This kind of gatekeeping and elitism is bad for Lemmy and for FOSS.
It makes this community a less welcoming place and leaves new folks with a bad first impression. Much better to be welcoming and let people learn/see the benefits of FOSS at their own pace.
I’d given up on lemmy because every so I had tried was unfinished and unpolished. I tried sync and finally felt like the user experience wasn’t getting in the way of content.
I’d love to support foss, if a genuinely comparable experience existed.
I’m glad to say that sync has revived my interest in lemmy.
You should check out Thunder, even if you gave it a try at some point - it’s super polished and it’s gotten even better week after week. In my opinion it has the best compact mode of all the lemmy clients, as long as you don’t mind swipe actions!
I was using Thunder last week until Sync’s open beta got approved and the User Experience and the interface of Thunder is nowhere near Sync. It’s a night and day difference, and a difference that would have made me use Lemmy less and less.
Thunder is like a month old - it’s still growing and will continue to improve with the community’s help :) if you think anything could be improved, definitely shout it out on the GitHub page!
I understand that it’s new, and it is definitely the best FOSS Lemmy app out of the dozens that I used. But it has a very long way to go to achieve the same level of User Experience that Sync has. It’s not even close and I don’t think anything bar a major UI/UX rehaul could fix that.
Dozens?? Do tell.
Not OP, but I’ve tried thunder. It’s OK. Sync is light years above all other clients I’ve tried. (same with reddit as well) swipe actions? Sync is the king of swipe actions.
IMO FOSS has really great offerings when it comes to libraries or other highly technical code.
But something about either the community or incentive structure results in sub-par UI/UX. Obviously not a rule, but definitely a trend I’ve noticed.
Don’t forget the community’s reaction to comments like yours, why down vote him if he’s stating the obvious? FOSS projects often focus so much on technical features because everyone wants to flex their code-fu, but nobody gives enough time to UI/UX. Just look at pretty much every Lemmy web frontend, fugly webpages with early 2000s look-and-feel, usually slow and/or buggy, and with little to no user feedback.
Lemmy is just new. The best desktops that exist are FOSS.
FOSS doesn’t need your support. You misunderstand the relationship. FOSS is looking out for you.
I see the upvotes but I cannot support this comment. FOSS could use a lot more support at every level, including users.
Username checks out. Wait I know this face from masto - I think I follow you!
This is why I unsubscribed from the Android community. I love Android, I use nothing but Linux at home and really appreciate open source software.
But the FOSS…enthusiasm is starting to border on zealotry. It’s getting really unpleasant.
Try to tell the Linux users on here that you prefer to use Windows…
I had to leave the Linux memes community because I swear nearly every post was shitting on Windows. Yes, I get it. Windows isn’t all that great. But, much like Ios, it just works for what I need. And I haven’t had any issues that weren’t ny fault with it.
If the game I play most, and the number one reason why i go on my pc, works on Windows, but won’t work on Linux. Which OS is better for me?
I thought all this software war crap era was over. That was shit I cared about when I was 14 or something. Just let it herself use what they want and explain the benefits of alternatives, only if they care.
I’m surprised they don’t shit on macOS too lol
I tell myself that I like MacOS as it was my favourite desktop for years. Honestly though, it is the worst of the three at this point.
I use Linux as my daily driver, yet I 100% believe Linux is overrated. It’s great if you’re willing to put in the work to get it working well, or maybe if you have someone else to do all your tech support for you, but it’s just not a good option for the majority of people.
I hate when people keep trying to push it on Windows users, especially when they go on about how “easy” it is. It’s not. And doing that will get people to try it out with high expectations and then get disappointed when they try it out and that’s not the case.
I honestly feel like people who say this stuff either haven’t tried Linux since 2008 or went straight to Arch.
I use Manjaro as my daily driver and I never need to fix the system. It really does just work, and these a bunch of disyros out there that do.
The only thing you might find terrible is trying to run windows programs on Linux, to which I say: dual boot! Even with all the progress Proton, Lutris etc. have made, it’s still way easier to just boot into windows on the occasion you want to play games or whatever.
I switched to Linux last year, and I used Linux Mint, which people say is the easiest, and then KDE Neon which I’m still using now, which is definitely way better than Linux Mint but it’s still not easy. I’m fine with it, and I personally prefer it to Windows, but I could never imagine my parents or my friends trying to use it without help.
Dood the automod is wild… people getting banned for, “suspicious activity”… and then there’s no way to ask the mods why the ban.
Btw, the automod is ONLY a service from us, that you are getting notified when something got removed from you. If you mean the @AutoMod@lemmy.world
I don’t get the point of this.
