Lemmy faces the same expectations problems as every free/libre software
It's the same as with Linux, GIMP, LibreOffice or OnlyOffice. Some people are so used to their routines that they expect everything to work the same and get easily pissed when not.
It's not only the break in routine but also the direction of the site. All your examples are productivity products while the fediverse is, in essence, social media. The thing with social media is that branding REALLY matters. There have been attempts to copy Instagram or Snapchat or Reddit but they have all failed to gain massive communities due to not being part of a known brand.
"I posted my pics on the gram"
"What's your snap?" etc....
Kbin, Lemmy, these are just instances of something called the Fediverse, try getting a layperson to understand that.
Social media generally has a rule known as the 90:9:1 rule. 90% of people are lurkers just doomscrolling or passing time, 9% are interacting with content and leaving comments and/or posting, and the final 1% is making the engaging content that sites like Reddit and YouTube are known for.
Right now, FOSS software is often populated by only 10% of that ratio, the power-users and people that interact every so often. Those lurkers, the 90%, migrating them will be hard if not impossible. Remember, they lurk, they will stay where the most engaging content is, and that is still currently Reddit.
Only the generators and interactors really matter for the user experience.
I guess if you want to get word out for a product, project or political cause or something it matters, but for everything else it won't really effect things.
It's basically how reddit started out 18 years ago anyway.
It’s not just that: it is made worse by the fact that, being “free”, resources are limited. For example, Lemmy.world has been experiencing several hiccups and it’s bloody slow at the moment. I get it, it runs on small servers. But the QoS is bad nevertheless; how can you expect the average Joe coming from Reddit to stay here?
I was with you until GIMP. If one more person lists it as an alternative to Photoshop I’m gonna lose it. It’s UI is terrible, you have to watch a guide just to get started. Can’t read PSDs in any viable way. I’m sure people use it just fine but to call it an alternative to Photoshop is just plain lying.
Edit: the other thing I dislike about it being suggested as a replacement is that it assumes you work alone. Anyone on a team with people in PS will not be able to even attempt to use GIMP to get work done.
The better alternative to Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign is Affinity. And yeah, while it’s not actually free, you only have to pay once and everything is yours.
Something I use a ton: smart objects, smart masks, smart filters. Non destructive actions where I can still edit the original and have all previous items applied in a separate file or view in real time.
Well its still not a image manipulation feature missing. It’s a workflow feature. You could also just copy a layer. But in the end, Photoshop has no image manipulation feature that is really missing in GIMP, you can export the same result picture.
Look at it like two cars. One is automatic and the other has a stick shift. In the end what I am talking about is the transportation. Both cars drive the same speed and arrive at the same time, but driving stick requires a different workflow, then driving automatic. But that does not mean, stick shift is no alternative to an automatic.
Photoshop doesn’t have a native G’MIC plugin feature. You can’t wave that away as not Adobes fault!
That’s how stupid you sound.
Different products have different features and different ways to do things. It’s not Gimp’s sole purpose to just clone every feature from Photoshop. It’s not a Photoshop clone, it’s a piece of software in its own right.
Gimp makes great use of the amazing G’Mic filter tool. Adobe doesn’t. That doesn’t make Gimp better than Photoshop.
Different software makes different choices and people choose whichever they want to use and shut the hell up about it.
My whole point was only that I dislike that people call it an alternative to Photoshop. That’s been proven by your post. I’m not trying to have a semantics contest here
A task would be if to give us an example of an “end result” that you can accomplish in PS that you can’t in GIMP.
Not what tools you use to make it. But the content that comes out the other end.
I’m not going to argue that PS has some extra tools that make stuff easier to do. It has the resources to develop them, after all.
But there is no drawing, animation, photo edit, composition or other end product that you can ONLY do with Photoshop. The only people who say that are people who have never used any alternative.
So my point is still valid that GIMP is not an alternative to Photoshop. It would be like saying this screwdriver is an alternative to this toolset. People coming from Photoshop aren’t looking at the singular goal of image manipulation.
My biggest takeaway with open source projects is this:
Theres there’s a HUGE jump from being power user friendly to being user friendly in general. Significantly bigger than the jump from dev/contributor users to power users.
UX is something huge companies spend a lot of time and money on to ensure the layman can use the software well, something open source developers do not have the luxury of caring about from the get go.
Power users do not recognize the inbuilt muscle memory they have acquired over time to get around some of the more nagging aspects of the software and get frustrated with new users for not doing the same, while these new users get frustrated at things not being straightforward, or similar to some other software they’re used to.
IMO this push and pull is what is truly preventing a Linux desktop experience that is truly layman friendly. But when it works, and an open source project can slowly start putting more of their time into UX when the project is more mature, then it truly starts kicking ass.
