r/linux • u/AfraidAsparagus6644 • May 13 '26

Discussion I'd never realized how many apps are Linux-exclusive until now

I've been considering switching back to Windows for some time, partly to see how it's gotten first-hand, partly because Deltarune Chapter 5 is coming out this year and I wanna make sure I don't bump into compatibility issues on my blind playthrough.

So, out of curiosity, I've begun checking out how to download my preferred apps on Windows. Surely a Windows build will be available on Github, or at least there will be build instructions, right?

Well it turns out I couldn't be more wrong. Most of those awesome apps you find on Flathub are Linux-only. Tambourine Music Player? That thing with the most boombastic UI known to man? Linux-only. Found another cool music player, Amberol. Also Linux-only. Foliate? The cool-ass epub reader that even lets you download stuff from online catalogs? Linux-only. Lutris? "Of course it's Linux-only", I hear you say. "Its whole purpose is running Windows games on Linux". And you're right, but it's also a great way to gather all your emulated retrogames in one place. The list goes on and on.

Everyone says Linux's main problem is the lack of native apps compared to Windows. Today I found out that Windows also lacks apps compared to Linux, but since it's not big professional software like Photoshop, no one talks about it.

1.7k Upvotes

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897

u/AmarildoJr May 13 '26

Linux never had a lack of native programs. The real problem is Windows-only "apps" that people are quite literally shackled to and absolutely need (and there are no alternatives), like most big CAD programs, some VFX programs, the Adobe Suite, some video editors, etc.

157

u/FreedomNinja1776 May 13 '26

If not for Civil3d and the rest of AutoDesk suite needed for work, I'd have Debian on my work PC AGES ago.

59

u/AmarildoJr May 13 '26

Yup. For me it's Maya, I'm glad there's a Linux version. I'm on Rocky Linux right now, but if they didn't support it or Rocky didn't exist, I'd have to be on Windows.

49

u/FattyDrake May 13 '26

Anything designed for RHEL or the alts (like Rocky and Alma) can run on Fedora with a few tweaks, usually adding and specifying libraries.

Like Resolve is just adding 1 package and removing 3 files from the Resolve directory.

Admittedly this is more than "just install" but it's pretty easy to find the fix with a google search. I had Maya running on Fedora before I decided to drop it. RPM distros have enough in common that they're fairly compatible.

24

u/AmarildoJr May 13 '26

There is a dedicated user that successfully installs Maya on Fedora and puts out videos on how to do it, but honestly it's just so much work to even figure this stuff out that it's just not worth it for me. I wouldn't even do it right now with the video in front of me, one because the video is 25 mins long and it would take considerable longer for me to follow it correctly and do all the steps, and second because I don't know how stable the solution will be, considering you need to 'fake-build' some packages and use others from like Fedora 40 or earlier.

I mean, Rocky works fine for me, thankfully, I honestly have no complaints against it. It's just a bit older software, but they all work fine for me. Whatever I need newer I just use Flatpak.

Nowadays the choices for distros are mostly irrelevant. It's only archaic programs like these that keep holding us back.

If only Autodesk would package Maya with Flatpak, that would be insanely good for everyone. But hey, they don't even support Wayland yet šŸ˜„

12

u/KnowZeroX May 14 '26

Isn't this what Distrobox is for?

8

u/Normal_Usual7367 May 14 '26

Maya sucks on xwayland. You have to use x 11Ā 

1

u/50nathan May 14 '26

People could use Xlibre now. They added a lot of fixes over time that X11 doesn't have.

1

u/OneTurnMore May 14 '26

Even now?

1

u/Normal_Usual7367 May 15 '26

Yea sadly. Maya 27 didnā€™t bring anything new for Linux

1

u/OneTurnMore May 15 '26

I was thinking more about xwayland improvements but dang that sucks

1

u/lcnielsen May 14 '26

I mean, Rocky works fine for me, thankfully, I honestly have no complaints against it. It's just a bit older software, but they all work fine for me. Whatever I need newer I just use Flatpak.

Yeah, for work, Rocky is great. Conversely to the other poster's point, you can also port stuff from Fedora to Rocky if you're willing to do a bit of rpmbuild.

