What’s a graphical piece of software you wish existed or was better?
Hi Linux Lemmites. Recently finished up school and started working full time and kind of miss working on personal projects. I’m looking to try to make something in rust and try out gpui if I can figure it out or maybe egui. I also want to make something maybe even a handful of people would actually use as I find that motivating, so I ask what would actually be useful to you?
Edit: thank you all very much for the input, I think that maybe doing something akin to a “settings+” would be a fair target for me for a n initial project. If I make anything interesting I’ll make another post in this sub.
GUI for Pipewire configuration. Being able to reliably change the sample rate and buffer size without having to mess with config files would be nice.
I think I’d shoot for something like this for maybe a project 2 or so. I’ve messed a bit with cpal already because I wanted to mess around with doing some basic dsp stuff so I’d love to do a full easy effects replacement with this included. Or alternatively include something basic in the settings project I mentioned a bit higher up
Happy to test if you do.
Three finger drag in Wayland, a new gui for opensnitch where i can isolate network activity by app like little snitch
GUI for managing fingerprints/PAM that allows complicated or at least some customization with PAM such as requiring password on first login then allowing graphical fingerprints for sudo, unlock and other prompts with fallback to password.
I think this a pretty good idea. There’s a few other ideas below as well that are like settings tweaks or ui for them, it might be cool to build out something kinda like what opensuse has with a bunch of settings put into a graphical app.
Qt version of cool GTK software: Nicotine+, Ardour (ahahah), Lutris, Cartridges
Qt software I would love to see graphically improved: QuodLibet, Falkon, Qbittorrent, KeePass
Others: PeerTube client, Syncthing client, Ardour+Kdenlive fusion (a good Video DAW is my wet dream), Lemmy for desktop
Qbittorrent desperately needs an easy way to change font size for us blind motherfuckers.
If you use the web UI, you can adjust the zoom in your browser.
WebUI has had exploits in the past, I wouldn't use it unless I had to.
I was gonna say QuodLibet. Strawberry is great but I really liked QL back in the day.
Oh yeah, a reliable Android Syncthing client would be awesome after the debacle with Syncthing-Fork lately.
A standalone utility for decoding QR codes that will work on a desktop. All I want is to be able to put a picture of the code in and get whatever text it was concealing in a little text box where I can read it, and C&P it if it's useful to do so. If something like this exists, I've never been able to find it, although there are seemingly dozens of programs for generating QR codes.
Kde's spectacle (screenshot utility) does this by default now.
Not op, but holy shit, it actually does! Wish I knew that before, ty!
I wrote a little script a while back that would save a temp file with fswebcam, run zbarimg on it to decode the qr, delete the temp file and if it worked it would pipe the output into xclip/wl-copy, otherwise it would try again (up to 8 times).
I hooked it up to a keyboard shortcut and I'll see the webcam light flash one or two times when I hit it, then know it's good.
It wouldn't be a ton of work to also have a popup with the qr value using zenity or something, maybe use the --question and pass it "copy $output to clipboard?". You could have an --error if all the scan attempts failed.
Feel free to shoot me a pm if you want help.
Ya know I tried for years to make QR codes a thing. Now they're a thing but everyone uses them wrong and it drives me absolutely nuts.
What qualifies as "using them wrong"?
Anytime they're not printed. If it's not printed, use a link. It makes no sense. I cannot scan a QR code on my phone with my phone.
Fair enough. Sometimes it seems QR users assume everybody has two devices.
Should be very possible. Are you on Linux or Windows? Please write me again at the end of the week if I didn't come back to you.
zbarimg decodes them on CLI.
I don't have a concrete idea for you, but I suggest starting with something really simple. I think simple games are a good place to start. Or create a front-end for some command line tool to make it easier on beginners. That way you can focus on the UI development you're interested in without getting bogged down in the rest of it.
This is some sage advice thank you. I’m guilt of always starting something super difficult and then going back. My first couple qt projects were forcibly scoped because I had actually end users I needed to keep in mind and that helped immensely.
