Getting rid of Google, Microsoft, Meta etc - alternatives?

Lounge
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We have deciced to do a mid term project: getting rid of anything Google, Microsoft, Meta etc.
Our goal is to use Open Source where possible. Also, software should be GDPR and DSA compliant, so: in keeping with European regulations and independent of foreign “influences”…

We use MS Office, Windows, all the typical apps and OSs now. The last thing to go will be Windows and Android, the first thing to go will be Office, Chrome, Outlook and all social media clients.

Privacy, security, compatibility, stability & performance are key!

Any ideas?

EDIT

Final list of software (growing):

  • Windows OS for Desktop, Android for Mobile. Yeah, there is no real alternative!
  • LibreOffice for word processing, calculation etc.
  • Firefox browser
  • EM client for email on both desktop and mobile
  • Koofr for cloud
  • Ecosia for search engine
  • Signal for messaging
  • Bluesky for social media stuff
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Book Club: You Read Any Good Novels or Non-fiction?
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I like Vivaldi a lot as a browser. It’s still based on Chromium, but it’s maintained by a very small team, and the guy running the show is against ads and AI. It’s _extremely _ customizable. I love what you can do with the tabs in particular.

Also, there’s OpenCamera if you want a FOSS for taking photos and videos.

Heliboard with Whisper+ cover me for a keyboard and voice input.

Do you use Fdroid?

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No, for Android I will stick to the “official” path (Play Store, official Android) for the time being.
Ok, I do have LineageOS on one of my mobiles, but that’s adifferent story: old mobile, no updates via manufacturer.

Fdroid sounds interesting, but I have some highly sensitive client data on my devices, so I must be 100% sure that anything I do is secure.

EDIT
I will give Vivaldi a try. Also, I do use OpenCamera already!

EDIT2
Oh yeah, I don’t want any AI sh#t on my devices, unless I specifically have a use case for that!

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I recently decided that I want to degoogle. Moved over to Firefox which was a really easy first step.

I’ve set up a Proton email address, but migrating over will take time, I’ll likely leave the gmail account for buying things and signing up for things (for now at least)

The next big step for me is to migrate my photos. I’ve been using google photos for years and I really want to set up some kind of self-hosted storage system. I’ve heard about a couple of different options but I think I’m going to need to buy some more storage space first.

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Ah, that’s a great idea! Will do that too…

EDIT Proton could not provide me my standard email name, so I went for Tuta. The alternative would have been mailbox.org

I really wanted a Chromium-based browser, hence Brave.

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I use Protonmail. I still use actively Gmail, but my plan is to move completely out of it.

I haven’t used Chrome in years, and have been using Firefox. But I read that Firefox is incorporating Google’s AI services into it, so my plan is to ditch Firefox and move into Vivaldi.

I moved from Google Photos and Drive, and now I use pCloud instead. It is encrypted, safe, and from Switzerland.

For AI, the French alternative Claude AI is much better. Claude promised it will not use ads. ChatGPT and the others are going to starting putting ads in their services. It is not a good idea to use them anymore. There are other options. The French Le Chat, or Apertus from Switzerland, or Proton’s Lumo.

For note taking apps, Obsidian might be the best choice, because you can run it locally on your computer and for free. I used Evernote for years, but it isn’t safe anymore, it isn’t encrypted, and the prices are becoming absurdly high. Another alternative is Notesnook. Encrypted and safe.

I have used LibreOffice for years and warmly recommend it.

I haven’t gone as far as moving away from windows. But I installed Windows 11 with a local user account. Microsoft tries to make it almost impossible for regular users to install it without it being connected to a Microsoft account, but it is still possible, by creating a flash driver for installing it, using the windows ISO file and Rufus. If I managed to do that, probably anybody here can. If anyone wants to know more, I can give a link to an YouTube video thar explains how.

I still use Android on my phone. I wish I didn’t have to, but I think most apps I need wouldn’t work on another OS, but I will research into it some time.

For translations, DeepL is better than Google or ChatGPT.

As for social media, I still use Instagram and Facebook, mostly because it is the only way to be in contact with some friends or family. But I barely log in into Facebook. Instagram is useful for the funny animal videos. Apparently I’ve trained the algorithm to show me funny videos.

YouTube would be very hard to ditch. So many good bass cover videos, tutorials, etc, etc…

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I have heard about it the first time this morning! It sounds promising!

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I really really really wanted to use Proton … but somehow somebody took all varieties of my usual usernames for his email adresses. I hate that guy!!! :slight_smile:

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Claude AI made totally hilarious videos making fun of ChatGPT incorporating ads into their services, and promises Claude will never do that.

Search on YouTube for “claude ai ads”. :grin:

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That is unfortunate. It’s good that there are excellent alternatives!

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For AI stuff, I use Perplexity Pro. It was free for a year, and - though it’s great - I will not use it after that period.
I try to limit everything AI as it’s the antichrist!

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I use Google Keep and OneNote a lot, and I didn’t dare to look at alternatives yet.
Obsidian is Chinese, right? We try to avoid non-European software as much as possible, cause of (lack of) GDPR and DSA compliance…

Maybe we’ll go for Joplin - need to understand how it syncs over my devices though … hopefully using the Koofr cloud…

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And it is very bad for the environment. Unfortunately AI is getting into everything, it is hard not to be involved on it. Even when applying for jobs, the companies now use AI tools to go through the CVs. So, it is practically impossible to be safe from it. I’m just waiting for SkyNet now. No terminators so far, though.

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Obsidian was developed by Chinese students while they were studying in Canada. It is considered very safe. Especially people on the IT area love it.

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Cool! Canada is a honorary part of Europe :slight_smile:

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I am also moving away from some American services. Privacy is indeed my main concern. I went from Dropbox to Tresorit (Switzerland) for all my personal documents. Which are better encrypted at Tresorit.

Great tool for taking notes. I have used it as well!

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Ok, ok - you both have convinced me!

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Ugh, I hate that. That and the shoving of OneDrive and Copilot on the user are my biggest pet peeves.

I use the OOBE\BYPASSNRO trick on a command line to by pass it. Then I rip OneDrive out first thing.

There’s also Mailfence. They don’t require a phone number to sign up, and also have a calendar.

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buy macs

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Oh, and I might try to get my friends to switch from Discord to https://element.io/. It’s open source and uses Matrix.

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