It's really strange how different people's approach to technology can be.
I find that free software is generally better, more solid, more stable, and more useful on its own merits than commercial alternatives. There is a clear point where this breaks — new hardware, new hardware interactions — largely because hardware vendors do not do their jobs with regard to Linux / BSDs. But in terms of pure user-friendliness? it's not even a contest.
To me, user-friendliness implies that software is moldable to my workflows, and that other users' stuff is easy to integrate. Also, disruptive change is evil.
This concept of user-friendliness necessarily implies that software should be end-user programmable, and the pieces of the environment should be composable. Most commercial end-user software fails at this. There are clear commercial motivations why it should, given a need to sell 'apps' for every workflow, and the need to work in corporate environments (where limiting users' ability to interact is a necessity for the people who make software buying decisions).
iOS is especially bad at this, given the appification of everything. There seems to be an effort to do at least something good in Shortcuts, but it's very much not enough.
I do most computer stuff in Firefox, Emacs, and xterm. Or WSL (xterm and Emacs) on Windows when I'm on a Windows device because something requires it. I'm actually typing this on a Raspberry Pi, where I only have those three installed as graphical apps. I also occasionally need Darktable (which needs a GPU for any kind of performance) and Office, for which I power on a different computer. Which I would find extremely hostile without WSL.
You can also track how Linux things are percolating into Windows / macOS. Virtual desktops were a thing in Linuces for years and years before coming to those two. Tiling just begins to arrive. UNIX terminal environments are such a pain decreaser that even MS now has a way to use them. With my xmonad setup I live in the future, and that's the future that has been available for a decade.
Browsers are probably the most important user-facing applications right now, and are all opensource-originated. Whether corporate capture of KHTML did any good is a question; I don't think it did.
I find that free software is generally better, more solid, more stable, and more useful on its own merits than commercial alternatives. There is a clear point where this breaks — new hardware, new hardware interactions — largely because hardware vendors do not do their jobs with regard to Linux / BSDs. But in terms of pure user-friendliness? it's not even a contest.
To me, user-friendliness implies that software is moldable to my workflows, and that other users' stuff is easy to integrate. Also, disruptive change is evil.
This concept of user-friendliness necessarily implies that software should be end-user programmable, and the pieces of the environment should be composable. Most commercial end-user software fails at this. There are clear commercial motivations why it should, given a need to sell 'apps' for every workflow, and the need to work in corporate environments (where limiting users' ability to interact is a necessity for the people who make software buying decisions).
iOS is especially bad at this, given the appification of everything. There seems to be an effort to do at least something good in Shortcuts, but it's very much not enough.
I do most computer stuff in Firefox, Emacs, and xterm. Or WSL (xterm and Emacs) on Windows when I'm on a Windows device because something requires it. I'm actually typing this on a Raspberry Pi, where I only have those three installed as graphical apps. I also occasionally need Darktable (which needs a GPU for any kind of performance) and Office, for which I power on a different computer. Which I would find extremely hostile without WSL.
You can also track how Linux things are percolating into Windows / macOS. Virtual desktops were a thing in Linuces for years and years before coming to those two. Tiling just begins to arrive. UNIX terminal environments are such a pain decreaser that even MS now has a way to use them. With my xmonad setup I live in the future, and that's the future that has been available for a decade.
Browsers are probably the most important user-facing applications right now, and are all opensource-originated. Whether corporate capture of KHTML did any good is a question; I don't think it did.