I speak standing on a hill if my own dead projects. Just remember personal projects are supposed to be fun and educational, maybe with a little resume padding for good measure. Scratch that itch you can't get to at work. It's great when other people enjoy them, but as soon as they become a commitment, they start feeling like work. To me, at least.
That's why I think games or little tools are great. They small enough so you can throw them out and start over. People won't get (too) mad if you stop maintaining them (if you open source them) because it's easy for someone else to take over.
A real Photoshop replacement. GIMP is cool, but ain't it. I have yet to find ANY software that can replace PS. I've even tried using multiple programs to replace PS, and it just doesn't work. I fucking HATE Adobe.
Krita, after som tinkering, has replaced it for me, but I'm not a Photoshop power user either.
I'm not an artist by any definition, but I am wholeheartedly behind the sentiment of excising the cancerous growth that is the Adobe company out of existence. You may have seen this website before, but have you checked out fuckadobe.com? Alternatives are a little ways down, past the wall of text.
Graphite is getting there
I’d love to do something this big in scope eventually maybe a couple projects down the road but I’d definitely want rust to be at the level of my main languages before I delve into that depth. I also would want to avoid the gimp development times it seems it takes forever for stuff over there
Absolutely
A universal uninstaller.
Now that Ubuntu has apt, snap, ~/bin, flatpak, appimages, etc, when I want to disable, update, or, uninstall an app, I can't quickly figure out where it is or how to do that. So a program that starts with 'which appname' or something more clever to find it, which also told you what type of installation method it was and then let you remove it with the next action.
For example I had Desktop Docker installed which was garbage, and I didn't remember how I had installed it. In that case you couldn't use 'which' because that's not the name of the executable, so you'd have to design something smarter that could search .desktop files or whatever.
Good luck with your project!
The GNOME & KDE Platform have a software store with an "uninstall" button?
What platform are you using with Ubuntu?
That works for things that are installed via the app store, but I install things from other sources as well.
I don't know what you mean by platforms, but if the software I want is not in the app store, I usually go to their website and see how the developers recommend installing it.
Sometimes I download an appimage. Sometimes I download a .deb. Sometimes the developer wants me to wget directly into sudo (yuck) sometimes I have to clone a github repo, rarely these days do I have to download a source tarball and make compile, but maybe I get some old software that works that way.
Sometimes it is confusing because the software I installed (e.g. Steam) has the preferred way from the website different from the version in the app store (Steam-launcher or whatever). The problem is I don't remember which method I used to install what.
In my imagination, I open the universal uninstaller, and start typing the app. As I type it shows suggestions. If I select it, it tells me how I installed it (downloaded a deb from their website, etc.,) then the next click takes me to the correct uninstall method.
Pretty sure you can just delete appimages
Yes you can. This would remind you that itis an appimage and then delete it
I wish Scratch was more powerful, kind of like Flash was back in the day, so that it would be easier to make more complicated things with it. I feel right now if you want to make a somewhat real game it gets too hard too quickly because you need to work around the limitations.
Check out turbowarp, an ultra fast reimplementation of scratch.
I've seen games that only worked in turbowarp.
Custom editors are probably needed.
On mobile check out OctoStudio.
I'd be happy to see one more email client option. Using Geary now - nice ui but very limited in features. Been through quite a few in the past.
For a bit of mindfuck check kdialog : Tool to show nice dialog boxes from shell scripts
Maybe the shell truly is enough BUT in some cases, say you want to help somebody who for some reason doesn't want the terminal, you can bring the bare minimum of UI to give utility. My favorite example is the file picker e.g
kdialog --getopenfilename "*txt" | wc -las most CLI commands do support a filename as input.This is the KDE take on yad/zenity, no?
Looks like, I'm not familiar enough to spot obvious differences.
I understand why it doesn't exist because it's pretty niche and a shitload of work, but I wish there was a a really good dedicated 2D animation software similar to Moho Pro or Toon Boom Harmony on Linux. That's one of the only reasons I'm still keeping Windows around.
