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What sort of software do you want to see?
Devs make things they feel like making, or things they think the world needs.
What kind of an app (web, desktop, or mobile) would you want to see? What is something you wanted or needed for a long time that simply isn't there, or there but so bad with X that you can't use it?
Alternatively, what is a common problem that could be solved with software but hasn't been yet, or at least not effectively?
Leaving this vague on purpose, to let Tilderinos express themselves.
I want something lightweight, simple, without fluff, animations, or any distraction.
I want a software that uses the native SDKs and UIs.
I want to have my own scrollbars, hooks, shortcuts, and every thing I can actually configure and get through my desktop environment, which custom softwares utterly break.
I want something that doesn't require an account to work, especially since 99% of the time, I'm gonna use it offline, and will want to sync my data my own way, and not the software's way.
Basically put, I want a fast and efficient software that doesn't get in my way and keep me in control.
Sadly, this is more and more rare nowadays.
Linux on the smartphone, but for real this time. In short, I'm pretty disappointed by the direction Android has gone (I think Android may have been the result of a monkey's paw wish in the late 2000's that Linux becomes the most popular OS), and I think it's past time I can just run regular mainline desktop linux with an appropriate UI on a phone. Luckily, it looks like I'm in good company in thinking this, between the Librem 5 and the PinePhone, the latter of which I actually ordered today, since they just opened orders for the Manjaro edition.
Also, take a look at postmarketOS. It seems to be more focused on being available on large swaths of the market rather than specific phones that meet certain hardware requirements.
PostmarketOS is a great project! Unfortunately for me, my two devices that have PostmarketOS builds have unrelated hardware problems that prevent me from really getting a good experience with it. I'll definitely try it out on the PinePhone whenever they get it to me.
I agree. It seems like for a while everyone was trying to come up with the ultimate 'convergence' phone, one that could transform into your desktop computer as well (See Samsung's Dex, Microsoft's 'Continuum', and even Motorola's Atrix with Lapdock). But everyone did it by trying to make phone widgets work on a big screen. Why? That's practically the opposite of what everyone wanted.
And the sad thing is that I can see GNOME 3 and it's application suite in particular being well suited for being able to switch easily between phone and desktop interfaces.
Of course the real obstacle that's preventing this from happening is simply that smartphones are filled with black boxes. As long as SoC and modem manufacturers are permitted to keep their platforms closed, we will never see the Linux of our dreams on smartphones.
That's part of it, for sure. I think the other thing holding the concept back was software: most of the things regular users would want to run on a phone-powered laptop weren't available on ARM; it ended up just being a less awkward way to browse sites in desktop mode. But for Linux users who mainly use open source software, it gives you access to practically your whole software suite. TBH, convergence wasn't one of my main interests in this phone, but I'm excited to try it out; I got the convergence package anyway, since it was bundled with extra RAM and storage.
I had much the same thought; I am curious just how usable unaltered gnome shell is on a smartphone. It's honestly probably not too bad. Though hopefully it'll be possible to launch to a separate DE upon hooking up to a dock; I'd much prefer to be using xfce or lxde if I've actually got a keyboard and mouse.
Yup. Ironically the entire ARM ecosystem in general ended up being much more locked down and restrictive than x86 with its history of adversarial interoperability. My hopes these days are with the open hardware movement and RISC V, but there's no guarantee that a RISC V ecosystem doesn't end up the same way as ARM. Is it really too much to ask for a platform with the openness of x86, without the choking duopoly?
I have basically what I want. A linux system, a good DE and most of the apps needed.
Aside from that I would like more TUI applications because their fun.
A Windows clone that's not bloated/spying on me that's not Linux or Mac or whatever. Just.....the same, but functional. Probs never going to happen anytime soon.
Other than that, software with customizable UIs like Blender does. Drag screens around, customize pretty much everything, give the user control over the environment they are going to be working in for the majority of the day.
And in general, a good UI/UX setup. If I have issues with software, 99% of the time it's due to UI/UX reasons, not bugs or missing features.
