I migrated from W11 to Kinoite and NY workflow is similar - flatpak, distrobox (right now I have Arch and Ubuntu boxes for different programs) and only layer essential system wide packages to the ostree.
Its very stable and I seriously enjoy using it. The *how Linux should be" piece is mostly resolves and enhanced by using distrobox.
KDE plasma is awesome and a great DE for a beginner like me.
Osmand+ is definitely the right answer for customizability and power; however CoMaps has made the GUI decisions for you in a nice way and is ready to go out of the box.
Osmand+ added secure location sharing to their roadmap for 2026 which is something my family really misses - so I will he using and supporting when that drops.
Laslty, open street maps have one fatal choke point - search is pretty terrible. Even inputting a correctly formatted address often yields no results or too many confusing results. Searching by place name is hit or miss, mostly miss. The only workaround is to verify address and get lat long coordinates for that address- I typically do this from a third party website.
All Geckos can sync if Mozilla Sync is enabled with an account. So you can sync say LibreWokf or WarwrFox on desktop to any mobile version, such as IronFoz. They do not have to "match".
From an outsiders perspective, element has never worked for me and never been stable enough to get anywhere close to discord. Joining servers is buggy AF and Element X is severely hobbied on mobile.
I've been refusing to use discord for about 6-8 months and am often invites to join various discords by IRL friends and online communities. I wish Matrix / Element was a viable alternative but I've never been able to get it working for anythung other than DMs, and I'm already happy with Signal for that honestly.
As a non developer I want to be sensitive to the amount of work involves, and the number of cooks in the kitchen, but the fact that we don't have a FOSS- federated slack / discord killer app is leaving so much interaction on the table.
I've heard of Revolt but it doesn't seem to be there with encryption
We desperately need a stable implementation of fission / true tab separation on android.
Just bought a 9 for Graphene. Up and running - works like a charm. Devs are not announcing end of the line for Graphene development- they are making daily updates on their way to bringing out Android 16. At this point I'd grab a 9 rather than wait for the 10. Get yourself up and running before Google tries to lock us out of more apps - right now everything I need runs fine without any play services whatsoever. The OS is solid, Vanadium is really good - I could go on and on. If you are onboard and interested in the project its 100% worth it from where I sit.
Nothing is ever perfectly future proof
I went with the 9 ultimately - and recently - and am very happy so far. I was prepared for a buggy or difficult experience but grapheme is really smooth in my experience so far.
After months of trying to degoogle a Samsung running stock OS, finally having control and proper security is a relief.
I also went with the 256gb and would recommend spending on storage whatever model you go with. Personally i don't see much in the 9;pro that i don't already have in the 9.
Signal, Lemmy (Voyager), Mastodon, PipePipe etc all running smoothly.
Learning that many apps you can get on Aurora will work, but most apparently rely on Google Play services to send notifications. So it's annoying to not receive those or need to set up workarounds, but honestly think about that. The app is telling google every single item it wants to notify you and relying on google to deliver it. That really sucks as a strategy.
Thankfully Signal has its own way of delivering notifications
Many appa that seem to "need" Google Play Services to run will work without it, especially with Exploit Compatibility turned on in that specific app settings. Even worked for banking for me, no play services needed in that profile etc.
While true, I think many have been motivated to take much further action, get organized and get knowledgeable by the clear collaboration between the far right / neo reactionaries and the tech right in the US in the last decade. So basing the guide off of that will draw attention
1.Email --
proton
2.Cloud storage / file sync--
pCloud (lifetime storage purchase FTW)
3.Maps & navigation--
Magic Earth works pretty well
4.Search engine--
Qwant for daily driver, exploring SearxNG
5.Web browser--
Waterfox on desktop and mobile, exploring LibreWolfe and Fennec as well but Waterfox is smooth and fast
6.Calendar--
Proton
7.Contacts management--
Fossify
8.Notes / to-do lists--
Obsidian MD (free) with paid vault sync upgrade
9.Office suite (docs, spreadsheets, etc.)--
LibreOffice & Obsidian
10.Messaging / chat--
Signal, Line. I really, really tried with Element and Element X - would love a federated discord alternative - but honestly I was not even successful at adding friends with confirmed accounts. Could be user error.
Signal is great.
11.Video calling--
Line, Signal
12.Social media / microblogging--
Mastodon, BkueSky
RSS reader / news--
TBD open to suggestions -
13.Music streaming / podcast app--
Podcasts - AntennaPod is great, switched over from PocketCasts and haven't looked back. Fuck Spotify.
Music -- Bandcamp (must try it!) + CloudBeats on mobile (streaming my own flac files to myself) + MusicBee on desktop. Also, fuck Spotify.
14.Video streaming / YouTube alternative--
PeerTube, PipePipe
15.Password manager--
Proton
16.VPN / DNS / Firewall--
Proton
17.Launcher / Android OS (if you use custom ROMs)-- Android with I hope all the right settings and no g-apps in the main profile. Looking at Lineage (my device can't do Graphene)
Never wanted a pixel for any reason but might try it for next device solely for graphene - we'll see.
18.App store / APKs--
Aurora / F-Droid
19.Photo backup / gallery--
Fossify Gallery
20.Weather--
Ehh. Still on MyRadar but probably time to switch
21.Smart assistant (if any)--
None
22.Anything else you’ve replaced?--
Left audible for Libro.FM, so far so good.
Left Amazon, been buying books on Thriftbooks.
Pixelfed seems to have potential as an IG replacement.
RedReader when looking at Reddit .
Looking for a meaningful Goodreads replacement with a mobile app...
Goal is to potentially try Lineage this summer...
The PurchaseWithPurpose community here on Lemmy and other platforms does a great job of pointing at achievable change by dissecting nine differences between available alternatives.
Privacy is a spectrum; I agree with comments here saying to look at these much more hardened principles still even if you won't ultimately be taking them up on all their suggestions
LibreOffice has been working "fine" for my DeGoogled personal life.
Work is heavily Googled still (and not entirely up to me), but I've practiced a hard barrier between work tech and personal tech for years now. In case I can sway any colleagues: Anybody feeling like any of these alternatives would be ready for a small or larger team to jump over to that routinely collaborates on spreadsheets, documents and slides?
My primary use case is for audio production. I love that my DAW is native (Bitwig Studio), it runs like a charm. I ran into a lot of issues implementing it with Wine and yabridge with the flatpak install to still use my windows only plugins (I have a large collection of really cool tools)
After building Bitwig in a distrobox with Wine and yabridge I was successful, almost all of my windows plugins work - some as smoothly as Windows, some with some wrinkles. A few of my favorites just dont work at all unfortunately, and after looking into this, its an issue with JUCE8 and wine - specifically,
full support for Direct2D feature level 1.3 in Wine.
I'm novice level with Linux and pretty advanced in Audio production, I'm hoping we can get some folks from the audio world together to contribute to wine to try to make this happen... I want me Aberrant DSP and Eventide plugins working properly!
Thankfully, many whose GUIs are broken can still be somewhat utilized due to Bitwig exposing plugin parameters in their own wrapper - I can tweak from there, but it's not ideal.
I'll continue to pressure developers to offer Linux native support as well, but so far its mostly crickets with a few noticing an uptick in requests and considering adding it...