Also as a side note, don't trust Toon Boom. I bought a perpetual license from them that was super expensive, and then they switched to a subscription model and turned off my perpetual license.
Its funny because there is really good animation software on Linux. Problem is its difficult. But what it does is real good!
Cant say that and not mention the name my guy
Ok for example, and this isn't the only one, OpenToonz. It is the direct and open source descendant of the same software that Studio Ghibli used.
You would need to learn it. You would need to create your own custom pipeline workflows. And you would need to be an artist.
Blender and davinci? Prob doesn't compare, but they run natively ar least.
Kvm/libvirt windows vm maybe? It opens windows apps as linux apps, issue comes with using gpu but toonboom seems cpu and ram intensive?
You would just set it up normally in the vm then open the app through your start menu as you would normally.
Calibre https://calibre-ebook.com/
Pursuing feature parity with Calibre would be a long journey, but we have to start somewhere
What features does the Windows version of Calibre have that the Linux version not have?
Begging the question?
Sorry, I don't understand what that means in this context. When I switched from Windows to Linux,I didn't notice any difference in Calibre.
Your question, "What features does the Windows version of Calibre have that the Linux version not have?" cannot be answered without accepting an unargued premise: that the windows version has more features than the Linux version.
No one was saying that, so your question is begging the question.
That is what begging the question means in the uk, unless I'm mistaken.
Some context, which you may or may not be aware of, that makes the original comment funny, is that recently, Calibre, which had been a very boring piece of software, has started including a bunch of AI features. So there are some new forks that intend to make a drop in replacement for Calibre without the unwanted features.
I'm not debating with you. I was trying to understand your post.
Do you understand now?
I've moved on emotionally.
Nope, it simply asks (or even expresses genuine curiosity) about a subset of features on windows which might be missing in Linux version. That's if you want to be super logical and fussy about things. If not, you could have just answered or moved the discussion in any relevant direction you would like. That was always allowed.
Ironically, you kinda did answer it, at least in part, by mentioning the AI slop bloat. Why hide your answer behind a wall of being a jerk, though? I can only speculate. Too little sleep, too many old Rationality Rules videos? :-) Thatt's none of my business; I just hope you feel better now.
It assumes the windows version has features the Linux version does not have, which is a question in bad faith, and difficult to answer. Hence "begging the question".
WinSCP is a Windows tool I use at work to send files between machines and I wish there was linux version. Programs like Dolphin are similar but I always manage to find something I can do in WinSCP that I can't do in the linux alternatives
Edit: commenters just pointed out a bunch of potential solutions I wasn't even aware of, so I'm probably just dumb please carry on
I'm not sure what WinSCP has what linux SCP hasn't? I guess WinSCP is a GUI tool?
I do a lot of scp to send files between machines (even mac<->linux).
Filezilla?
It’s a GUI tool that lets you see both filesystem side by side and drag and drop items to transfer them
Can't you already do that from Nautilus with bookmarked sftp locations?
I'm not commenting to discourage other tools from being made, just curious if there's some aspect of that process that isn't already easy to accomplish on Linux with existing GUI tools, or if you'd like to be able to do it differently is all.
Have you seen the current version of SSH Pilot? Close enough perhaps?
I’m intrigued.
Do you recall something in particular?
FWIW, I usually just connect to a ssh location from within Nautilus.
FAR manager (clone of Norton Commander) might be worth giving a look. Not a GUI, though, it's TUI but responds to mouse.
On Debian,
sudo apt install far2land then runfar2l.BTW, to add ssh-agent authenticated scp connection, press F11, go to NetRocks and create connection. in the dialog you'll need to select the protocol to
scpand then auth method in "protocol options". you can edit an existing connection by going back to the connection "directory" and using F4 on the connection. Once you connect you can copy/move files back and forth.Along with scp it supports eg. smb, nfs and davs.
A comicbook viewer that is lightweight and supports .cbt well, without slowing to a crawl depspite it being a simple tar. Just needs to have pic-for-pic and webtoon (attach at bottom) modes.
