• CrypticCoffee@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    I have suspected for a while it is astroturfing. Same as with GIMP and Libre Office where inevitably someone will trash the UI as it’s “soooo bad”. If you say a lie, and repeat it enough, people start to believe it.

    • sab@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Every time I introduce someone to LibreOffice I half expect them to hate it, and that I’ll have to go through the alternative interfaces and try to make them accept it and potentially install OnlyOffice instead if that doesn’t help.

      Instead, I’m generally met with an “oh, this is nice”, before they start typing away.

      I get that some of the bigger nerds would prefer something different (I would personally love the power of LibreOffice inside a modern minimalist GTK app), but LibreOffice is working great for most users. Those passionate enough to see an issue with it probably prefer markdown or latex anyway.

      • LinkOpensChest.wav@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        I honestly prefer LibreOffice to what Microsoft Office has become.

        When I went to grad school, I was told MS Office was required, so I purchased it, but turned out we just used basic word processing and a handful of simple presentations, so I ended up using LibreOffice for everything instead.

        • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.net
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          1 year ago

          Same here. I found the Microsoft ribbon they introduced in 2007 to be a major anti pattern. It didn’t make things easier, it made things way harder. Our IT department tried to bust me for not using the official Microsoft software (outlook, excel, word, etc) so I outright uninstalled windows and put fedora on there. Granted, I was trying to do partitions and fucked it up, but whatever. The point is I wanted to get away from their “antivirus” spyware so I could use what worked for me. I got the idea when I saw the Dean of academics was using i3 as her window manager

          • Hellfire103@sopuli.xyz
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            1 year ago

            I can just imagine your IT dept. running into the Dean’s office to complain, only to be met with yet more Linux. Hilarious!

      • argv_minus_one@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        I’ve only introduced LibreOffice to one person in recent memory, and her reaction was basically, “This is free?! I wish I knew about this years ago.”

    • million@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I’m a huge fan of open source but saying the only people saying Gimps UI is bad are astroturfing is insane.

      It’s famously controversial and uses UI paradigms that don’t exist in any modern desktop environments.

      • CrypticCoffee@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        I’m not, but it’s not like it’s an occasional thing. Every time it’s brought up, it’s trashed. Free software that does a better job than anything else free, and folk bash it. Either they like and are motivated by Adobe dominance, or they’re useful idiots.

        It’s balanced to say “great program, but could do with a UI improvement”. It isn’t to say it’s unusable because of UI. I cannot imagine any free software advocate should be proud of taking that line.

        • PopOfAfrica@lemmy.one
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          1 year ago

          We don’t need to praise the software specifically because it’s Open Source. We need good Open source Software of which there are plenty of great examples.

          Blender, Krita, Libre Office, Audacity. These are great. Better than the paid competitors in a lot for ways.

          Gimp and scribus are simply not. That should mean we start developing good FOSS software to fill that gap, as a collective.

          • CrypticCoffee@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            Tenacity, not audacity. Audacity got took over by a company with questionable record and tried to add telemetry into it. Tenacity was the OS fork which stayed true to principles.

            GIMP may not be your bag, but it’s highly used and many find it has much higher quality features than the alternatives. UI may not be popular, but it doesn’t prevent it being a solid bit of open source software.

            Btw, what steps have you taken to improve open source graphics software? It’s easy to bash, it’s harder to learn and contribute.

            Open source contributors > open source advocates > grateful open source users > almost everyone else > open source critics

            • GizmoLion@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              One doesn’t need to be a dev to have opinions about ease of use of a piece of software, don’t be dense.

              • CrypticCoffee@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                That is true, but to get free software made by people in their free time and say “this is rubbish” is a little ungrateful.

                “Here, have this free food…”. " ewww gross, that is so bad".

                • PopOfAfrica@lemmy.one
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                  1 year ago

                  I’m saying is that there is tons of open source software that isn’t crap. Gimp has no excuse it should be as good as the others.

                  Especially one as mature as Gimp.

                  • CrypticCoffee@lemmy.ml
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                    1 year ago

                    Considering I know many artists that use it as first choice, I know you’re wrong.

                    It’s good software, you just don’t like it.

    • Millie@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I love GIMP’s UI. It’s clean, it’s to the point, and it’s stayed basically the same for ages!

      • CrypticCoffee@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Damn, this positivity isn’t welcome in free software circles! How can I respect you? (Kidding, I think you and your positivity is awesome.)

    • Landrin201@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      “Other people who have bad experience ces with something just be asteoturfing.”

      Ivw consistently had an issue with Firefox that I described in a thread a few days ago that I can’t seem to identify or fix. Am I just not allowed to mention it?

      • CrypticCoffee@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Maybe their issue tracker is the best bet, or in a separate question thread about the issues. Raising it in every thread it comes up when people recommending it isn’t going to solve the issue or help anything, is it?

        • Landrin201@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          No, it won’t. I bring it up in this particular thread for 2 reasons.

          1. I don’t like the insinuation that anyone who claims to have problems with Firefox must be bots. I don’t think that’s at all true, since I’ve run into multiple problems with the browser myself that I haven’t been able to solve.

          2. I brought it up in the previous thread because I think that if people are considering switching, knowing what problems exist is useful. It isn’t meant to dissuade anyone, in fact I regularly recommend Firefox to my friends and family. But I don’t personally use it because of a pretty major problem, and I don’t think it’s bad to mention it when the topic comes up.

          • CrypticCoffee@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            “I don’t like the insinuation that anyone who claims to have problems with Firefox must be bots.”

            I did not say this, multiple people have interpreted it this way. It’s a little defensive. I said there is a targetted campaign against it where every time it is brought up it is trashed. You may be be a genuine person who is also trashing it, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t also a targetted campaign at play. I just find it hard to believe that some folk hate FOSS projects so much they have to smash it every time it’s brought up. Sounds exhausting.

            There is a difference between “it’s great software, but i’ve notice a few issues” and “this project is trash”. The second is posted purely with the intent of trying to dissuade people from using it, and all they do is keep people using Chrome, which I think we can all agree has bigger issues.

    • PopOfAfrica@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      Woah, hold on now. Gimp actually is unusablly bad. I say this as Linux Graphic Designer who would rather use Krita (anillustration software) to do photo edits.

      Libre Office is great tho.

      • CrypticCoffee@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        I’m involved in open source software, and of the artists I’m aware of, most use GIMP, not Krita, because it has better features. Krita is a great option, but it doesn’t quite have the same features for producing quality art.

    • AnonymousLlama@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Also talking about GIMP, plenty of people have said “there’s heaps of Photoshop alternatives” yet legit everything on Ubuntu I’ve has been buggy AF and feature poor. Like I get that FOSS software is hit and miss but this has been really rough