ReactOS is basically trying to be just that.
Doesn't seem to run games well :/
Yeah, it definitely still has a long way to go before it could ever be widely adopted. IIRC, it doesn't even have proper 32 bit app support. But it's still a neat project IMO, and for some light PC users it's probably still an ideal alternative even in its current state.
In addition to ReactOS, there's Greentea OS, which is a WIP ReactOS fork.
There's also Windows 10 LTSC, or whatever it's called now. Long story short, it removes a lot of components that require constant connection, and delays updates barring security matters, because LTSC is designed to work on devices that would not benefit from constant updates: ATMs, cash registers, user-friendly terminals...
What's the most common complaints you have?
Even when using LTSC some telemetry is enabled by default, you can disable it deleting the programmed tasks and using group policies (either manually or with something like WPD that configures them for you).
This looks interesting but it's proprietary so I cannot audit it. It seems counterproductive to run proprietary software by unknown authors to try and protect one's privacy.
I know it's proprietary, it's written in C#, I've decompiled it and it does just what it claims. You can decompile it yourself using ILSpy or a similar tool, make a list of the group policies it configures and configure them manually if you don't trust the tool.
All you can be sure of is that the exact binary/release that you checked is safe though. I'd much rather that we maintain a list of the changes and instructions on how to make each manually. I know it's a little more work but if you're setting up LTSC then you're already doing a bit more work anyway. With LTSC you don't have to reapply the fixes every six months like with Home/Pro.
Just curious, what's wrong with Linux?
Oh valid, it's just time-proven not to be my favorite thing.
I'm using Manjaro and only time I use terminal is to run games downloaded from a browser. Otherwise I've no need to open the terminal. Updates and installing software is done through add/remove program.
This is a very good point. GIMP was really annoying till I found a extension to make it behave like photoshop.
I would like permission to use this comment to address every new "why not linux" question I receive in the future.
A cross-platform Matrix client that's not written in web technologies, but has most features available in element. Something like Ripcord, but for Matrix would be ideal for me.
A FOSS, cross-platform GUI text editor that's not written in web technologies, but has the awesome extension support of VSCode. I use Sublime right now (not FOSS), and it's mostly fine but I do miss the great extensions of VSCode. Sadly, I have a hard time using VSCode because it feels sluggish compared to Sublime. Optimistically watching rxi/lite.
For Matrix, I've been using Mirage, and I think it's the best native client I've used so far. It's pretty new though (still in alpha), so definitely expect some occasional bugs, but I've found it to have all the features I need from Element.
As a bonus, it also works great on mobile Linux.
If you have a keyboard that supports it, firmware is a great choice to configure once and run everywhere. I'm using an Ergodox-EZ which uses QMK as the firmware. I've configured it how I like it and I can plug it into any computer and it will work the exact same (barring OS level differences, Windows key, Mac super key, etc)
You could try messing around with
sxhkd/skhdfor Linux and MacOS, respectively.I've never used
skhdand don't know if it would fix the MacOS "mixing of ctrl and meta" issue, but it does advertise application-specific hotkeys.It sounds so nice. In the modern days of frameworks on top of frameworks and bloated one size fits all libraries, though, only a dream.
I want more self-hosted iot platforms. Home camera or energy monitors or air filters or furnace devices shouldn't need to be subscription devices and they don't need to be on the internet.
So much this. I'm so sick of finding a cool device only to learn it's a brick if you don't connect it to some stupid account that has no features I want or need. Who the fuck wants to share their blood pressure readings on the internet? It's so scummy.
Here is the software I'd love to see
Largely the features I've mentioned, primarily syntax highlighting, linting, auto close brackets, maybe something like IntelliSense? Seeing markups based on Git, like new or modified lines would be pretty cool too.
You get what you want with vim/emacs bundles like spacemacs or spacevim or many others, basically vim/emacs with plugins preinstalled.
I don't think I've heard of these. Do they include linting and bracket auto close?
