What apps would you love to have open-source alternatives for?
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 ๐ 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?
Plain banking apps for smartphones. Having those developed in the open would hopefully make it possible to have forks that work on rooted devices without hiding magisk and whatnot.
That would be awesome. I wish banks would also have standardized (or at least open) APIs so I could use FOSS financial software to pull my live purchase history and then categorize that and etc. I think some banks do this, but not very common in the US from what I can tell.
i learned about GNU Taler the other day from one of the OS communities
Sure, I guess. Not what I was after but it has potential in its own right.
I had to leave VirginMoney because the lady on the phone told me I needed an iPhone to reset my password (seriously) even after trying with three separate Android devices.
There's no desktop functionality (mobile is king with them) and it amazed me that day I had to use the Current Account Switcher to go to an equally meh banking service.
Sorry state of affairs across all mobile apps to be honest and as seen by the prevalence of MDM and accessing data Vs doing the very same, on a desktop "PC". Why the data is more precious on a mobile device to them is telling.....
My phone firmware
god i fucking hate android, i await the day linux on mobile actually functions with great anticipation.
That was 2004. They made a Linux phone not was troll tech or something.
No one bought it.
Android may be 'meh' to you. I like it, but only because it's good enough for what I need. Fair. But it's got something the green Linux phone never had: massive presence.
Droid is a bad Linux with a huge ecosystem, and that's why this may be the best we can hope for. We could have a perfect phone, but without that massive presence to get the apps and the dedicated devs, anything with less presence will suffer.
Think about it. It's a sad fact, but you know it's a fact.
That's like how Xz didn't get trojanned because it was a nothing project: it is a crucial part of everything. It lost its presence and when the sole Dev was deep in burnout he was hoodwinked. Ya need the eyeballs, and that's a popularity game for foss.
My 2c.
FOSS CAD softwares. I know FreeCAD exists but itโs very unintuitive compared to the proprietary ones. I am thankful that it exists but itโs a long way apart to become a household name like Blender.
I wish I could start writing one but I donโt 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. Iโll check it out.
I think FreeCAD is still the best bet, it does.seem to be making a few strides recently. Topo naming and sketcher workbench are both getting updates. For me personally it's definitely usable for personal projects. I want better FreeCAD rather than an alternative new thing.
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.
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 wish there were more Open Source games.
Just wanted to shout out https://osgameclones.com/. It has a pretty decent list of them and source ports.
You may have heard of them, but I love Shattered Pixel Dungeon and unCiv
I wish we had an opensource game store to sell or donate to opensource games.
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.
Spotify.
An open source music streaming service where I can financially support artists but where I'm not forced to put up with annoying advertisements (even when paying membership fees!), and which allows me to use whatever app I want to play the music I listen to. It is annoying AF that I need to switch between apps to listen to music because Spotify's shitty native app is inferior in every possible way with the single exception of offering more content.
There seems like a lot of potential for an app like this with the mixture of decentralization/encryption/verification/blockchain/etc. Easily verify artists, get the artists paid with a determined currency or by merch and donations, have it federated or decentralized so artists have more control and a company canโt take percentages.. I donโt know. There has to be something there. It seems possible and almost a necessity in the future for artists to make money and corporations to not enshittify each app that is released. For example, spotify adding features to try to be like TikTok, or recently they were trying to add โeducational coursesโ to the app
my personal favorite is the one where the band or artist hosts their own site, and then you can just buy shit from it.
I use spicetify just to get an improved shuffle function.
For desktop there's ncspot, which is a Spotify TUI client written in Rust. Not exactly what you were asking for, but it does work well
I use Ymusic it is android, but shouldn't be hard to run on Linux
there's this really cool alternative to streaming, called you buy their shit directly. Or if you like me, don't really care, just finding a way to throw money at them, in their general direction sometimes works. Spotify actually works so little, that the only party that makes money, is the music publishers that spotify allows on their platform, the artists and spotify generally don't make much money, or make very little money. Gotta love capitalism.
If you're a music artist, please allow people to just give you money directly, in some way. It'll incentivize people who don't pay for it to send you a few dollary doos.
thereโs this really cool alternative to streaming, called you buy their shit directly.
