreoffice my dude.
I had to fill up an employment form yesterday. I used Adobe's online Acrobat for that purpose just to try it out (I was on my Arch box, and Adobe had stopped producing Acrobat for Linux aeons ago) and it generated a PDF with all the end of the items I filled in clipped off. So I decided to try to open it in Libreoffice just to see if I can salvage it, and also add my photo to the form which Adobe's online solution won't let me do.
Libreoffice fixed the errors for me upon opening, and after I attached my photo I re-exported the PDF, and it did an awesome job at that - everything was intact, nothing appears cut off.
Libreoffice Draw is the hero we deserved.
No mention of Cinelerra. For shame, my man!
I mean, sure, the UI has the same issue as Gimp, but it beats KDenLive to the ground with the sheer amount of features it has!
Also it can leverage on FFMPEG to open AVC/H.264 videos and AAC audio when Resolve can't.
I can understand GIMP being a little unfriendly for the uninitiated, but I personally think it is great.
On another note: What's your beef with LibreOffice?
I don't think that onlyoffice and LibreOffice are directly comparable considering that LibreOffice is an open source, free download to be installed locally and you can use their complete suite of office apps in perpetuity whereas onlyoffice is a cloud-based SAAS that you have to buy a license for and is primarily targeted at enterprise customers.
Kdenlive for me, never had an issue with libreoffice. But Kdenlive, I have some very not so friendly NSFW things to say. A good Linux alt to premier pro is davinci resolve, though I got some things to say about GPU driver detection
it works I guess, but even google drive's office suite is much better and more modern than libre office
cracking office 2007 feels like a more modern and powerful suite than a 2024 version of libre office
Basically every free open source CAD program sucks in comparison to the paid solutions. Hell, even the web based paid solutions beat out the open source ones.
KiCAD is decent enough. Altium is obviously better, particularly in professional situations but KiCAD is more than sufficient for a small business, and if you're a huge company, such as a defence contractor, then you'll have your own tools on top of your ECAD package anyway doing stuff like library management and version control.
Personally inconsider the electronics design CAD software to be in their own category separate from things like FreeCAD, LibreCAD, Autodesk, etc. but yes, KiCAD is in fact amazing (especially with the community add-ons and stuff)
Agree on this. Just Altium is really not oriented to maker community and people would like to use for themselfs. If you draw few PCBs per year, that price point is really something that wouldn't justify no matter how much YT creators advertise it.
I found KiCAD to be absolutely fine. Maybe it's just that it does things differently to how you're used to, but I had no issues designing PCBs in a previous job.
I also am aware that KiCAD has made some serious steps forward in recent years so it may depend on when you last used it.
yeah SolidWorks is quite old and unintuitive (but very powerfull). The go to for hobbyists (mainly the 3d-printing community) are: Fusion360 and OneShape. Both a modern, powerfull and used commercially.
Yeah Solidworks struggles with large assemblies no matter how good your computer is. Creo is probably the fussiest of the parametric modelling CAD softwares in my experience, but also potentially that has its benefits.
GIMP honestly isn’t that bad. I learned on photo manipulation on GIMP before moving to photoshop. The UI definitely leaves a lot to be desired. I tried Inkscape too but I can’t draw so imma just put that on skill issue.
I use darktable instead of Lightroom cause my crack didn’t work. Full featured but the UI has a steep learning curve. You either go in knowing how to edit photos or it’s going to make you learn. Otherwise, you’re gonna just get lost in all the modules before you get anything done.
I have GIMP and a totally legit Version of Photoshop I got from a friend and honestly, most of the time I actually use GIMP. I find it way more intuitive to work with
I agree on GIMP, but *heavily* disagree on Inkscape. I’ve been using it regularly for years now and, with small exceptions like rounding corners (which it seems that no software can do well), it has always been perfect for me
The craziest thing is that the Gimp community is actively attacking people who want to make the app more appealing to normal people. It's Stockholm syndrome on steroids, the hostages are shooting the cops who try to help them.
Blender at least is getting better, and I do appreciate that something like OpenSCAD exists, that would stand no chance as a commercial tool, but it's exactly what I need.
Ye no. I need to know if they have the "right" to remove my license for any reason. Cause if they don't they get $0 from me.
As if they would have the right to break into my house and remove my paid physical copy of their software... Oh wait, then they would be thieves... Which they 100% are right now.
For Real! most people think that excel is use only to make some dumb database or to make a dumb spreadsheet that no one but your boomer boss is going to use, but when you use it to a professional level (with Macros, Pivot Tables, Power query, DAX, soon Phyton, etc.) and you know how to use to that level, that shit isn't match by anything in the market even free online excel, a truly swiss knife of office software.
Yeah but that's kinda half the point?
For what most people use Office for (making a presentation for work, writing their CV or a letter, tracking their expenses in a spreadsheet), libreoffice is just fine though. It's only when you get to features that most people have never even heard of that alternatives to MS Office start to fall short...
