Yep. There are no exclusives anymore, not even timed ones. Those releases that aren't Day 1 on Playstation now is only because they were too far along in development to make that happen. This is part of their "Everything is an XBox" mantra, giving people pretty much zero incentive to buy XBox hardware right now.
> The authors get somewhat blinded to the pain because they're used to it, plus change is difficult for the established userbase. There's also a feeling that emulating competitors is surrendering one's own identity, and the idea that some of the rough edges are justified by "the powerfulness". Thus radically changing defaults, streamlining, simplifying and even just matching user expectations is often perceived as "taking the power away" and really difficult to have the daring-do to just do. Even though on the other side of the transition a much larger and happier userbase awaits.
I think it is unfair to say that they are "blinded to the pain". They are well aware of it from what I've seen of the Dev discussions on Discord. But the vast majority of the devs are volunteers so they can only do so much so fast. There are also some very nice usability improvements as of late that borrow from other programs, like the Solidworks-style navigation settings and the on-screen draggers for pad / pocket / transform type operations. Yes there are tons of preferences and some of the defaults might not be great, but they've added a "Search Preferences" field to help sort through them all. Then there are issues like in the link below where the discussion of how to improve FreeCAD considers comparisons with other pieces of software.
Another point I'll add is their creation of a Design Working Group to help sort through usability issues and generate a consensus for devs to subsequently implement.
I would think it would be beneficial to the companies that make 3D printers and CNC machines to help fund some of these efforts... I've found it often takes the input of commercial interests to get general UX improvements into open-source.
ex: really impressed with the direction of Audacity as an example, though I can also understand why a given community would reject such influence from a single org.
> I think it is unfair to say that they are "blinded to the pain".
I mean it more in the sense that it's very difficult to truly conceive of what a new user of the app would stumble over or dislike, if you're very used to it yourself.
Often that means small things that would not be that hard to address become invisible, because there's obvious higher priorities. Other times, things are considered small fries that actually are consistently wrong and need a holistic re-think.
One of the best things to do is to actually watch novice users use your software. This was also a big boost to the "Blender moment", when the Blender studio started inviting over artist and just watched them work in the software. This used to be really hard to do, but has now become a bit easier with screencasting and conferencing tools. I bet FreeCAD is also starting to do more of this.
Thanks for adding additional info! I forgot to mention the Design Working Group as another sign. In KDE we also set up a similar "Visual Design Group" years ago that was behind a lot of the improvements.
Set tip makes sense if you think of the steps taken to build up a parts as a history. Setting the tip isn't a rollback. It is saying "I want to insert a new step in the history".
I've been treating FreeCAD like a rolling release by using the weekly Flatpack builds and it has been a pretty good experience so far. Based on a good model I was given as a starting point and a lot of Mango Jelly Solutions videos, I've developed a detailed model of the Virtual Pinball machine I'm building now. It has been huge in saving me from countless mistakes in the actual build.
I've spent a decent amount of time on the FreeCAD Discord and more than one advanced user on there suggests treating FreeCAD like a rolling release. So I've been using the weekly FlatPack builds and have had a great experience. FreeCAD has been taking some big steps recently and by sticking with 1.0.0 / 1.0.2, you're basically missing out on almost a year's worth of improvements.
And the tutorial by Mango Jelly Solutions on YouTube are fantastic. They are generally very focused on one particular task per video so I think you'd find them really useful.
We still have open source hardware in Voron. High performance and almost infinitely moddable. Pair it with the open source Klipper firmware and open source slicer OrcaSlicer and you're there.
LTSC is what mainstream Windows should be. It doesn't load up a bunch of apps you don't ask for or throw ads in your face all the time. Solid, dependable, reliable, and stable.
> If Canada didn't have an air of superiority to comfort itself with, it would have nothing at all.
Canada might be known for many things, but you're the first I've heard refer to an "air of superiority" that we carry around. "Nice" and "polite" maybe. Sorry you feel this way. Have a good day.
Canadians aren't crass enough to describe it as superiority, but it is true that the identity of English-speaking Canada is largely built on "not being America" and that the vast majority of the population is content as long as things are "better than in the USA".
Yep. And then there is Visio which gets used a lot where I work. LibreOffice Draw doesn't come anywhere near it. It saves a lot of grief just to give our Linux users a Windows VM with Office on it if they need to do any significant docs or drawings.
> What I think could really push Linux desktop forward is if various PC gaming influencers started doing content on how to game on Linux. Given that it is not just viable now but actively sometimes better than on Windows it would make for good content AND show people an alternative.
Not exactly what you are looking for, but Gamers Nexus at 2.57M subscribers is working on Linux Gaming Benchmarks with help from Wendel at Level1Techs [0]. Steve bemoans the shitshow that Windows has become all the time.
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