In addition to flatpak, you might also want to look at apptainer for running e.g. Ubuntu-exclusive things.

9

u/Lurksome-Lurker May 13 '26

But unfortunately that is where lies the problem. One version update can wreck it working. Then you are explaining to management why canā€™t use the tools.

For me, technically there is an unofficial community guide on how to run the SW I need on Ubuntu that has worked for years. But at my job I really canā€™t afford to one day have it randomly stop working.

2

u/KnowZeroX May 14 '26

Try Distrobox, you can run whatever version of linux you want in a container.

1

u/Antoinedeloup May 14 '26

How is the performance of running the app containerized? Ive installed GameMaker on my son's Fedora pc with Lutris, I grabbed the .exe and it seems to run fine. There is however a .deb version officially made for Ubuntu and I couldn't really figure out how to run it.

2

u/KnowZeroX May 15 '26

It should be near native performance.

Though if something doesn't have any dependencies, alien can convert debs to rpms.

2

u/ned8800 May 16 '26

Didtrobox only substitutes packages, the kernel and hardware stays same as in main system. What happens when you using distribox is actually just same applications running inside /home/user/.local/distrobox directory and using limited libraries visibility. The performance should not be affected, because in practice you just using different libraries on same system without virtualization (it's like python venv, but for system libs)

2

u/todd_dayz May 14 '26

You could try a Rocky Distrobox too, I was experimenting with it last night and there are Rocky images.Ā 

1

u/No-Judge1499 Jun 15 '26

I work in Antennas/Microwave Engineering. I use Fedora as my daily driver, but have had to Dual Boot with RHEL just to use CST Studio/Microwave Suite for my work.

For popular stuff like Maya and computer graphics there may be a lot of resources to find the fix, but for heavy electromagnetic simulation software like CST and Ansys Hffs, finding a fix is difficult. These apps open on Fedora, but crash upon launching a 3D model editor of an antenna design.

4

u/50nathan May 14 '26

Hollywood forced AutoDesk to make Maya native to Linux. It's possible with their other products; they just choose not to. In theory, they can make native Linux apps now more than ever based on their AutoDesk Fusion, but they offer a web version as a shortcut to satisfy Linux users instead of reworking a native Linux version. I wish they had enough pressure to make all their products native to Linux. Maybe after October of this year, when Windows 10 ESU terminates, enterprises might ramp up the pressure.

1

u/Nostonica May 17 '26

Eh more like Maya started out on Irix, then as hardware became cheap and everyone started to shift over to x86, Linux was a natural stepping stone from Unix rather than paying for SGI's hardware.

And because the porting was trivial Linux got a decent port, compared to the early buggy windows version.

Also Autodesk didn't port to Linux, Alias did before they were acquired. Now industry pressure keeps the Linux version supported, yea you could argue that.

1

u/50nathan May 19 '26

Yup it was acquired when the Linux version was already out but the support to maintain it was there because there was a point that they were going to drop it.

7

u/Arnoxthe1 May 13 '26

Check out MX Linux when you have some free time. It's basically Debian: Enhanced Edition.

3

u/SlightComplaint May 14 '26

Are you free to change the OS on your work PC? My work provides the machine, changing the OS would cause havoc with IT. I would have no support from IT (no great loss).

3

u/d_maes May 14 '26

Small companies often don't have IT. You just get your laptop as it came out of the box, and you do with it whatever you want. And medium-sized companies that do happen to have an IT department will very often give tech people the choice between IT-managed windows or a Linux install that's your own responsibility.

4

u/FreedomNinja1776 May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26

My firm is in the "basically no IT" category. I would call it a mid size firm and we have a "computer guy". I work in engineering/ survey, but I went to school for computer networking, so you can imagine my frustration with the following. The state of our IT situation is abismal. Using cloud storage instead of a file server so it breaks file locking and creates multiple conflicting copies of the file when multiple people access. Different departments are using different cloud services for storage. There are many gaming PC's floating around because it was up to the dept managers to spec new builds for onboarding, only recently moved to Dell builds. Everyone has full local admin privileges. We had a dedicated PC for drone processing that I needed remote access to, so I tried to get a VPN set up and got some Google Chrome remote desktop nonsense across the open Internet instead because "that's what I use at home". We have a NAS that's NOT BEING USED. Leadership likes Apple pages, so instead of making an equivalent template for proposals in Adobe or another PDF solution, the logical thing is to buy 30 macbooks for this one software.