Wow, mind blown! I had no idea money could be used to buy things directly! /s
Seriously though, buying music from artists you already know is easy for artists that actually provide this as an option, but it doesn't help when trying to find new artists and songs to listen to. Spotify is brilliant for discovering new content and can't be replaced by 'buying shit directly'.
Photoshop.
And yeah, no, please, don't come over and mention Gimp and Kryta and all the others. I get it, they're cool for the stuff they do. They just aren't the all in one package that Photoshop is or have as powerful tools specifically for photo editing. Photoshop would require a Blender-style major effort to replicate and Gimp just isn't up to it. I wish it were. Photoshop is at the perfect intersection of being uniquely capable and walled off behind the single crappiest ecosystem in software.
Nobody likes Adobe, nobody wants to work with Adobe. Nobody can avoid Photoshop. That's just the world we live in and I don't like it.
Well, counterpoint: Photoshop tries to be an "everything for everybody" app, and GIMP/Krita don't need to compare to that, as little as any user needs all the features of Photoshop.
Nobody can avoid Photoshop
Call me nobody, then. I worked with the Adobe suite professionally for 15+ years, haven't touched it for the past six. You won't find a single 1:1 replacement. It's just a matter of quitting and accepting the individual limits of different alternatives.
It's a groupthink issue anyways. 3DSmax/Maya was the same for a long time, and "everyone" was saying Blender is not an alternative. And then some big companies switched to Blender and suddenly people stopped complaining about it. And while Blender did improve during that time, it did not improve so substantially that it really made all the difference.
I agree that it depends on your use case. If you're an artist or illustrator you can make do with a number of alternatives and just go elsewhere for photo editing, and if you're just doing basic adjustments to photos rather than detailed edits you can figure it out as well.
Photohop is harder to bypass if you're a jack-of-all-trades user mostly doing image editing but also dabbling in the other options from time to time. That's not to say you can't do it if you try, but it's going to be less convenient and add friction to your workflow.
Based. Just curious, what do you use for vector editing software? (For Illustrator-type work)
Nobody likes Adobe, nobody wants to work with Adobe. Nobody can avoid Photoshop. Thatโs just the world we live in and I donโt like it.
This sounds like Stockholm syndrome. You are just too familiar with Photoshop, so using anything else is hard and less efficient.
In photography there is this mantra about "the most important part is right behind the camera". A good photographer is not a good Nikon user, or good Canon user. A good photographer can deliver decent pictures with a potato camera if needed.
Sure, a potato camera is less efficient for any work that an actual good one. So it's good to invest in a good brand. But the point is: if you are not capable to make average results with a potato software, the problem is not in the software.
You know why the person themselves is the important part of this equation?
Because they know what tools to use for which purpose.
For example, GIMP is only now getting non-destructive editing through adjustment layers, which is such an indispensable feature for important projects
Photopea. Not foss, but a free clone of photoshop.
It does seem like a hopeless situation sometimes. I used to be a graphic designer and honestly it is very difficult to switch to any other program that is cohesive. Especially with the addition of AI features in Photoshop (keyword, I know, but generative fill can be extremely helpful in some cases). The Affinity suite is barely even able to keep up, and they have employees that are paid. Cross-compatibility and file type standards are a massive issue too, let alone the functionality itself
Also would be nice to have open source ecosystem with blender ,then open source pro level video editing like da vinci and open source photoshop.
I'm happy to give Black Magic Design my money.
I literally wouldn't piss on Adobe if it was on fire.
I haven't gone back to Blender's built in editor and postprocessing suite. I hear they did some stuff to it in 4.0.
Still, yeah, I end up going to DaVinci because Blender editing is more like Gimp Photoshopping than it is like Blender 3D modelling and rendering.
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.
A decent language learning type app, like dulingo
grindr
Exactly. Like when can I be a foss hoe
A defederated grindr
Do you like your men like you like your software?
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.
I tried Saber (https://f-droid.org/packages/com.adilhanney.saber/) for a while with my fat fingers and it worked good enough for my use case, idk if it fits your needs
Thanks for the recommendation. I'll give it a try sometime.
Yes yes yes ๐ 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.
Have you heard of Rnote? It is only available for linux, windows and mac tho
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!
Try this. Still under active development, but I like it so far.
