Much to my chagrin, SVP is still better than MPV+VapourSynth in the realm of frame rate upscaling. Worst part? SVP is, in fact, based on the same code that VapourSynth uses, just with their own proprietary additions that should honestly have gone back to the community.
Apples Notes because nothing else has the perfect amount of formatting, alongside exceptional sync.
Also Apple Mail for the same simplicity reason - Geary on Gnome is close-ish, but goes too far down the simple route. How does it not have a refresh button??
Also Logic Pro, mainly because there aren’t any fully FOSS alternatives that even attempt a full-featured DAW, let alone with Drummer etc.
I also ‘prefer’ Apple’s productivity suite over everything else, because it has by far the best UX, but I’m totally fine with LibreOffice too.
X-Plane comes close to FlightGear. It has far-superior visuals. fully functional glass cockpits like the Garmin G1000, and simulated ATC, but the vast array of community-made planes available in FlightGear still kinda seals it for me, despite the jank.
FreeCAD has its pain points. Software like Creo Parametric is much more robust in a lot of ways, but I literally cannot run it on Linux (no mouse-wheel zoom in WINE, slide show in QEMU). Fundamentally, they are similar enough, and my work primarily takes place on a component level so I can live without the streamlined assembly workflow. Also, FreeCAD doesn’t cost >$2000, and can still do FEM analysis and computational fluid dynamics. Maybe I could find a crack for SolidWorks and try that out, but it takes a long ass time to learn a CAD system proficiently.
Everyone who learned on Photoshop says the GIMP interface is weird, but I learned on GIMP and can say the same for Photoshop.
Games are the only exception, but games aren’t fungible. Minecraft is not a substitute for Dwarf Fortress. CS:GO is not a substitute for Unreal Tournament.
Some people hate Sync for two reasons, that is, pricing and tracking. What they need to know is that tracking is done by google ads, once one gets adfree version tracking won’t happen.
Nearly all video games, and by extension where i get them - Steam. Open source gaming is simply not an option. One can - and i do - stay away from the big annoying AAA companies most of which of just subsidiaries of yet bigger annoyinger tech companies, and Valve is actually pretty decent about open source, but one cannot simply game without proprietary software.
Discord and WhatsApp. Literally everyone i know uses one of them.
For me at least i have no problems with the UI, functionality, etc, of these apps’ foss equivalents but the main problem is the userbase. You cannot have a messaging app with no people to talk with and you cannot and a game store with no games to play. You can have the best design and software ever but that won’t do shit without the established legacy and publicity of a big company.
There’s not a good alternative to Discord for it’s usecases. Sorry Matrix and XMPP, despite many attempts at clients to mimic Discord on these protocols they just never cut it.
Maybe a controversial opinion I don’t think videogames should be open source personally, they’re art and should be unique
Think all the tools used to make them should be and generic modules that could be reused maybe but I see no issue with game devs going closed source with code that’s unique to their game
Finale vs Lilypond. I’m convinced only the Borg actually uses Lilypond. It’s obscure, terrifying and difficult to use. Maybe it’s because I’ve been using finale for over 14 years but it’s hard for me to even conceptualize how to make music in Lilypond, whereas Finale just does whatever I ask of it.
Musescore is also a good FOSS alternative but I still stick by finale.
Other than basic things like Tetris (Quadrapassel) and minesweeper, I’ve not yet found an open source game I’ve enjoyed nearly as much as the countless proprietary games I own and play.
My really obvious one, and a huge source of problems for me, is Discord. But the biggest one was a wild one:
Irfanview
It is a super-fast image viewer and simple image editor. Supports every format I’ve ever thrown at it. Bulk conversion and resize works like a charm. Hell, it’s half the reason I haven’t moved to Linux for my daily use.