The holiday season has brought us major releases of three lighthouse projects of the Free Software world:
Krita has reached version 5.0 on the 23rd: https://krita.org/en/item/krita-5-0-released/
Blender already got to version 3.0 on the 3rd: https://www.blender.org/press/blender-3-0-a-new-era-for-content-creation/
and KiCAD hit 6.0 on the 25th: https://www.kicad.org/blog/2021/12/KiCad-6.0.0-Release/
The upgrades are significant, and these three applications already rule their domains at the entry level. How much further will they go?
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A Good Month for Free Software with Three Major Releases
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 29 2021, @01:13PM (14 children)
(Score: 3, Informative) by Mojibake Tengu on Wednesday December 29 2021, @01:53PM
Sure, not everyone is able to write Gerber files for their PCBs out of head directly in Emacs...
Before KiCAD, only other good option for electronics design in FOSS was gEDA.
Respect Authorities. Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
(Score: 3, Funny) by epitaxial on Wednesday December 29 2021, @02:22PM
KiCad is used a lot by the hardware community. Never heard of Krita before but it explains why so much artwork looks similar.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by stormreaver on Wednesday December 29 2021, @03:13PM
KiCad is outside of my scope, but Krita is fantastic. Blender and Krita are my top choices for game asset creation.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Rich on Wednesday December 29 2021, @03:25PM (3 children)
Submitter here.
I use KiCAD a lot, and that's become more or less the standard tool for new electronic design already in Version 5. Corporate users may be locked in by some SAP & Altium history, and a number of hobbyists clings to, or is stuck with Eagle. But unless there are super-specific features required, KiCAD will do the job, or, by nature of its open architecture, can be forced into doing the job with some effort.
Version 6 is a major cleanup (they have finally understood how Macs worked between 1984 and 2010...) and brings file formats in line to universally use a LISP-like S-Expr syntax. V6 will get you from idea to product on roughly the same path as V5, but there will be a lot less "yech!"s along the way, and a lot more "mmh..."s.
Really the only thing that is missing (for me) for everyday tasks is footprint-push-n-shove, where you can grab a footprint, drag it around, and all the connected traces will follow in a reasonable way and push conflicting traces away. Right now it is quite an annoyance to move a footprint, not only because the traces will have to be re-connected, but also because the moved footprint will upset the rule-checking logic. Another feature I'd appreciate would be cloning of sub-circuits both in eeschema (the schematic editor) and pcbnew (the pcb editor), but that can be achieved with scripts (which is what I meant with "can be forced into doing the job with some effort" earlier).
I follow the other two projects loosely, but don't use them in any qualified way. I once submitted a bug fix to Krita for some vector art detail as part of a wider experiment with a geometric algorithm, that's about it. I was impressed by their project leader's (Boudewijn Rempt) cat-herding skills. I gave Krita and Blender's new versions a spin, and they looked very tidy. Blender in particular seems to have progressed to an interaction smoothness that a commercial product couldn't do better. But given the feature load, that is needed.
I submitted the article, because I thought the mainstream reporting so far had really missed those milestones. For the future outlook: Blender already achieved critical mass in the past, because too many commercial interests are involved for the project to fail. For KiCAD, I think that point is being reached now. For Krita it's a bit difficult, because it is mostly aimed at single artists which can't line up that corporate power behind them - even though in terms of dominating its field, Krita is the most advanced of the article's projects, and second to none.
(Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Wednesday December 29 2021, @03:34PM
Thank you for both the article and the comment!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 29 2021, @09:56PM
Yeah, I used (misused?) KiCad at work for plotting the connections in our GPIB relay array.
It wasn't exactly the right tool for the job, but it was so much better than trying it in Visio.
Overall, I think it is a great tool as it took me less time to download, learn to use and create 3 diagrams than it had already taken me to make those same 3 diagrams in any of the other tools I was using.
If I am ever actually designing circuits rather than diagramming relay layouts, I know what I will try to use first (assuming my employer is already requiring something).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 31 2021, @02:18AM
Thanks for the detailed overview.
It's nice to know about these domain tools. I have artist friends, but I never find/make time to create digital art anymore.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Wednesday December 29 2021, @05:16PM (1 child)
Krita is focused on digital painting. Photoshop is the industry standard, but Manga Studio might be a better comparison.
I'm not an artist, but in my limited experience it is obvious that Krita focuses on painting, while GIMP is an all purpose raster editor. When I was trying to create digital art with my tablet Krita provides the better experience. Then Inkscape exists for vector graphics.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by crafoo on Wednesday December 29 2021, @06:15PM
I disagree. I use Krita for pixel-level work and it is pretty good although there are better free apps out there. I use Krita for processing textures exported from Blender - rendering static lightmaps, normalmaps, etc. Krita has a MUCH more useable interface than Gimp and far more streamlined and useful UI organization and shortcuts. In my opinion it is superior to Gimp in every aspect that I find these type of programs useful at.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 29 2021, @06:27PM (1 child)
I would fix that to be "Does anyone from the 99% of FOSS Users bother with these?"
Blender - ProAm tool that maybe 1:10000 Linux user do any amount of work in.
Krita - ProAm (more Am..) that maybe 1:2000 Linux users do any work in.
KiCAD - probably the most popular.. being 1:100 Linux users doing any work with.