An alternative to iTunes so that I donโt need a Windows VM to backup my company iPhone. But I know itโs 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.
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 Iโd still need an Apple program and a Windows VM, so it wouldnโt change a thing ๐
For maps, there is already OpenStreetMap and its ecosystem. I particularly like OrganicMaps which is available for Android, iOS and Linux (beta).
OrganicMaps works really well even with Apple Carplay. Iโm now a 100% relying on it.
OsmAnd
"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
I know them all but they can't hold up with their proprietary counterparts both by userbase and features.
Catima for a digital wallet
That doesn't seem to support credit cards
Software for the production of music and audio, like Ardour but for more platforms which more typical people could use more easily, plus plug-ins for that ecosystem. It's a major sticking point how corporate that field is for me.
At least Reaper has Linux ports, better than nothing.
Bitwig is probably the best available closed source daw on linux
I've looked at these, especially LMMS, but in my view they aren't enough (or good enough) to completely escape non-FOSS.
Sample Library plugins, my area of interest, are under two or three banners: Kontakt, Decent Sampler and SF. None of these are appropriately free, although Decent Sampler shows the most promise of breaking down the class divide in this area.
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.
Without wishing to give too much away, I know a group of people who work at a public transport agency in the UK. They recently had a meeting with Google about "opening up our data" which amounted to Google wanting the agency to sign a contract that would give Google exclusive rights to realtime and scheduling data in perpetuity, then Google would decide if/when/how it would be made public. The agency didn't say "fuck off", but something to that effect.
Now, instead, they're working with a group of students to create a public API with a permissable licence and a framework for other agencies to do the same.
So... maybe do hold your breath? Transit is one of those areas that attracts nerds and nerds love open source.
I mean, there are several FOSS transit apps around. The Netherlands, Germany,...
SnagIt!
Flameshot is great, but it lacks too many features I've come to depend on from SnagIt! and I would absolutely pay for a Linux port even if it isn't FOSS
How about ShareX? Iโve been using that as a SnagIt alternative for a few years, but I was never a heavy SnagIt user though.
Swiping library and keyboard.
Yousician or similar entertaining musician motivator. One that has scoring or analysis, specifically. Not just a video/backing track player.
Some kind of buy/sell/auction/freecycle system service/app/front-end that isn't evil and it's simple enough for normos to use so it gets critical mass and makes it easy to buy/sell/give/recycle stuff locally.
HeliBoard. Swype library must be downloaded and currently only working ones are closed source but the keyboard itself is open source and amazing.
I've just switched this week from SwiftKey, which was the best keyboard I have ever used. Made the switch just to abandon a piece of proprietary software, but oh boy... HeliBoard has way exceeded my expectations!
FlorisBoard (at least the beta) is getting there (swiped on FlorisBoard), though it's not quite there yet
I would love to see a good Lightroom alternative in terms of ease of use.
Darktable is great and the results are good, but it's pretty complex to use and has a really steep learning curve. And it doesn't do photo management other than a few basics. Even after months of use I still struggle to replicate what I can do in Lightroom.
YouTube
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.
Notesnook is OSS, e2ee, and cloud synced, with the ability to share notes. See if it fits your requirements.
I was interested in setting up a self hosted silverbullet.md site to potential replace keep as well.
Hedgedoc / codimd.
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.
This may be my unicorn, going to test out some time in the coming weeks! Thanks for the suggestion, stranger!
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
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.
Snapchat and Google Docs are the only two non-FOSS apps I can't shake off.
It would be cool to have a Snapchat clone based on Briar.
Google docs because I don't trust myself with my own data, I always end up delteting important documents cause I save them to random locations when cleaning house. Having it all in once place, with autosync, search and a nice powerful mobile interface is really convenient.
Certainly not as powerful as common office suites, but https://cryptpad.fr/ is not only open-source but also has already running instance (and has end to end encryption for your documents)
https://syncthing.net/ is a good general file synchronizer. Requires devices too be online simultaneously to sync, but gives you transport encryption with forward secrecy.
I can relate with trusting yourself with data ๐๐ would love to self host Immich, but I have continued to make silly mistakes and would 100% screw myself over if I had all my eggs in one basket with just a home server for files. At the moment I managed to completely degoogle and settle on Proton Drive, which although far from perfect, has been significantly improving (no Linux client yet though ๐). Syncthing has been looking more promising too. Maybe one of those could work for you?