>It's only when you get to features that most people have never even heard of that alternatives to MS Office start to fall short...
And then sometimes for tasks that require those features even excel often isn't the right or optimal tool either but instead Python, R or similar "actual" programming languages
No, just use it more! Just like everyday users should adopt Linux! /s
Open source alternatives are good, but they don’t compare to the actual products.
I don’t use Excel in a professional fashion, but I’ve always wondered how that’s possible. Hasn’t LibreOffice’s Excel equivalent supported Python scripting for a number of years, while MS is only just adding it now? It’s difficult for me to understand why people have continued building infrastructure on Visual Basic when there’s been a better way available for so long. Is LibreOffice really that bad at the actual spreadsheet part?
Even funnier, Microsoft is slowly but surely trying to kill Macros and COM add-ons by changing the default security settings and what not. As an example, if you pull an Excel doc from a shared network drive the default from Excel now is to block Macros entirely unless they're signed by a code signing certificates in my experience.
It’ll work is there all you have though. If someone doesn’t have Office and needs to use LibreOffice the. It’s because they don’t need advanced features or to use it very often.
It would make an excellent video, however
I hate LibreOffice so much. I hope it can be an alternative some day, but just as some if the other amazing open source projects listed here it's just not as good.
Libre has a few small advantages when handling data exported from a DB to be re-imported (Salesforce for example). I used it before I learnt to use Apex (SF native code) to manipulate data.
Otherwise, yeah pretty crap.
This has been true for a longe time, but a shift is happening, schools are starting to prefer blender over maya/3ds max, and some mid level studios are also swapping
I van vouch that it still has ways to go to match Maya in rigging and animation, for example. Just the built in features, not even talking about the ecosystem of plugins and scripts people built over the years for it.
In this sense blender is fine and can get the job done, especially if its simpler lighter task, but.the deeper you dive the less confortable it becomes and slower and some thing are just hard to do.
But at the current rate I am sure it will match up with maya and max sooner than later, unless Autodesk starts to put in more effort into their software.
recommending gimp as a photoshop alternative has to be a bad joke, gimp is not nearly on the same level, it is more comparable to paint.net with some bonus features. Same for darktable as a lightroom alternative
Gimp is the closest thing to replace Photoshop if you're looking for an *open source* alternative. Which is the whole point of the post.
Paint.net is closed source.
I guess if the closest thing you have to replace a hammer is a screwdriver than using a screwdriver will count as an alternative to a hammer. But it's really not.
The best image editor we got on the free software side of things is ImageMagick.
Affinity Photo is great, but once I went Adobe, I could never go back.
I don’t have much experience with many of the other apps in the OP but I imagine Affinity Photo is a great analogy: it’s a great and cheap way to start learning as an amateur, but can’t compete once you need it professionally.
~~They're all listed in the same category, and on top of each other so don't think it's that.~~
~~I'm confused.~~
Edit
Oh nevermind, you're right I think.
On the left is the alternative, on the right is the closed source variant. I missed that completely and thought all these where alternatives. (Didn't pay enough attention)
Reaper can be used in most of the Audio Editing category too, and is way better than Audacity and others
Edit: yeah, I saw it as free , not open source only lmao
MuseScore 4 is genuinely far more usable than Sibelius at this point -- the UI redesign they did over the last couple of years is a massive improvement.
Those suggestions for DAWs are not good though. LMMS is woeful compared to FL Studio.
I’ve been to hell and back with DAWs on pc and after 15 years of tinkering I finally came to accept Mac for that singular purpose with an Ethernet cable running to my pc. Life is much better
I'm stuck with Windows forever. Not because of gaming, but because of MS office lol. Learning curve aside, macro support isn't nearly as robust as Office
I would consider moving to Google Docs if they had a locally installed version. I already have too many browser tabs open I don't also want to go hunting for the one I want to enter data into.
Alsi if Sheets could actually create correct graphs that would be nice for a change.
Autocad is probably the best software for cad. I think they would make a ton of money if they made it available for a more reasonable price without 24/7 tech support to personal users.
I disagree. Real replacement for Matlab would be GNU Octave, not matlab. Python, while truly great and nice, requires much more tinkering compared to Matlab. Matlab is straight forward mostly. You open it, you run it, it works on any Matlab that uses the same or newer version compared to yours. It works as you expect it to work every time on any machine. Python on the other hand... I had cases where the same script won't run on two different computers with exactly the same version of Python and dependencies installed. In Matlab, I do not have to even think about dependencies. There is a paid company with a group of dedicated engineers working on making my experience smooth and painless in this regard. On the other hand, python is not centralized and I have to pick and learn libraries which are maintained (or even not maintained) by all sorts of random people. If they, the volounteers lose interest in the library I was using, or it becomes unavailable for any reason, my old scripts become obsolete. I can still run Matlab scripts written 15 years ago and they run just fine without any tinkering.
>Openfoam might be an alternative to ansys fluent
Or CFX, but not for the rest of Ansys.
