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

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm curious what "basic settings" require you to touch the command line. My elderly mum and dad - who aren't very tech savvy btw - have been running Linux for nearly a decade now (Xubuntu previously, now Zorin) and haven't had any major issues in all this time. Admittedly their requirements are pretty basic, but they do all your tasks a typical basic PC user would - surf the web, check emails, work on documents, print and scan stuff, backup files from their phones/USB drives, video chat etc. In fact, the entire reason why I got them onto Linux in the first place was because Windows wasn't really stable for them - I got tired of having to troubleshoot or reinstall Windows for them all the time. They'd complain about how an update broke something, or how the system was becoming slower etc. But no such issues with Linux. Occasionally I might get a call asking "how do I do this", but after a few years, these support calls have all but vanished. Linux "just works" for them, it's rock solid, the GUI is intuitive (at least for Xububtu/Zorin) and they never had to touch the command line.