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 😎 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?
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
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
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
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)
You had me for a second, lol. Unfortunately it is not an April fools joke :/ luckily for us though, the worse the application gets, the higher a chance a Foss alternative will emerge from a madlad who was sick of discord's shit
Completely agree. At this point it seems like it just needs time for the momentum to build (more and more users vouching for it). I didn't know they were adding cloud backups, that's great. Usernames have been helping too, I think!
I can relate with trusting yourself with data 😂😅 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 😐). Syncthing has been looking more promising too. Maybe one of those could work for you?
Yes yes yes 🙏 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.
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
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
Same, been eyeing and testing Anytype since alpha, and honestly it doesn’t feel intuitive at all. I tried, I really did, but it just feels like I’m going against the grain in every way to try to use it in daily life in its current state :/ don’t get me wrong, I love their values and what they’re trying to do. But it feels so convoluted at the moment
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 can’t take percentages.. I don’t 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 “educational courses” to the app
I've been using GrayJay which has been the game changer for me. I know it's not completely FOSS, but I feel like it is an amazing step in the right direction. I have access to my YouTube sub's AND the Odysee/Peertube/etc counterparts. So as channels transition, the subscribers can too. I feel like this is the necessary direction for more adoption, since like you and others have said, Odysee and Peertube don't have enough main channels for incentive
I've thought about this for a while actually. I think the hardest thing to balance would be privacy. With a FOSS-oriented platform like this, and a broad amount of features like Facebook, you would have to have the users sacrifice a certain amount of real-world data to have these all be linked, and convenient. It could be encrypted in some way, so at least the instance's server wouldn't be able to read the data, but across users you would. I think a new line or definition would have to be made for people who want to use something like this. Most people, though, probably wouldn't care. And a FOSS version would 100% be better than Facebook's servers, where the data is mined and sold.
Proton picks up Standard Notes to deepen its pro-privacy portfolio ( techcrunch.com )
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 😎 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?
Breezy Weather: An open-source, privacy-friendly Android weather app forked from the now-unmaintained Geometric Weather ( f-droid.org )
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