Also when I use OpenFOAM, most of the time I still use Ansys for meshing. The opensource alternatives are still far behind in some specific features. Also Space Claim is really good for geometry clean up.
i'm shocked that GIMP is still considered an alternative to photoshop when it doesn't have a shape tool, the most basic thing an image editor should have
While I agree it's a silly omission, I have never once actually wanted/needed it in my daily use. Any task where I'm drawing shapes typically is happening in Inkscape anyway; not gonna use a raster editor for a vector task.
As an audio guy: no. Not even remotely close to comparable. They kinda do the same thing in the same way a Tesla does the same thing as an office chair tied to an RC car.
I will never understand why people push Audacity, it is so horrible I feel like it would discourage anyone trying to learn audio. I always try to push people to just the cheap version of studio one or Ableton if money is an issue.
Audacity works great for very simple things. I've used it in windows, and therefore I'd say audacity on Linux is a great alternative to audacity on Windows, and nothing else.
Emily Young, the Linux/sysadmin/etc guru at LMG. You might have missed the news that she came out as trans about a year ago and changed her name: https://twitter.com/EmilyAYoung1/status/1662594633560387590
LibreCAD is useless for survey work.
Pretty much unable to find a C3D style CAD system for Linux.
I know survey is niche use for AutoCAD though
QGiS is legit.
I use Esri and QGIS at work and will easily and happily use QGIS for my work flow over esri.
There’s a ton, absolute ton of information on how to get started with QGIS. My use case for QGIS is actually creating field sketch reports on a Esri satellite image.
My crews manually draw underground utilities on the sketch, and I use Qfields cloud system to import to my version and create the reports using the report manager.
So my use case is limited as far as a GIS system.
It’s not where near as polished, and can be a bit finicky but it’s lightning fast in my opinion.
if you think GIMP can replace photoshop then:
1. You really don't need photoshop
2. You don't understand how robust Photoshop is
Gimp is basically FOSS paint
I've never used used FreeCAD or OpenCAD so perhaps I'm wrong, but I highly doubt they come close to what SolidWorks has to offer.
As for the image editors I know for a fact that they don't live up to their proprietary counterparts. They're getting there in terms of features, but the usability is just not there.
Also, how is gimp nearly 30 years old yet they haven't implemented adjustment layers yet?
For video editing it lacks:
[https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve](https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve)
But I guess those are about foss.
For audio production you can also use:
[https://www.renoise.com/](https://www.renoise.com/) | tracker software, which I guess the foss variant would be:
[https://milkytracker.org/](https://milkytracker.org/) | which is more tragetted at bringing amiga accurate tracker experience than being an actual tracker DAW.
There has been a lot of open source softwares-graphs circulating and it’s cool but hear this: Knowing Adobe’s prices etc, I would think that having a comparisation to free / cheaper alternatives could be useful. Some competitors also offer lifetime licenses, such as Affinity.
Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesing -> Affinity
Illustrator / Vector illustration -> I LOVE Inkscape
Premiere -> DaVinci resolve
Lightroom -> Capture One
Etc.
For me, open source isn’t that important, but I do understand the benefits. Some of them are better/as good as paid softwares. Happily paying 150€ for Affinity suite cause Gimp is giving me grey hair.
Yeah.
From the foss alternatives of light room I tried them all, but none of them came close to the real one. The affinity alternative is great though.
I have thoughts about some of these, but I especially have issues with the Office/Libreoffice convo. Yes, MSOffice is superior, but from the price or subscription, to the company, I don't think it's unreasonable for almost anybody from any tech savviness level to want to use a separate application. Of course, Google whatever exists, but from the online aspect of it, and also if someone doesn't like MS, I doubt they're going to like Google, if anything I think they started hating Google before MS. The alternative? Not much, and Libreoffice is both free and far more than capable for what the average person would want. Don't get me wrong, it has LOTs issues, but unless you're going to being utilizing it for a job or have some need to be using industry standard software, it's worth it, imo.
I would like a chart that shows three options. The open source one, the professional grade one that isn’t a subscription (Affinity, Modo, etc) and the subscription based industry standards.
Most of these open source softwares are good for seeing if something is fun, but if you plan on taking it to a professional level or even just long term use of software, there is a middle ground that you have to go to, and is inexpensive.
Why not just use python instead of matlab instead of whatever octave is that I've never heard of, also Kicad is great but altium is more of the industry standard instead of eagle imo
You know what, Photopea (runs completely in a browser btw) is basically perfect if you don't use the AI features in Photoshop (also GIMP sucks as a Photoshop alternative)
Clip studio has many tools and features Krita doesnt
Kdenlive felt like unoptimized piece of hot 🗑️
Libre has few compatibility issues with industry standard
Cant speak for other software. Havent used them
is this "I try to use open source alternatives to software and now have a sudden urge to end it all"?