Since when did Sync masquerade itself as FOSS?
Just use whatever you want. Isn’t that why we’re all here?
Is the Sync noise getting to you? Just ignore it. It’s natural since the app just opened up and there were a significant amount of Reddit refugees that badly wanted their app back.
I think it’s more the Lemmy userbase having different expectations than that of the Reddit userbase, with Lemmy being such a shift from Reddit.
I agree. SYNC will bring tons of reddit users to lemmy. I for one welcome that change.
Seems to me this has spawned a fair bit of discussion… Which is the actual reason we’re all here.
Sync has gotten a lot of buzz (I don’t understand why, even on Reddit, rif was always better anyway) and that’s always going to bring out the people who don’t agree, for one reason or another.
Don’t mistake an opinion you don’t share for anything beyond what it is. I could just as easily parrot your statement back: if you don’t think this discussion is productive, just ignore it. There’s plenty of other discussions to get involved with on Lemmy
Sync gained a big following because it had a core feature many many moons ago, when having constant cell service was much less common, it allowed you download and save hundreds of posts and all the comments while you were on wifi, so you could browse reddit offline, it did this automatically and in the background (based on your settings ) hence the name ‘Sync’. This was a killer feature back in the day, at least for me. As that became less of a need, the app continued to change and add a lot of nice features, like lots of customizations, random NSFW, a very good OLED dark mode, etc, so there was no point in switching to something else.
My .02¢
I could use this same logic to talk about your comment. People are free to dunk on other apps, so why not just mute the post?
Sync is just so much more polished and feature-rich than all of these already… It’s exactly like how it was when it was for reddit, and it’s just one dev! I don’t mind at all paying for a fantastic app.
You guys are taking the justified corpo hate and extending it to talented individual devs just making a living.
FOSS isn’t about “corpo hate”. It’s about freedom. There’s a philosophy behind it. You can, of course, disagree with it, but I think you should know what you’re disagreeing with.
If the users don’t control the program, the program controls the users. With proprietary software, there is always some entity, the developer or “owner” of the program, that controls the program—and through it, exercises power over its users. A nonfree program is a yoke, an instrument of unjust power.
I’m talking about the community. A large part of the community absolutely is about gate-keeping and hating on corporations… and now devs too apparently.
A large part of the community absolutely is about gate-keeping and hating on corporations
I haven’t seen that at all. Hate doesn’t bring you far.
I have and it’s good and cool.
Well maybe not gatekeeping. But hating corporations…
Yeah, until he gets an attractive buyout offer from an SEO company who wants to get into data mining.
I am disliking this sentiment. I am on the Fediverse because Sync’s developer and many others were betrayed by Reddit and I wanted to show solidarity and to ‘punish’ Reddit by leaving. The Fediverse’s values are admirable, but I do not share them all. I believe in supporting good projects, even some that are private if they don’t pose a risk of destroying something bigger, and Sync is a good project that can be easily abandoned without consequences if something goes wrong.
I think we need to separate the system from the product. With Reddit they’re the same, with a single owner. With Lemmy/ActivityPub, just like with email, there’s an underlying system that nobody owns. It’s an ecosystem of pieces created by lots of different people.
It is a good thing that people are building products on top of that. Some of them are FOSS and some of them not. As long as no-one gets too much control of the underlying system then that’s great! Users retain choice and can choose FOSS apps if they want, or they can choose something like Sync.
I agree it would be sad if the only apps were paid, but I think a mix is a sign of a healthy ecosystem.
It amazes me the how far Reddit users will bend over backwards to suck this dude’s schlong. Must be a mobile-user thing.
that’s what you take away from the post you’re replying to? therapy is very much needed.
It’s amazing how divorced from reality the FOSS obsessed can be whenever anyone mentions non-FOSS apps. Nobody is bending over backwards, and nobody is sucking anyone’s schlong. If Sync were to have been FOSS, you’d be first in line to sing its praises. This trollish behavior doesn’t win anyone over to the “All Software Must Be Foss” camp at all. Must be a PC Master Race thing.
I had a mobile app for Reddit on my phone, you know when I used it last? 9 months ago when I was sitting in a waiting room waiting for an oil change. Every other time when I’m away from the computer I’m doing non-fucking-computer things.
This guy’s whole shtick was to make enough money to quit his day job, so he wrote a wrapper around someone else’s content using their free API. “Oh he did it all by himself, that’s amazing!” It’s really not, especially if you’d rather not share the subscription profits with other employees.