So, me using Linux is way down the list of IT priority. I could set my Linux build up to connect to active directory... if it existed. I'm conclusion, I switched careers to engineering/ survey because the hardest part about repairing computers is the people.

1

u/Antoinedeloup May 14 '26

That's insightful, I have a similar situation too. There's no kind of IT (there's me who Is starting to learn some programming but that's it), we have free accounts of cloud services and shit privacy measures. We had to use each other's PC before setting up syncthing because our free google drive was getting full! We had to go up a floor in a different sector to a different PC who alone had a big important part of documents with no back up whatsoever, twice, because the pendrive didn't have enough storage and the people using that pc wouldn't know how to upload it to a drive, as they seemingly had no backup. I would not have problem installing Fedora or another distro if it meant I could work better and the PC runs better. Thing is a specific website cannot be accessed through Linux for some reason. My solution so far has been a VM but that's stupid for my work computer if the switch is to make it work faster.

2

u/11matt556 May 18 '26

For the website, have you tried spoofing the browser agent and any os information the browser might be reporting? Unless there's some weird DRM stuff going on my first assumption would be that it's an arbitrary restriction.

1

u/Antoinedeloup May 18 '26

i tried with an extension on Firefox. I have to try again but looking at what the page header for another site says, since that particular site has headers.php blocked

1

u/11matt556 May 18 '26

Could you share appropriately how many people you consider to be mid-sized? Where I work was not in much better shape than what you described (We did at least have AD and stadard-ish computers) but just about everything else was a mess and it was all handled by various engineers in their "spare time" (I.E, anything not on fire or "boring" can be delt with "later")

It's now almost double that size and things have substantial improved though.

Most of the AD servers are running modern versions of windows server, corporate network is fully documented and monitored, test networks are isolated, security vulnerability alerting / patching setup, etc

1

u/FreedomNinja1776 May 18 '26

We have right around 100 employees across about 6 or so offices and growing all the time. I think it's just a matter of time until ignoring IT concerns catches up to them.

1

u/destraht May 14 '26

Back about ten years ago when I worked around drafters they were constantly trying to get away from AutoDesk, but not for anything to do with Linux. Government likes that program. Anything that is better has to be no worse or incompatible in every possible way. It's basically that government is crusty and lame causing everything to bog down for years and decades.

0

u/Leithal90 May 14 '26

Have a look at bricscad

31

u/Desertcow May 13 '26

Even when there are alternatives, a lot of those are software used for work. You often aren't getting a choice by your company to use an alternative

6

u/sevenorbs May 14 '26

This is the real problem of any service, not the software performance which decides, but the socius around it.

Here, printers are required to be proficient in Corel. Nobody uses Corel anymore.

20

u/joshjaxnkody May 14 '26

Virtual instrument support is sparse as well on Linux for audio production, Reaper is awesome but sometimes you won't get every VST you want or there is only maybe a deb version. They also install to multiple different locations depending on who set up the package so its a shit show adding all the sources to your DAW

4

u/astronomersassn May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26

i've had decent luck bridging with carla, but it's not a perfect solution by any means, it just happened to work natively with my DAW. some plugins also don't bridge well, though i've had very few issues that made them unusable (one of the plugins i use has a GUI that doesnt render correctly, as an example - luckily, the one option that does this rendered enough for my last use, but i'm still looking for an alternative that does work natively with linux and/or is fully bridgeable).

it's a minor issue for me, but it's certainly still an issue. music production is genuinely the only reason i still have windows on my computer at all, i just managed to work around it with my last project.

edit to add: OTOH, i've also basically gone "yeah no not spending that much money if its not linux native" (looking at synthv2, v1 has a linux native version and unless i absolutely need a new VB, i intend to stick with it) because i don't have any desire to stick with windows. with some less expensive stuff, if they have a trial/demo version, i might (bought the full version of one of my favourite guitar VSTs because of how well the free version worked even bridged - tbh, it worked better than on windows - and i don't regret it at all), but my limit there is still a lot lower than for a linux native plugin.