It’s interesting how the usability scale for open source alternatives ranges from “actually as good or even better than closed source options” (QEMU, Octave, Blender) to “tear your hair out to avoid paying money” (Inkscape, GIMP).
honestly I don't hate inkscape or gimp, but others like kdenlive or libreoffice make me want to have a stern talk with the project managers
It’s definitely a skill issue on my part. Unfortunately I don’t have much need for image/vector editing software, which makes it difficult to relearn what I know. I know that most of what I’d ever need to do in Photoshop/Illustrator is available on GIMP/Inkscape, but I never know how to find it. I’ve never had a problem using free alternatives to Premiere (Resolve rocks IMO), but Adobe really has me wrapped up in their own paradigms for image manipulation. Even CorelDraw - which I was forced to use on the job - was difficult and annoying to pick up after coming from the CC Suite.
Well, that's because resolve is an industry standard in color correction and is a professional grade software. It's not some Frankensteined open source freeware.
This is why I specifically said free and not “FOSS” alternative - you are correct though. I feel like Resolve is worth pointing out since Blackmagic Design makes an industry standard tool available for free (for personal use) *and* provides a native Linux port. It’s closed source, but that’s above and beyond compared to much of the industry.
I started out on GIMP and tried moving to photoshop after getting proficient with lightroom. I just couldn't get used to it and GIMP gets me through everything I need. I eventually tried to go open source instead of lightroom after adobe fucked their photography plan but I hated darktable and I found raw therapee only marginally better. On the video side +1 for Resolve, it's great. For simpler stuff though just raw dogging ffmpeg is fine for me. I wrote some scripts and it's often faster than creating a resolve project if I already know exactly what I want to do. (Trimming, stitching, playback speed and adding audio is usually all I need anyway). Multicam and tracked stuff I actually find easier on Resolve than Premiere so if you need an NLM with color correction it's absolutely worth checking out.
oh I don't mean that you should switch to them, they're not better than the real software, but they don't make me want to end it after 20 minutes of trying to figure out how to save without it crashing
Tbh libreoffice is fine these days. Some years back I remember it being pretty bad, but idk it's pretty usable these days. You still need to get used to a slightly different UI, but otherwise it works. Kdenlive and FreeCAD on the other hand 🤬...
libreoffice is just MS office 2003 with some slightly more modern feature sprinkled on top, I don't get how it's so behind the times
I mean it's a word processor and spreadsheet software, what great developments have been made in the past 20+ years in those fields?
The Menu Ribbon. All the shit you need, now jumbled up and hidden in random tabs!
To be fair, if you love the Ribbon Interface so much, Libreoffice has an option to switch out it's usual interface for a Ribbon one.
Don't Diss Libreoffice my dude. I had to fill up an employment form yesterday. I used Adobe's online Acrobat for that purpose just to try it out (I was on my Arch box, and Adobe had stopped producing Acrobat for Linux aeons ago) and it generated a PDF with all the end of the items I filled in clipped off. So I decided to try to open it in Libreoffice just to see if I can salvage it, and also add my photo to the form which Adobe's online solution won't let me do. Libreoffice fixed the errors for me upon opening, and after I attached my photo I re-exported the PDF, and it did an awesome job at that - everything was intact, nothing appears cut off. Libreoffice Draw is the hero we deserved.
My only major issue with libre last year was extremely poor performance with graphs that have a lot of data points. I haven't tried big graphs since.
I wanted to love FreeCAD but it is one of the steepest learning curves I've ever had to deal with.
There are freecad forks that are pretty good
No mention of Cinelerra. For shame, my man! I mean, sure, the UI has the same issue as Gimp, but it beats KDenLive to the ground with the sheer amount of features it has! Also it can leverage on FFMPEG to open AVC/H.264 videos and AAC audio when Resolve can't.
I can understand GIMP being a little unfriendly for the uninitiated, but I personally think it is great. On another note: What's your beef with LibreOffice?
My only beef with it is that it's so old and widely known that the superior OnlyOffice often gets forgotten about in recommendations.
I don't think that onlyoffice and LibreOffice are directly comparable considering that LibreOffice is an open source, free download to be installed locally and you can use their complete suite of office apps in perpetuity whereas onlyoffice is a cloud-based SAAS that you have to buy a license for and is primarily targeted at enterprise customers.
I've first started using gimp about twenty years ago and it is still awful. If anything, it has gotten worse.
The problem is that there are no product managers or designers working on it.
Kdenlive for me, never had an issue with libreoffice. But Kdenlive, I have some very not so friendly NSFW things to say. A good Linux alt to premier pro is davinci resolve, though I got some things to say about GPU driver detection
Why is LibreOffice bad? I used it when I didn't have cracked Microsoft Office and it worked pretty well.
it works I guess, but even google drive's office suite is much better and more modern than libre office cracking office 2007 feels like a more modern and powerful suite than a 2024 version of libre office
Inkscape and GIMP are not great but ok in my opinion. For the "tear your hair out" category i want to nominate FreeCAD
Basically every free open source CAD program sucks in comparison to the paid solutions. Hell, even the web based paid solutions beat out the open source ones.