Btw, why is the nonsensical format .cbz (zipping already compressed images) the default? And why is such a simple format always in electron GUI?
Okular? Iirc it opens cbt and the likes fine.
Lightweight much?
All things must become electron do not resist
Paint.net for Linux. Most of my experience with making art digitally came from paint.net and there's not really a good alternative that doesn't require me to recreate my workflow from the ground up (Krita).
Pinta is technically an option, but it's missing many of the features that modern paint.net has.
For now, I have to make do with a VM to run it.
Oh, it's marked as "garbage" in the wine compatibility database 😕
The new Gimp 3.0 is quite a lot better than the last versions for digital art. Maybe try it again?
GIMP is still missing a way to draw a circle without some convoluted method. It won't work for my needs currently.
Vorta. Qt based front end for BorgBackup.
I wish Stonesense was better and more stable. Im just glad it is still maintained though.
(a tool to view dwarffortress's forts)
GNOME
It feels like it never quite decided on what it wanted to be. Extensions break with every update. There seems to be no long term plan with it.
Honestly, bring back unity.
Gnome is like the t virus. Slowly trying to devour everything else and convert it to its side by force.
They don't actually break for the most part, the extension usually needs to be updated to say gnome 49 instead of 48, or you select ignore version on the extension site
They haven't caused major changes that actually make them break in a while.
In case they do make major changes, it makes sense to not ignore version on default especially since that also effects older addons.
Also say an addon still works but gets abandoned, if they can't bother to update just the version, it's for the best that someone else comes along and takes over seeign that no one is working on that extension anymore, if it just kept working without someone bothering to even update the version? eventually when Gnome did get a major change, it would have no one working on it. So I think it kinda helps keeps extensions developed even if they technically work with a version change.
Wow, I feel the absolute opposite. Of all the UXes I have ever used, Gnome feels the most like they have a vision they're committed to.
Not everyone likes it, and I get it's very different to the WinUX that most others have settled on, but they absolutely have a vision, and they execute on that vision.
Sort of.
When a new Gnome version comes out, Gnome's default behaviour is to mark extensions as unsupported. But in reality unless you're upgrading to the first Beta releases, you're unlikely to run into that, as extension developers will have marked their extensions as compatible long before the new Gnome version has hit stable and distros start pushing it.
You can disable the check if you like, but hypothetically that could lead to issues (say, if Gnome radically changes the calendar applet, and then you force enable an extension that tweaks the old applet). Gnome, probably wisely, goes with the more stable option.
If you just use the stable branch, you're unlikely to ever get broken extensions.
These are all some very good ideas. I particularly like the ffmpeg idea. I do think a file manager is on the horizon for me eventually as well, I’ve always wanted to try making one
I wish Divvy/WinDivvy worked on Linux. There are similar alternatives, but none that duplicate the functionality.
A nice editor for both Markdown and reStructuredText with minimal dependencies, which allows to change seamlessly editing between rendered text and source text. Like one has a tab for source text, and one for rendered text, and can change and edit both tabs.
Gollum wiki has something similar but it could be better. Maybe even having two panes side-by-side, left source, right rendering, and one can edit both and / or flip them.
Also, I think one could find a ton of small useful improvements in Zim Wiki. I use it all the time to gather and structure information on poorly documented stuff, which is very often needed when working with legacy software, and it is great and extremely useful but not perfect.
Markdown is so crazy that it is supported everywhere on the Web yet there are no good desktop apps to do what you describe.
I use one from the snap store that let's you go back and forth like you describe, but to change the font or print you have to expoet to a different format........
I forget what it is called but it is a gnome app.
I wish there was a graphical or CLI option to add a Linux drive to etc/fstab.
gnome-disk-utility can. And PySDM.
Ah, I'm on KDE though.
Doesn't stop you from running a GTK app.
This is kind of what partition managers do, no?
And CLI-wise, you can just open it in nano... Or where you talking about something interactive?
I use KDE and it keeps asking me for a password to mount one of my partitions. I tried to edit it using nano but couldn't find any documentation about how etc/fstab even works so I was hoping for a way to do it with the CLI.
