A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
My selfhosted Nextcloud does:
While I use OSMAnd for offline navigation MAPS is still my go-to for navigation/discovering places.
My phone is currently running stock Android
What podcast apps do you use with gPodder?
Replaced
Haven't been able to replace (just yet)
Tutamail has a calendar. Tutamail hasn't said anything positive or factual about the republican parties either. They've made no statements
Google sheets is simply... Really good. I haven't been able to find anything else close. I've tried libre and even excel but sheets is by far my favourite. And I really love spreadsheets so I feel I'm in a horrible position and so torn.
Tell me about it. Wallet is literally the only good option. The alternatives to Maps don't come even close, it's simply the best and most convenient app. Same with Earth (use it rarely but still).
I guess I'll share my setup aha. Forewarning: I invested heavily into self hosting and being in full control of as much as possible, mainly to try to be 'Internet independent'.
I've tried HeliBoard as already suggested elsewhere, but I find its autocorrect and suggestions absolutely abysmal in English and even worse in my native Bulgarian. With Gboard I can usually type a letter or two and it already knows what's up, and it often knows what's the next word based just on the previous one.
How's your experience with it?
I tried to minimize my dependency on Google by signing up for various email services like Petal Mail by Huawei, Proton Mail, and Yandex Mail. I also tried to find smartphones that don't have Google by default, such as Murena smartphones and Huawei smartphones. But it seems like it's too late to look for those gems without Google because I have so many apps that I bought on Google, amounting to around five digits in Malaysian Ringgit, which is not cheap. So I think I'll stay with Google for now, sadly.
Google Search -> Ecosia, Qwant Browser -> Vivaldi Mail, Calender -> Proton* Drive -> Proton* DNS -> Quad9 Notes -> Joplin VPN -> Proton LLM/AI -> Mistral Translate -> DeepL Maps -> Here We Go Dall-E etc -> Stability Matrix Kindle -> Pocketbook
*Planning to move everything to a NAS with Nextcloud and synch in with Jottacloud as a backup.
I see from the "View source" option that your comment has everything in a neat, line-by-line fashion, though the final markup is decidedly not.
So, a pro-tip I've noticed from my own commenting experience: even if you have a line break, Lemmy (for some stupid reason) won't apply one when rendering; so if you want it to show, you have to use two line breaks, though then there will be an extra half-line or so that you probably never wanted.
For example, don't do
Line Item 1
Line Item 2
but rather do
Line Item 1
Line Item 2
Yes, I agree it's rather stupid.
It's the way Markdown works, for reasons, which is what Lemmy uses for its comment syntax.
If you want a regular line
break, you can put two spaces
at the end of a line.
Holy shit I've been using markdown message boards for years and
you just blew my mind
Yeah I know, and I don't like that limitation. Lol. xD
Yeah, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense here. Codeberg uses a Markdown flavor which honors single line breaks and it kind of surprised me how well that is working. Like, if you're used to Markdown, you can put those two spaces and they're just ignored. If you're not used to Markdown, it works like you'd expect.
I guess, the downside is that either each client needs to configure their Markdown renderer to behave like that, or I guess, the server software has to pre-process the Markdown to add in the double-spaces.
That's more of a problem for Lemmy than it is for Codeberg, because there is a number of different clients available.
Didn't know that Codeberg did that. I'll have to add that to my list of reasons why I love Codeberg. Lol.
Been degoogled for years at this point:
I've also decoupled from other similar services:
I never used any online password manager myself, I went from writing passwords in a literal book to KeePass, to now Vaultwarden* for that
* - self hosted
Nice, I have also chosen most of the same as you. For custom ROM there's CalyxOS, which ironically makes a Pixel phone one of the best picks for deGoogleing
I don't like the proprietary style of Proton Mail, plus they charge to have more than one account logged in, which is very inconvenient, so I set up my own Mailcow instance
For YouTube I highly recommend ReVanced
For notes I use Apache-CouchDB and connect using Obsidian with the LiveSync plugin. Live sync is fantastic and is as close as I think I'll ever get to OneNote.