Look at how far Blender has come since the 3.0 update. A lot of studios are straight up switching to it for a lot of work that was traditionally Max or Maya based. Obviously you still have some of the “old guard” who felt a little alienated with the sweeping changes from 2.7 to 3, but I feel blender is objectively better for most people since then.
TL;DR: OSS always deals with different competing needs for power users vs regular users, but given enough time things get smoothened out
I think even the jump between 2.7 and 2.8 is huge in terms of user-friendliness and aesthetics, but yeah over time Blender has gotten way more features and support. Hell, it supported ARM Macs way before Maya did, and the latter only got ARM support earlier this year. I expected Apple to fully complete their transition before Autodesk managed to pull it off.
Somewhat agree, but don’t get me started on a Gimp. To think that gimp was build to be a tool analogous to Photoshop (PS) is naive. It was born to demonstrate GTK GUI widgets and to check boxes on feature list (of supposedly paint program analogous to PS) from programmers perspective at most. Ok, they did the thing, checked the boxes, used all widgets, demonstrated that it works and from that day on it had and still has totaly inneficient workflow compared to PS and nobody cares about that. Answer to sugestions is almost always half assed, apple soused - you are holding it wrong, we are not PS. :)
My 2 cents, you can learn Gimp, you can adjust yourself to it, but if you have ever worked on PS and were good at it (with all its workflow, shortcuts, up to the level where you work one hand on keyboard, having most toolboxes hiden out of your view, etc…) you’ll still feel gimpy. It’s like comparing of giving commands to the gnome with an axe versus to an elf with a whole bunch of efficient specialised tools, spells and workflows – both trying to create art. I don’t use PS daily for how much, maybe >8 years and use Gimp weekly for about 12years – I say, it is still gimpy as f… And I’m programmer not a designer, designers usualy just hate it. I on another hand understant it (and it’s history) and take it as it is, as an inferior gimpy cousin of PS :)
then say it better when lemmy trully already have everything instead of saying it now ? you dont acknowledge a toddler as master degree even if later they could take master degree, you call them as their current state which is toddler
Seemed like this discussion was about the technical capabilities, not the user generated content. Anyway if you compare the beginning of reddit (e.g., the early days after digg’s implosion) to lemmy today, I’d bet lemmy is doing just fine on the content side too. And even leaving that aside, there’s a quality over quantity aspect in the discussions that heavily leans in lemmy’s favor.
I guess as a user I didn’t see the back-of-house tools for mods and admins, but so far Lemmy is at least competitive. There are risks with server security and threat of being hacked, along with the size of the team.
I barely understand how things work, i recently followed some people making some apps for kbin but I have no idea how to get back to seeing their profiles again. I can still surf some topics though and I'm slowly figuring things out so I'm quite happy
Yeah, right now it’s pretty amazing for a bunch of tasks. Epic injected a ton of money on it and I’m sure a lot of other investors are also helping the Blender foundation, which they totally deserve.
Open source software is quite far from behind the curve.
There is almost no-one in my field in academia not using R and Latex. Combining it with Linux makes my life much easier.
Wikipedia is open source. Firefox. Chromium. WebKit. Android. Immagine your digital life without any of those.
Whenever I'm forced to use proprietary software I feel like I'm being held back. I know it's mostly just a question of what you're used to, but saying that open source is behind the curve is just not accurate.
You talked about your field now let me talk about mine.
There’s no-one in my field, in advertising agencies, corporate, and design studios, not using proprietary software. Combining it with Windows and MacOS, makes everyone’s life function with normality. From designers, to animators, to sculptors, to publicists, to copywriters, to editors, to analysts, to architects, to project managers, to printers, to final clients.
Adobe and Autodesk are proprietary. Octane. ZBrush. Cinema4D. NVIDIA. Ableton... Imagine professional life without any of those. From proprietary technology, to software integration.
I can’t even be forced to use open source software for my professional work which is also my passion and my hobby. It’s not a question of what you’re used to, it’s a question of what’s available and what others who depend on your work are using.
In my field, using any open source package is the equivalent of using Windows 95 in 2023 just for the sake of being a contrarian hipster. The poetic protest might be noble until you get to join the professional industry and face the reality of the decades of development and progress that proprietary software has over open source.
Yes, it absolutely depends on the field. I'm not arguing that for every proprietary software there is an equally good open source alternative, and especially in some of the fields you mentioned it is absolutely behind. I don't think anyone is arguing open source video games are better than proprietary ones, for an extreme example.
Saying that open source is lagging behind as a blanket statement is still as wrong as saying the opposite - it depends what you're doing.
Yo be fair, only the core of Android is open-source (AOSP), but there is a lot of proprietary shit build on it with the versions most manufacturers carry out most of the people could not live without (Google Play Services, Network Location Provider, Firebase etc.).
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