My biggest takeaway with open source projects is this:

Theres there's a HUGE jump from being power user friendly to being user friendly in general. Significantly bigger than the jump from dev/contributor users to power users.

UX is something huge companies spend a lot of time and money on to ensure the layman can use the software well, something open source developers do not have the luxury of caring about from the get go.

Power users do not recognize the inbuilt muscle memory they have acquired over time to get around some of the more nagging aspects of the software and get frustrated with new users for not doing the same, while these new users get frustrated at things not being straightforward, or similar to some other software they're used to.

IMO this push and pull is what is truly preventing a Linux desktop experience that is truly layman friendly. But when it works, and an open source project can slowly start putting more of their time into UX when the project is more mature, then it truly starts kicking ass.

Look at how far Blender has come since the 3.0 update. A lot of studios are straight up switching to it for a lot of work that was traditionally Max or Maya based. Obviously you still have some of the "old guard" who felt a little alienated with the sweeping changes from 2.7 to 3, but I feel blender is objectively better for most people since then.

TL;DR: OSS always deals with different competing needs for power users vs regular users, but given enough time things get smoothened out

I was with you until GIMP. If one more person lists it as an alternative to Photoshop I'm gonna lose it. It's UI is terrible, you have to watch a guide just to get started. Can't read PSDs in any viable way. I'm sure people use it just fine but to call it an alternative to Photoshop is just plain lying.

Edit: the other thing I dislike about it being suggested as a replacement is that it assumes you work alone. Anyone on a team with people in PS will not be able to even attempt to use GIMP to get work done.

This isn't just open-source software; it's also a collection of servers run by hobbyists.

There is no business here at all. You're not the product, but you're also not the customer — because there is no customer. What you're seeing here is a strictly nonprofit Internet service provided by people who just want to make one.

Well thats true for all software - being free/libre or not. It just takes time to get used to it.

For example, when I get a new phone - I spend the next months complaining over how much better the previous one was, until I dont.

Hmmm, fuck those people honestly

Somewhat agree, but don't get me started on a Gimp. To think that gimp was build to be a tool analogous to Photoshop (PS) is naive. It was born to demonstrate GTK GUI widgets and to check boxes on feature list (of supposedly paint program analogous to PS) from programmers perspective at most. Ok, they did the thing, checked the boxes, used all widgets, demonstrated that it works and from that day on it had and still has totaly inneficient workflow compared to PS and nobody cares about that. Answer to sugestions is almost always half assed, apple soused - you are holding it wrong, we are not PS. :)

My 2 cents, you can learn Gimp, you can adjust yourself to it, but if you have ever worked on PS and were good at it (with all its workflow, shortcuts, up to the level where you work one hand on keyboard, having most toolboxes hiden out of your view, etc..) you'll still feel gimpy. It's like comparing of giving commands to the gnome with an axe versus to an elf with a whole bunch of efficient specialised tools, spells and workflows – both trying to create art. I don't use PS daily for how much, maybe >8 years and use Gimp weekly for about 12years – I say, it is still gimpy as f.. And I'm programmer not a designer, designers usualy just hate it. I on another hand understant it (and it's history) and take it as it is, as an inferior gimpy cousin of PS :)

As someone who used Reddit when it was first released, Lemmy is 10x better than Reddit v0.1 and obviously better than current Reddit.

This is why I have 4 different apps to surf Lemmy. When one app is acting up I just switch to another. For example I was just barely scrolling in Jerboa but getting a bunch of network errors so I switched to Connect which is where I'm posting this comment. I'm totally down with being patient with Lemmy for the time being. Anything to get away from R*****

The thing is if they want people to migrate they should do something about it

I am a reddit refugee and just down for fun ride on the bleeding edge. I am finding a lot of the same communities here and I am happy that Lemmy is here to fill the void.

And for some reason, mainstream media seems to discourage people from FOSS projects. Just look at the coverage on Lemmy.

"It's clearly not ready yet."

Why? We don't know. It's just not.

Lemmy is absolutely easy to use. once you created an account. But a lot of people have problems with that.

It's not just that: it is made worse by the fact that, being "free", resources are limited. For example, Lemmy.world has been experiencing several hiccups and it's bloody slow at the moment. I get it, it runs on small servers. But the QoS is bad nevertheless; how can you expect the average Joe coming from Reddit to stay here?

I’m using wefwef right now, and its all running pretty smoothly. No complaints here