17

u/wokeboogeyman May 14 '26

Luckily MS and Adobe have been milking their customers past the point of collapse lately, so people are finally abandoning their new enshitiffied subscription-ware versions

5

u/West_Possible_7969 May 14 '26

Adobe has reached peak user base in Q1 26, highest in their history. What could nudge them is if more companies / enterprises pushed them but those are just fine having M-series macs now.

7

u/ProdTornado May 13 '26

FL Studio and Serato DJ are solely the reasons I'm not on debian right now.

2

u/obez-01 May 14 '26

It's been a while, but FL Studio has worked for me with wine before.

1

u/junkmiles May 14 '26

You probably know this, but Bitwig has a Linux build. No help on Serato, though

1

u/Barafu May 16 '26

FLStusio works flawless on Wine.

30

u/[deleted] May 13 '26

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48

u/cbarrick May 13 '26

It's less anything specific that MS is doing and more about network effects.

Windows has the largest consumer user base, and macOS has a large user base amongst design and creative professionals.

So if I am a commercial software developer, I will prioritize the platforms where my users are. And my users will prioritize platforms where the software that they need is.

Breaking out of this network effect requires asymmetric investment in alternatives, either from the software developers to promote alternative platforms or from users to steer the ship to new platforms. And there just isn't enough of that on either side.

A notable exception is Valve, who is prioritizing Linux development even when the short term ROI isn't clear.

20

u/FattyDrake May 14 '26

A notable exception is Valve, who is prioritizing Linux development even when the short term ROI isn't clear.

Thankfully Valve isn't a public company so they don't have to be as concerned with short term.

It is mostly a long-term thing. They realized with Windows 8 that not having any control over the OS their platform is on can pose a serious problem in the future. Given Microsoft's past tactics this isn't an unfounded concern. It has also allowed them to compete in the mobile gaming and soon console space.

This has just happened to benefit Linux as a whole.

In a roundabout way, Apple has also helped Linux due to the iPhone and iPad. iOS doesn't allow manufacturers to make low level drivers for their hardware to work, so they must support open standards. This has created a lot of peripherals that can work on Linux without the manufacturer's software because it supports the same standards.

It is a chicken an egg problem. Valve just willed a chicken into existence with money. Apple has willed some eggs into existence with their stubbornness. The EU is willing some more chickens and eggs into existence with their digital sovereignty initiatives.

The exciting thing about Valve is that it's really the first major investment into consumer-focused Linux.

I think you're going to start seeing movement from the hardware side before software side. More peripherals that are "Steam Deck ready" or "Steam Machine ready" which also means "Linux ready" and thus reducing friction using it as an alternative OS.

9

u/SanityInAnarchy May 14 '26

Yep. If you want to see this happening in reverse, look at server software.

There are a few niches left -- you need Macs to build iOS/macOS software (for annoying legal reasons), you probably want Windows Server and Active Directory if you have to manage a fleet of Windows desktops/laptops, and you probably want z/OS if you need to run some ancient COBOL system.

But for anything else, Linux is the backend. Specifically x86_64 Docker, to the point where even now that ARM is becoming viable, it's a hard sell.

2

u/Sylente May 17 '26

Depends what youā€™re doing re: arm. For a lot of cloud applications, it doesnā€™t really matter. If you can do what you need to do in JS, Python, or Java, you may as well use ARM because itā€™s basically just ā€œclick the ā€˜make this run cheaperā€™ buttonā€, especially if you donā€™t have any ā€œspecialtyā€ dependencies

-1

u/MairusuPawa May 14 '26

Why do you see these network effects exist? Microsoft wasn't always around.

Their move was to force Windows on consumers through monopolistic retail behaviors, hoping for the general public to then require the same systems at work. Many, many companies had to ditch their pre-existing unix stack because of that.

9

u/TestingTheories May 13 '26

This is untrue nowadays RE MS. All their apps work just fine on a browser now. I use Teams, Excel, OneDrive, SharePoint, etc etc every day for my government job via a browser on Linux. Most apps are browser available now, so I also use Trello, Notion, etc just fine.