Yeah, both of them do if I remember correctly. They're basically Emacs distributions, so they're the base Emacs bundled with a bunch of different plugins to make it more modern. Both of them use the evil-mode plugin that implements Vi bindings.
https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs
https://www.spacemacs.org/
It's been awhile since I used either, but back when I had used them it required installing a plug-in manager and installing any number of plug-ins to even get the indents and brackets to work correctly (which I explicitly called out in my comment.)
I never got anything like linting or IntelliSense set up
Nah I don't want a terminal emulator, just a terminal-based text editor
No problem at all!
If you built me a terminal editor with linting for JS & Python I'll fully forgive you ;)
I can’t honestly say there is anything I need, but here are a few projects that I think would be neat:
A machine learning research project: autocomplete that can add accurate and appropriate quotes and citations.
Video conferencing hardware that’s as easy to set up as a desk phone. Just plug it in and go.
An open source library to synthesize accordion sounds using physical modeling. (Or some alternate synthesis technique that’s not sample-based.)
I want to see https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/ updated for IOS so the interface isn't so bulky.
It is all I want in life.
I want non-destructive-ness to come to GIMP. If a new image editor came on the scene that touted this feature, I would give it serious consideration.
Nice. I didn't even know this existed. Link for the curious: https://glimpse-editor.github.io/
Looks like it's in pretty bad shape these days w.r.t. contributions. They don't even seem like they are able to keep up with the upstream project, TrechNex is the only regular contributor and he seems to be doing his damnedest to play keepie uppie just on language, grammar, and variable changes related to the word gimp. If there's something you or @tindall would like to see in Glimpse, your best bet is still probably appealing to the GIMP team and waiting for it to end up downstream.
Yelp, but for open-source tools, apparently.
KDE lets you set the opacity of any window right click title bar -> More actions -> Configure special window settings -> Appearance and Fixes -> active/passive opacity.
I just set Firefox to 80% opacity and it's really confusing... =)
Mostly I use it when taking notes in a video conf or something like that. I set emacs to "Keep above others" and opacity 50% and use it to take notes.
Picom?
I've never used it, but the Arch wiki seems to suggest that it could be used for that purpose.
If you're on Wayland, I think Wayfire can also do that (as well as background blur).
Open Source and modern Remote Desktop software. VNC is technically open source(?), but I feel it’s not friendly to non-devs. The ones that are user friendly aren’t open source.
I’m sure there’s a reason this hasn’t been done. I want to see an add-on or something for VM’s. It would fake a GPU for the guest OS. Any calls the guest OS made would be passed to the add-on, which would run the call on the host’s GPU. The results would be sent back to the guest OS. I’m probably explaining it poorly, but it would be similar to what Wine does for exe’s.
Edit: VNC not VLC
Do you mean vnc? VLC media player is great (and fairly friendly to non-devs =) )
Haha yes I did. Thank you for pointing that out. I’ll fix it.
I agree on the need of an open source TeamViewer replacement (something that doesn't require port forwarding). Imagine doing remote support and asking the user to port forward by changing router's settings..
Latency was my biggest worry. Software like DXVK gave me hope though. Add a VM to the mix is another animal though.
I've come across a community that I think is all about what you're talking about.
https://www.reddit.com/r/vfio
From my limited amount of reading it looks like they provide a passthrough for the gpu from the host to the virtual machine. In this community I think it's specifically for gaming purposes, but I'm sure could be extended to do whatever you need it to.
Edit: From their "about" section:
I have setup VIFO before. It works quite well but you “need” two GPU’s. With VIFO you dedicate a GPU to the guest OS. This prevents the host OS from using it. The software I’d like to see wouldn’t take control away from the host and you’d only need one GPU.
I would love to see an adaptive TDEE tracker built into an iOS app that pulls your dietary energy and weight from Health to calculate your actual TDEE. There’s a very popular spreadsheet on Reddit which works okay, but I don’t want to enter my weight and intake every day since Apple Health has all that data. I’d gladly pay $3-5 for an app that does this.
I believe Cronometer allows for this. I've been using that app + a Garmin Vivosmart 4 with pretty good results. I had it tied to Apple Health for a bit, too...but the way Garmin sends activity to Apple Health is buggy. Seems to double-dip by sending both active calories burned and total calories burned. Total burned is active+resting, so active calories get counted twice. I don't really trust Garmin's resting burn calculation...so I wish I could just send the active calories burned to Apple Health. I can do that with Cronometer, though, and use Cronometer's resting burn calculation, which I believe to be more accurate.
Curious, though...how does Apple Health have your intake data without you manually entering anything?
I've used Cronometer, and it does something similar, but not quite what I'm looking for. I don't mind entering my calories in one place (I use MyFitnessPal for that), but I don't see why there isn't an app that reads calorie input and weight and calculates your TDEE based on that. I did find an app that just released the feature, but it seems buggy as all getout, saying I weigh 60lbs even though that's not what I've entered, hah.
I used to have another item on my list: something better than bash, this problem was solved when I found fish.
There are certainly attempts:
I've seen 2 of them before.
This means it has the same memory usage and performance problems as Chrome on my old laptop.
Midori was a good Webkit-based browser back when I used it, then it was abandoned and now:
Is it still dead? I'm not sure about its state. I replaced it with GNOME Web, another Webkit-based browser which is good when it comes to memory usage and relatively decent performance but it takes ages to start (between 30 seconds and a minute) so I can't use it to quickly open links I receive through chat (I don't keep the browser open all the time, not enough RAM to have that luxury and not possible to add more).
I didn't know about Sleipnir but unfortunately it doesn't seem to support Linux (I had to switch from Windows to Linux due to performance, memory usage and boot times).
A fourth, relatively unknown but still actively developed option:
It runs on its own, custom browser engine (not WebKit / Blink / Gecko based) which makes it the fastest browser I've ever used, but does mean that it has substantially more rendering bugs than the competition.
That's the one I use when I have to quickly open an image or article link and it's pretty great for those things, but unfortunately its JavaScript support is very rudimentary and never works for anything more complex than
document.write.Basically, a hybrid between Fusion 360 and Illustrator. A parametric 2D vector design program with a constraint system. Technically, you can (and I have) use Fusion 360 for 2D vectors and just export them to SVG, but it's a pain in the butt.
A Retroarch core for Steam games. Box86 is the most promising, and I've seen demos that show real PC games on a portable Pi Unit, so I know it can be done, and Android is only another step up.
I'm also super curious about Virtual Reality productivity tools, as software horse blinders can go a long way to keep you on track when they are literally blocking out distractions and monopolize your eyes and ears.
Similarly, better tools for productivity on Mobile. Current me tends to kick past me's ass if we get into a disagreement on time management, so hard limits for a 24 hour period aren't going to cut it. Maybe point me into a less time sink of a direction during working hours? Or set my working app as my launcher during a set period of time?
Finally, if you could give me a raw data dump of my stream of consciousness into a computer so I can sort it out externally and do creative stuff real quick like, that's the dream.
I would like a nice, modern utility for quickly making and editing plots given some raw data. ggplot is good but I can’t help but feel something more modern might be better. Right now I just make python scripts to properly format plots using pyplot, but I have to rerun the script when I make changes. Something was was real time and quickly reversible would be nice.
gnuplot is something I’ve been meaning to check out. I’ve used Jupiter before and I agree it’s useful for this, but it feels like a lot of overhead just to get a decent workflow making plots in python.
Is there a meaningful difference between using copyleft-licensed software and something under MIT?
I'm not sure I follow:
Is this you speaking in favor of MIT or copyleft?
I feel like I've missed a logical step or two with this Zig/Zen situation.
This is the first I’ve heard of Zen. Are they getting any traction?
You can use MIT-licensed code to build proprietary software. A license like GPL-3 requires that all derivative work have the same license.
I feel like the principle of selfdogfood is very relevant here.
Open source SIP software that actually lets me set up TLS client certificates.
This calculator, but for iOS! So far, all the calculators I've encountered on iOS suck by comparison. I emailed the developer, but they have no plans to port it. :(