Nano is the way to do it in CLI.
Should be:
sudo nano /etc/fstab
Should bring your fstab file up right in the terminal. Make the edits and then hit Ctrl+x to exit and save. Reboot to see if it worked.
Problem is that I don't know the format and I couldn't find any documentation on the matter.
You can't exactly type "man nano /etc/fstab" into the console.
Man fstab will work though I think
How about a utility for generating and/or handling QR codes?
EDIT: as there are tools to generate QR codes, how about a tool to handle them? Scan and present the option to open any associated links/display data
I use qtqr for this, few dependencies.
Check out zint
Wow it generates postal barcodes as well, that's cool
Inkscape can generate QR code
@nyan had a similar request elsewhere in this thread and got a few suggestions. It seems that the KDE screen capture utility can do this.
IMHO
qrcode-terminalis pretty good.Requires qrencode. Replace magick
displaywith your image viewer of choice if you want.A graphical 'advanced' package manager for Qt / KDE. Something to replace Muon which is/was the KDE equivalent of Synaptic but no longer available in Kubuntu. Discover shows you apps (both snap and apt), Muon showed packages with all sort of relevant technical information (source, dependencies, 'reverse dependencies', installed files). I guess everything Synaptic/Muon does is also available through the various
aptsubcommands but there is value in a decent GUI to bundle those individual commands and their output.There is not much choice for drawing diagrams, dia is old school and draw.io is big.
Pebble app. There's Rockwork, but outside of Ubuntu Touch it will only produce empty notifications. There's Rockpool, that's only for SailfishOS. There's Amazfish, but so far it can only pair and then... nothing.
SSH connection/session manager for people who need to keep lots of open connections to different remote devices, like Xshell for Windows. There are options for Linux that come close in functionality but most seem to miss one desired feature like vertical tabs, grouping connections with a one-shot open of all in a group, saving/restoring sessions which keeps all tabs in the same order, sending keystrokes to all tabs in a window, or split panes.
Tabby is the closest I’ve found so far and is pretty nice overall, but it’s missing some functionality and isn’t the snappiest being an Electron app.
A part of the desktop GUI that opens git forge stuff for installed apps. Like I want to just right click "submit code issue" for an app and have it open a proper templates issue for that given project. Right click and select "see source code" and it pops open my ide of choice. Add some integrations for building and installing forks and branches so I can test my changes in real time.
I kinda want an lcars interface for my phone, but I'm too lazy to configure it
I wish there was any alternative to after effects. It's what keeps me in the adobe system. It's so good and there's actually nothing comparable out there.
I also havent enjoyed any open source video editing software either. A lot of them don't have the specs for bigger more rhobust projects
Streamlined VM deployment inside a headless server. Been scratching my head for 2 days now on getting a Debian VM to work as advertised. Every step of the way I keep thinking "surely it doesn't have to be this difficult, right?" And for some reason, a basic netplan edit to make a bridge broke all my NFS binds. Took all day to sort a brand new permissions issue that shouldn't be possible
I don't have any experience with any of this, but have you looked at Cockpit? It can manage VMs not only locally but also remotely, I believe.
Yeah, I got it set up through Cockpit actually
Cool!
I would love a good WYIWYG desktop screenwriting software.
Writing fountain markup just doesn't work for me. it's hard to explain, and sounds precious, but if my brain is in markup mode it's not in creative mode and vice versa.
Some of the ok ones from the past have been abandoned.
I bought a pro license of fade in which is supposed to be available for Linux but it won't install and support didn't solve it. So I have to work exclusively from my Windows machine... Which I don't love doing.
Linux is still a difficult environment for creative work.
https://github.com/trelby/trelby ?
https://trelby.org/
Found here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/List_of_applications/Documents#Screenwriting
I didn't realize it was back in active development. It seemed to be abandonware for years.
That's awesome. I'll have to test drive it. Thanks.
Late reply but I also recommend going through flathub for screenwriting apps if you want more. I saw some options that looked pretty good, although many were proprietary.