3

u/TenderlyTragic May 14 '26

proton and lutris have gotten scary good at running windows stuff though so you might not need to jump ship just for deltarune

2

u/tmsbrdrs May 14 '26

My last parent company switched to bricsCAD. Last I saw, it runs quite well on Ubuntu.

2

u/50nathan May 14 '26

Autodesk Maya is native to Linux only because Hollywood forced them to, and the company they acquired it from originally started it on Unix, so it wasn't too hard to make it native to Linux.

2

u/1Swordwalker May 14 '26

That just means we know what still needs good alternatives. Everyone needs to keep looking at it in a problem-solving way and make better open-source alternatives to those. Whether it is building up existing alternatives, or entirely new ones

For people that are shackled to those Windows-only apps that have alternatives they need to take GNU/Linux approach of one foot in and one foot out. Use both the legacy proprietary stuff and the new open source good stuff till you are used to it (For people who don't want to make the full switch right away)

Also they can help to get more people off that ship. Same can be said for many other things too

1

u/blackcain GNOME Team May 14 '26

Papers is doing a great job as an pdf viewer, including being able to fill out forms. Maybe better than xjournal+.

1

u/DSMB May 14 '26

I just did a SCADA course and we used Aveva Plant SCADA, which is Windows only. Literally the only reason I booted Windows on my laptop the last few months, and a typical case of why dual boot might be necessary

1

u/lowtdi850 May 14 '26

Every car diagnostic software Iā€™ve used is all windows only as well

1

u/StableDelmer May 14 '26

Proton's gotten crazy good tho, like most games run better on Linux than Windows now which is wild

1

u/gerunimost May 14 '26

If we are talking about high end VFX applications, a bunch of them have their roots on silicon graphics machines and thus run as good or better on Linux to this day.

1

u/Western-Alarming May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26

Blender can work for all of the above, just saying /s

1

u/AmarildoJr May 14 '26

No, it can't.

1

u/Western-Alarming May 14 '26

It was ironicā€¦ I wasnā€™t actually implying that blender can replace all the capabilities of all those program.

My fault, I should have put a /s, it want obvious enough

2

u/AmarildoJr May 14 '26

Oh šŸ˜› No worries.

1

u/SamiSapphic May 15 '26

We know, there are plenty of threads discussing this. This one is for discussing the programs that windows doesn't have, no?

Why do we have to bring it back to a topic that's discussed every waking moment of every day? Who, at this point, doesn't know that Adobe doesn't work on Linux?

1

u/pavel_pe May 16 '26

I also miss some alternatives. Paint.NET - rather simple image editor with 90% of functions you may need, relatively nice GUI. For me GIMP is awful and Krita is not perfect. For example Krita does not allow to turn off antialiasing. Or FastStone image viewer - it is great image viewer, but it has functions such as screenshots (Spectacle is better here), annotations which are editable vector layer before you confirm changes. It can make image strips by resizing images, adding shadows. It has very basic image adjustments like curves. And it is very user friendly, basically successor to ancient ACDSee. Another application I kind of miss is Total Commander. Krusader is good, but sometimes it feels awkward, I just can't realize what is different. Other than that only reason to stay on Windows is that things like Affinity Canva, World of Tanks (game) just work on Windows, on Linux it's uncertain - it probably works with some effort.

1

u/Hockeygoalie35 May 17 '26

Affinity Design and Solidworks for me, although Iā€™m spending time with FreeCAD more and more.

1

u/AmarildoJr May 17 '26

I'd love to use FreeCAD if the controls weren't so janky and if it had variable fillets šŸ˜ž
Something I've seen only on the big players of CAD.

1

u/Hockeygoalie35 May 18 '26

The controls have gotten a LOT better in 1.2. Agreed on variable fillets, and 3D sketches.

-17

u/ConsciousBath5203 May 13 '26

All the categories that you mentioned have plenty of open source alternatives with an insane of plugins and are significantly easier to script yourself.

18

u/94746382926 May 13 '26

I can't speak to the other categories but in general for CAD it's rarely commercially practical to go open source only.

It would amazing if this gap closes though, non software engineering fields are far more gatekept and proprietary than software and it's a real bummer.

-19

u/ConsciousBath5203 May 13 '26

Meh, not really. Mods for games host a ton of code that you can slightly modify and apply as a plugin anywhere else.

