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My journey towards more European, open source, privacy-oriented, and decentralized alternatives
(lemm.ee)
Over the past few months, I embarked on a rewarding digital journey to move away from US big tech and towards more European [EU], open source [FOSS], privacy-oriented [P], and decentralized [D] alternatives.
I'm sharing my experience here in case it can be useful to others, as well as to gather any additional thoughts or suggestions:
- Desktop OS: Microsoft Windows 11 --> OpenSUSE Tumbleweed + KDE [EU][FOSS]
- Web browser: Google Chrome --> Brave --> Vivaldi --> Mozilla Firefox + Strict privacy settings, uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, Conset-O-Matic [FOSS][P]
- Email: Gmail --> Infomaniak Mail [EU][FOSS]
- Calendar: Google Calendar --> Infomaniak Calendar [EU][FOSS] + OneCalendar [EU]
- Files: Dropbox --> Infomaniak kDrive [EU][FOSS]
- Photos: Google Photos --> Infomaniak kDrive [EU][FOSS]
- Notes: Google Keep --> Notesnook [FOSS][P]
- Social Media:
- Facebook --> Nothing
- Twitter/X --> Mastodon (
mas.to) [EU][FOSS][D] - Reddit --> Lemmy (
lemm.ee) [EU][FOSS][D]
- AI Chatbot: OpenAI ChatGPT --> Mistral AI Le Chat [EU]
- Videos: Youtube --> Unwatched [EU][FOSS][P]
- Podcasts: Apple Podcasts --> Spotify --> Pocket Casts [FOSS]
- Translate: Google Translate --> DeepL [EU]
- Maps: Google Maps --> Organic Maps [EU][FOSS][P]
- Weather: Apple Weather --> YR [EU]
- Online payments: PayPal --> Revolut [EU]
- Password manager: LastPass --> Mozilla Firefox --> Bitwarden [FOSS][P]
- Online shopping: Amazon --> Cdiscount [EU]
- Travel booking:
Booking.com--> Direct booking
And here's the list of things I couldn't let go of:
- Mobile OS: iOS | I have a business iPhone which is also my personal phone
- Messaging: WhatsApp | The network effect is too big here: family, friends, local businesses, etc
- Streaming services: Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ | These come basically for free with my ISP and are too convenient for the moment (esp. w/ kids)
I really like it on desktop. On default front end, it clicked the easiest. Though for lemmy I still prefer Tesseract, but all the other inherent features that's not on lemmy, especially comments consolidation for same link, just trounces lemmy for me.
The android app Interstellar is testing piefed support, although currently only allows preferred.social instance IIRC. I registered on the flagship piefed.social instance, and I'm a bit too lived in on it to change instance. Maybe it's better to see if I can migrate my account.