My somewhat convoluted solution is using Scrivener 3 in Wine. Takes a bit of setting up but works really well for me now. Also it's not a dedicated screenwriting software (it's designed for novels I think) but it has a screenwriting mode which does everything I need it to.
That's a great suggestion. I'll check it out. Thanks.
No worries! If you do decide to go that way, these are the guides that got it working for me:
Wine: https://forum.literatureandlatte.com/t/scrivener-scapple-for-windows-activation-under-wine/47254/5
Bottles: https://joe8bit.com/blog/running-scrivener-on-linux
What is screenwriting?
Writing screenplays. Movie scripts. At it's most basic, you can write it in any text editor, and you can format it in markup.
But, because the formatting is very specific and there are a lot of ways a screenplay gets analyzed and parsed they're mostly done in a dedicated software. The biggest and most industry standard is called Final Draft.
That is really cool! Thanks!
The one thing I desperately want for Linux is BetterTouchTool. That one piece of software alone plugs SO MANY gaps in how to navigate macOS, but Linux has nothing like it. Not that I've yet found, anyway.
After Dark Totally Twisted - The Grossest, Goriest, & Weirdest Screen Savers from Berkeley Systems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0dD_TACPx0
They don't have to be graphical but there are some things I can think of that I'd really like to have or see improved.
Some form of an app that will allow me to get the most out of Flathub. I know that I wont use every app that exists on Flathub but I would like to have some app that will allow me to at least see every app that's available. I don't care if it's something as simple as just a list of every app in the order they were added, preferably sorted/sortable by oldest first and multiple pages to make it easier to find where I left off, or if it's something more intricate, like a full app store experience with an app recommendation system that filters out apps I've already interacted with.
Something will allow me to get better use out of GameFAQs, I was thinking about something similar to Anime Plus but for GameFAQs. If you're not familiar with Anime Plus, it's a companion app for My Anime List that creates a temporary profile based on your MAL account and gives you a list of anime/manga that are missing from your account and gives recommendations for new anime/manga. If that's not possible, similar to Flathub, I don't care what is made for it. Right now, I've been using documents to keep track of everything but I noticed that this isn't reliable because there is no way to be notified of when new games are added since games are only sorted alphabetically.
I feel like there are more things but I can't think of anything else right now.
Have you looked at Bazaar? I don't think it does everything you listed, but maybe some of it?
Actually yes, I have it installed already. It unfortunately doesn't do what I'd need it to. For example, if you go to the games category in Bazaar, it'll say that there is 701 apps but it only shows 96. But now, if you go to the Flathub website, it'll also say that there is 701 apps but there are 24 pages with 30 apps each.
Also, if you are wondering why I'm not just using the website, I've mentioned it in the past but I forgot to add to my previous comment. Basically, the issue is that I'd have to go though every page manually and keep a spreadsheet of every app I've checked because the order that the apps are listed in changes occasionally.
Oh, wow, I didn't realize that it did this, but I've barely used it yet. Yeah, that's not good.
Edit: it seems that the most efficient approach would be to fix the Bazaar app or any other apps that show the Flathub catalog instead of writing something completely new.
I mean yeah but after using Bazaar a little more, I realized that it would still have the same issue that I'm having with the website. If there are other apps that show Flathub's catalog, I'd be interested in trying them but I never found any others last time I looked. As I've stated before, I don't care too much about how it works, I just need to be able to reliably see every app that's available. At the bare minimum, I'd except something similar to how Droid-ify works for F-droid (a third party app store for android), where I can set it to sort the apps by newest first and then scroll down to the last app I've seen and work my way up. It's tedious but it works.
Got it, I just haven't looked at any of them closely enough to give an informed opinion on this. Both Gnome and KDE (and PopOS?) have their own software store apps that let you browse flathub apps with different features, but I haven't noticed if they do what you're looking for. What you're asking for seems reasonable and useful though. I hope you find something that works.
A GUI for Mozilla SOPS to use it as a password manager.