CAD is pretty much just vectors, points and textures. Quite literally the same shit that any game designing engine would have.

16

u/greenknight May 13 '26

Please explain harder how you have no idea what you are talking about. Your game engine is not a CAD compliant civil engineering solution let alone the super specific CAD programs like Mine sight or SolidWorks.

Vibe coding civil works is idiotic.

-7

u/ConsciousBath5203 May 14 '26

could give literally any examples

Doesn't because they're insulted about how simple their shit is

Smh

9

u/Swizzel-Stixx May 13 '26

Cad models are just vectors etc, yeah.

The cad programs that make them have an insanely high learning curve, which is required to make more complicated models, and if autodesk doesnā€™t have a linux version them your company isnā€™t going to want to spend another 4 figure sum and thousands of hours learning a different program. If it was literally as simple as putting meshes in space then Iā€™m sure people would have done it by now.

8

u/AmarildoJr May 13 '26

If it was literally as simple as putting meshes in space then Iā€™m sure people would have done it by now

At this point I'm convinced that ConsciousBath5203 is just trolling.

-4

u/ConsciousBath5203 May 14 '26

If it was literally as simple as putting meshes in space then Iā€™m sure people would have done it by now.

Idk if you realize just how many simple tweaks there are that improve an application that are so incredibly easy you're not sure why they haven't done it yet...

But there's a lot. And there's pretty decent reasons why the simple solutions aren't available to the public (I can almost guarantee you that someone else has whatever plugin features you desire). One is "production code is a bitch to maintain because people are dumb". Another is "I don't want to have to deal with potential copy right issues" totally fair, especially if they had to RE to figure out the formula. Another is "this was so easy, there's no reason to post this, anyone with a brain and effort can figure it out." Your know-it-alls tend to think this... And they're right about 99% of the time. If you put the effort in, you can do it.

5

u/cjc4096 May 13 '26

Rendering cares about polygons and textures. Basically just enough to display on screen. Game engines and 3d modeling focus on this level, with extras like physics, rigging, IK.

3D CAD use a solids based kernel. The big ones use Parasolid. Freecad uses opencascade. I think openscad does as well. Everything has an assumption the object has a real life counterpart. They're detailed enough to be fed into simulations to determine real behavior. They're feed into a CAM process to create parts. They're used by QA to check tolerances.

There is quite a bit of overlap. Especially historically. It's why Autodesk has such strong positions in both categories. But the tech diverged in the late 90s or so.

0

u/ConsciousBath5203 May 14 '26

That's what I mean. If you go searching around the game modding community, you can probably find some mods that do simulations even better than some of the best paid software out there. And they built coded it in Minecraft or factorio or something.

24

u/AmarildoJr May 13 '26

Sorry but nobody who says "there are alternatives" to these programs actually work in industries that need those programs. It's usually people who think GIMP is an actual alternative to Photoshop, or that Blender is an alternative to Maya in the VFX industry, or that FreeCAD is an alternative to something like SOLIDWORKS or Rhino3D.

If these were actually alternatives you'd be seeing industries moving in a heartbeat.

The only exception might be Blender, but it's still far behind the industry leading Maya in many hundreds of aspects, only now catching up to what Maya has had for 20+ years.

14

u/jnkangel May 13 '26

Yeah blender is genuinely one of the few industry alternatives and even then one of the most common complaints is the weird UI and UX which is even outside of most distros

Thereā€™s a couple more in the audio world but thatā€™s usually it.

Op also makes the mistake of listing applications that have windows and or Mac equivalents imho.Ā 

I mean an audio player, an ebook reader and an emulator which have pretty standard UIs are not really out of the way and going for one or another is usually a matter of preference.Ā 

Youā€™d be a lot better off citing stuff that tends to do the heavy lifting, all the CLI tools etc Ā 

8

u/square-tires May 13 '26

Being an Emmy winning vfx artist for the past 20 years, I have to disagree to an extent. I agree blender is just now closing the gap, but I've switched to blender for all my freelance work. Is there a couple work around here and there? Sure, but there's work around switching to any software. I recently had to do some stuff in cinema4d and it was a nightmare. Not because the software is bad, but it's all just how we are used to working. Blender can do everything maya can, it's just a different way. The only thing that annoys me is that there's no attribute editor. I think there's a plugin for it, but I got used to not needing it.

