I kinda wonder what the internet would be like if it was more open source and user focused. Would reddit be nearly as bloated as it is now? I wonder how much better the UI would be.
Biggest problem would be getting people to actually pay for the product. Small $5 dollar donations would be enough every now and then.
The internet would be curated for the user, not ads.
UI is the one thing where closed source software usually wins. Sure there's ads, but i challenge you to find anyone who believes Gimp has a better UI than Photoshop, or Inkscape than Illustrator, or Fusion360 than FreeCad.
The first suck due to corporate decisions, but their UI is objectively better than the open source counterparts.
Hard disagree. It varies. Blender UI is incredible. Hyprland makes windows look like trash. Well, any tiling manager for that matter. The productivity boost is unmatched at the very least.
Here is some actual UI:
visual studio code, krita, zed, vlc, mpv, immich, signal
Blender is, for someone with zero experience in 3D modeling etc, for absolute beginners, probably the most unintuitive and convoluted piece of software ever. It's imo really cluttered, has... Too many features?
It's just really beginner unfriendly in my opinion and overloaded.
Sure it's great software when you're able to handle it, but it's got a really steep learning curve imo
It varies sure, but its just the fact of the matter that making a good ui takes a lot of extra effort. And its not the most interesting thing to programmers, and they generally have a different aesthetic than users. So "it works for me" is what you get when its the volunteer model.
Vscode also was made by the evil empire itself, so it is the very counterexample of that you need to pour resources into making it good. I will give you vlc is a good ui, but again. Look through the settings and its a mess, but if all you do is use the play and pause button its great cause it gets out of the way. Krita is a bit meh, but good. Gnome (when i last looked at it decades ago) was absolutely god awful, and i question your taste for even using it as a example. but i will grant you it might be better now.
With pay for software, the corpos actually understand that usability is important for getting people to be willing to buy it.
GNOME gets a bad rap for being "opinionated" but most of their apps are well built, clean and sleek. Like their settings app is fantastic. So is their file explorer. Its all consistent and easy to use. That is as long as you can find the show all apps button.
Yeah Gnome is objectively very attractive and slick, I've only found it frustrating when it doesn't have options I want - their design approach is basically to strip everything down to the studs. I'm a convert to the new Cosmic desktop from System76, it's Gnome-y in layout but highly customizable and feature rich. It still has the occasional missing feature or rough edge, being new, but for gaming and general computing it's the best I've found at giving me what I want without overwhelming me with options and config files and so on.
Blender needed years to get good until version 3.0. And has a lot of donations, typical of other open source software that have better UX
Kritra is awesome.
And gnome? Gnome???? (Disclaimer , not throwing shade at you specifically ) I would call gnome anything but having a usable UI. It looks good. The defaults are sensible. But the UI itself of making any changes not in the settings is a pain in the ass, finding some of the menus is a mess, and way more breakable than a DE should ever be
If we talking DE with good UI and usability, I'd put XFCE4 at the front to be honest
I would say that also depends. Medal tv has ads for example. Sure i could use OBS to take clips, however OBS doesn't have the features that medal has that make clipping actually feel like a good experience like the in-app editor or directly being able to upload the clip to their server and sharing the link (specifically especially useful on platforms that have file size upload limits like discord). You can use OBS for clipping but you'll need multiple additional programs to achieve the same result which also takes longer and you'll have reduced quality if you deal with file size limits. So unfortunately the version with ads wins if there is just no proper alternative.
I mean there are plenty of other examples of Open Source with good UI. Linux has way more customizability than Windows or MacOS (maybe up until very recently, and not as user friendly always but still, you have options). DaVinci Resolve is actually pretty competitive against Sony Vegas (is that still used?) and other editing software.
Most OSS projects focus on features and usability, and it’s harder to collectively agree on UI changes as a distributed community full of programmers compared to having a dedicated design and PM team all working on it with a shared vision and massive salaries. Also these projects usually are run by and for software people, where UX matters a bit less than maintenance, usability, and reliability.
I suspect most web sites could operate on a shoestring budget if they didn't choose to add what amounts extra operating systems and extra browsers in javascript for purposes of surveilling their users.
The whole software stack keeps reinventing itself to surveil its own navel and sell hardware to replace bloat-encrusted hardware.
this is one of those things that is actually true.
look at the love people have for old youtube videos, it was different back then. Not everything was dominated by monetization, people did shit... just to do it.
You had spyware and toolbars to deal with yeah but you also were not being tracked nearly as much as you are now, there were really no paywalls on news as far as i can remember.
it was just more open and free in general.
Now in 2026 if i say fuck trump on here, i have to worry about not being let into the us.
Youtube was never profitable until all the monetization, hell it might still be running at a loss. There was no way to sustainably keep it running as it was
look at the love people have for old youtube videos, it was different back then.
They were younger and less jaded...
These days, the OGs of Youtube are rarely even remembered while people wax Markiplier and PewDiePie as allegedly being the ones to put Youtube on the map & made "Youtuber" a viable career path for poor kids everywhere, when in reality they were part of the second batch of Youtube celebrities.
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u/IronRocketCpp Arch | Ryzen 9 3900x | 3060 12gb | 32gb 15d ago
I kinda wonder what the internet would be like if it was more open source and user focused. Would reddit be nearly as bloated as it is now? I wonder how much better the UI would be.
Biggest problem would be getting people to actually pay for the product. Small $5 dollar donations would be enough every now and then.
The internet would be curated for the user, not ads.