For me, it’s CAD software. FreeCAD is trash (sorry, lovers). Fusion360 is honestly the best out there for free. The “almost there” app is Shapr3D, but fuck $40/m.
And yes I’ve tried all the others not listed here.
you can always pirate SolidWorks. its the best, and if you pirate it its completely free.
dassault only goes after businesses so feel free to pirate for personal use.
Word of caution on this, make dang sure you know exactly what you’re doing. Dassault systems has a reputation for tracking pirates down and billing out the ass, and that reputation doesn’t come from nowhere.
Still not saying not to pirate it, but do tread on very light waters.
Adobe suite Ms office
Krita!
Tried affinity.studio?
I really like photopea.
[…] FreeCAD is trash […]
What issues have you had? What features do you wish it had?
I wish the UI/UX wasn’t made by people who still live in 1995, as a major start.
Not OP, but FreeCAD auto-constraints in sketches are all over the place, and figuring out which constraint is a problem and selecting the right element in the UI is terrible.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but FreeCAD tells you when a constraint is redundant, and clicking on it highlights the respective constraint in the sketch:
[1]References
- Type: Screenshot. Publisher (Application): FreeCAD. Published (Version): “1.1.1”. Accessed: 2026-06-11T23:44Z.
The redundant constraint detection works pretty well and FreeCAD usually remove them.
The main issue for me is that certain auto-constraints will not work as they advertise on your cursor.
The biggest culprit for me is the coincident constraint.
Let’s say that you have two lines in a 90 degree corner. If you add a line in the middle of any of the two lines, the cursor shows you that it will add a coincident constraint. But when you create your line, the coincident constraint isn’t applied.
And the other thing for me is that navigating which part of a line (and which line) is selected is not intuitive and correcting or adding constraints to fully constraint the drawing is a wild goose chase.
[…] Let’s say that you have two lines in a 90 degree corner. If you add a line in the middle of any of the two lines, the cursor shows you that it will add a coincident constraint. But when you create your line, the coincident constraint isn’t applied. […]
What you’re describing sounds more like a bug to me. At any rate, I wasn’t able to confirm the behavior you described (maybe I’m misunderstanding you?):
[1]I was able to get both a symmetric constraint (green arrow), and a coincident constraint (red arrow) on the two 90 degree lines.
References
- Type: Screenshot. Publisher (Application): FreeCAD. Published (Version): “1.1.1”. Accessed: 2026-06-12T22:47Z.
[…] correcting or adding constraints to fully constraint the drawing is a wild goose chase.
I’m not sure I understand what you mean by this. Could you elaborate?
Another mobile OS. Something that isn’t built entirely to exploit me.
Tell me about it. Like Linux Phone hurry up!
I miss the FirefoxOS concept. Ahead of its time. Basically ran PWAs for everything.
I reccomend donating to postmarketos then. They do awsome work reverse engeeniering phones. Oneplus 6 is usable with pmos. Of course it has multiple problems but its nice seeing people make so much things for on old phones.
There are of course graphenos, calyxos, e/os/ of course. Unfortunatly the issue with every alternative os is that you need specific model of phone to even open bootloader.
I really liked my Jolla phone back in the days. I hope they make a good comeback.
Theres always e/os, iodeos, grapheneos and other forks
that is still android though
I hear you. With Android turning into a closed OS like iOS later this year things are not looking very bright for people like me that uses alternative stores a lot.
Honestly, I would really fuck with a comprehensive Linux mobile experience. I know some things exist, but they aren’t yet fully rounded off. I say this now, but know damn well I’d tinker with something I shouldn’t and wind up needing to reinstall the OS like five times.
I’d be all over it. Hopefully we could get an open cellular modem with that at some point, too.
We do have some similar things, like Meshtastic for messages, but that’s just texting via radio. As far as calls go, it’s mostly also just radio for now.
Session tried to get a call and text system setup whereby anyone can host a node, similar to a TOR node, but their foundation didn’t reach the funding total. The work is done, but some services are gonna be scaled back a bit. There is definitely a considerable push for systems like that, but they’ll take a bit of time for implementation as it’d otherwise just be another company owned service that’s outside our control.
Microsoft Exchange.
How many grandkids do you have? ;) ;)
How many competitors does it have that can do email, contacts, calendar, shared versions of the above items, and hybrid connect to exchange online.
I can’t think of a single option besides groupwise which is dead.
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I suggest:
Household Acoustic Notification Standard (HANS)
Where it’s a standard protocol or noise making system you can configure with some kind of device. Perhaps it also outlines LORA notifications as well.
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A really different approach to CAD is OpenSCAD. I was not happy with FreeCAD either.
This might be controversial, but I want yet another code editor.