NextCloud is great, a pain in the arse to add existing files as you need to upload everything, but a few hours of uploading with Cloudflare set to DNS only is fine
I've considered CalyxOS but prefer the hardening of GrapheneOS with no gapps - still means a phone decent on privacy. However I do try to keep an open mind, so if CalyxOS has additional privacy benefits to my existing setup I'd be interested.
I agree with the proprietary style of ProtonMail point, and my workaround for multiple accounts has been to use my own domain and have email rules for delivering messages to the respective folder. I don't have immediate plans to move from them, but I am watching the news cycle and have considered Tuta as an alternative.
I haven't used ReVanced, but I remember the original YouTube Vanced was a mod of the original YouTube apk - if that's still the case, I feel like ReVanced would offer even less privacy than Invidious or NewPipe. However I'm happy to be corrected.
I personally use Nextcloud notes but the Obsidian setup you have sounds interesting, especially if it's like OneNote - I'll keep it in mind!
Completely agree on your Nextcloud points - I uploaded my uncompressed Telegram archive to it, which took like 12 hours over my Gigabit lan. I suspect it hated the sheer amount of small files
ProtonMail was the GMail alternative for awhile, until Proton CEO did a stupid move. Otherwise, ProtonMail had actually been a great service and it was nice having a data cap of 500MB. It told me that was all I ever needed for the few years I had with it.
Firefox Forks over Chrome.
Tuta also has a free tie up to 1GB. Been slowly switching over for a few years. It isn't perfect and you can only use the first party app for "security" but tuta supports a ton of privacy efforts within the EU also
I fucked off Google Photos and now run Immich from a Raspberry Pi with raid 1 SSDs.
I have moved away from Google Contacts and Google Calendar and am now using Synology Calendar/Contacts. I've left Google Drive for Synology Drive and I've left Google Photos for Synology Photos. Everything is self hosted and self maintained.
These are what I use:
Browsers: Fennec, LibreWolf
Email Clients: K-9, Fair Email, Proton Mail, Thunderbird
Pictures: Fossify Camera, Fossify Gallery
File Sharing: Proton Drive
YouTube: Tubular
SMS Messaging: Textra (It's not FOSS, but unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a FOSS app in existence that shows the actual name of the person who's sent the message in group chats. They just show an icon, which isn't enough for me to keep track)
App store: Droid-ify (F-Droid), Aurora Store
Password Manager: Bitwarden
eBook Reader: Librera FD
Books: Bookwyrm
Translation: LibreTranslator
Calendar: Proton Calendar
What I can't find good alternatives for:
YouTube itself - enough said
Phone screen translation - I still use Google Assistant, and I'm not aware of anything else that grabs and translates all text on my phone screen
Maps - Rant time. This one is so annoying because there are FOSS navigation apps based on OpenStreetMap that are excellent in every way except one that makes them unusable for me: Using POV navigation instead of observing the convention of up = north. I did find one that lets you maintain a normal map view during navigation, but it doesn't keep your position centered automatically, which makes it impossible to use while driving. I have no idea who all you deranged people are who actually like the POV navigation, but there are definitely a lot of you because I can't find a replacement for Google Maps. I even tried Mapquest because at least it's not Google, but when I tried using it to navigate the first time, it somehow autocorrected "St" to "Ave" and I ended up lost lol. This maps situation really grinds my gears. I do still try to contribute as much as I can to OSM though because it's an important project, and hopefully someday an uninsane developer will make a proper alternative to Google Maps.
Would you mind hitting us with a direct link to tubular? This is one of the biggest hindrances to getting completely off google
FreeTube is a good replacement for YouTube on PC and NewPipe is good on Android phones.
Yeah Tubular is basically NewPipe with Sponsorblock. I'll give Freetube a try.
What I mean though is ... it's still YouTube, y'know?
