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What non-FOSS software are you using that you wish you could replace? (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 year ago by John_Coomsumer@beehaw.org to c/foss@beehaw.org

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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.

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[–] MJBrune@beehaw.org 12 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Windows. Linux as a desktop just isn't stable enough for me. Too many bugs with GUI settings. I don't want to look up multiple ways to do things just to be eventually kicked into the command line and hopefully run the right commands to get some basic settings working. I'd love for Linux to be more stable and to have a cohesive GUI.

On the more cosmetic side running KDE apps in Gnome or running Gnome apps in KDE is just a further huge mess that can essentially ruin how your system looks which could potentially soft-lock you on screens that you can't read. The DE on Linux just should do the Windows and Mac thing of requiring hooks to allow them to set important color and theme settings.

Windows is terrible but it's still leagues above Linux in some real basic ways. Linux is going to need to step it up if it ever wants a serious "year of the Linux desktop" to happen before the death of the desktop computer altogether.

[–] Icarus@beehaw.org 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

If you haven't checked out Pop!_OS I'd recommend giving it a try. While I'm using a system76 laptop so they guarantee hardware compatibility, it's been one of the smoothest and most functional DE/guis I've used. Ive never had to resort to a command line* and aaalllmost everything you'd expect to find exists in the gui.

*caveat. Except for some really esoteric problems, which are usually a result of my own tinerking

[–] MJBrune@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

Pop os has constantly been recommended to me. I'm certainly putting it on the list to try this year. I'll probably load up a ventoy USB with a ton of oses and report back eventually.

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