Hear me out, I write very little code, but often in widely different programming languages. Most of the time I write LaTeX and/or Typst all day, so I need:
- an editor that sandbox really well, there is no way I am trusting all my coding environment with my entire user space.
- an editor that don’t require much tinkering: if it can get to 80% there, I am welling to learn the rest, but I don’t want an editor that get 20% there and force me to pull 80 different package just to do things.
- preview LaTeX and Typst within the sandbox, ideally just in editor, so I don’t need to configure synctex.
- not controlled by a big tech like Microsoft.
So far, I am only able to find vscodium that is close to my desire, but it is still mostly controlled by Microsoft.
(ideally, self hosted) overleaf with texlive-full installed?
When’s the last time you tried FreeCAD? I also used to think it’s trash, but version 1.0 really changed that and now 1.1 is freaking amazing.
Like last week. It’s cad software from 20 years ago that’s trying to be everything and not really mastering anything.
I want an open source option that focuses on UI/UX and not… well, whatever freeCAD is doing.
I have the same UI issues with GIMP and Inkscape. When programmers try to make human interface. (No offense to programmers)
I’ve been using GIMP long enough that I’ve learned where things are. It’s not intuitive, but I can usually accomplish what I set out to do without swapping to another program.
Inkscape feels like a foreign language that I don’t speak.
I started using it after 1.0, still haven’t gotten anywhere with it because it’s just not intuitive and I’m constantly running into problems where I have to go into the documentation. If it was good someone familiar with other CAD software would be able to switch to it without so many issues. I found a YouTube series that someone recommended that looks pretty good though so I’m going to lock in and go through that and try again because I really don’t have any other choice. At least it doesn’t crash every time you fuck up constraints anymore.
If it was good someone familiar with other CAD software would be able to switch to it without so many issues.
I don’t think this is true. Professional software is usually very hard to switch between. Be it CAD, video editing, 3D modeling, animation, programming, painting, freaking file sharing, or pretty much any other field of endeavor. Each program/tool/suite prescribes a certain workflow, and it almost never matches the workflow of another tool designed for the exact same purpose.
For exactly the same reason, it’s hard to switch between operating systems, especially if you’re a power user who knows a lot about how things work in the OS you’re used to. It’s not a sign that either OS is better than the other, it’s just how used the user is to a certain way of doing things.
I think this is also why Adobe and Autodesk are still doing alright. A large part of their customer base are just people who would have too much friction switching to a different, better (imo) suite of tools, so staying with the tool they know is worth the cost.
I don’t know your situation, but from your comment I think I can recommend pushing through the re-learning period with FreeCAD. It’s good.
I understand things not being the same. I’ve switched between software and OS’s before and dealt with these kinds of issues. I worked in IT support for years and have had to learn about how all sorts of software works on the fly. I’ve switched between several CAD programs I used successfully before landing on Fusion360. FreeCAD is a whole other level compared to pretty much anything else I’ve dealt with. Blender is the only other app I can think of that I’ve had so much trouble with.
Forgot to say: 1.1 has quite a lot of QoL improvements, so make sure you learn from a source made for 1.1 and not 1.0 or earlier.
Operating systems.
Windows is a collection of legacy code with trash strewn over top, but it is ubiquitous.
Apple’s offerings are typically decent and reliable, but the executives spent a lot of time lately kissing the ring.
Linux is simply not something I’m interested in supporting for my family.
I’d just like something that’s easy to use, common enough I don’t need to teach people to use it, secure by design, and not owned by an evil megacorp.
I’d just like something that’s easy to use, common enough I don’t need to teach people to use it, secure by design, and not owned by an evil megacorp.
Hey I don’t want to preach but if many people were able to learn how to use Chrome OS over the last decade they will be able to learn how to use the latest Ubuntu (or whatever flavor of Linux is now considered the most intuitive and fully featured for new users).
Yeah no, one toe past extremely basic and you might end up in a quagmire of shit and googling usually makes things worse with misinformation.
I believe Mint is the current “beginner edition” of Linux. Ubuntu has been getting a lot of hate lately from what I’ve seen.
My latest build is running Bazzite on an HTPC, but it’s still a project and not fully up and running quite yet.
Yeah that ring kissing rubs me.
You could always use HaikuOS (kidding) there’s ZERO evil behind that one!
Photoshop. GIMP is serviceable, but just give me damn Photoshop circa like, 2015?
PhotoPea works pretty well for me, though I am not using it for anything other than fun projects.
I have used photopea before and it works shockingly well, but I don’t like having to rely on a web-service.
photoshop cs6 was indeed great, it does run fairly well on wine tho
I have an issue with it that really makes it unusable: every input renders one frame behind. I make a gesture, I see most of the stroke, but not the last bit until I click again. I select and cut something? Doesn’t disappear until I give one more input. I zoom to a certain level, then click and it zooms the last little bit. It’s bizarre and makes it surprisingly unusable.
i did have some glitches and switched away from it to gimp eventually but your issue kinda seems different from mine. are you on x11 or wayland? if x11 are you running a compositor like picom?