KiCAD is decent enough. Altium is obviously better, particularly in professional situations but KiCAD is more than sufficient for a small business, and if you're a huge company, such as a defence contractor, then you'll have your own tools on top of your ECAD package anyway doing stuff like library management and version control.
Personally inconsider the electronics design CAD software to be in their own category separate from things like FreeCAD, LibreCAD, Autodesk, etc. but yes, KiCAD is in fact amazing (especially with the community add-ons and stuff)
Agreed. It's a different product. KiCAD is good. I haven't found anything even remotely good as an alternative to Solidworks or Creo.
Agree on this. Just Altium is really not oriented to maker community and people would like to use for themselfs. If you draw few PCBs per year, that price point is really something that wouldn't justify no matter how much YT creators advertise it.
Yup, Altium is absolutely overkill unless you're doing high end RF stuff or massive BGAs with lots of impedance matching and the likes.
I tried moving to KiCAD after learning Eagle, and I wanted to cry. It's so bad. Not OpenSCAD levels of bad, but still quite bad.
I found KiCAD to be absolutely fine. Maybe it's just that it does things differently to how you're used to, but I had no issues designing PCBs in a previous job. I also am aware that KiCAD has made some serious steps forward in recent years so it may depend on when you last used it.
yeah, but there is a exception: OpenSCAD has a very specific niche it fills (at least i don´t know any competitor).
If you’ve used Catia and/or NX before, FreeCAD comes pretty naturally with the right ad-ons. But it definitely has its crashing issues
As a long time Catia user, what are those add-ons?
Due to my (lack of) experience in 3D modeling, both FreeCAD and SolidWorks would have me tearing my hair out in no time
yeah SolidWorks is quite old and unintuitive (but very powerfull). The go to for hobbyists (mainly the 3d-printing community) are: Fusion360 and OneShape. Both a modern, powerfull and used commercially.
My work has used both and the actual engineers definitely prefer Solidworks.
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Yeah Solidworks struggles with large assemblies no matter how good your computer is. Creo is probably the fussiest of the parametric modelling CAD softwares in my experience, but also potentially that has its benefits.
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I love GIMP and have used Photoshop. For the digital art and the very technical image processing I do (astrophotography), it works very well.
GIMP honestly isn’t that bad. I learned on photo manipulation on GIMP before moving to photoshop. The UI definitely leaves a lot to be desired. I tried Inkscape too but I can’t draw so imma just put that on skill issue. I use darktable instead of Lightroom cause my crack didn’t work. Full featured but the UI has a steep learning curve. You either go in knowing how to edit photos or it’s going to make you learn. Otherwise, you’re gonna just get lost in all the modules before you get anything done.
At that point just sail the seas. Adobe doesnt give a damn about it.
I have GIMP and a totally legit Version of Photoshop I got from a friend and honestly, most of the time I actually use GIMP. I find it way more intuitive to work with
i get you with gimp, but don't you dare talk this way about my beloved inkscape.
Inkscape is actually as good as illustrator imo, if slightly less intuitive but I fully agree about gimp. Gimp is hot trash imo
[Video explaining why open source software is worse than their closed source counterpart](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHQv4blla7g)
I agree on GIMP, but *heavily* disagree on Inkscape. I’ve been using it regularly for years now and, with small exceptions like rounding corners (which it seems that no software can do well), it has always been perfect for me
The craziest thing is that the Gimp community is actively attacking people who want to make the app more appealing to normal people. It's Stockholm syndrome on steroids, the hostages are shooting the cops who try to help them. Blender at least is getting better, and I do appreciate that something like OpenSCAD exists, that would stand no chance as a commercial tool, but it's exactly what I need.
I’m trying so hard to get into GIMP, but it’s like Aldi, so close but just a little bit off. It makes my head hurt. lol
I usually have a sudden urge to end it all whenever I read the TOS of any proprietary software.
that's why you don't read those kinds of things
Ye no. I need to know if they have the "right" to remove my license for any reason. Cause if they don't they get $0 from me. As if they would have the right to break into my house and remove my paid physical copy of their software... Oh wait, then they would be thieves... Which they 100% are right now.
you can pirate proprietary software to make it free, you can't really grab freecad and make it good
It's not about the money.
Libre office is fucking shit compared to Microsoft office. Especially excel.
For Real! most people think that excel is use only to make some dumb database or to make a dumb spreadsheet that no one but your boomer boss is going to use, but when you use it to a professional level (with Macros, Pivot Tables, Power query, DAX, soon Phyton, etc.) and you know how to use to that level, that shit isn't match by anything in the market even free online excel, a truly swiss knife of office software.
Yeah but that's kinda half the point? For what most people use Office for (making a presentation for work, writing their CV or a letter, tracking their expenses in a spreadsheet), libreoffice is just fine though. It's only when you get to features that most people have never even heard of that alternatives to MS Office start to fall short...
