I want to talk about our gateway products to open source. You know, that one product or software that made us go, “Whoa, this is amazing!” and got us hooked on the world of open source.
What made you to jump ships? Was it the “free” side of things like qBittorrent? Did you even know that some of your programs are open source before you got into the topic?
For me those products were:
- Android
- Firefox
- VLC
- Calibre
Am thinking to order some merch and I wanna make it more accessible to people unfamilliar with open source culture. Now, am looking for fairly normalized but still underrepresented product – maybe it could serve as a conversation starter and push some people to open source
Like other people have said, I’ve used open-source software for decades without thinking about it, but what really made me think about it as a concept was when I got into Skyrim modding, and I saw the exorbitant subscription fees of Photoshop and then learned through that community about GIMP. Then, I started learning more about things like privacy and more tangible effects of corporate greed, and gradually switched to more alternatives.
However, I personally never tried a FOSS OS until the last couple months when someone on Lemmy talked me into trying Linux. I always thought it was only for people with high levels of technical skills, but it turns out there are distros that are extremely accessible to users like myself.
Man, that’s a rough entry point. I’ve been waiting for GIMP to get good for decades, and I’ve accepted now it’s probably not gonna happen.
You’re such a disappointment, GIMP. Blender is right there, why can’t you be more like Blender?
I think I’m blissfully unaware of what a good photo-editing software looks like since I’ve used GIMP for almost everything. I might struggle with an app that’s good actually, because I’ve learned in one that I’ve heard many times is hard to navigate.
Hah. Yeah, I guess it sucks having learned Photoshop before it was an outright scam, because there is no good alternative.
Let me caveat that: there’s actually great art software that’s either cheap or free and there are many basic quick photo editing apps. But broad image manipulation and in-depth photo editing? It’s GIMP or nothing, and GIMP is definitely not it.
Note that for vector graphics editing, Inkscape is really good. That doesn’t help you if you need to edit photos, though.
Yeah, it’s just that specific hole in the landscape where GIMP has become the default and nobody else is doing better despite being the part of the ecosystem that Adobe holds with the tightest grip. It’s extremely annoying.
I actually did use Paint.net at one point as well, because there was an improved format that GIMP just straight up didn’t support, so at one point I was creating textures for my mods in GIMP, then opening the files in Paint.net and exporting them again lol
To be fair, I’m not a graphic designer, but I did have to learn about things like using layers to create glow maps, so GIMP worked just fine for a scrub like myself, but I can understand for anything more serious it would have some limitations
Not a graphic designer either, so I also use it for, say scanning documents and stuff like that. But I’ll be honest, if it takes more than that I’ll often just load into some mobile app meant for the edit I need to make just to avoid GIMP’s backwards UI.
My biggest grip with mobile apps, even for simple edits, is that none of them seem to support layers. I understand maybe it’s a performance thing, but it sure would be nice to be able to do some very basic things in a pinch when I’m away from my laptop or PC.
Edit: *gripe
Yep. You either get the features but not the depth in mobile apps or the depth but not the features on GIMP.
It genuinely sucks. Because it’s not that the technology is proprietary at Adobe and can’t be replicated. Like I said, Blender holds up to the best of commercial software and it’s just as free. It’s that the GIMP guys haven’t quite found their way to that qualitative jump Blender took.
Check out Krita. Krita is also free, but it’s amazing.
Yes, I’ve tried Krita. Krita is great. Go Krita. Krita is a painting program, though, not a full Photoshop replacement.
As, you know, we said in the post right above this one.
That was a different person
Perhaps you could specify which Photoshop feature it is that you need?
If you’re still looking, try Krita, it’s a polished and powerful open source image manipulation program.
I’ve tried Krita, but it’s primarily a painting tool, not really a Photoshop alternative for other tasks. It’s very solid for what it’s meant to do, though.
Makes sense. I never used Photoshop, so I don’t know how it compares. It’s been good enough for my needs so far.