The entire phone-based ecosystem.

@VirusMaster3073 music DAWs. I think the only real option is Ardour, but I tried it and was struggling to just figure out how to create a couple instrument tracks. Could be skill issue, but honestly I'm pretty good at figuring out UIs so if I was struggling a lot with the basics, it's probably not just me. So I'm still on garageband for now which doesn't get in my way when I'm trying to make music

I'm not sure I follow. LibreOffice is at least as good (if not better) than Offics365 unless maybe if you're doing advanced shit in Excel, or need specifically coded macros.

Considering Microsoft's push to make everything into a webwrapped application, I think LibreOffice is only going to be a better and better alternative as time moves on.

MS Office isn’t better than LibreOffice and OnlyOffice, they all do the same task of making docs, spreadsheets, and presentations with very similar UI. It’s a no brainer to use the one that doesn’t bug you to use OneDrive.

Linux gaming has come a long way, especially with the introduction of things like Proton and popularisation of it by the Steam Deck. If you can play games on the Steam Deck, those games run on Linux :D

The main reasons (mind you, not only reasons) why people don’t just switch to Linux is:

• it’s different (humans naturally gravitate towards things they are familiar with)
• partly because Linux has a few things that are unintuitive to the average user (e.g. using terminal), but distros like Mint have mostly solved this issue
• Switching itself is really annoying (I would say I’m in this boat, but I’ve installed Linux on my old computers and will definitely do it again if I ever get a new computer)

I'm sorry but... 20 years behind? What new features has, say, Word even offered in the past 20 years beside that damn ribbon?

Tax filing software

I'd like to see an open-source decentralized game store, like a competitor to Steam, GOG, etc. However, I think it should also target emulators. There's still an unfounded stigma toward emulation even though emulators themselves are legal, and even though the big AAA game companies themselves are now using them as a lazy way to repackage and resell their old games on new platforms.

One of the biggest barriers to entry into emulation is the setup. Even with super user-friendly frontends like Emulation Station, people are still required to either go out of their way to either legally backup the games they already own, or told to "do some searches," because of legal issues. Nevermind how this exposes new users to potential malware.

But people still make new games for these old systems. It's entirely possible to make a store that can sell ROMs legally - one already exists, itch.io. But imagine a federated open-source game store, one where game makers can choose to legally sell their own games, and then create plugins for the emulation frontends to allow people to buy roms directly from those interfaces. It would turn emulation into a fully complete console-like experience, all while being available on more platforms than any console could ever hope to be (including those same consoles when they're jailbroken!)

I also think it would be the final puzzle piece that legitimizes emulation.

3D CAD software. There are a few options out there (FreeCAD, LibreCAD, etc) and Blender is a thing that exists for more artistic 3D modeling. But they simply don't hold a candle to the features and capabilities of the paid packages, which typically have costs in the 4-to-5-digit range. And I'm not talking the crazy high-end simulation options - those I understand, they're hard - but basic modeling features.

Hell, I'd even settle for a CAD package that had some solid basic features and had a reasonable purchase cost. Unfortunately the few providers have the industry by the throat, and so your options are "free but terrible" and "you need a mortgage to use this".

Adobe After Effects!! PLEASE DEAR GOD

This is the singular thing still keeping me using Adobe software. If this was replaced then I could be FREEE

I'd love to see a user-friendly, easily-implemented FOSS alternative to the entire Android system.

The options that exist now often can't get past all the defenses that Android and phone manufacturers put into systems to secure their own data collection/revenue. I have an older Motorola phone that I literally can't install another operating system on.

We desperately need a stable, user-friendly, and hardware-adaptive replacement for Android. I don't want that shit on my phones any longer.

That's amusing to me. Back around 2010, I used a lot of state legal forms that they only released as PDF files, but not fillable. It was annoying to print them and fill them by hand, and terribly fiddly to use the PDF annotation tool on the computer.

So I just used OpenOffice.org to create almost-pixel-perfect versions of the forms, with fillable text boxes, then exported them as PDF. Word couldn't do it at the time.

Now, at work, I use Microsoft365 because that's what everyone uses because of the site license. I wish we'd switch to something else, because Outlook fails so hard at basic email stuff.

huh, i much prefer libreoffice to msoffice, i can't even think of a reason why anyone could prefer msoffice.

Im a but gobsmacked at the notion.

what do you use the drawing for?

I have still quite literally found no other tool, even paid products, that can interior-crop the way IrfanView can (select row/column Y in XYZ if the entire image was XYZ, and crop out that inner part and auto-tuck X and Z directly against each other). And it's had this feature for decades, I think.

The only one I really miss is an NFC payments app, but a local LLM for Android that's FOSS would be cool too - PocketPal is free, but not open source or on F-Droid.

Also LibreOffice for desktop is great, but on mobile there aren't any easy to use ones in the same way Google Docs is, I've tried LibreOffice for Android and Collabora

I heard https://www.onlyoffice.com/ is good, but have no personal experience.

A big one for me is Microsoft office (desktop), Libreoffice and other FOSS alternatives just simply don't come close,

What, exactly, is missing? MS Office pretty much peaked, feature-wise, in like 2003 (or, arguably, 2007), and LibreOffice is ahead of that. I also find the workflow to be closer to "classic" Office and, to a slightly lesser extent, WordPerfect, which I appreciate.

You can even give LibreOffice the ribbon menu if you want (it's in preferences somewhere). The default button icons may be rough (though recent versions have improve), but you can even customize those.

Business Accounting software under FOSS is abysmal. Poor quality, poor documentation, poor functionality, limited locale support and limited local support.

CAM software under FOSS is limited to three axis at best, but most is two and a half axis.

Office functionality is covered with LibreOffice. Your assertion that it's 20 years behind is in my experience not based in fact.

Source: I've been using FOSS for over a quarter of a century.

Microsoft Access. I have one database that I need that's written in Access, and although I suppose I could convert it to some other system it would be a chore and I'm not that driven to make the change.

I've moved almost everything else onto Linux.

Obd2 software so I can diagnose and repair my car. This is more than a dtc scanner, I need to be able to trend values and flash/program modules without a $15k tablet with $50k of yearly software.

Screenreaders.

The one half-decent libre screenreader is Orca, and it only works by hacking X into doing things X was never intended to do. Wayland is much cleaner and more sensible, which means that Orca doesn't work on it at all. This means blind and visually impaired users are physically unable to use modern Linuxes or BSDs.

And Orca was only half-decent.