Hi Linux Lemmites. Recently finished up school and started working full time and kind of miss working on personal projects. I’m looking to try to make something in rust and try out gpui if I can figure it out or maybe egui. I also want to make something maybe even a handful of people would actually use as I find that motivating, so I ask what would actually be useful to you?

Edit: thank you all very much for the input, I think that maybe doing something akin to a “settings+” would be a fair target for me for a n initial project. If I make anything interesting I’ll make another post in this sub.

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[–] 33 points 11 months ago (3 children)

GUI for Pipewire configuration. Being able to reliably change the sample rate and buffer size without having to mess with config files would be nice.

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  • [–] [S] 5 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    I think I’d shoot for something like this for maybe a project 2 or so. I’ve messed a bit with cpal already because I wanted to mess around with doing some basic dsp stuff so I’d love to do a full easy effects replacement with this included. Or alternatively include something basic in the settings project I mentioned a bit higher up

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  • [–] 23 points 11 months ago

    Three finger drag in Wayland, a new gui for opensnitch where i can isolate network activity by app like little snitch 

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  • [–] 17 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    Qt version of cool GTK software: Nicotine+, Ardour (ahahah), Lutris, Cartridges

    Qt software I would love to see graphically improved: QuodLibet, Falkon, Qbittorrent, KeePass

    Others: PeerTube client, Syncthing client, Ardour+Kdenlive fusion (a good Video DAW is my wet dream), Lemmy for desktop

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  • [–] 11 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

    Qbittorrent desperately needs an easy way to change font size for us blind motherfuckers.

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  • [–] 16 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    A standalone utility for decoding QR codes that will work on a desktop. All I want is to be able to put a picture of the code in and get whatever text it was concealing in a little text box where I can read it, and C&P it if it's useful to do so. If something like this exists, I've never been able to find it, although there are seemingly dozens of programs for generating QR codes.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago

    I wrote a little script a while back that would save a temp file with fswebcam, run zbarimg on it to decode the qr, delete the temp file and if it worked it would pipe the output into xclip/wl-copy, otherwise it would try again (up to 8 times).

    I hooked it up to a keyboard shortcut and I'll see the webcam light flash one or two times when I hit it, then know it's good.

    It wouldn't be a ton of work to also have a popup with the qr value using zenity or something, maybe use the --question and pass it "copy $output to clipboard?". You could have an --error if all the scan attempts failed.

    Feel free to shoot me a pm if you want help.

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  • [–] 14 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    I don't have a concrete idea for you, but I suggest starting with something really simple. I think simple games are a good place to start. Or create a front-end for some command line tool to make it easier on beginners. That way you can focus on the UI development you're interested in without getting bogged down in the rest of it.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    This is some sage advice thank you. I’m guilt of always starting something super difficult and then going back. My first couple qt projects were forcibly scoped because I had actually end users I needed to keep in mind and that helped immensely.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago*

    I speak standing on a hill if my own dead projects. Just remember personal projects are supposed to be fun and educational, maybe with a little resume padding for good measure. Scratch that itch you can't get to at work. It's great when other people enjoy them, but as soon as they become a commitment, they start feeling like work. To me, at least.

    That's why I think games or little tools are great. They small enough so you can throw them out and start over. People won't get (too) mad if you stop maintaining them (if you open source them) because it's easy for someone else to take over.

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  • [–] 13 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    A real Photoshop replacement. GIMP is cool, but ain't it. I have yet to find ANY software that can replace PS. I've even tried using multiple programs to replace PS, and it just doesn't work. I fucking HATE Adobe.

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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago

    I'm not an artist by any definition, but I am wholeheartedly behind the sentiment of excising the cancerous growth that is the Adobe company out of existence. You may have seen this website before, but have you checked out fuckadobe.com? Alternatives are a little ways down, past the wall of text.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 11 months ago

    I’d love to do something this big in scope eventually maybe a couple projects down the road but I’d definitely want rust to be at the level of my main languages before I delve into that depth. I also would want to avoid the gimp development times it seems it takes forever for stuff over there

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  • [–] 13 points 11 months ago* (4 children)

    A universal uninstaller.

    Now that Ubuntu has apt, snap, ~/bin, flatpak, appimages, etc, when I want to disable, update, or, uninstall an app, I can't quickly figure out where it is or how to do that. So a program that starts with 'which appname' or something more clever to find it, which also told you what type of installation method it was and then let you remove it with the next action.

    For example I had Desktop Docker installed which was garbage, and I didn't remember how I had installed it. In that case you couldn't use 'which' because that's not the name of the executable, so you'd have to design something smarter that could search .desktop files or whatever.

    Good luck with your project!

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    The GNOME & KDE Platform have a software store with an "uninstall" button?

    What platform are you using with Ubuntu?

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago* (2 children)

    That works for things that are installed via the app store, but I install things from other sources as well.

    I don't know what you mean by platforms, but if the software I want is not in the app store, I usually go to their website and see how the developers recommend installing it.

    Sometimes I download an appimage. Sometimes I download a .deb. Sometimes the developer wants me to wget directly into sudo (yuck) sometimes I have to clone a github repo, rarely these days do I have to download a source tarball and make compile, but maybe I get some old software that works that way.

    Sometimes it is confusing because the software I installed (e.g. Steam) has the preferred way from the website different from the version in the app store (Steam-launcher or whatever). The problem is I don't remember which method I used to install what.

    In my imagination, I open the universal uninstaller, and start typing the app. As I type it shows suggestions. If I select it, it tells me how I installed it (downloaded a deb from their website, etc.,) then the next click takes me to the correct uninstall method.

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  • [–] 24 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    GUI for managing fingerprints/PAM that allows complicated or at least some customization with PAM such as requiring password on first login then allowing graphical fingerprints for sudo, unlock and other prompts with fallback to password.

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  • [–] [S] 5 points 11 months ago

    I think this a pretty good idea. There’s a few other ideas below as well that are like settings tweaks or ui for them, it might be cool to build out something kinda like what opensuse has with a bunch of settings put into a graphical app.

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  • [–] 12 points 11 months ago
    • ImageMagick
    • Ghostscript
    • Pandoc
    • LittleCMS (CMS: Color Management System)
    • Wireguard
    • Rclone
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  • [–] 9 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    I wish Scratch was more powerful, kind of like Flash was back in the day, so that it would be easier to make more complicated things with it. I feel right now if you want to make a somewhat real game it gets too hard too quickly because you need to work around the limitations.

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  • [–] 9 points 11 months ago

    I'd be happy to see one more email client option. Using Geary now - nice ui but very limited in features. Been through quite a few in the past.

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  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago (9 children)

    Calibre https://calibre-ebook.com/

    Pursuing feature parity with Calibre would be a long journey, but we have to start somewhere

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (8 children)

    What features does the Windows version of Calibre have that the Linux version not have?

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  • [–] 0 points 11 months ago (7 children)
  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (6 children)

    Sorry, I don't understand what that means in this context. When I switched from Windows to Linux,I didn't notice any difference in Calibre.

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  • [–] 0 points 11 months ago* (5 children)

    Your question, "What features does the Windows version of Calibre have that the Linux version not have?" cannot be answered without accepting an unargued premise: that the windows version has more features than the Linux version.

    No one was saying that, so your question is begging the question.

    That is what begging the question means in the uk, unless I'm mistaken.

    Some context, which you may or may not be aware of, that makes the original comment funny, is that recently, Calibre, which had been a very boring piece of software, has started including a bunch of AI features. So there are some new forks that intend to make a drop in replacement for Calibre without the unwanted features.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (1 child)

    Your question, “What features does the Windows version of Calibre have that the Linux version not have?” cannot be answered without accepting an unargued premise: that the windows version has more features than the Linux version.

    Nope, it simply asks (or even expresses genuine curiosity) about a subset of features on windows which might be missing in Linux version. That's if you want to be super logical and fussy about things. If not, you could have just answered or moved the discussion in any relevant direction you would like. That was always allowed.

    Ironically, you kinda did answer it, at least in part, by mentioning the AI slop bloat. Why hide your answer behind a wall of being a jerk, though? I can only speculate. Too little sleep, too many old Rationality Rules videos? :-) Thatt's none of my business; I just hope you feel better now.

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  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    For a bit of mindfuck check kdialog : Tool to show nice dialog boxes from shell scripts

    Maybe the shell truly is enough BUT in some cases, say you want to help somebody who for some reason doesn't want the terminal, you can bring the bare minimum of UI to give utility. My favorite example is the file picker e.g kdialog --getopenfilename "*txt" | wc -l as most CLI commands do support a filename as input.

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  • [–] 7 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    I understand why it doesn't exist because it's pretty niche and a shitload of work, but I wish there was a a really good dedicated 2D animation software similar to Moho Pro or Toon Boom Harmony on Linux. That's one of the only reasons I'm still keeping Windows around.

    Also as a side note, don't trust Toon Boom. I bought a perpetual license from them that was super expensive, and then they switched to a subscription model and turned off my perpetual license.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Its funny because there is really good animation software on Linux. Problem is its difficult. But what it does is real good!

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Cant say that and not mention the name my guy

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    Ok for example, and this isn't the only one, OpenToonz. It is the direct and open source descendant of the same software that Studio Ghibli used.

    You would need to learn it. You would need to create your own custom pipeline workflows. And you would need to be an artist.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago*

    Kvm/libvirt windows vm maybe? It opens windows apps as linux apps, issue comes with using gpu but toonboom seems cpu and ram intensive?

    You would just set it up normally in the vm then open the app through your start menu as you would normally.

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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Paint.net for Linux. Most of my experience with making art digitally came from paint.net and there's not really a good alternative that doesn't require me to recreate my workflow from the ground up (Krita).

    Pinta is technically an option, but it's missing many of the features that modern paint.net has.

    For now, I have to make do with a VM to run it.

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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

    A comicbook viewer that is lightweight and supports .cbt well, without slowing to a crawl depspite it being a simple tar. Just needs to have pic-for-pic and webtoon (attach at bottom) modes.

    Btw, why is the nonsensical format .cbz (zipping already compressed images) the default? And why is such a simple format always in electron GUI?

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    [–] 5 points 11 months ago

    A graphical 'advanced' package manager for Qt / KDE. Something to replace Muon which is/was the KDE equivalent of Synaptic but no longer available in Kubuntu. Discover shows you apps (both snap and apt), Muon showed packages with all sort of relevant technical information (source, dependencies, 'reverse dependencies', installed files). I guess everything Synaptic/Muon does is also available through the various apt subcommands but there is value in a decent GUI to bundle those individual commands and their output.

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago

    I wish Stonesense was better and more stable. Im just glad it is still maintained though.

    (a tool to view dwarffortress's forts)

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (7 children)

    WinSCP is a Windows tool I use at work to send files between machines and I wish there was linux version. Programs like Dolphin are similar but I always manage to find something I can do in WinSCP that I can't do in the linux alternatives

    Edit: commenters just pointed out a bunch of potential solutions I wasn't even aware of, so I'm probably just dumb please carry on

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    I'm not sure what WinSCP has what linux SCP hasn't? I guess WinSCP is a GUI tool?

    I do a lot of scp to send files between machines (even mac<->linux).

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (1 child)

    It’s a GUI tool that lets you see both filesystem side by side and drag and drop items to transfer them

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago

    Can't you already do that from Nautilus with bookmarked sftp locations?

    I'm not commenting to discourage other tools from being made, just curious if there's some aspect of that process that isn't already easy to accomplish on Linux with existing GUI tools, or if you'd like to be able to do it differently is all.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago

    FAR manager (clone of Norton Commander) might be worth giving a look. Not a GUI, though, it's TUI but responds to mouse.

    On Debian, sudo apt install far2l and then run far2l.