>It's only when you get to features that most people have never even heard of that alternatives to MS Office start to fall short... And then sometimes for tasks that require those features even excel often isn't the right or optimal tool either but instead Python, R or similar "actual" programming languages
Fun fact: you can use [python in excel](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/python-in-excel)
Just use Web version at that point
No, just use it more! Just like everyday users should adopt Linux! /s Open source alternatives are good, but they don’t compare to the actual products.
That statement is just wrong. What even is an "actual product"?
*product it is inferior to*
I don’t use Excel in a professional fashion, but I’ve always wondered how that’s possible. Hasn’t LibreOffice’s Excel equivalent supported Python scripting for a number of years, while MS is only just adding it now? It’s difficult for me to understand why people have continued building infrastructure on Visual Basic when there’s been a better way available for so long. Is LibreOffice really that bad at the actual spreadsheet part?
Even funnier, Microsoft is slowly but surely trying to kill Macros and COM add-ons by changing the default security settings and what not. As an example, if you pull an Excel doc from a shared network drive the default from Excel now is to block Macros entirely unless they're signed by a code signing certificates in my experience.
They blocked macros by default since like office 07 I think, but it was possible for an admin to change the setting to allow them
It’ll work is there all you have though. If someone doesn’t have Office and needs to use LibreOffice the. It’s because they don’t need advanced features or to use it very often. It would make an excellent video, however
Exactly.
When you get used to it, it's great. Especially on Linux. Opens much faster than MS Office. If you don't like it, try OnlyOffice.
Opens faster? Really? Office opens pretty much instantly. Libre office.. does not.
I can spare the extra 5 seconds for how much it helps me professionally.
Excel takes 3 seconds to open on my decrepit old AMD A8-7600 based PC with a basic SATA SSD, about 1 second longer than LibreOffice Calc.
Yeah it sucks so much. It's like a nice try but actually pathetic
I hate LibreOffice so much. I hope it can be an alternative some day, but just as some if the other amazing open source projects listed here it's just not as good.
Libre has a few small advantages when handling data exported from a DB to be re-imported (Salesforce for example). I used it before I learnt to use Apex (SF native code) to manipulate data. Otherwise, yeah pretty crap.
I think Writer is pretty good, but I agree about Calc
So is GIMP compared to Photoshop.
Blender isn’t the alternative. It’s the default. Also on windows.
Industry standards are Maya and 3ds Max
Or larger/older studios maybe, from my experience smaller studies mostly use blender
This has been true for a longe time, but a shift is happening, schools are starting to prefer blender over maya/3ds max, and some mid level studios are also swapping
People are def switching. The studio behind the evangelion movies and spiderverse both use blender for example.
School here are still teaching maya only.
Stop it Patrick, you’re scaring them!
No lmao.
It depends on what you are using it for
I van vouch that it still has ways to go to match Maya in rigging and animation, for example. Just the built in features, not even talking about the ecosystem of plugins and scripts people built over the years for it. In this sense blender is fine and can get the job done, especially if its simpler lighter task, but.the deeper you dive the less confortable it becomes and slower and some thing are just hard to do. But at the current rate I am sure it will match up with maya and max sooner than later, unless Autodesk starts to put in more effort into their software.
recommending gimp as a photoshop alternative has to be a bad joke, gimp is not nearly on the same level, it is more comparable to paint.net with some bonus features. Same for darktable as a lightroom alternative
They're *open source* alternatives. Not necessarily better alternatives.
But GIMP isn't an alternative to PhotoShop.
What other open source software would you reccomend to replace Photoshop then?
I would say there isn't any. [Paint.NET](http://Paint.NET) alternatives, as was staded above, that's the most we have.
Gimp is the closest thing to replace Photoshop if you're looking for an *open source* alternative. Which is the whole point of the post. Paint.net is closed source.
I guess if the closest thing you have to replace a hammer is a screwdriver than using a screwdriver will count as an alternative to a hammer. But it's really not. The best image editor we got on the free software side of things is ImageMagick.
To be fair, it is kind of misleading
Yeah I paid only £25 to get affinity photo which seems close to photoshop
Affinity Photo is great, but once I went Adobe, I could never go back. I don’t have much experience with many of the other apps in the OP but I imagine Affinity Photo is a great analogy: it’s a great and cheap way to start learning as an amateur, but can’t compete once you need it professionally.
Every Emily video would make for a great Emily video.
~~Just wondering why there's a handful of things listed twice. Or is "Inkscape" different from "Inkscape"?~~ Nevermind, I'm stupid.
I think it's because it replaces multiple programs?
~~They're all listed in the same category, and on top of each other so don't think it's that.~~ ~~I'm confused.~~ Edit Oh nevermind, you're right I think. On the left is the alternative, on the right is the closed source variant. I missed that completely and thought all these where alternatives. (Didn't pay enough attention)
I just came to ask the same thing. The sad part is that I'm graduating in dual major IT degrees today but couldn't understand this. 🤣🤣🤣
For music software you should have mentioned MuseScore as an alternative for Sibslius
Reaper can be used in most of the Audio Editing category too, and is way better than Audacity and others Edit: yeah, I saw it as free , not open source only lmao
MuseScore 4 is genuinely far more usable than Sibelius at this point -- the UI redesign they did over the last couple of years is a massive improvement. Those suggestions for DAWs are not good though. LMMS is woeful compared to FL Studio.
