For me its honestly a ton of my work software (digital forensics), shit is too niche to be replaced by good FOSS options. Cellebrite, Magnet Axiom, etc. Autopsy is great and free and has a linux version but it simply cannot get the same level of data without a pretty nutty level of custom code.
And the biggest side effect of this is FUCKING WINDOWS. God I would replace this nightmare OS in a heartbeat if the aforementioned work software would make linux compatible versions. We have legitimately wasted 10k hours dealing with windows bullshit that would not be a problem in linux. Though im sure linux would take a different 10k for its own problems.
What about you guys? Doesn’t have to be work related, thats just the thorn in my side right now.
Whatsapp
And no, I can’t simply stop using or ask friends to move to an alternative. I’m from Brazil and that thing is so popular and mainstream, that even stores or public services use it.
Just this week, I had to report an animal abuse case to the authorities, and the official communication channel I had to use was through whatsapp.
It’s sad to see how dependent of a single proprietary service for something so important we allowed ourselves to become…
My laptops BIOS
Discord. God I hate that program, but everyone I know uses it.
Same as Reddit; it’s network affect. There are different applications out there for various purposes that work better/nicer than Discord. But not enough people are using them so everyone goes where everyone else is at.
Discord on Linux is one of the biggest reasons I stopped trying to switch to Linux. Not the only, and I know web apps are a thing. But I hate setting literally a web app when there’s a “native” app, but their native app was doubling all my back/forward button inputs, and high was a massive disruption.
It was far from the only reason, more like the final straw in a growing list of frustrating shit that ALMOST worked right.
Windows Discord is also a web app.
That’s weird, I’ve never had that issue
The financial system. If i could i would use monero all the time since its FOSS money. Banking software, visa, slavercard, discover, etc APIs all proprietary.
Mechanical CAD. Something like SolidWorks or Fusion 360.
FreeCAD just isn’t there yet. They’re still struggling with the topological naming problem. However, Blender was like this in the field of 3D animations. Now it’s the standard. That gives me hope for FreeCAD. Anyway, MCAD is very important. I’m learning modern C++ and the FreeCAD code base in order to contribute.
I also wish there was a better CAD kernel than OpenCASCADE.
I have been experimenting with using Inkscape and OpenSCAD for 3d modeling, and it seems to work for what I do, but I know quite a few people prefer a more graphical interface than OpenSCAD.
OpenSCAD is a good take on CAD. My primary workflow is also based on plaintext (text configs, code, org-mode, latex, etc) and keyboard (no mouse). It’s easy to manage and back it up with version control tools like git. However, there are a few fields that I feel are inherently visual and need a very interactive tool. CAD is one of them. Others are 3D animation and art.
Bloody banking apps. I’m sick of them not exposing any API to make third party apps.
Honestly, I haven’t found anything that can replace Google Maps for route planning with public transportation. I really wish for crowdsourced timetables hosted on OSM…
You can use Gmaps WV to use GMaps without an Google account at least
Shazam
On my phone: a FOSS “find-my-phone” function
On my computer: a FOSS way to access Teams for work. Just give me a Weechat plugin please.
findmydevice on fdroid
Look at owntrack. Send position data to your own server
The whole Adobe creative suite. The options out there absolutely are not replacements, either in functionality or usability. Most of them are UX nightmares and feel actively hostile to the user
I even tried replacing Lightroom, which if you read the recommendations, people love the various FOSS options out there, but they were all garbage at onboarding or finding functionality or just even setting up a simple library with events and albums to group together and edit.
My central and autonomic nervous systems. Mine are shite and have been since I was wee. Even a clean reinstall of the original operating system would likely help a ton, but if the open source community could go through the files and find the all the bugs, who knows what I could make of my life. At the very least I’d be able to work again.
Autocad. This is the main (only?) reason I continue to use Windows. Professional 2d cad for architectural drafting has been lacking in Linux for a long time. There are a few commercial alternatives, Bricscad being the big one, but due to (cheap) grandfathered licensing cost for Autocad, I"ve been unable to push for a purchase. Qcad (professional) was another option I looked at but, despite being a good program at an amazing cost, had enough differences in work flow that I couldn’t find a good way to integrate it into a shared workflow.
Every once in a while I switch to Linux and either run a W10 vm or RDP just to work around the issue but, inevitably, get frustrated with performance. Freecad and Blender both seem to be working on the problem -but- from a BIM perspective, not detailed drafting . . .
Less software and more driverware. My headphones (arctis nova pro wireless) have some really nice customizations available with the sonar software. Nvidia drivers are more customizable but the issue is mostly support for vrr through gsync, dlss, hdr, and Nvidia broadcast. I know AMD is supposedly bounds and leaps ahead of Nvidia but that’s what I have for current hardware because of how useful and ubiquitous the software is.
If by Arctis nova pro you mean SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7 then this repo might interest you: github.com/Sapd/HeadsetControl it’s basically software that allows you to change afew settings for headset inside a terminal.
I really wish that you could install a clean AOSP on any Android phone, just like you can install FOSS OS’es on most laptops.
Last Android phone I bought had a few strange “vendor apps” (one with Chinese characters only in its name), and if I disabled Google Play Services the SMS app would go crazy and show error messages (as notifications) all the time. To add, “adb uninstall” was blocked by the vendor and there was no unofficial ROM.
I prefer small phones, so the market of phones is really really small for me :( Otherwise, I would have bought a Fairphone.