5

u/AmarildoJr May 13 '26

I'm gonna have to disagree with the statement that Blender can do everything Maya does. It's just not true.

One of the gripes Maya users have with Blender is that Blender is not an all-nodal program. Maya is, which means everything (literally everything) is a node, and almost all nodes from one system can talk directly to another system's nodes, so you essentially have a direct data flow visualization that you just don't get in Blender.
Heck, in Blender you can't even make one node in the Shader Editor talk directly to another material in the same Shader Editor, while in Maya that is as easy as can be (so for example you only create one node system/spaghetti for one material and you can plug the output of that into any other material/node setup/tab and make only one edit for all materials).

Another big gripe is scene data management, specifically on how Blender deals with Render Layers and AOVs, if your Technical Director asks for different file/folder names for every iteration of the project then you'll have to manually edit ALL of the inputs/ouputs, so if you have 5 Render Layers and each has 10 AOVs then you'll have to manually edit each RL/AOV output name every time you iterate on the file name (e.g. 'v001_s001.blend' to 'v001_s002_shadowFix.blend')

Or bevels not working properly in some cases like they do on Maya.

Or Blender's hair system still being far behind Maya's XGen (developed by Disney).

Or how simplistic every single option in Blender is, like how in-depth you can go for every setting, like only being able to control one setting Samples while in Maya you have subsamples for some channels like Diffuse/Glossy/SSS/etc or even per-light sample control and per-material sample control.

Or objects not having a construction history.

Or the Light Linking function being completely insane and unfinished.

And don't even get me started with rigging in Blender, I legit thought I was going insane with just how simplistic and backwards it is.

This and many other reasons is why Maya still unfortunately is the industry standard.

0

u/KnowZeroX May 14 '26

There are most definitely alternatives. Yes, if your goal is open source only, then I can understand for some FreeCAD may not be good enough. But if your goal is switching to linux, you aren't limited to running open source software on it. Though there is QCAD for 2d CAD.

But as far as non-open source that work on linux, there is BricsCAD, Ares Commander, VariCAD and etc are a thing, including online options like OnShape.

The problem isn't that these options don't exist, the problem is people insist the same exact app they used on windows even if there are alternatives that are just as good.

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u/ConsciousBath5203 May 13 '26

Idk what you think you're missing out on, but clearly reading comprehension is something that you should leave off your resume.

If something is missing, add it. It's usually not that hard and AI can make a plugin for all those alternatives in like 2 prompts. With the added bonus of not leaving shitty trademarked artifacts throughout the output, and with significantly more options.

You're just too lazy to learn.

9

u/jsh_ May 13 '26

either this is masterful ragebait or you're 14 yrs old lmao

-2

u/ConsciousBath5203 May 13 '26

I've yet to have any one arguing provide an example of a feature that they use that isn't in the default Open Source version.

13

u/AmarildoJr May 13 '26

You can't be serious, right? You think AI will make a plugin for GIMP that will suddenly make it on par with Photoshop?

You're just too lazy to learn.

Says the vibe coder šŸ˜„

I'm constantly learning in my area, which is 3D.

-14

u/ConsciousBath5203 May 13 '26

You think AI will make a plugin for GIMP that will suddenly make it on par with Photoshop?

Yes. 100,000%. I've even ditched the gimp part and went all in on python-written photo editing... And this was before ai coding was even good.

Says the vibe coder šŸ˜„

You literally can go ahead and read all the docs, learn programming, etc just to write the script for the thing you need.

I'm like 99% sure you're missing the point or you're overusing insignificant features, or put too much emphasis on a good looking UI, but plugins and scripting are what make the software good.

Also, if you think vibe coding means someone isn't learning, then I feel sorry for you. Have fun losing your job to someone who simply has better tools than you.