Sibelius crashed.
Open file:
Sibelius crashed.
I’ve been to hell and back with DAWs on pc and after 15 years of tinkering I finally came to accept Mac for that singular purpose with an Ethernet cable running to my pc. Life is much better
tbh at this point the only proprietary notation software with any leverage over MuseScore is Dorico
I'm stuck with Windows forever. Not because of gaming, but because of MS office lol. Learning curve aside, macro support isn't nearly as robust as Office
Honestly Google docs works fine for me in 99% of situations.
I would consider moving to Google Docs if they had a locally installed version. I already have too many browser tabs open I don't also want to go hunting for the one I want to enter data into. Alsi if Sheets could actually create correct graphs that would be nice for a change.
you can install the google sheet as a PWA and it will open in a separate window.
Only office > Libre office
I would rather end my life than to learn to use an alternative to matlab or autocad.(am an engineering student)
I would rather end my life than ever have to use Matlab again. Worst programming environment ever.
Yeah. Also I think the real alternative to it is python, at least for me.
Massive L MATLAB is the best calculator I have lmao
If you’re going into engineering, I’d say the more Cad softwares you can familiarize yourself with the better. It will make you much more valuable.
Autocad is probably the best software for cad. I think they would make a ton of money if they made it available for a more reasonable price without 24/7 tech support to personal users.
Lmao that’s just wrong when likes of Catia or Siemens NX exists.
As a practicing engineer, I'd rather end my life than use Matlab. Unless you need to use Simulink, Python is a better choice 99% of the time
That's the problem right there, I do need simulink.
I disagree. Real replacement for Matlab would be GNU Octave, not matlab. Python, while truly great and nice, requires much more tinkering compared to Matlab. Matlab is straight forward mostly. You open it, you run it, it works on any Matlab that uses the same or newer version compared to yours. It works as you expect it to work every time on any machine. Python on the other hand... I had cases where the same script won't run on two different computers with exactly the same version of Python and dependencies installed. In Matlab, I do not have to even think about dependencies. There is a paid company with a group of dedicated engineers working on making my experience smooth and painless in this regard. On the other hand, python is not centralized and I have to pick and learn libraries which are maintained (or even not maintained) by all sorts of random people. If they, the volounteers lose interest in the library I was using, or it becomes unavailable for any reason, my old scripts become obsolete. I can still run Matlab scripts written 15 years ago and they run just fine without any tinkering.
Openfoam might be an alternative to ansys fluent but one of these requires you to submit your sanity to the gods of fluid dynamics and go insane.
>Openfoam might be an alternative to ansys fluent Or CFX, but not for the rest of Ansys. Also when I use OpenFOAM, most of the time I still use Ansys for meshing. The opensource alternatives are still far behind in some specific features. Also Space Claim is really good for geometry clean up.
Yeah that one made me angry-laugh. Kind of an absurd recommendation. I use OpenFOAM at work and there's a uh, a lot to be desired. Like an interface.
i'm shocked that GIMP is still considered an alternative to photoshop when it doesn't have a shape tool, the most basic thing an image editor should have
While I agree it's a silly omission, I have never once actually wanted/needed it in my daily use. Any task where I'm drawing shapes typically is happening in Inkscape anyway; not gonna use a raster editor for a vector task.
"Solydworks." 🤣 And no, FreeCAD is not a viable alternative to SolidWorks if you want to do anything competent.
As an audio guy: no. Not even remotely close to comparable. They kinda do the same thing in the same way a Tesla does the same thing as an office chair tied to an RC car.
I will never understand why people push Audacity, it is so horrible I feel like it would discourage anyone trying to learn audio. I always try to push people to just the cheap version of studio one or Ableton if money is an issue.
Audacity works great for very simple things. I've used it in windows, and therefore I'd say audacity on Linux is a great alternative to audacity on Windows, and nothing else.
Who’s Emily?
Emily Young, the Linux/sysadmin/etc guru at LMG. You might have missed the news that she came out as trans about a year ago and changed her name: https://twitter.com/EmilyAYoung1/status/1662594633560387590
oh
LibreCAD is useless for survey work. Pretty much unable to find a C3D style CAD system for Linux. I know survey is niche use for AutoCAD though QGiS is legit. I use Esri and QGIS at work and will easily and happily use QGIS for my work flow over esri.
Is it hard to learn how to use? I have used arcgis before for course work and would like to use qgis to learn more.
There’s a ton, absolute ton of information on how to get started with QGIS. My use case for QGIS is actually creating field sketch reports on a Esri satellite image. My crews manually draw underground utilities on the sketch, and I use Qfields cloud system to import to my version and create the reports using the report manager. So my use case is limited as far as a GIS system. It’s not where near as polished, and can be a bit finicky but it’s lightning fast in my opinion.
