@JoshuaACNewman @zleap@qoto.org @Jennifer It's true, there are at least as many jerks writing FOSS as in the rest of the population and many are grumpy about the stream of suggestions, requests, and demands that come in for even mildly popular projects.
That said, my experience with closed software has been aggressively user hostile at best. Mastercam won't even notice small fries like me but the FreeCAD team has been awesome.

@trevorflowers @Jennifer In any successful public-facing project, commercial or not, it’s usually someone’s job to be non-grumpy, patient, and helpful to people who are new, frustrated, or surprisingly knowledgeable.

If that’s not someone’s job (it’s mine in plugdata) then the project becomes defined by what grumpy people don’t feel like doing.

@JoshuaACNewman You'd think that successful commercial software would have a non-grumpy support team but for many of the categories of software for machinists and related fields there's basically no financial reason to support solo or small teams. Mastercam support Boeing et al, not folks who work out of their garage like I do.
It's obviously not binary as there are commercial and FOSS teams all along the spectrum from "help everyone" to "pay millions or talk to the hand". 😸

@JoshuaACNewman Fusion360 is eating Solidworks and Mastercam's lunch down-market because Autodesk help is modern, more accessible to non-experts, and thorough. At the same time they're working their way up-market by adding more factory-oriented features. So, two commercial orgs in the same market with different levels of non-grumpy support.

@trevorflowers Yeah. Fusion is really cool. I just hate having my artwork held hostage like they do, so I’m painfully learning FreeCAD and Plasticity.

@JoshuaACNewman @trevorflowers @Jennifer

Agreed, I am all for promoting FOSS, however first question should be what do you use your computer for, that way you can advise which distro / software is best for their need.

Linux Mint just works, granted it does use non-free firmware etc. However, from helping a new user perspective let's get people up and running, if people are happy with the distro, can do their work we are a good way there to keeping them on FOSS software.

@trevorflowers @JoshuaACNewman @Jennifer

I have someone coming to the next STEM meeting I am running and he is looking for help with FreeCAD, so the fact the community support is excellent is encouraging.

@Jennifer @JoshuaACNewman @trevorflowers

I think the closest we have to video editing is Kedenlive, as for book design, I use |LaTeX for most of my documents. I do understand they are probably not the best solution here though.

@zleap @JoshuaACNewman @trevorflowers I've used LaTex but it doesn't work for graphic heavy documents. Hopefully one day more options will be available on Linux!

@zleap @Jennifer @trevorflowers
“Use LaTeX” is the reason Linux is totally unsatisfactory.

If you want a technology to be accepted, pitch it to artists and sex workers.

@JoshuaACNewman @Jennifer @trevorflowers

Which is why I said it may not be suitable in this case.