It seems like the FOSS community is continuing to grow, and FOSS apps keep getting better (Immich reallh blew my mind recently), which is a big win 😎 but there are still many apps I use that I would kill for an open source alternative. I am curious what you guys think? Are there any apps you’d love alternatives for?
Discord. It’s extremely popular and has no direct alternatives (Matrix spaces thing isn’t ready at all yet)
EDIT: I didn’t know Revolt and Zulip existed. I’m doing a research on them now
I keep hearing people recommend signal messenger as an alternative to discord, and honestly that’s the most obvious sign you don’t actually use discord
Well some people use Discord as a messenger for some reason and for them Signal is probably the best but yea it’s not a Discord alternative at all
Honestly i never enjoyed discord It is messy and difficult to find information once its a few days old
Id much rather use a decent forum really
This is more of a hammer as a screwdriver problem, where everyone decided to use chat software as a forum.
almost every hobby has moved to facebook and it’s the same damn thing. utterly useless for the purpose people try to use it for.
i don’t know what the fuck is wrong with people, but this is definitely one of the pinnacles.
Revolt is very promising, not ready yet but already feels very similar to Discord
The privacy policy of their app’s captcha solution is horrendous so no thank you
Especially with the upcoming implementation of ads. Really sucks that many communities and software support (who should have just had forums) are deeply embedded into it and will have to start from scratch and lose any and all helpful content. Its hard to see big communities moving to anything else anytime soon, even of there was a great Foss alternative. It would indeed be amazing to have one in the first place
I thought the Discord ads drama was an April Fools joke?
You had me for a second, lol. Unfortunately it is not an April fools joke :/ luckily for us though, the worse the application gets, the higher a chance a Foss alternative will emerge from a madlad who was sick of discord’s shit
https://adguard.com/en/blog/ads-discord-blocking-adguard.html
Adoption is always the main issue, as we can see here on the Fediverse. It’s crazy how even technically-inclined people flock to discord. So many 3d printing communities are on there, people who install custom debian distros on raspberry pis, solder wires, crimp connectors and assemble open source machines, still fall into the trap.
Hmm I really hope so
I think what’s even worse than ads is many channels now require verification through a phone number if you want to write something. Not sure when that became a thing but I just recently ran into this roadblock and noped tf out.
If you’re talking about voice channels specifically, then there is Mumble.
If you’re talking about chat rooms, old school solution is IRC and we have XMPP that works fine for most people.
No I meant an app that looks similar and contains most of the features (servers specifically) so it’s easier for not tech savvy users to get into. Someone suggested Revolt but its privacy (as in sending the data to not privacy respecting third parties) is questionable so idk if I can consider it a good enough alternative
Something like Revolt could maybe be a replacement for discord
FOSS CAD softwares. I know FreeCAD exists but it’s very unintuitive compared to the proprietary ones. I am thankful that it exists but it’s a long way apart to become a household name like Blender.
I wish I could start writing one but I don’t have a clear picture of requirements to plan and start writing one. If anyone is expert in this field please link some research papers and guidelines for someone to start fresh.
Check out Ondsel. They’re working on improving FreeCAD and making the workflow not suck.
Still definitely a work in progress, but the dimension/constraint tools and 3D feature naming are already lightyears better in their version.
Thank you. I’ll check it out.
100%
I put together a list of open source CAD software a couple of years ago, but none of the options are quite there yet.
Most definitely - Especially for woodworking FreeCAD is horrible and inefficient - even a friend who has been a contributor takes longer for some things than I do in Fusion360 as an occasional user. As a maker I love the idea of FreeCAD and the implications it has for third world countries, the amateur maker scene,etc. But I hate it for what it is. Which is so sad.
I use FreeCAD for woodworking, and…yeah. It works, it has its limitations, and I figured I know some Python, maybe I can code up some tools for woodworking specific tasks that would speed the process up.
Almost none of FreeCAD is documented and what documentation exists is wrong. You can’t learn how to contribute to FreeCAD, you have to be born knowing how. It makes no goddamn sense. “You know the chamfer and fillet tools in the Part Design workbench? I want one that makes Rabbets” is a bigger R&D problem than the Manhattan Project.
My understanding is that there are long-term developers who have left, and new blood is starting to appear, which is why the next version is going to have a lot of improvements to the sketcher among other things.
I would love a FOSS version of Rhino3D.
softwares
Software, like traffic and sheep and e-mail, don’t get an S when talking about a lot.
Blender is not CAD software though, it’s 3D modelling software. They’re not quite the same thing, and they’re intended for (and excel at) different things.
I know. I’m just comparing the reputation and how polished they are wrt to each other. Given they have similar scopes with modeling and graphics and everything.