Try having your self hosted services backup to an external (or at least a separate) drive, where each service has its own folder.
Are there cloud providers of OnlyOffice? That's the best FOSS option IMO. LibreOffice and OpenOffice were OK, but not nearly as good.
Streamlabs, Streamelements and Elgato, Logitech and Razer's software. Typically applications for streaming and content creation
Oblivion as there currently exists the Open Source Version of Morrowind
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
Dating websites
Tasker, Photopea, Perplexity.ai, Quick Cursor and A powerful alternative to Powerpoint. (I used to be a Powerpoint nerd)
Revealjs is a pretty great replacement for PowerPoint, but it does require rudimentary HTML skills.
Marp might also work. I believe it's a bit more limited but it is simpler. I think it may also pe based on Revealjs
OnlyOffice works well for pptx. Reference: Used to do animated PPT in advertising.
OK I will give it a try.
I would really like an open-source alternative to Facebook. The connection idea with friends via a social network platform I like, the bots and ads and force fed (propaganda) news I really don't like.
Plus, an open source Facebook would really hurt Zuck and that's also a win.
I think Facebook is interesting as it's such a wide range of apps. From groups, to marketplace to traditional social, it has a lot of potential to be spread across multiple FOSS alternatives
Universal Paperclip
You might like Swarmism!
Suicide booth
It may sound boring, but I would appreciate a good open source alarm app for android.
What's missing from the existing ones?
I have serious sleep issues so I heavily really on my alarm app, I need features like:
I miss Timely oohhh soo much
I have had success with the Simple Alarm Clock on F-Droid (not to be confused with the simple mobile tools apps). It has necessary basic features like custom alarms, increasing volume, and dismissing the alarm requires holding down "dismiss" so the chances of accidentally dismissing an alarm instead of snoozing it are much lower. The only time it seemingly failed me was after an overnight android update (samsung), where it didn't work until the phone was unlocked.
It'd be nice to have some kind of FOSS business suite, aka point of sale, accounting, inventory etc. I'm not a fan of Intuit.
I've also not found journal software I really like. RedNotebook is about the closest. I tend to use my journal not only as a personal diary but also as a place to brainstorm and I would also like a checklist/to-do list system, and this I haven't found in any software free or proprietary. I may have to build it myself, with my rudimentary knowledge of qt.
I may have to build [journal software] myself, with my rudimentary knowledge of qt.
Don't do that! Take a look at Tonto2.
For X/Twittwr there are many options but Mastodon(mastodon.social instance specifically) it's my favorite, it also works as an alternative to Facebook.
I just feel a lot better with Mastodon rather than X/Twitter
Parallel Desktop
There are several FOSS alternatives. All of them are more popular that Parallels.
are you talking wine, virtual box, quemu and such? Im pretty sure he is looking for usage like parallels so dual booting a mac and then running it from the mac side. I mean im not sure but thinking from a parallels user perspective that is my guess at the ask.
For macOS, I recommend UTM.
For RSS I recommend twineโnot sure if it's available on Mac os though. That's always going to be a struggle with foss stuff, support for Mac is lacking because the people making them tend not to use macs
For Copilot, Codeium might have potentional?
s/one/thing/
TransMac. It's a tool to create MacOS install discs and USBs. It works off of a limited time free trial then you are supposed to pay.
It works great but I'd prefer something FOSS.
Doesn't that require a computer running MacOS to run?
they did? totally slipped past me...
As far as I understand the app menue, tracking is an opt in.
Is OrganicMaps not a good alternative to OSMAND?
Not happy with OrganicMaps? It's my personal favourite at least, and completely open source. Probably depends what your needs are. :)
Just don't check the box?
It's the dumbest thing, but right now I just really want a better open source alternative to Advanced IP Scanner. Or I want someone to add a filter (especially by MAC) option to Angry IP Scanner. Whatever. I just want an IP scanner that can filter by MAC and works on Linux.
Vectric Aspire for my CNC work.
I sometimes needed something like powerquery from microsoft excel. To like quickly get specific data from a structured file.
