this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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Free and Open Source Software

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What was your gateway product to open source? (www.cnet.com)
submitted 1 year ago by graphito@beehaw.org to c/foss@beehaw.org
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I want to talk about our gateway products to open source. You know, that one product or software that made us go, "Whoa, this is amazing!" and got us hooked on the world of open source.

What made you to jump ships? Was it the "free" side of things like qBittorrent? Did you even know that some of your programs are open source before you got into the topic?

For me those products were:

  • Android
  • Firefox
  • VLC
  • Calibre

Am thinking to order some merch and I wanna make it more accessible to people unfamilliar with open source culture. Now, am looking for fairly normalized but still underrepresented product -- maybe it could serve as a conversation starter and push some people to open source

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[–] kent_eh@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Probably Mozilla.

[–] doehni@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago

Yep, for me it was the Mozilla Suite and then Firebird (to become Firefox)

[–] gloriousPingu@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago

For me those products are:

  • Linux
  • Firefox
  • Bitwarden
  • Libreoffice
[–] gatelike@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago

I got pulled in after hearing the term "copyleft". Red hat 6 was out (version numbering scheme has changed since then). I was a teen and into skateboarding and punk so I was attracted to this legal document that used the system against the system. I became a Linux evangelist to fight back against Steve Ballmer and big bad Microsoft. Felt good to have a glimmer of hope.

[–] fital1ty@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago

For me ist was FreeCAD. From there to Linux and down the Rabbithole

[–] moitoi@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago

Linux distro. It was a time were my area of interest was IT and I read a lot about it and tried several Linux distro.

[–] somenonewho@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago
  • OpenOffice
  • Firefox
  • Thunderbird
[–] seSvxR3ull7LHaEZFIjM@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

For me it was first VLC without really knowing what FOSS was, then KeePass while getting to know a bit about it, and finally Thunderbird. What did it for me was just how good and bullshit-free they were, especially in comparison to paid competitors. They really are the best products in their field, proving the quality often behind FOSS software.

[–] DmMacniel@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Mhm my first FOSS was probably The Gimp two or so decades ago. Previous to that I used Corel Draw and Paint Shop Pro. Suse Linux on a CD followed soon after as a test, but it didn't hold me for long.

[–] Mothra@mander.xyz 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wow. I also used to use GIMP about two decades ago, but I was a kid and I had no idea PS and Corel Draw existed back then. Since you mentioned already having experience with PS before Gimp, how did the two compare to each other at that time for you?

[–] DmMacniel@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I didn't had experience with Adobe Photoshop (PS) back then. But The Gimp was quite similiar to the features of Corel Paint Shop Pro. The UI was quite different though, as PSP (7.0) had everything contained in their Main Window whereas The Gimp (2.0) was using the floating panels.

[–] Lemmchen@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Simply because I haven't seen it mentioned yet: 7-zip
But realistically VLC and Firefox

[–] MaxPower@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago

Suse Linux 4.4

[–] twistedtxb@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

VLC but it wasn't love at first sight, but it opened a whole new world of FOSS to me

To this day I still don't know why the fuss about VLC, I prefer MPC-HC

[–] Anamana@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago

Probably the first for most

[–] silvercove@lemdro.id 0 points 1 year ago

My roommate installed Ubuntu on my laptop when I was in college. That was the start. Now it looks like this: https://xkcd.com/456/