What are some open source projects that had substantial initial releases or updates that seemingly came out of nowhere?
What are some open source projects that had substantial initial releases or updates that seemingly came out of nowhere?
With a lot of open source projects being worked on largely out of passion rather than financial gain I feel like there must have been several times where a release caught people off guard and "came out of nowhere" with its impressive scale.
To give some examples of how this might happen maybe it was an initial release dropped to the public in a complete state that had been worked on for a while privately or a project that was dormant for an extended period of time and picked back up.
Can anyone here think of an example? It doesn't necessarily need to be something groundbreaking maybe it got people excited in a very specific niche.
If you do have an answer I'd appreciate it if you could elaborate on it.
came out of nowhere?
I don't think anyone expected MS-DOS 4.0 (1986) to release under the MIT license in 2024
what the fuck
Florisboard (Android keyboard) was recently updated for the first time in two years. Literally one day after I had given up on it and uninstalled it.
Is the autocorrect any better than Heliboard?
Edit: I didn't mean to imply that it's bad; it's just not very good. Then again, that may also not be Heliboard's fault. It personally feels like keyboards in general have become worse at autocorrect during the last ten or so years.
Nextcloud has had some amazing updates recently. Adding Nextcloud Hub comes to mind.
Hub integrates the four key Nextcloud products Files, Talk, Groupware and Office into a single platform, optimizing the flow of collaboration. Eliminate the confusing hodgepodge of different SaaS tools and the compliance, security, cost and productivity issues that come with it and standardize on a single solution with Nextcloud Hub.
Cool!
Is it an app for android or just the webpage that integrates all the cloud features like notes, files, etc. Sorry for noob question.
Hub is their core set of groupware apps for Nextcloud. They’re all tightly integrated. It came out with Nextcloud 18.
https://nextcloud.com/blog/the-new-standard-in-on-premises-team-collaboration-nextcloud-hub/
Ghidra. Boom, here is 90% of ida pro. Enjoy.
Ghidra the code reverse engineering tool for analyzing code?
Yes
As much as I complain about the NSA memeing around with zero days and data collection, their open sourced stuff is really cool and useful.
Same thing for SELinux. Suddenly kernel supports complete MAC security out of box.
Ghidra even gets huge updates with some good features to keep up with Ida.
There really is 2 NSA's, with conflicting goals. Keep Americans secure, and collect everyone elses data. Its a difficult line to walk. The first half does produce really good advice and tools, but is undermined by the second halfs image.
I fortunately never learnt Ida due to cost, so I have no idea what is missing, but ghidra was a godsend for CTFs. Suddenly reversing challenges were accessible and easy.
https://code.nsa.gov/# - Lots of useful stuff here.
Finamp's current alpha was a huge surprise to me. I stopped looking at development for a few months and in that time they completely reworked it
Wow the UI is nice
https://github.com/jmshrv/finamp
Finamp is a Jellyfin music player for Android and iOS. It's meant to give you a similar listening experience as traditional streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music, but for the music that you already own. It's free, open-source software, just like Jellyfin itself.
I dunno... Jellyfin does great as a Video media player/streaming platform. I prefer to not have everything in the same basket.
Also, this is better for Dev, so they only have to concentrate to one type of thing. I would rather suggest navidrome as a music server and Tempo as a music client for android !!
Tempo doesn't get updated so much (every few months) but he/she takes his time to make his player functional and very pleasing to the eyes.
Note for any new comments:
It helps if you add an explanation of what it does, or link to read more. The name often isn't descriptive enough, and people love to find new things to use.
Can confirm. Some of these comments do not explain anything, and are about software I've never heard of. And I love to learn about new programs!
Thunderbird for sure. It had a major ui overhaul and now it's going through a rennisance
I happen to use it after the last year’s UI update but UX still needed a lot of work. Did that improved too?
Personally I enjoy using it now, but it still has it's issues
Beat me to it
MuseScore had a big UI rework with MuseScore 4, with an excellent video about the behind the scenes by Tentacruel (https://youtu.be/XGo4PJd1lng).
Although not sure if it caught people off guard as I'm not a user of it.
I do enjoy his videos. Apparently he working on the audacity overhaul too. Haven't heard (or looked) at it a few years. Last I head was the freakout when the dared to add some basic telemetry to figure how people actually used the software.
Because of this video I regretnot being a composer
Wire's new app just got pushed to fdroid. It was all but broken for a few years with no new updates on fdroid
Update: Wire is probably the best encrypted messaging app. Its free, has no phone number requirement, has Foss apps on all platforms, messages sync on all platforms seamlessly, and all messages are encrypted (its not possible to send unencrypted).
Interesting. Since the CEO of Telegram was arrested in France last month, I’ve read countless threads on c/privacy about which messaging app is best for privacy, and the two names that seem to come up the most are Signal and any Matrix client (e.g. Element); however, some commenters point out Signal’s phone number requirement and I forget what the other caveats are.
I don’t recall reading about Wire in any of those threads, but at a glance it seems to check all the boxes (open source, always-on encryption, etc).
Am I missing something? Any ideas why this app wouldn’t come up in such discussions?
EDIT: Hmm, I just went back and re-read a thread from last week, and Wire is actually mentioned. Maybe I’ve just always mentally skipped over it until now.
I want to say the Natron compositing software, but I could be misremembering.
I seem to recall it losing it's only maintainer and therefore being updated or maintained anymore. I want to say this was back in 2018, but since it's not a piece of kit I use often, I don't really think about it enough for it to stick in my head. Anyway...point being. It posted a fairly large update in 2022 and has been doing updates since then.