454
submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by FallenWalnut@lemmy.world to c/degoogle@lemmy.ml

I shared a version of this guide earlier this year, but felt a website was needed to unpack the different options fully. So after an unreasonable number of hours, I put together the necessary data and website.

I hope this is digestible enough for the average person to help those looking to take that first step, or for people who are equally passionate and want to get their friends or family involved.

Details:

Every time I post these guides, there is always feedback on things that can improve, or I got wrong. Please do share, as it is the best way for these to evolve!

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old

I also like OnlyOffice as an alternative to MSOffice/Google Office Suite, has free tiers and real-time sessions

[-] FallenWalnut@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Yup, an excellent option and it is listed on the site. https://purchasewithpurpose.io/category/office-suite/

It is worth noting the potential ties to Russia as that has been a deal breaker for some.

[-] BoycottTwitter@lemmy.zip 13 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I don't know where this would fit in on the website but one company that is really important to boycott is Oracle. Larry Ellison is a mega right-wing donor and his son is buying up media companies for the purposes of turning them into right-wing propaganda machines.

One way everyone can make a difference is by uninstalling any Oracle software on your computer. You might have the Oracle JRE installed or if you're into virtualization you may be using Virtualbox. It's especially important to avoid Oracle software in a corporate setting because their lawyers may come after you. If you work for a company and you're either involved in purchasing software or a software developer I would strongly recommend avoiding Oracle not just because of ethical reasons but also because typically they have their products are not as good from a technical standpoint as well.

For the Oracle JRE or JDK you can replace it with Adoptium. Adoptium is run by the Eclipse Foundation which is based in the EU.

For Virtualbox you can replace it with QEMU or Xen. For QEMU there are a lot of good GUI or CLI front-ends that make using it easy. See this article: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/QEMU/Front-ends note that some of the front-ends listing in that article also support Xen.

For Oracle's database some say that PostgreSQL is a good competitor. For this one I acknowledge the topic is more complex. I'm just going to leave it at for new designs please consider avoiding Oracle's database if you can. Oracle has a bad reputation among programmers for a reason.

If someone uses Oracle DB I can only pray for their soul 🙏

[-] FallenWalnut@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago

Oracle definitely fits under the tech giants to boycott.... and also fuck Larry Ellison. Will keep this in mind for future tools, but feel free to post this on https://lemmy.world/c/PurchaseWithPurpose in the meantime.

[-] BoycottTwitter@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 days ago

I posted it there! Before I was worried to post there because I didn't see any recent posts.

I was just thinking, one way to start adding Oracle might be to create a Database section and mention Oracle's database and perhaps other closed source/bad solutions like Access and suggest open source alternatives like PostgreSQL and MariaDB.

[-] quickRed@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago

I use the VirtualBox stuff all the time! Time to look for a replacement..

[-] BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 20 points 2 days ago

I am very bothered by the OS section. Bazzite should be the go-to for gaming, period. Ubuntu should never be recommended to anyone. Fedora is far more stable and reliable as a starter distro than either Mint or Ubuntu. Fedora Workstation for Mac expats and Fedora KDE for Windows expats.

I won’t fault anyone for putting Mint in there, but I loathe Cinnamon and would never recommend a distro that excludes KDE by design.

[-] zebidiah@lemmy.ca 8 points 2 days ago

agreed, bazzite, nobara, and cachyOS would all have been better alternatives to popOS

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] PokerChips@programming.dev 16 points 2 days ago
load more comments (1 replies)
[-] tomace83@lemmy.zip 15 points 2 days ago

I just tries Lemmy now instead of Reddit 👍

[-] NOOBMASTER@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 days ago

Replace Ubuntu with Zorin OS

[-] quickRed@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 days ago

Why Tidal? I get the part against apple, but why tidal?

[-] FallenWalnut@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Tidal

It is hard for me to be the arbiter of what tools are ethical enough, so I try to make these facts as easy as possible to find for people. In the end, it educates and ultimately most decide against using such tools (for example, Spotify). There is a note on Tidal's profile about Jack Dorsey's and Jay-Z's involvement. https://purchasewithpurpose.io/software/34R8h9DOVPhaJ7CZMmKW48/

[-] quickRed@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago

That's kinda why I was asking I remember something about Dorsey a while a go

[-] puntinoblue@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago

Spotify often gets bad press, some probably promoted by competitors. Its payouts look lower mainly because it offers a free ad-supported tier and serves markets with lower subscription fees - if it were subscription-only in high-fee markets, payouts would be similar to Apple, Tidal, or Qobuz. Also, I haven’t seen Spotify play me any AI-generated tracks, unlike some other platforms.

