this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2024
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Free and Open Source Software
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I think FreeCad is a great tool once you overcame the initial issues. I think it's not as user friendly as commercial tools but I think that's a general issue with smaller projects that don't have billions of funding.
If you want to support a FOSS alternative, you could engage to make FreeCad better. Make tutorials, report bugs, update the documentation, help with translations, help users on the cmvarious forums and platforms or simply throw in a few bugs for the developers. :)
TBH I don't like FreeCAD - I fell like it's like recommending Gimp as a serious alternative to Photoshop. With enough effort and deep knowledge you can almost achieve similar results but you have to invest multiple times as much time. The saving in licencing cost is very quickly eastern up by the increased labour cost.
There is an alternative that has come a long way IMHO, though: BlenderBIM. They are still not quite as good as ArchiCAD and such but it runs natively on Linux and is very neat so far.
It really depends on your needs. 3D printing community is very satisfied with FreeCAD, and GIMP is great for my needs when I need to find a way to increase visibility of some features in drone images and than make python script to repet it hundreds of times. No way I could do it in in PS. Making it run under wine already takes too much time.
And it is not only about money for license but about freedom.
I always see coments like this, and while I appreciate sharing of experience it is just being boring. At least add something specific and don't be a bot.
Gimp is intuitive to me. I grew up on RISC OS, not Windows, and only later learned Photoshop. Switching was easy for me, and that was before I got into FOSS. It was just free and legal.
I've seen lots of people from a Windows only background struggle with it. I agree it's not like a normal Windows app. Maybe single window mode helps, but I'm not in a place to judge.
I think PS is a lot more intuitive than GIMP, as someone who also has used Linux and GIMP from a young age (though dual booting windows for most of my childhood, for pirated PS as one of the main reasons). I would love it if GIMP could get to PS's level but tbh I don't think they ever will just due to lacking the resources Adobe has. I don't use PS anymore as I avoid proprietary software whenever at all possible (and I no longer have any windows machines and pirated PS is iffy on wine last time I tried) so I'm going to continue with GIMP, but yeah I still don't think it holds a candle to the power and ease of use of PS unfortunately.
Meh, always done what I need and I find easy enough.
I've been in rooms for people forced to switch from PS to GIMP for corporate cost cutting. Every time I went to help someone on something else (animation or exporter related), I'd hear "GIMP can't do X" and "GIMP can't do Y". I'd go over and show it could and how. It was never even stuff that hard. Layer stuff often. GIMP gets a lot of hate I just don't think is justified.
=
"GIMP works differently than I am used to"
Same goes for Blender, Libre Office, Thunderbird and many other tools
Exactly. I don't even think it's that different to be honest, it's just not identical to PS and comes from a different windowing school of thought.
GIMP is a serious alternative to Photoshop. Wtf is your problem?
It's not even remotely an alternative to Photoshop for various reasons. Maaaaybe for personal use I could agree to some degree.
Hell Krita is closer to photoshop than GIMP
If you're trying to recreate Photoshop, that's part of your problem. We want an alternative, not something that has an identical UI
Lolno.