But they don’t really have similar scopes… One is for technical models, based on extruded 2D drawings, the other is for abstract 3D modelling. Sure in both if them the end product is a 3D model, but they’re achieved in vastly different ways with completely different skillsets and different use cases.
I think you’re missing their point, they weren’t saying that Blender is cad, it’s just a good comparison, as a successful piece of software in the the same broad, general category (3D modeling)
We want what Blender is to mesh modeling, rendering, etc, but for parametric cad, manufacturing, etc. Basically Fusion 360 but open source, without any of Autodesk’s bs. Ideally it would even work together with Blender for rendering.
The comment I originally commented on compared them as if they were similar tool, (before it was edited), which I simply pointed out it is not. It’s like saying a plane and a helicopter are the same, sure they both are able to lift off the ground, but the similarities kind of stop there.
Because the purpose/function of the software isn’t exactly the point of this particular discussion.
A lot of FOSS applications have what I’d call GIMP syndrome. The software is functional and powerful, but it’s got the UX of a urinary tract infection, and the developers seem to have an outright religious need to KEEP the software in a perfectly capable but unusable state. GIMP is the example of this behavior, the developers have outright said terribleness is their vision and it shall not be altered. So GIMP is the technically correct yet permanently non-valid answer to “What’s a FOSS alternative to Adobe Photoshop?”
Blender is one of the rare examples of a FOSS application that overcame GIMP syndrome. Blender is not only powerful and capable, but though a UI overhaul became decent to use as well. As a result it is seeing genuine adoption because it actually is the best answer to the question “what software will do this task?”
That’s what this thread right now is talking about, wishing that FreeCAD would similarly reach that level of “not just surprisingly okay for free software, but actually objectively good” that Blender has.
You’re right, not sure why all the down votes. I think people don’t get how big a difference 3d modeling is from technical drawings.
I wish there were more Open Source games.
You may have heard of them, but I love Shattered Pixel Dungeon and unCiv
Recently discovered Veloren, maybe you haven’t heard of it
Veloren is great, there is also Mindustry and Shattered Pixel Dungeon to name a couple of high quality ones.
And Beyond All Reason if you like RTS games.
Perhaps not Foss, but definitely free (beer) , endless sky, available on steam
Looks like Endless Sky is under GPL license, so definitely FOSS
Regardless, it is well worth your time. Find the wormhole, steal alien tech, build a fleet, become invincible.
I really liked how Id used to release their old engines as open source, but of course once they got bought out all that stopped. The biggest problem for OSS games is with assets though. There are a few decent open source engines now for a lot of types of games, but it’s a lot harder to find decent looking assets to make games. I wonder if stuff like stable diffusion might help with that going forward.
There: https://mander.xyz/post/11076441
There was a post recently about people’s favourite open source games and it’s been a nice repository of games for me :)
Ultimate Guitar Tabs. After spending years getting a community to contribute to one of the best music resources on the web, they turn around and lock all but the most basic features behind a pay wall.
Holy shit the most painful and miserable experience is using this god forsaken site, let alone the fucking mobile app. Actually rage inducing.
they turn around and lock all but the most basic features behind a pay wall.
To be fair, that was forced by the music industry.
If they didn’t licence the tabs and come up with a payment system they were going to be sued into oblivion.
Is that really the case? Because you can still see all the songs and a basic set of chords without an account/payment.
Stylus/handwriting oriented note taking. Stuff like Samsung Notes or Goodnotes (or OneNote, though it does a lot more) in the Android space, or e-ink options like Remarkable’s stock software.
If I just want to use a keyboard for everything I have great FOSS options like Joplin and Standard Notes, but when I want to use a pen instead it feels like no other freedom-respecting option seem to even remotely approach the usability of just sticking with real ink and moleskine-like paper notebooks.
Even someone willing to pay an upfront fee for proprietary apps will struggle to find good options that allow syncing and reading (let alone editing) your notes on other devices/platforms without resorting to a monthly subscription.
Have you heard of Rnote? It is only available for linux, windows and mac tho
Yes yes yes 🙏 I swear I go around at least once or twice a month looking for this. I’m not sure if it is a huge technical feat to approach this type of program or not, but like you said there are tons of options for typing but I haven’t found even one that solely focuses on handwriting.
Yeah, I’m currently using an old version (2018!) Of AutoDesk sketchbook, since it seems like every other option tries to force me into a subscription or cloud service. I just want to take notes!
This is a totally wild card guess, but I imagine obsidian probably has a community hand writing extension
it’s also closed source.
You know, I always forget that
grindr
Exactly. Like when can I be a foss hoe
A defederated grindr
An alternative to iTunes so that I don’t need a Windows VM to backup my company iPhone. But I know it’s never gonna happen because Apple is the devil.
