And for different problem domains: Often what determines excellence for desktop/interactive work is detrimental for automation, especially at scale. I find that FOSS does much better for the latter.
I think we do need to keep in mind that Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) to me should be read as āfree as in Freedomā, even though some might be āfree as in beerā
Iām happily paying for my FOSS applications (where they allow me to), because I agree that having a developer working on it that can make a good living from it helps quality of the software.
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Totally get that. Personal preferences are still permittedā¦.
Iām using Signal and havenāt had any problems. It has clients for the usual OSes and devices, including Debian-based Linux distros.
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That could very well be true.
I personally use Gimp on occasion.
Here is where there is a huge difference. I am in Libre Office daily, I use spreadsheets to create the .CSV files for initial data inputs for my AnimalTrakker system and I also have a bunch that get updated regularly, several times a week at least, for the farm and sheep flock. I create forms in LO that I save as fillable PDFs with field names for automatic filling from my AnimalTrakker system.
Another major Open Source package I use is Zotero as a reference manager. It plays well with others and is becoming critical in my workflow.
Your comments on the Macness of open source SW are generally accurate. OTOH that is a huge reason for me to stick with Open Source. I run on a Mac, but my husband uses Linux exclusively. We have to target Windows machiens with our AnimalTrakker and LambTracker systems. The mobile versions are only on Android right now and likely to stay there for a myriad of reasons. So I need apps that ar the same across all the major platforms.
Actually so am I. I spend between 2-4 hours farming and between 4-6 hours programming every day right now. I think the difference is my programs have to be cross platform and are themselves open source which puts me in different mindset than someone with the luxury of sticking to a single operating system.
I also use Audacity, Calibre, Firefox , Homebrew and am looking at setting up a NextCloud server.
Calibre is critical itās how I save all my ebooks and reformat and de DRM them so I can use them on a variety of readers.
I use an old rev of Firefox with a great simple SQLIte plugin that is no longer supported or maintained but works just fine and has for over 10 years. Itās my go to when I need to quickly verify data during in the field debugging.
THIS!
I also pay money for my FOSS when I can if they are ones I use reguarly.
And FWIW while both LambTracker and AnimalTrakker are FOSS I fully expect to make $ off of them by doing the data conversions from other systems and also making custom bespoke versions like I am doing right now.
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There is always an awesome list for anything.
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FileZilla (Pro)
Needed to copy 130GiB+ of files over my network (and it turns out several times).
Tried copying with Finder and it was glacial.
Tried cp, glacial.
Tried rsync, also glacial.
Remembered FileZilla, turned on ssh on my iMac Pro, and used FileZilla and sftp to copy files using 10 simultaneous connections. Much better, about 50MiB/s and my laptop is on Wi-Fi.
Itās free, but I sprang the whole $20 for the Pro version, which supports many cloud services.
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Not only glacial but also not very reliable in my experience.
Rsync should be able to manage that speed as well. What command were you using?
[quote=āibuys, post:40, topic:30516, full:trueā]ā¦ I donāt have much to say other than itās another browser built off the Chromium project, which is great but I still prefer Safariā¦ Does the app take advantage of current OS features? ā¦ I prefer apps that are built for the Mac. ā¦
[/quote]
Safari: the engine is WebIt, an open-source project
macOS: based on NEXTStep, based on BSD. Open Source. Here is Darwin: GitHub - apple/darwin-xnu: The Darwin Kernel (mirror). This repository is a pure mirror and contributions are currently not accepted via pull-requests, please submit your contributions via https://developer.apple.com/bug-reporting/
āApps for the Macā: most of them coded in Swift today. An open-sorce language.
Printing on a Mac: CUPS, open-source.
ā¦and a lot of open-source stuff onder the hood.
And this post was written on the Internet, which hugely relies on FOSS (Apache, mySQL/MariaDB, OpenSSL, ā¦).
I had an email exchange with David on exactly that topic. I think it was an episode about word-processors that triggered me. Several products were mentioned, but not LibreOffice.
The contributions of the FOSS community are huge. The internet as we know it (āWWWā) was built and still runs on FOSS. Just think of web servers, 2/3 of them run Nginx or Apache.
I use:
- LibreOffice (especially with HUGE tables, itās the fastest)
- R (donāt even think about data science without R)
- QGIS
- many, many tools in the shell (through MacPorts)
- Calibre
- LaTeX (and tools)
I have many more installed, but those would be the ones I regularly use.
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I donāt know, I have to say I have found that āfreeā software is not what it was: to my great sorrow. The great exceptions of course being LaTeX, Tor and Libre. Often supported and maintained by academics, to their credit.
āFreeā is quite hard to define too. I note the recent US legislation that research funded by the public should not be paywalled. It is almost incredible that it is or ever was!!? The British Library, University Libraries were at one time like Secret Societies, āmore than me jobās worthā to get a ticket to the former. Still makes me mad, when it was ALL funded by the public, when education was all free at point of use and anyway, get off my lawn!
Anyway free software. Well I would like to see a lot more about LaTeX here for a start off and Tor and Libre.
I use Signal as well but donāt love it. I donāt like that they are integrating crypto, itās requires a central server, and i find the desktop app infuriating (constantly being disconnected and having to reconnect it to phone and losing message history).