Interesting, I've had the exact opposite problem with Osmand last summer: Could not get it to use POV mode (not smart enough to navigate otherwise when cycling), it was always stuck on North Is Up (there's a button to change that on the upper left corner which they now changed to click and hold so I have my hopes up that it'll work now).
The #1 Google service/app that I used in the past was Google Maps. I've replaced it with Magic Earth for the last few years and it's been great. It uses Open Street Map for its navigation data, handles addresses very well, has live crowd-sourced traffic and hazard data, and can record rolling footage if you want it to act like a dashcam.
It works on Android and iOS, and supports Apple watch and Android car play if you use those.
For email I use Protonmail, for Google drove I use Proton Drive and my own self hosted NAS. For browsing I use several different Firefox forks like Zen, Floorp, LibreWolf, etc. UnGoogled Chromium for the rare times that a website "needs" Chrome to run.
My phone runs GrapheneOS which works great.
I'll have to check out Magic Earth. My biggest fear switching from Google Maps was not having up to date road closures or accident reports.
The traffic data, at least in my area of the US, is pretty good.
Road closures are a rough point for sure. Generally, Magic Earth does have them marked, but not always. And the map data is only updated once a month. So even if a new closure does show up on Magic Earth, it takes several weeks to a month.
This isn't a terrible issue for me in my area, because I know the major roads and highways decently well, but when in other states or cities, it can be a problem.
That being said, it's still about 80% accurate on the whole. And on rare occasion, it has actually had a closure marked correctly that Google Maps didn't.
Firefox.
Immich for photos
Radicale for calendar and contacts
My own mail domain and server, for mail
Lineages on android
The only thing I cannot do without, is google maps.
Mail: Posteo Maps: osmand for walking, hiking, cycling, skiing and magic earth for car navigation (because of real live traffic) Drive: nextcloud Phone: second Hand Google pixel with graphene OS installed (degiogled Android)
There are like 10 communities called something like privacy and a couple with degoogle in their name specifically. If you need more alternatives check them out. ;)
I use Ad Nauseum. Why degoogle when you can actively cost them money?
It seems interesting
I use F-Droid and Aurora Store on my phone and replaced the Google apps, that came preloaded on the phone, with FOSS apps. NewPipe on my phone and FreeTube on my PC to replace YouTube. I don't use Gmail. My Google account is on a Proton account. After I am sure I have all my desired apps switched over to email sign in, I will delete the Google account. I am also switching my Proton mail for Tuta mail. Proton is on the wrong side. I also dumped Microsoft over a year ago. I have been on Linux since then. I have avoided FaceBook for over a decade and never maintained a Twitter account.
I recommend, as a bonus, to use Universal Android Debloater, it has an easy to understand GUI and it uses AndroidDebugBridge to connect to the phone via USB. It shows all the installed apps, recommends with various tiers the apps that are worth uninstalling - every app has a helpful description - and blitzes the fuckers. System or factory bloat isn't safe from it.
Chrome โก๏ธ Brave - Open source and privacy focused
Search โก๏ธ Qwant - Good search results and privacy focusing
Photos โก๏ธ Immich - Pretty much Google Photos but self hosted
Drive โก๏ธ Nextcloud - Use it with Hetzner Storage Share, pretty cheap and easy to use
Gmail โก๏ธ mailbox.org - European email hosting focusing on privacy
Meet โก๏ธ Nextcloud
Other than Fediverse apps/websites, and F-droid for FOSS, I have switched to ProtonVPN and their encrypted emails.
The problem with Google services is that they will be probably one of the last ones (from big tech companies) I will stop using. I wanted to switch to Proton this year, but there has been some controversy of its CEO supporting Trump...
Edit: Removed unrelated paragraph.
Google's CEO literally showed up to Trump's inauguration and pretty sure even paid millions or billions. So if you're not using Proton because their CEO made a tweet supporting Trump, then Google should probably be one of the first companies that you must boycott, in my opinion.
Was out of the loop on that so I just did the most cursory search. What do you think of this take on it?