They're all big-income FOSS projects that have an industry of contributors, and those big-income people want to see it quasi-advertised with announcements like this. Not really big projects in the eyes of the average Penguinista, though.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday December 30 2021, @03:27AM
I admit I have never used Krita, KiCAD, or Blender. Never even heard of Krita. I have used FreeCAD, and use GIMP fairly often. Many public libraries now have 3D printers. Bang out some physical item in FreeCAD, export it to whatever format the printer likes, and it works. FreeCAD is good enough for that. I made ear horns for an elderly relative who doesn't give a crap about appearances and didn't want to pay $5k for ridiculously expensive hearing aids. Seems ear horns are hard to find anywhere these days, as the concept has evidently suffered from much unpopularity. He didn't like any of the very limited selection we were able to turn up.
As to other notable libre software, there is of course Firefox. LibreOffice is pretty good, but damn, what it takes to pry businesses away from MSOffice. They have severe cases of "you get what you pay for", they see everyone else using MS, and don't want to be the weirdos doing something different, and finally, they feel in MS a kindred spirit, and trust the profit motive too much. Evince and Okular are both decent PDF readers. I haven't kept up with databases of late, haven't used one since MariaDB was forked from mySQL. Lots of DRM free games on Humble Bundle and GOG, or even their own website. Minetest is a decent clone of Minecraft, likewise FreeCiv for Sid Meier's Civilization.
I take this story as a focus on CAD, graphics, and photography. Why the mention of those categories particularly, I suppose because that's what the submitter knows and uses. Didn't seem to me all that notable. Releases are made all the time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 29 2021, @06:49PM (1 child)
yes, you windows/mac-using twat.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Rich on Wednesday December 29 2021, @08:27PM
As a Mac-using twat, I would like to point out that I checked out all three programs on a Mac. I didn't want to touch the Linux box that runs the production tools (KiCAD 5.1). With KiCAD 4, the Mac was a second class citizen, the touchpad practically unusable. With KiCAD 6, it's near perfect (except for the stupid recent system version requirements). All three projects release on Linux/Windows/Mac, so even Windows/Mac-using twats can enjoy these new releases - and they gain a migration path for when M$ decides that henceforth square-tiled warnings against the dangers of Communism featuring both Bob and Cortana overlay libre apps, while Apple switches the Mac to an all-AppStore iOS-style ecosystem.
Actually, it might be partially thanks to Blender that Apple is kept on a path of reason, because it is killer-app enough by now that it has to work, and work well on Macs, despite all conflicts from OpenGL vs Metal to GPL vs AppStore.
Also, for the other AC, calling Krita an amateur app is like calling Fender an amateur guitar company, because the majority of Fender products ends up in the hands of those. :)
(Score: 3, Informative) by owl on Thursday December 30 2021, @03:00AM
Yep -- KiCad. Was, earlier today, testing a circuit board I laid out in KiCad and had fabricated. After installing the components, then hooking it up enough to test, it works just fine.
(Score: 2) by MIRV888 on Wednesday December 29 2021, @02:53PM
Thank you for the info.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday December 29 2021, @05:39PM
Thanks for the submission. Watching the release notes for Blender, I'm struck again how powerful that software is. I have been using it for 3D printing, which in itself is a deep subject; but the release upgrades mostly cover features in animation, which I've never delved into. It's like exploring a mansion, opening a door in the kitchen, and discovering that there's another mansion in there. Some of the animation features point to near VR-level editing, where you can step inside your design to "inhabit" it and edit it from there. Just imagine if you could yoke that to 3D construction bots!
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by crafoo on Wednesday December 29 2021, @06:20PM
Krita - my favorite image editor
Kicad - used it to design and have a few PCBs produced and it is fantastic and quite complete; from circuit diagrams to pad editing to PCB layout. Fairly easy to use and very powerful.
Blender - The new visual procedural geometry generation tools are absolutely amazing. In my opinion Blender is more useable now (huge improvements!) than 3D Studio MAX, and more powerful with the features I care about. Their texture painting and sculpting tools have improved so much and are integrated so well that I'd rather just stay in Blender and use it tools. It's also a really good non-linear video editor with image stabilization and tracking! The post processing of images is also really good.
Great post, great software. These programs really drive it home: free software will lead in all but niche, very specialized software.
(Score: 5, Informative) by crafoo on Wednesday December 29 2021, @06:58PM (2 children)
https://www.freecadweb.org/features.php [freecadweb.org]
FreeCAD - parametric CAD. can interface with KiCAD. can work with MCAD (for milling machines etc.) NURBS modelling as well.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Rich on Wednesday December 29 2021, @09:05PM (1 child)
I actually checked their site to see whether they also have a new release to report. I'd say that FreeCAD is not at the point of perfection yet that the mentioned apps have reached with the latest versions. I have toyed with it, but haven't really worked with it yet. It appears to me that they caught traction at a point from which it can't stall anymore. Like Blender a few years ago. It probably can do everything needed for CAD/CAM tasks that are not too complicated, with a few bumps in the road. Give them some time, and they will almost surely end up as what I called "lighthouse project".
(Score: 3, Informative) by crafoo on Wednesday December 29 2021, @11:20PM
I agree, FreeCAD is pretty good but it has some missing critical features still, IMO. Version 0.19, so I think even the dev team agrees with that take. It's really good though. Parametric modelling from sketches, CSG, STEP/IGES handled well, decent UI, and it seems really stable.