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!

  • BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world
    171·
    6 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
      7·
      6 days ago

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

    • Random Dent@lemmy.mlEnglish
      3·
      6 days ago

      I’d normally have Pop as as more of a starter distro, although I haven’t been recommending it lately just because it’s in a bit of an awkward spot in crossing over from GNOME to COSMIC. Not that I dislike COSMIC, I just wouldn’t want a newbie to install the GNOME version and then have to go through switching their whole DE right off the bat.

      • BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world
        3·
        6 days ago

        COSMIC is supposed to hit 1.0 in the next few days and I’m looking forward to it. I wouldn’t recommend it right now only because the beta still has too many rough edges. Once it’s more polished, Pop_OS it could be an excellent starter distro.

  • BoycottTwitter@lemmy.zipEnglish
    121·
    6 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.

      • BoycottTwitter@lemmy.zipEnglish
        3·
        6 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.

  • Alas Poor Erinaceus@lemmy.mlEnglish
    20·
    7 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.

    • puntinoblue@lemmy.ml
      2·
      6 days ago

      I’m not so sure. Last time I looked for an album it was cheaper on Qobuz than Bandcamp - also Qobuz had a Hi-Res version. Bandcamp I think takes 15% + payment handling which seems a lot for being a shopfront. I went to record label to get it in the end as I thought that was probably the best way of getting the money to the artist.

  • Lor@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    6·
    6 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
      4·
      6 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
  • Gloomy@mander.xyz
    6·
    7 days ago

    This is me, but i did it in reverse. Once windows was behind me it kind of opened up the door to more change. Took me less than a year to arrive at not using my google account at all.

  • solomonschuler@lemmy.zip
    4·
    6 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.

  • Dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.works
    5·
    7 days ago

    Great guide! Very useful for people discovering a world outside of the GAFAM’s.

    I’ve done everything, but leaving Whatsapp is the most difficult one. I use Threema and Signal with my close friends, but I can’t get rid of Whatsapp because of many groups I have to follow but I’m not close enough to people to ask them to switch.

    I’d love it if these two chat services proposed a separate app which would be interoperable with Whatsapp.

    Yes Meta would still get some of my data, but less than if I had Whatsapp directly.

    Also getting Whatsapp business and setting an automatic answer asking people to contact me through mail, sms or other chats is useful.

    Leaving youtube is also difficult as Peertube is lacking non tech content like basketball…

    • FallenWalnut@lemmy.worldOP
      1·
      6 days ago

      Thanks! Social media is by far the hardest and will be the last hurdle to tackle. Right now, I am focusing more on getting people to move tools. Btw, if you didn’t already see, the website is even more helpful than the guide itself - in case you ever want to get others to make the switch. https://purchasewithpurpose.io/

      • ferric_carcinization@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        6 days ago

        I’m not Swiss, but I’ve understood that Switzerland adopts many EU laws, but not all of them. I’ve also heard that a right-wing party, which wants the country to be more independent from the EU is pretty popular there.

        As this is just based on things that I’ve heard, I don’t have any sources to link.

        What I mean is, Switzerland is an European country, but as I’ve understood, any specific EU law or regulation may or may not apply.

  • Digit@lemmy.wtfEnglish
    62·
    7 days ago

    I stopped looking at it after initial glance, seeing the top line, the browsers.

    Vivaldi?

    Really.

    No.

    • katy ✨@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      32·
      6 days ago

      what’s wrong with vivaldi? they’re european. they have zero ai in their browser. and they’re one of the few browser with a build in ad/tracker blocker that supports adblock filters.

        • Digit@lemmy.wtfEnglish
          4·
          6 days ago

          what’s wrong with vivaldi

          it’s proprietary/closed-source

          And thus cannot readily be audited.

          And thus attracts malarchy and malware being put in it.

          Fully free software or gtfo.