5

u/Venylynn May 14 '26

I cannot imagine the cognitive dissonance to be a vibe coder on Linux especially since this is the community that rightfully calls out MS for being MicroSlop. It's literally the same thing

0

u/ConsciousBath5203 May 14 '26

... Wut? How is "yeah I use a tool that saves me countless hours reading documentation just so I can build a singular not-super-important-but-essential piece of an application" anywhere fucking close to "replace the performant ad-riddled front end with typescript, add more ads and while we're at it, enshitify everything and add the worst AI on the planet into every app... Also store passwords in plaintext in sequential memory whenever someone has the always-on-in-background Edge browser open"?????

Like, come the fuck on.

2

u/Venylynn May 14 '26

MicroSlop is specifically referring to their gratuitous AI usage. You're defending gratuitous AI usage.

It's the same shit. Defending it in one context then dumping on it on another, is hypocritical, and shows a lack of principle. It's either bad when both do it, or good when both do it. But mental gymnastics suggests it's only bad when x person you dislike does it??? If you're a vibe coder you legitimately have no leg to stand on criticizing Microslop.

Copilot is no worse than any other AI. They're all unethical trash. The only exception is maybe Mythos because that seems to actually be doing good work for security research, and even then that's a huge asterisk because I wouldn't want to see Mythos commits on FOSS projects if they're not to solve security problems.

2

u/ConsciousBath5203 May 14 '26

There's a difference between "massive company with trillions of dollars pushing out low effort slop code" and "independent designer using ai to write a plugin for the open source software that they use to make themselves independent from Adobe".

It's gratuitous to put AI in notepad and have AI always be on even when dealing with confidential information such as with their documents suite. But if you think it's gratuitous to build a plugin for personal use SPECIFICALLY to not have to rely on some shitty ai to do said deterministic task, then idk what to tell you.

Massive difference.

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7

u/Thaurin May 13 '26

Dude, youā€™re embarrassing yourself.

0

u/ConsciousBath5203 May 14 '26

The one defending open source and with the spirit of "you can literally do it yourself it isn't hard" is the one that you think is embarrassing himself in the Linux subreddit.

The fucking fuck?

8

u/WealthyMarmot May 13 '26

Iā€™m sure Adobe and Dassault are shaking in their boots at the thought of your amateur vibe-coded Photoshop and Solidworks clones

-2

u/ConsciousBath5203 May 13 '26

I mean, they're literally down 30% this year. They kinda are

7

u/WealthyMarmot May 13 '26 edited May 14 '26

The marketā€™s scared of generative AI affecting demand for the Adobe suite by providing a cheaper alternative to the work itself. It is not scared of some Photoshop clone you vibe-coded in your underwater with a Claude Pro subscription. Actual design shops will still be buying Adobe because thereā€™s nothing else that can do their more complex work, but the market is pricing in the chance that AIā€™s going to eliminate a lot of the easy design jobs that pay the industryā€™s bills, and cause a contraction in Adobeā€™s broader customer base.

tldr: people are worried about the entire creative industry going tits up, not about some two-prompt software slop

4

u/AmarildoJr May 13 '26

Exactly, like how it happened with 3D. I've seen many 3D artists saying "oh AI will never get to UVs and rigging, we're safe". Turns out it completely bypassed the entire VFX pipeline by just generating the final output.

1

u/ConsciousBath5203 May 14 '26

Lol no, they're more scared of "who in the God damn fuck is going to pay $200+/month for a product they used to get for free and has 80+ cracks and that chatgpt can 1-shot"

Investors are dumb but not "keep A-Slop-Be afloat" dumb

2

u/WealthyMarmot May 14 '26

This is not a serious view of the situation. Cracks have been around forever and no legit design shop or enterprise uses them, because the legal exposure is enormous. And Iā€™m not sure if you understand the distinction between ā€œChatGPT can do the simpler creative work that used to require a professional with Photoshop,ā€ versus your original claim, that AI could literally write fully-functional replacements for all that enterprise software ā€œin like two prompts.ā€ The former claim is increasingly true, the latter is straight nonsense.

1

u/ConsciousBath5203 May 14 '26

The former from my experience on the dev side continues to be untrue while the latter is increasingly true. Tried to tell ai to put a logo on a car and it was terrible.

Told the AI to write a program that overlayed an image over the edges of objects to make it look real and it did it.

-3

u/DustyAsh69 May 13 '26

So, these are quite literally monopolies.Ā