[-] hildegarde@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 2 days ago

Why does every search engine look exactly the same, and push the exact same AI chat feature, and have identical options for filtering arranged in out in the exact same order in the exact same location.

I think there's only one search engine.

[-] FallenWalnut@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

People are all copying what they are familiar with, and that is Google. I list the providers that have AI Summaries as part of their offering; you can find one that doesn't. https://purchasewithpurpose.io/category/search-engine/

[-] douglasg14b@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

Probably because it's the same use case?

That's like asking why all keyboards have the same letters in the same arrangement, with mostly the same options.

If you want something different, try Kagi. It has other controls you don't see elsewhere

[-] Kirk@startrek.website 35 points 3 days ago

KDE is friendlier to Windows users than GNOME, but Mint is still a good option.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] Blizzard@lemmy.zip 38 points 3 days ago

Nice guide! Lemmy is missing though 🐭. Also, what's the point of moving from Twitter to BlueSky? They are no different. Mastodon is a great option.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] solomonschuler@lemmy.zip 4 points 2 days ago

I personally enjoy marginalia search and duckduckgo lite. I never enjoyed/appreciated the current search engine market with all generative AI enshitification. Marginalia search is similar to a database, where you have a limited number of keywords to get a decent search, they also offers filters if you dont want websites with JS and much more. duckduckgo lite is similar to this, but instead of having a specific tab to find website domains, it has it built in the search engine functionality.

[-] Vex_Detrause@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 days ago

I can use marginalia as default search for Firefox!

[-] solomonschuler@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 days ago

Yea that's what I've done as well, I do enjoy it.

[-] Vex_Detrause@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 days ago

Someone posted Narrow32 on lemmy then when I was trying it out I discovered Duckduckgo lite. Now it's my default search. Brings me back to when Google was a search engine.

[-] FallenWalnut@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

marginalia

Hadn't heard of Marginalia search. Will look to include that on the website :)

[-] solomonschuler@lemmy.zip 4 points 2 days ago

Pretty small development team. I'm hoping over my break I can contribute.

[-] lorski@sopuli.xyz 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Here is my set up:

  • Browser: Helium
  • Email: My own domain thru Spacemail
  • Search: DDG
  • Music: Deezer
  • Office suite: Jotta
  • Files: Jotta
  • Photos: Jotta
[-] Kjell@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

My set up:

  • Browser: Librewolf on PC and Duckduckgo on phone
  • Email: Protonmail
  • Search: Ecosia on PC and Duckduckgo on phone
  • Music: Locally stored music and VLC (on PC) and Musicolet (phone) as music player
  • Office suite: Libreoffice
[-] LikeableLime@piefed.social 4 points 2 days ago

Anyone have an alternative for Google Keep? I just want shared notes and checklists across all my devices

[-] ghen@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago

If you need markdown and other formatting you can use notion.so, but I can't expect that company will be good in the future even though they're good now. They've already added AI. I use it for a note-taking because I can create hyperlinks between notes.

[-] somerandomname@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 days ago

Joplin maybe?

[-] FallenWalnut@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

On the list, will get there maybe in 2-3 weeks time! But if you want something sooner, maybe post on the community https://lemmy.world/c/PurchaseWithPurpose

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] zdhzm2pgp@lemmy.ml 23 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I see Qobuz on there. IMHO, Bandcamp should be your first stop when buying music. If it's not on bandcamp, Qobuz seems to have just about everything else, more or less, that someone might want. I've complained about them in the past for making me download my purchases one track at a time, which can be pretty annoying if you're buying a super-duper-deluxe version of an album, but, I am pleased to say, they no longer do this; you can download the complete albums you've purchased in a zip file. But only once. Stuff can disappear for annoying rights reasons, and I think they even say, once you buy your music download it immediately, because it may not be there on a subsequent visit.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] DrunkAnRoot@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago
[-] FallenWalnut@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

They are on the website :) Just too many options to include them all on the infographic. https://purchasewithpurpose.io/category/search-engine/

[-] flameleaf@lemmy.ml 14 points 3 days ago

Reddit -> Lemmy is a recent switch that I'm happy with

load more comments
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2025
454 points (95.8% liked)

DeGoogle Yourself

14409 readers
12 users here now

A community for those that would like to get away from Google.

Here you may post anything related to DeGoogling, why we should do it or good software alternatives!

Rules

  1. Be respectful even in disagreement

  2. No advertising unless it is very relevent and justified. Do not do this excessively.

  3. No low value posts / memes. We or you need to learn, or discuss something.

Related communities

!privacyguides@lemmy.one !privacy@lemmy.ml !privatelife@lemmy.ml !linuxphones@lemmy.ml !fossdroid@social.fossware.space !fdroid@lemmy.ml

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS