Wasn’t supposed to be condescending, apologies that I came across like that. I just more meant you aren’t representative of who a FOSS potential killer app needs to reach. I agree, I don’t want cloud, AI, subscriptions. But I do want a tool palette and interaction experience that doesn’t require looking at the docs to use.
From a UX perspective federation has been absolutely bungled. Twitters greatest trick was to cause an exodus before the alternatives had reached maturity, though I imagine the demand has pushed them further than they would be otherwise.
IMO BlueSky is by far the best Twitter replacement, insofar as you can just use it like Twitter but it is built on an open protocol, allowing you to run your own server if you wish but with zero interoperability friction or worrying about servers on the actual client. Also it has already started basic bridging between threads and mastadon, its custom feeds in place of algorithms is genius and stackable moderation is the most compelling solution I’ve seen to the core complaints and concerns over modern social media.
And it’s independent, transparent and run by intelligent, passionate people. And, very importantly, Jack Dorsey has nothing to do with it!
There’s always been a real stick in the mud attitude with GIMP. No matter how many people cry out about it’s confusing UX it’s always tried to serve the existing userbase rather than design to expand its usefulness to more people. I think this is a shame and is why GIMP never achieved what Blender has.
I remember trying to use it the best part of 20 years ago when I wanted to make animated gifs. It was so hard to use it was easier to pirate photoshop/imageready. Then a year or so back I tried to use it as I had moved to being a Linux user and was kind of astonished that the UX was still so bloody hostile.
I don’t think I’m a moron (though how many morons do… so take this with a pinch of salt) but trying to figure out how to do basic things like cut and paste, cropping etc. without reading documentation just goes hellishly wrong. Any time I take the time to follow a guide on how to use it I’m taken aback by how unintuitive it is and once I’m done I forget it’s idiosyncrasies immediately.
I remember “gimpshop” being a thing at one point, which I never got to use but heard it used the processing of GIMP with a more photoshop like UX. Though I believe that project lapsed.
Anyway, yeah it’d be nice in a world where things like GNOME have become such beautiful UXes that projects like GIMP have the courage to revolutionise themselves.
I too am a fan of Comic Sans. It sits in my heart the same place as overplayed dad rock.
I actually code in a monospace variant of comic sans because my life is basically a shitpost
To anyone who used Linux once upon a time and got scared off - try it again. Nowadays so much works without any config, driver support is so much better and, at least with my last year using Fedora, it’s incredibly stable.
And if you get stuck, ChatGPT is so good at helping you through the experience. Also, IMO, once you spend a week or so to get used to Gnome desktop environment it’s better than both windows and macos.
Fairly sure there are some decent societal goods in outcomes around medical research and engineering