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Did PewDiePie Just Crack the Code for How to Present Libre Software? (blenderdumbass.org)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/opensource@programming.dev
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[–] 29 points 1 year ago (14 children)

Instead of asking people to install a GNU / Linux-Libre operating system immediately, they now ask people to install Libre-Office, or something

This is a great idea, but I think I would really emphasize the "or something" part of this, not the "Libre-Office" part. It needs to be something that's an upgrade or at least on par with what they were doing before experience wise (GIMP instead of Photoshop). I actively recommend against people I know taking on free software stuff that I use, if I know that it's a pain in the ass to get going with just to avoid a bad experience that turns them off to the idea.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    I don't think Gimp is the upgrade you think it is. And I say this having used basically nothing else, but the interface is arcane. Unless you use it every day, you sort of have to have a browser open all the time to search for how to do things.

    But I agree that the best path to migration is to do apps first, one at a time, then do a system migration. Minimizes friction and pain.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    I appreciate you pointing this out. As someone who used actual photoshop for decades, GIMP simply doesn’t cut it.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (4 children)

    There was Gimpshop, but the project got abandoned years ago. These days I use darktable for photo adjustments and don't do much creative editing. I've heard good things about Krita.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Look into PhotoGIMP.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    Interesting, thanks!

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Idk, I guess it is personal taste but I like GIMP substantially better. The whole “separate windows is the default” thing is a baffling and wrong decision, but once you get over that small hurdle, it just seems like everything is more straightforward. Every time I have to rotate an image or something in Photoshop it’s just weird and off putting.

    Maybe it’s just what I’m used to. And, some fancy things like layer effects or AI image stuff are straightforward in Photoshop whereas in GIMP you have to go into the awful scripting if you can do it at all. But to me for most things GIMP is easier and better.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    GIMP is hot garbage compared to classic Photoshop (I haven't used the rent-seeking versions so I wouldn't know about those). The UX has been utter shite and will remain utter shite because they like it that way. PhotoGIMP has been a godsend.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    What did you try to do that you found confusing or difficult? I’m genuinely just curious.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Exhibit A: the text tool.

    In general though, I find the UX to just be worse across the board. Too many steps. Non-intuitive defaults. Bad keyboard shortcuts. and so on.

    To be honest, I have successfully avoided using bare GIMP for enough years now (not sure how old PhotoGIMP is, but I think it's been around at least 5 years) that the specific bad memories are fading.

    I do think GIMP has objectively bad UX in the sense that it's definitely not just "I was used to Photoshop first so I automatically think everything else sucks." Probably the last ~20 years of flamewars started by people pissing off the devs by saying the exact same thing is some evidence of that. But I'm not a UX expert and haven't sat down to do a side-by-side comparison... honestly, that's something I'd really enjoy reading/watching if somebody did do it.

    If such a thing existed, it'd be coolest if they did it with one of the "good" versions of classic Photoshop, like version 7 or whatever was made by pirates into a portable app in the 2000s. I have no idea how far the UX has evolved in Adobe's rent-seeking era because I stopped using even portable Photoshop when I switched to Linux as my daily driver for good in 2015 or so. Then suffered with GIMP for a few years, hating every nanosecond of it, til PhotoGIMP came along.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago*

    Exhibit A: the text tool.

    Oh... yeah, you're not wrong.

    Then suffered with GIMP for a few years, hating every nanosecond of it, til PhotoGIMP came along.

    You're also not wrong that the GIMP developers stubbornly refusing to create something like this as the normal way of doing things is evidence of them not really caring about how well their software works out for most people who are going to use it.

    If you needed some more evidence, holy shit the scripting interface is bad. However bad you think it is, multiply that by about 3 to 5 times, and that's how bad it is. I'm not trying to talk trash on people who made something awesome which I use frequently which does the job I need it to do perfectly (and were fine with making it available for PhotoGIMP to take advantage of to make some different thing to serve other people's need). But holy shit the scripting is bad. It's so bad.

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