The FOSS alternatives? Done by guys with day jobs. They’re passion projects. I can respect that.
But you lot, who will drop to your knees the minute the guy wants to repeat his shtick now that Reddit kicked him to the curb? Zero respect at all.
“Wrote a wrapper”. Oh, is that all? It’s just that easy, huh?
Then why can none of these FOSS apps deliver the same experience, if Dawson is such an untalented hack?
You either have no clue of what you’re talking about, or you’re a troll. From my perspective, there is no substantive difference. If it’s such an easy shtick, the do it yourself, and do a better job. Put up, or shut up. Nobody asked for your respect, and I’m certain you know precisely where you can shove it.
If you only want to use or support open source apps, by all means do so. I tried Jeroba and Liftoff for a while, and while they had their merits, I am happy to pay a little money for the experience I get with Sync.
People need to remember that Lemmy is for everyone, not just people that live by free and open source software. Oh and sync the best, so there 😜
I am so happy to finally have Sync again. Was always my most used app before the API death on Reddit. Always happy to support LJ.
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I’m anti mega corporations with consolidated power and platform monopolies. I’m not anti small distributed devs getting paid for high quality hard work.
for long i thought Voyager had performance issues but in fact it’s my instance’s fault
Instance hosted voyager webapp?
Someone please correct me if I’m wrong, but does Sync seriously charge to remove ads that they added to browsing Lemmy in the first place? I get charging for Reddit due to the API, but I have a hard time believing the app is that much better than the existing FOSS apps such that the privacy tradeoff with ad trackers and/or the monetary cost worth it for, well, anyone really. Seems kinda scummy and antithetical to the philosophy that drives much of the Fediverse to me, yet I see so many people defending it in a way that reminds me of the rhetoric used to defend Reddit. Seriously, am I just a crazy person?
To be fair, this should be the other way around. All these foss apps are the teletubbies because they’re clunky and have major bugs. Sync is the power ranger.
You’re still stuck in 2002 or something? Most of the web is literally FOSS. Gone are the myths of free software being worse when the whole world literally runs on it.
(not op)
Sure, but in this case, most of the lemmy-clients (FOSS or not) are bad.
I have problems logging into my accounts (seems like some instances want my email as a username and many clients cannot handle this after I switched accounts), some clients don’t feature editing or deleting your posts, some clients don’t show my saved content, some clients don’t allow to see what you posted
Sure, much of this is because they started from scratch and will maybe surpass sync some day; but right now I couldn’t find something that isn’t worth. (didn’t try infinity yet, tho)
it’s not necessarily “FOSS is bad”; it’s just that the current lemmy-ecosystem is in it’s child shoes (I have the feeling this proverb doesn’t work in english?)
That said: I use Sync4Lemmy since 5 minutes and this is my first comment; so let’s see if/what it will deliver
Never heard that idiom before, (is it German?) Sentiment is clear though, I would probably just say “in its infancy” or something.
Also completely agree with your points. I’m a major supporter of FOSS but at the end of the day, I’m gonna use what actually works - the same as everyone else.
I say this as someone that uses FOSS day to day for work, I don’t really give a shit if my Lemmy app is FOSS.
For me, Sync was Reddit. It’s where 99% of my interaction with Reddit happened. I don’t really give a shit about Lemmy or the fediverse either. I’m here because Sync is a seamless product that gave me the best interface.
Despite saying that I don’t care about Lemmy or other distributed servers, Sync is basically that sync (lol) for me. Once I map my old subreddits on Lemmy, the experience doesn’t change.
If apps were girls:
I was always in love with Sync. But life happened and we had to go different ways for non-romantic reasons. Some fucker called Spez, long story…
Eventually I met Voyager and she was great. Any user would be lucky to have her. But Sync was always the one that got away. Everyday I looked at Voyager and thought she was awesome but I was always holding a candle for Sync. But Sync was gone and I had to move on. But I could never really move on.
But life happened again and Sync was coming back. I had committed to Voyager but, as great as she was, I always thought how she came short of Sync. Sync came back and she was as stunning as I remembered. I couldn’t stay with Voyager. I’m sorry Voyager. You’re an awesome girl but I was pretty much just using you since I couldn’t have Sync.
I’m a user Voyager, I make no excuses. There, there…
The gatekeeping is so fucked up
Oh nooooooo someone made a familiar and easy to use app to help people get used to this new ecosystem that can only thrive if people actually show up and use it. What a real shame.
Are we really being this petty already?
No love for Arctic? Def the best on iOS IMHO. Voyager is a close second.
I think that app didn’t exist when I made this meme 7 months ago.
