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

  • MudMan@kbin.social
    5·
    1 year ago

    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?

    • Link.wav [he/him]@beehaw.org
      5·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • MudMan@kbin.social
        2·
        1 year ago

        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.

        • Link.wav [he/him]@beehaw.org
          2·
          1 year ago

          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

          • MudMan@kbin.social
            0·
            1 year ago

            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.

            • Link.wav [he/him]@beehaw.org
              1·
              1 year ago

              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

        • argv_minus_one@beehaw.org
          2·
          1 year ago

          Note that for vector graphics editing, Inkscape is really good. That doesn’t help you if you need to edit photos, though.

          • MudMan@kbin.social
            1·
            1 year ago

            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.

    • Jummit@lemmy.one
      2·
      1 year ago

      If you’re still looking, try Krita, it’s a polished and powerful open source image manipulation program.