A clean redshift application for Android, like redmoon. I found something but it's not quite there.
Something actually good to replace Google Docs, the current alternatives are either paid or not feature complete (or both).
OnlyOffice
True, I caved for Proton Drive for lack of a better option right now. Even then it is not feature complete. However I'm happy enough with Google not mining my data anymore
SOLIDWORKS. FreeCAD is hostile.
Hostile? The FreeCAD community is great
Onsdel is a fork of FreeCAD with UI improvements. Much better in my opinion. They actively contribute back to FreeCAD as well.
AirPlay projecting to other devices. I only see a tool to receive projections
Notion + OneNote/Samsung Notes
There is a myriad of open source notes apps, but none of them really hit the spot for me.
appflowy.io is getting really good as a notion replacement
Have you tried Affine.pro?
What features do you feel are missing in the open source options?
There always something missing, like
Every app is different, but I have yet to find one that ticks all the boxes.
Apple Remote Desktop. Batch control of computers through SSH and VNC would be amazing.
like Remmina?
Apple remote desktop? Apple doesn't support RDP. They do have a VNC client built in however
It's a long shot, but a viable alternative to Google Maps or other proprietary mapping websites (and no, OpenStreetMap is not a viable Google Maps alternative).
EDIT: Not sure why downvotes, OpenStreetMap doesn't even have directions as far as I can tell.
Organic Maps honestly hasn't been that bad for me, but searching addresses is appalling and I do need to rely on Google Maps in many instances still. However, it has made it much easier for me to contribute to OSM and have a better user experience. A step in the right direction at least
OSM is not that user friendly as Google Maps for sure, but if you really want you really can replace GMaps. It probably heavily depends on your country and if the OSM community is active there, but for example here in Germany the mapping information is basically on par with GMaps
The thing is, OSM is not comparable with GoogleMaps. OSM is just a (gigantic) database and is in many cases way more complete than GoogleMaps. What people usually associate with OSM is a rendered version of the database focused on what ever the renderer decided: bike lanes, waterways, hiking trails, etc. Many other apps actually use their database: OrganicMaps, Komoot, etc. And even more their rendered tiles. Now there are so many functionalities that this database doesn't do like geocoding (searching for adresses), reverse geocoding (getting the adress of a point) or route planning, but there are tools for it build on OSM data. e.g. Nominatim does geocoding and graphhopper does routing.
And to be honest, if you're travelling by bike graphhopper does a way better job at routing than google. An other plus, you can download the complete data for offline usage. All of Europe is only around 60GB.
All my installed apps are FOSS
Partiful / evite. Thereโs not much out there thatโs a good simple replacement.
I would love to see an Open Source alt to AlchemyRPG
I love using their scenes when playing DnD online, but their privacy policy leaves a lot to be desired
Im late to the party I know but, google wallet/gpay
MobaLiveCD its freeware but as far as I can tell it does not have a foss license.
personally for me it'd have to be remote desktop software, don't really need it myself, but being an SSH jockey, the day that i can do that but with remote desktop, and without it looking like a jpg, or needing to compile tigervnc specifically for it or some shit like that will be a good day for me.
I realize it's partially dependent on hardware, and that hardware sucks, so sometimes it just sucks. But SSH just works so well though.
YouTube, and one technically exists in the form of PeerTube, with PlasmaTube being a good client for PeerTube.
YouTube really isnโt anything without the content and Iโm not sure how open source will solve that.
A service that provides sheet music. I am learning the piano and I find it difficult to find accurate and reasonable sheet music for much I want to play. Some of it is obscurity, but even when it's findable, the service is monetized to make it unpleasant
The ultimate goal of the IMSLP is to gather all public domain music scores, in addition to the music scores of all contemporary composers (or their estates) who wish to release them to the public free of charge
IMSLP currently has 231,406 works, 755,950 scores, 83,070 recordings, 27,907 composers, and 2,027 performers.
Scrivener!
The frustrating thing is that, at least for me, there are no perfect word processors geared for novels and other scenarios where you manage large text masses.
Scrivener is one of those cases where you have a pretty excellent software that doesn't have a lot of problems OSS alternatives have. I have smooth time with it. But at the same time, the software always could be better.
