Electric company: Hold my beer
Windows aint free, which just makes it that much worse!
In the minds of most people it is, because for them it’s just factored in the cost of their Computer.
Windows aint free
Not with that attitude
Yay I only have google and windows out of all of them.
Google, windows, and WhatsApp for me.
I’ve been slowly phasing out Google, and going to experiment with Linux on my old laptop, with the eventual goal of getting rid of windows on my pc
Alternatives for WhatsApp and Google Search that won’t sell your information?
….iMessage MUHAHAHAHAHA
Best alternative for WhatsApp would be Signal
Most search engines make money with ads, including DDG. Plus, DDG has in the past explicitly whitelisted trackers from MS so I wouldn’t trust them. They are definitely better than Google though (as low of a bar that is).
SearXNG (https://searx.space/) seems to be the best option from a privacy standpoint I found so far.
That’s why you have to find services you pay for with your own money. So you know how they make money.
I love kagi. I know exactly how they make their money… because i pay them.
Signal is like WhatsApp but you don’t even need to share your phone number for it anymore. You can have an username and share that with people.
for WhatsApp : signal, telegram (for large news group chats) and jami
for google: searX/searXNG (really customizable) startpage (uses google search) ecosia (eco friendly and uses bing) and finally brave search (best independent search engine)
Signal an Duckduckgo or Startpage
Signal and DuckDuckGo
Installing Signal is the easy part. Convincing your friends to do the same is the impossible part.
I was surprised by how many of my friends were using both when I first installed it. Just try it out.
I already did and managed to get two friends to use it too but they only use it to talk to me
MetaGer is a metasearch engine focused on protecting users’ privacy. Based in Germany, and hosted as a cooperation between the German NGO ‘SUMA-EV - Association for Free Access to Knowledge’ and the University of Hannover, the system is built on 24 small-scale web crawlers under MetaGer’s own control. In September 2013, MetaGer launched MetaGer.net, an English-language version of their search engine.
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MetaGer
It currently supports the following languages/regions:
Dansk (Danmark)
Deutsch (Österreich/Schweiz/Deutschland)
English (Great Britain/Ireland/Malaysia/USA)
Español (España/México)
Suomalainen (Suomi)
Français (Canada/France)
Italiano (Italia)
Nederlands (Nederland)
Polski (Polska)
Svenska (Sverige)
Source: https://metager.org/lang
There is a TOR-hidden service too:
It is open source:
https://gitlab.metager.de/open-source/MetaGer
And has other useful features, for example:
That you can hide yourself behind our proxyserver just by opening the result anonymously? Use “OPEN ANONYMOUSLY”; this also affects the following links.
Source: https://metager.org/tips
Alternatively I use some SearxNG-instances, preferably hosted in the EU:
I don’t use any service of them
I just use Google Pixel 8 but with other system.
But Google is almost impossible to totally escape (their trackers and codes are in almost all sites in the web)
GrapheneOS supremacy
Share your alternative stack … 321GO!
OS: NixOS 24.05 (gen 67, non-flake)
WM, DE: KDE Plasma
Mass massaging: Aliucord mobile, Vencord (installed from nixpkgs patch) desktop
P2P messaging: Netcat
Don’t really watch many videos / listen to music
Editor: Sandboxed VSCodium
Base flake for development environments: stddev
Programming language: Haskell + Rust + Go (one project)
Browser: Sandboxed Firefox
Phone launcher: NiagaraGoogle > DuckDuckGo, sometimes fall back to Startpage if DDG has bad results
Discord > I use Discord, but incredibly rarely. Haven’t bothered finding an alternative
Windows > Linux, obviously
Whats App > Signal
iCloud > Selfhosted storage + Proton Drive
I don’t want anything like TikTok, Instagram, or the rest of them, so I don’t use those or their alternatives.
Greater than?
I think he’s using it as an arrow. Like “are you using X? ➡️ Use Y instead”
Revolt is a great discord alternative. It’s pretty much the same exact thing except open source and the nitro perks are free.
Your greater than symbols being the wrong way around made this far more confusing than it needed to be
I think they were just going for “arrows”
Yeah they need the dash. ->
Reddit --> Lemmy
Facebook --> fucking nothing lmao
YouTube --> FreeTube + Invidious [1]
Windows --> Debian [2] with KDE Plasma
Word --> LyX
Microsoft Office --> LibreOffice
Built-in phone music player --> Odyssey [3]
Firefox --> LibreWolf [4]
Adobe Reader --> Okular + Librera on Android
Default phone launcher --> KISS Launcher
[1] I prefer FreeTube on computers where I have it installed, but one of my family’s jank 10-year-old work PCs can’t handle it, so I’ll typically watch videos in Invidious in LibreWolf on that computer.
[2] I can’t recommend Debian for absolutely everyone since it prioritizes stability and predictability over new features and ease of use, but it’s great for most of my use cases. I typically recommend Linux Mint for complete beginners.
[3] It handles extremely large music libraries (>100 GB of .mp3 files) without constantly taking forever to reload when I add a single new album.
[4] Firefox is pretty good and FOSS, but LibreWolf comes with better defaults and I’m a lazy fucker.
VLC for FLACs
Arch Linux instead of Windows or MacOS
GrapheneOS instead of stock Android or IOS
Mastodon instead of Twitter/X
Matrix instead of Slack
Lemmy instead of Reddit
Signal instead of phone, texting, and video chat
Jitsi instead of Zoom
Nextcloud instead of Google Contacts, Calendar, and Drive
Protonmail with custom domain instead of Gmail
Jellyfin instead of Spotify, but I still use Spotify… :(
Pixelfed instead of Instagram, but its still lacking content and useable mobile apps.
Haven’t escaped YouTube yet, but meaning to browse Peertube more.
I’ve been a Linux-only gamer for years too, thanks to Proton, Vulcan, Lutris, etc. Still waiting for good VR though.
FOSS or GTFO!
- Online discussion: Lemmy
- Private messaging: Signal
- Music: Direct purchase/download
- OS: Any linux flavour
- Mobile OS: Unfortunately needs a little more time…
Android is fine, just not the default versions. Using lineage or graphene os is barely a difference from stock os, but significantly more private.
My exact choices. I want to love the open source phone options but… Corporations have embraced android and iPhone. I worry about road blocks with things like duo and apps that don’t permit install on rooted things etc.
Only iCloud. No siri. Only use for auto photo storage and music. I don’t care if they know my music listening habits. None of the rest.