Just so you know, libimobiledevice can backup iPhones with their idevicebackup utility. It’s CLI only, so maybe not as easy to get into as iTunes but it has worked pretty well for years on my end.
Yeah thanks I’ve read about it but the terminal part is probably above my really modest Linux knowledge for now.
That’s fair enough! I can tell you it’s not that difficult but having a nice iDevice suite desktop application would certainly be a big improvement!
honestly terminal isn’t that complicated, if you’re surviving using a VM at the moment, you could probably manage to comprehend a terminal for long enough to figure out how that software works (and as a benefit, also figure out how basically every other CLI application works)
Thanks for the advice, but, for now, I can’t picture myself managing a professional phone backup without a GUI.
Had it been just a tinkering phone maybe, but not my professional one😇
honestly it’s no different than using a GUI, unless your place of work mandates a specific piece of software or something. It’s not like you can’t fuck shit up, but you can also do that with GUI apps too. I’ve fucked up more shit using a GUI than using CLI. That could change some day, but that’s what backups are for.
Good news, Apple has the solution for you. You don’t need iTunes anymore.
https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9np83lwlpz9k?hl=en-US&gl=US
Yeah but I’d still need an Apple program and a Windows VM, so it wouldn’t change a thing 😅
Full on Transit app that works well. Most that do are closed sourced and the ones that are open do not work well. A traffic app would be good but that would be very resource intensive. So not holding my breath.
- Digital wallets (for things like cc, ID, coupons)
- Map apps (like google maps)
- Dating apps
Catima for a digital wallet
That doesn’t seem to support credit cards
“Maps”: as others have suggested: OsmAnd and OrganicMaps (I use OsmAnd as it covers my needs better than Google Maps or other apps)
“Dating Apps”: There is Alovoa
but the problem is who you will find on there, as everyone is on other apps
Haven’t tried Alovoa, but think of it differently; if someone is on Alovoa, they maybe are more similar-minded to you, because they too probably like open source stuff.
I like your “the glass is half full” attitude, however their signup seems to be broken.
Ah, rip, that may be an issue😆
I know them all but they can’t hold up with their proprietary counterparts both by userbase and features.
I don’t see anyone talking about it here but I’d dream of an open source alternative to AndroidTV/Apple Tv. Firstly because ATV is ultra-dependent on Google, and secondly because the interface is unclear and not really pretty.
Today I’ve switched to Apple TV, which is much better in terms of UX, but the OS is too closed and sideloading isn’t possible…
So I hope to see some sort of CalyxOS / LineageOS for Tv arrive one day!
KDE BigScreen had some ambition to be that
And I wish the same for the combo AndroidAuto/Apple CarPlay. (But I have no hopes for this one haha)
…Kodi?
I second this, having a dedicated, 2013 era machine for Kodi is more than perfect. Most plugins are maintaned and updated regularly.
…Honestly my Kodi box is kind of a pain in the ass. About half the plugins I tried outright don’t work, giving some cryptic Python error, a few of them most notably Youtube has some fairly onerous API access problems which has almost made be give up on watching video content while seated on a couch as an abstract concept. It breaks more than it improves, and I’ve had to repeatedly solve issues like resolution and framerate limits, audio outputs just…stopping working and having to SSH into the thing to add or subtract a line from a config file…
I retract my recommendation of Kodi. It doesn’t work worth a completely flaccid failed attempt at a nonconsentual fuck.
my experience with it was also kind of a rollercoaster, but libreELEC on x64 harware with some basic IGPU was the key for me.
I tried it on Raspberry Pis (OG and 3) but that surely was painful.
since using a nornal PC, I really have no issues with compatibility, even the most obscure, sonewhat recently updated plugins work no problem.
but I can feel you, it needed several chances from me too, but I needed to replace my PS3 (uaing Movian - what an amazing piece of software!) cause it had issues with some recent fullhd files.
If I’m going to be fair, I’d say probably 3/4 of the problems I’ve had with Kodi (via OSMC on a Raspberry Pi 4) weren’t Kodi’s fault. Everyone from Alphabet to WGBH has had a hand in fucking something up. Of the addons I’ve tried to use, a good portion of them never once worked, or stopped working after awhile because the services they were scraping changed or disappeared. Or, because I am using a Pi 4, high resolution and high framerate can be a problem; I’ve seen issues with the video playing back slightly slower than the audio track, after 20 or 30 minutes becoming visibly out of sync until it freezes up for several seconds then resumes normal playback. Mind you this is only a problem above 1080p. Playing video files over the network from my NAS works pretty well if a little clunky to set up.