Probably the best OSS novel writing software I've used is Org-Mode for Emacs. But, you know, it's based on Emacs, so it squeaks around the edges and gives the impression that it's a miracle it runs as brilliantly as it does.
Check out https://novelwriter.io/
I'm not familiar with such softwares (I use pandoc for technical writing), but might help you..
Dating app. An app that help people metting each other based on their interest and purpose local activity. :)
found this the other day, not sure if its what you're looking for https://github.com/Alovoa/alovoa-expo :P
Exchange and Outlook for business use.
No nothing else comes close.
Itโs the last app in MS Office that does not have competition. LibreOffice fills ever other app well enough but nothing comes close to exchange and Outlook. Considering they are trying to kill it off with an always online website (OWA) we need foss competition asap.
Have you tried Thunderbird after version 115? Also, what's so special about Exchange? It's just another (proprietary) email server, isn't it? Couldn't you just use Dovecot?
Discord. And no, Matrix/Element isnโt an alternative.
Its not really Foss but Vencord is a nice discord client mod that blocks some analytic stuff and is super cute to boot!
Let's see if Loops can fill the gap. Not sure if an open source alternative could generate enough hype to be viable - maybe if TikTok is banned in the US or something.
Holy smokes! I was an avid TikTok person for music before they enshittified it with ads and the shop features. Canโt wait for Loops!
My problem with Loops is the same problem I have with Pixelfed. They are both only maintained by the same one guy. No team, no support besides him. Its only a matter of time before they are dead in the water due to burnout or shifting interest.
@ClearCutCoconut WhatsApp
:blobfoxsignyes:
What about Signal?? I know it's not perfect but it seems like more people are using it each year. Whatsapp really has the majority of the market though, and it is so difficult to get people to change messaging apps (in the US at least, where I swear 95% of people have an iPhone and a superiority complex)
@ClearCutCoconut Yes, exactly.
Signal is nice but there is a lot of communication in Whatsapp.
I Don't have WhatsApp anymore. Though I just deleted my WhatsApp account and said that I am no longer reachable via that crap. If you want to contact me use Signal. Most of my friends just installed Signal (a few took some time), but if you don't do it that way you will never get away from WhatsApp just because of the network effect... And yes, you will miss out on some groups
Xx
That's what the question was? What FOSS alternative do u want for a software?
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
Matrix is also extremely complicated to sign up for. I tried getting some tech savvy friends to sign up for Matrix the other day. Even for someone tech-savvy it is waaaaaaaay too complicated. Many of the clients don't even have a sign up option, you need to sign up elsewhere first.
Yeah...for many of these programs the onboarding is so daunting, even for those who are tech savvy. Laymen don't stand a chance with something that is that complicated. It doesn't often seem to be a technical issue either, more-so a user experience or design problem
There are instances that are not very hard to sign up for. The main issue with Matrix is instability and performance, especially when communicating with users/groups on different instances. It's really not a great experience. And the inability to properly delete messages can be a big deal too
It's inconvenient, sure, but think of it as an assurance that you're not locked in with one app.
That said, I completely agree that Matrix and Element need to work on UX, particularly making it easy for new users to adopt it as well as verification/device switching.
@SorteKanin I'd like to see that. I have already onboarded about 35 students and my whole family to matrix, nobody had any problems with signup. Bigger problem is later if they get the infamous "Unable to decrypt message" error.
Can't relate. It's not harder to get your hands on a matrix account in comparison to a mail account. And for those that want it even easier, just download Element and you are guided through the default registration at matrix.org
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
Yeah signal is amazing for one to one or small groups, but not for what discord servers are used for.
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
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
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.
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 think whatโs 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.
I thought the Discord ads drama was an April Fools joke?
https://zulip.com/ is likely your best alternative. It's more a Slack copy than Discord but the features are there
Revolt Chat
I recently ran into that very issue, leading to me downloading (one foss) third party clients for discord which are privacy focused. As long as discord is still the place to be I have to be there too, but I can certainly limit the data they can gather about me. I found
Perhaps they are an option for you too
Didn't know those existed.
Aliucord looks like a modified client tho, so not really open source.
I couldn't get goofcord to work on Wayland but webcord works great
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.
Mumble needs a server, iirc
Edit to be more precise, it needs you to host a server of your own
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