I haven’t been able to get it working with winetricks, bottles or lutris. Any tips?
What about Affinity Photo?
CS2 is completely free from adobe. It doesn’t understand scaling in windows, and won’t run on the next Mac OS release. But it’s serviceable.
Honestly, notes apps. All of the big tech options are fine, but they’re big tech, so fuck them. All of the open source options suck. The best I’ve found is just Nextcloud Notes, but it’s still shit. Basic Markdown syntax, no linking notes, adding attachments is… well idk, I haven’t figured out how to do that yet.
Trilium Notes is great for note taking. It can do complex formatting and attachments and all that stuff. And you can self host the server and keep it synced across devices. I use it every day
Someone else recommended that one, but apparently it’s coded with AI now, and I’d like to avoid AI generated software.
I just want apple notes self hosted.
markor on android seems pretty good for me, have you tried it?
No, but I use iPhone. Ideally I’d want something self hosted that works on all platforms.
Obsidian, Joplin or Logseq. Have you tried any of these?
I’ve tried Joplin and Logseq. They both are not good for me. Joplin’s mobile experience was terrible.
Give Obsidian a try. Its very mobile-friendly.
It’s proprietary!
I know, I know. The notes you create are still yours. They’re just Markdown files. And they have a huge ecosystem of community-developed extensions that aren’t proprietary. The company is almost as far as you can get from Big Tech. I pay the $5/month for their sync service just to support them, but since your notes are simple Markdown files, you can just as easily sync your notes any other way for free.
Can you help me? I have obsidian on my phone and am trying to use it but I dislike the UI (feel there is too much information / clutter, would rather have something distraction free like a terminal) and I think it is only possible to sync notes from computer to cellphone if I pay a fee or do it manually? Is that right?
Aren’t there any ways of taking simple txt notes on computer syntaxed or not and have them automatically appear on my phone?
Hope you can enlighten me
You can sync your notes in any way that you want.
Dropbox, Google drive… Generally people recommend Sync thing if you can configure it (it’s not hard. Just harder than Dropbox and Google drive)
my response was mostly meant as a hint to other readers, but I’d also like to add that the canvases are not markdown, but a custom json schema basically. not necessarily an issue, but noteworthy due to portability issues with that specific feature.
I switched from OneNote to obsidian when I de-windowsed and haven’t looked back
I’ve found Obsidian to work well for me. Its plugin ecosystem is pretty robust, so there’s a lot of room to bolt on features.
And if you really need an open source option with every possible tool and a full customization language… emacs
Yep. Obsidian plugins is like installing Skyrim then thinking, “I’ll just go get the essentials from Nexus Mods…”
Three hours later you have an absolute beast that also does note taking too.
I keep seeing people say this, but I’ve never seen a plug-in that seemed to do much of anything that the base engine wasn’t already.
I’ve stuck with notesnook for awhile, but i might switch it up after my premium subscription ends.
Disregard, my original comment since first using this program it looks like it’s been ensloppified, what a tragedy
~~I like Trillium https://github.com/TriliumNext/Trilium~~
Oh god, yeah. Their README starts with an AI slop ad. :(
Anything closed where the update is “throw it away, buy the new model”. Industrial electronics, car stereo, any gen 1/old product.
Most recently Amazon deprecated older Kindles for no apparent reason except the fact that they were still being in use for over a decade.
Do you work on industrial electrical? Kinda curious about your comment there. The company I work for implements new systems, some of the biggest in the US, but we do plenty of maintenance, refurbishing, tuning, etc on some very very old systems. I’ve seen working equipment that is from the dawn of the 20th century, still going fine. Maybe we come in and install a new VFD on them, or recently we did a system running 2 setups of 8k amps @ 480V for motors that had gone through a whole entire fire that was so bad the roof collapsed.
Maybe it’s just the sector I’m in, which is steel and aluminum mills, but I’ve seen industrial be the one that does not want change because it comes with a high price tag. The sales guys need to convince these places that they can’t keep running everything on electrical equipment from the 70s to 90s
I don’t know why I said industrial. Just old nerdy junk, like a digital embroidery machine that needs xp to load designs. A media player locked in a similar situation. My car is 12 years old, gimme the source to the janky is on the head unit. Abandoned firmwares.
Social media app with circlejerk auto-hide would be Awesome. Would have to be politically agnostic.
That would just turn into a bunch of AI trying to figure out which kinds of dicks you like to jerk and which you don’t.
No, I said politically agnostic, and more than enough discussions are not circlejerks.
Sounds like you want to touch a bunch of limp dicks. I dunno if there is a filter for conversations about opinion topics that prohibit any opinions.