Dating websites
Streamlabs, Streamelements and Elgato, Logitech and Razer’s software. Typically applications for streaming and content creation
heads up, for you and anybody wondering, there is a community version of razer driver support under linux. IDK if it works under windows, but that shit slaps under linux i tell you. IDK about logitech, but i assume something similar exists.
Works better than synapse and doesn’t try and reinstall itself everytime i update windows (thanks microsoft, that’s not like malware at all)
Wait so how well would it work for my Razer Seiren V2 Pro? Sorry I got distracted…
Razer Seiren V2 Pro
just had a look at the open razer page, see nothing about microphones, but it seems to support a shit ton of keyboards and mice. As well as some related things.
YouTube
Odysee?
Why did you get downvoted lol? Odysee and Peertube are pretty good alternatives.
My biggest gripe with Odysee is the fact a lot of the people I like to watch aren’t on there. Otherwise, if they’d just set up an account and have it linked to their yt account, I’d be on there a lot more.
Anyone who is trying to make money from their videos isn’t likely to have any incentive to be on Odysee, unless thay start paying for views with something other than their useless in-house crypto.
Plus, the audience on Odysee is miniscule compared to pretty much any other video platform.
I’ve been using GrayJay which has been the game changer for me. I know it’s not completely FOSS, but I feel like it is an amazing step in the right direction. I have access to my YouTube sub’s AND the Odysee/Peertube/etc counterparts. So as channels transition, the subscribers can too. I feel like this is the necessary direction for more adoption, since like you and others have said, Odysee and Peertube don’t have enough main channels for incentive
Fusion360
Tried out FreeCad/Ondsel, and just couldn’t get it to cooperate. Trying to do even basic changes would constantly result in errors/crashes. I spent maybe two weeks trying to make a single model. Then I tried making the same model in Fusion360 and was done in an half an hour. Granted, there is a huge difference in experience level here between these pieces of software, but still.
So I think my best bet for now is a jailbroken copy of Fusion360.
Google Keep
My wife and I use it all the time for things like grocery lists, packing lists, etc. It’s nice to be an able to collaborate in real time on a checklist, and I haven’t found an app that can replicate that convenience.
Joplin? Can basically do all this.
Does Joplin actually have real-time (as in two people simultaneously editing with two cursors and changes streaming in a character at a time) collaboration? All I found was some vague language about shared notebooks and some guy’s stab at a real-time collaboration plugin that hasn’t been touched in 3 years.
Realtime? No. There are various Tab Solutions for that,like Etherpad,etc
But especially if you selfhost you can put in really short synch times, that will give you near real time collaboration and comes out of the bo without any plugins.
OP was asking for real-time collaboration in a package similar to Google Keep: a simple, mobile-friendly UI (my bar for this is at minimum a UI that has a dedicated button to make a checkbox, automatically adding a checkbox on the next line when hitting “enter”, and the ability to check or uncheck boxes by touching them alone) with an at-a-glance view of available notes, both private and shared.
It’s something that I want, too. I’m happy using tons of weird stuff, but I need something simple, easy to use, and with real-time collaboration to use with my partner, who is very much not interested in anything less convenient than Google Keep. The closest thing I can see coming is HedgeDoc 2.0, but it would still be a hard sell.
The definition of real time collaboration does vary widely from usecase to usecase and user to user. While the Joplin mobile app in theory does limit the minimum synch time to every 5 minutes there are (easy) ways to circumvent that and have a faster synch (I use every 60sec, but I selfhost).
Everything else you mentioned/require is available with Joplin. It literally has a checkbox Note-Type (but checkboxes can be easily added to every other note as well) which can easily be check off, Notes can be categorised into folders (Shared or not shared, with additional privacy locks available),etc.
Don’t get me wrong, I have a myriad of ideas/things I would like to see Joplin do better. But its usability beats Google Keep - by far. And by now my extended family has adopted it - from an 8 year old to an 80 year old.
This may be my unicorn, going to test out some time in the coming weeks! Thanks for the suggestion, stranger!
Hedgedoc / codimd.
I like Simple Note.
I’m not sure about real time collab, but I know you can share notes.
They do have a github page. Having to make an account and store notes server side is a big minus, but it is the only one I’ve found to
- Not be Google
- support all major OS (Lin, Win, Mac, And, ios, and browser)
- Not serve ads
- Not require self hosting
- Not ask for money (beside a donate button)
- Not be Google
Edit.
Digging into it a bit more. Seems they started in 2008 and were aquired by Automattic, in 2013. Same people behind WordPress. Oddly enough, Simple Note is not listed in their list of products.
Simple Note client side is GPL-2.0 The server is proprietary
They say on their own site, don’t store sensitive data. But that’s good advice for any online service.
If you use Android and Nextcloud, check out Quillpad, it’s probably the closest thing you can get.