    BTW, to add ssh-agent authenticated scp connection, press F11, go to NetRocks and create connection. in the dialog you'll need to select the protocol to scp and then auth method in "protocol options". you can edit an existing connection by going back to the connection "directory" and using F4 on the connection. Once you connect you can copy/move files back and forth.

    Along with scp it supports eg. smb, nfs and davs.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago (1 child)
    • Bulk unarchiver or a frontend for ffmpeg (using existing tools, both get very messy when special characters or multiple directories are involved)
      • Existing ffmpeg GUIs have had fixed lists of formats and options, making new or obscure ones inaccessible. There also needs to be an option to export the command based on GUI selections so the user can learn if they choose, or fix the command if something isn't right.
    • Adding the little details of Windows File Manager (i.e. Format dialog, search by attribute like MP3 bitrate) to some existing Linux file manager
    • Mounting of network drives in Linux graphical file managers: many of them handle it through gvfs, which for some reason insists on mountpoints with long directory paths and special characters, breaking compatibility with various utilities
    • Extending Linux Mint's libadapta to further restore theming in libadwaita apps. This I am personally looking forward to contribute to as more programs move to libadwaita and disrupt the look I've painstakingly set up for my desktop.
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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago

    I wish Divvy/WinDivvy worked on Linux. There are similar alternatives, but none that duplicate the functionality.

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  • [+] 6 points 11 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago

    There is not much choice for drawing diagrams, dia is old school and draw.io is big.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago

    A part of the desktop GUI that opens git forge stuff for installed apps. Like I want to just right click "submit code issue" for an app and have it open a proper templates issue for that given project. Right click and select "see source code" and it pops open my ide of choice. Add some integrations for building and installing forks and branches so I can test my changes in real time.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago

    I kinda want an lcars interface for my phone, but I'm too lazy to configure it

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (7 children)

    How about a utility for generating and/or handling QR codes?

    EDIT: as there are tools to generate QR codes, how about a tool to handle them? Scan and present the option to open any associated links/display data

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago

    I use qtqr for this, few dependencies.

    Version         : 2.1-9
    Description     : Qt GUI that makes easy creating and decoding QR codes
    Architecture    : any
    URL             : https://launchpad.net/qr-tools
    Licenses        : GPL3
    Groups          : None
    Provides        : None
    Depends On      : python-pillow  python-pyqt5  qrencode  qt5-multimedia  zbar
    
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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (1 child)

    IMHO qrcode-terminal is pretty good.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)
    qrgen() {
        ##: generate and display qr-code in one step
        qr_file="$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR"/"qr.$$.svg"
        qrencode -l "${2:-H}" -t SVG -o "$qr_file" "$1"
        display "$qr_file"
        rm "$qr_file"
    }
    

    Requires qrencode. Replace magick display with your image viewer of choice if you want.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago

    Pebble app. There's Rockwork, but outside of Ubuntu Touch it will only produce empty notifications. There's Rockpool, that's only for SailfishOS. There's Amazfish, but so far it can only pair and then... nothing.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago

    SSH connection/session manager for people who need to keep lots of open connections to different remote devices, like Xshell for Windows. There are options for Linux that come close in functionality but most seem to miss one desired feature like vertical tabs, grouping connections with a one-shot open of all in a group, saving/restoring sessions which keeps all tabs in the same order, sending keystrokes to all tabs in a window, or split panes.

    Tabby is the closest I’ve found so far and is pretty nice overall, but it’s missing some functionality and isn’t the snappiest being an Electron app.

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  • [+] 4 points 11 months ago (5 children)
  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago* (2 children)

    This is kind of what partition managers do, no?

    And CLI-wise, you can just open it in nano... Or where you talking about something interactive?

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  • [+] 1 point 11 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (1 child)

    Nano is the way to do it in CLI.

    Should be:

    sudo nano /etc/fstab

    Should bring your fstab file up right in the terminal. Make the edits and then hit Ctrl+x to exit and save. Reboot to see if it worked.

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