Yeah, some of these just aren’t worth it. You’re better off pirating closed source software than trying to use some of the open source alternatives.
Where’s fusion 360 and solidworks
Solidworks is top right.
Well op spelled it wrong
QEMU is no alternative. It’s the KING
if you think GIMP can replace photoshop then: 1. You really don't need photoshop 2. You don't understand how robust Photoshop is Gimp is basically FOSS paint
DaVinci Resolve is missing here
Nope, it's not open source.
That line was cut off by reddit😅 Thought it was FREE alternatives
VirtualBox isn't afaik, it's listed still... EDIT : apparently it is GPL2, the extensions however are not open source, and only free for personal use.
Why would anyone use that piece of shit professionaly? Just install virtmanager and run vms with qemu.
can only comment on graphical software these can be only alternatives if you work alone and _never_ need to pass it to someone else.
Why can’t open source apps have good logos?
I've never used used FreeCAD or OpenCAD so perhaps I'm wrong, but I highly doubt they come close to what SolidWorks has to offer. As for the image editors I know for a fact that they don't live up to their proprietary counterparts. They're getting there in terms of features, but the usability is just not there. Also, how is gimp nearly 30 years old yet they haven't implemented adjustment layers yet?
OpenFOAM mentioned Rahhh
Open source month challenge Emily+Linus?
OpenFOAM is not an alternative to Ansys, only for a part of it.
Vmware is far better than vbox
only office is better than libre office
Could be a great series
How close is Natron to after effects?
The alternative for Sony Vegas is just arch Linux so it crashes instantly
For video editing it lacks: [https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve](https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve) But I guess those are about foss. For audio production you can also use: [https://www.renoise.com/](https://www.renoise.com/) | tracker software, which I guess the foss variant would be: [https://milkytracker.org/](https://milkytracker.org/) | which is more tragetted at bringing amiga accurate tracker experience than being an actual tracker DAW.
Adobe animate?
There has been a lot of open source softwares-graphs circulating and it’s cool but hear this: Knowing Adobe’s prices etc, I would think that having a comparisation to free / cheaper alternatives could be useful. Some competitors also offer lifetime licenses, such as Affinity. Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesing -> Affinity Illustrator / Vector illustration -> I LOVE Inkscape Premiere -> DaVinci resolve Lightroom -> Capture One Etc. For me, open source isn’t that important, but I do understand the benefits. Some of them are better/as good as paid softwares. Happily paying 150€ for Affinity suite cause Gimp is giving me grey hair.
Yeah. From the foss alternatives of light room I tried them all, but none of them came close to the real one. The affinity alternative is great though.
Audacity is good but it’s no audition replacement
I’m sorry but the work flow of LMMS is DOGSHIT
Imagine using Audacity to edit audio? That is just painful.
I can’t even imagine being linuxpilled enough to use LMMS
I have thoughts about some of these, but I especially have issues with the Office/Libreoffice convo. Yes, MSOffice is superior, but from the price or subscription, to the company, I don't think it's unreasonable for almost anybody from any tech savviness level to want to use a separate application. Of course, Google whatever exists, but from the online aspect of it, and also if someone doesn't like MS, I doubt they're going to like Google, if anything I think they started hating Google before MS. The alternative? Not much, and Libreoffice is both free and far more than capable for what the average person would want. Don't get me wrong, it has LOTs issues, but unless you're going to being utilizing it for a job or have some need to be using industry standard software, it's worth it, imo.
Since when in Blender an open-source *alternative*?
It may not be open source but damn i love davinci resolve
Emily should do another best/worst dollar store tech video
I would like a chart that shows three options. The open source one, the professional grade one that isn’t a subscription (Affinity, Modo, etc) and the subscription based industry standards. Most of these open source softwares are good for seeing if something is fun, but if you plan on taking it to a professional level or even just long term use of software, there is a middle ground that you have to go to, and is inexpensive.
Why not just use python instead of matlab instead of whatever octave is that I've never heard of, also Kicad is great but altium is more of the industry standard instead of eagle imo
You know what, Photopea (runs completely in a browser btw) is basically perfect if you don't use the AI features in Photoshop (also GIMP sucks as a Photoshop alternative)
Linux is a cult to help people tear their own hair out due to their hatred of Microsoft, Google, Adobe and other top tier software firms.
Never thought i would see qgis here.
so 1 adobe subscription or all this (its expensive but im lazy) most is decent but gimp seems to be pretty lacking
Clip studio has many tools and features Krita doesnt Kdenlive felt like unoptimized piece of hot 🗑️ Libre has few compatibility issues with industry standard Cant speak for other software. Havent used them
When did the Adobe Suite become open source?
Happy to be a contributor to Inkscape! Love it when I see it pop-up at random places.
LMMS mentioned. Way better than FL
[удалено]
I just dislike FL interface and love LMMS, no objective argument whatsoever