@kde@kde
I support people trying new things! I hate Adobe!
However, all of the tools here, save for Blender and maybe Kdenlive, are lacking somewhat in either features or UX. Inkscape is not comparable to Illustrator in my recent experience, and even Krita, while decent, has some weird decisions that don't make much sense from a workflow perspective.
I commonly hear criticism met with either "Add the feature yourself, it's open source" (I am a visual artist with experience using digital art tools, not a C++ programmer) or "It's not supposed to replace <comparable software>" (then your software might as well not bother competing if it's not going to work much better than the other options). I have a necessity to switch, but I can't use these tools yet if they don't behave how I need them to, often how swaths of other competing software behaves. I'm willing to curb my expectations, I don't expect things to be perfect, but the amount of configuration I need to do to get similar workflows like comparable software is rough. I think once that gets addressed, more people will be interested in switching.
I'm so convinced it isn't even a feature issue, more of a look and feel with sane defaults sort of issue.
Don't take this the wrong way. While I appreciate the tact with which you have expressed your criticisms, but you may find that your objections all boil down to "I am used to a certain set of tools and now I have to change. The new tools do things differently and I am confused and it is messing with my productivity", that is, the problem is not entirely with the new software, but with you, your workflow and your muscle memory.
@Bro666 i appreciate your reply! I'll link you to my response to a different post here outlining a bit more of my experience. tl;dr, I've used multiple programs in personal and academic settings. Some FOSS options are great and comparable! Some miss the mark, even if they get close. It's not for lack of trying, it's that out of the multiple programs I've learned over the years, the FOSS options tend to be the odd ones out.
Even blender is guity of this with its default control scheme being the odd one out among Maya, Unity, and Substance, but it can be modified enough to make up for this and has other attractive aspects to make it a worthy contender. Digital tools tend to be used in an ecosystem that they are integrated with. Learning new workflows if fine, but there's value in being able to do what's already being done well in a similar way without much fuss.
Y'all dont block all the .exe files with your firewall? I been doing that for years. I anticipate being stuck with the near current version of Photoshop I have now. An update never occurs, but thats okay. Ive got windows update disconfigured and blocked, too.
Ive found that originally, updates actually fixed problems, but it seems for the last few years, updates only benefit the company and not the user. They are either trying to reinvent the wheel, increase data mining, restricting access in the name of better services, to gear up towards changing to some bullshit form of a subscription service (again, to provide you better services! Better for them...)
And, sometimes, updates just straight up break things. I've soured to allowing any updates when things are already working smoothly.
Thank God .... I've been on Gimp and Scribus for the past 15 years, mainly because I could never afford Adobe products for the little bit of work I needed them for.
I was open source a long time ago because I just couldn't afford paying for stuff for the little time I needed software. Now I'm happy to be fully open source and even contribute with donations to the projects I like the most. I donate annually now to projects like Wikipedia, Libreoffice, Scribus and Fediverse developers and projects.
This is one criticism I'll always have with open source supporters ... if you want open source alternatives, contribute with donations to them. Give anything you can afford ... $1, $2, $10 ... because they need money to survive and stay engaged and committed to their project.
If we all just stand aside and take advantage of free open software and not give anything, then we are no better than the corporations we were trying to avoid. Instead of corporations taking advantage of us, we are taking advantage of developers.
So if you want these open projects to live and survive, contribute to them with whatever you got. If we all just gave a dollar each to these projects, no matter what they are, the developers would have more than enough to maintain their work.
And whatever you contribute, it will be far less than the hundreds of dollars annually you would have given to a big corporation that would have just counted your money as profit and not directly contribute or support the actual developers.
Right, I'm not a creative professional but the occasions I need tools adobe provides there are plenty of open source alternatives I use instead.
Sadly most people won't care about what adobe is doing, but I can only hope they continue to shoot themselves in the foot. I yearn for the day when they aren't the dominant player in the space, maybe in 15 years.