Credit to https://www.reddit.com/user/lukakopajtic/
There might be some changes that could improve it further:
- Remove Brave
- Maybe add Signal; It’s easier than Element, but it’s also centralized
- Stop suggesting Linux Mint specifically
- Recommend Hosted Nextcloud
- Add GrapheneOS
- Maybe add Delta chat
- Maybe remove Bluesky
- Remove Stremio and add Jellfyin (even though it’s selfhosted and not a direct equivalent)
- Add ente because Immich is selfhosted
Any other suggestions?
Linux Mint is the simplest Linux distro if you come from Windows, unless there are others that recommendation is pretty much accurate.
Anyone else who uses other distros on a daily basis will simply skip that recommendation.
I get the desire to post “simple” answers like this. And while some of the recommends do make sense… I believe the lists should be better researched. A few other comments also pointed out some of the issues already.
I’ve noticed with a lot of these lists that worse/unreasonable/less private/less secure/not even European or FOSS are being recommended as alternatives and I think they do more harm than good for people that might need genuine help making this process more simple. They also tend to miss a lot of excellent alternatives.
For what it’s worth, these lists oversimplify and can’t take into account individual needs, so own research is always necessary IMO.
For me, it’s paramount that the software we use is secure and privacy respecting / transparent. A great resource for good recommendations is: privacyguides.org .
Suggesting linux mint specifically is good. Linux is overwhelming to new users, don’t give them choice paralysis too.
I honestly agree here. Better to suggest a specific distro than just saying “use Linux”.
I see that this is focused on foss alternatives streaming wide I would suggest mubi and your local library which often include streaming services. At least here in Germany.
This is the pic that made me join
Nice, if you have any questions about Lemmy feel free to ask
you love to hear it
signal is a good option for messaging. it is technically american, but i feel like FOSS projects should generally get a pass.
also, as an american who is very not okay with what our (russia’s) government (puppet) is doing, wouldn’t supporting non-american businesses mean paying the tariffs and supporting the oligarchs? i’m not really sure what us yanks can do besides just trying not to spend ANY money.
what us yanks can do besides just trying not to spend ANY money.
That’s about to get a lot easier. How do you feel about a $3000 laptop? Car manufacturing might just stop temporarily. They’ve got a month to figure out how to change pretty major processes that companies may not have the current ability to change.
And let’s see if they’re going to move into the US or out.
Signal is extremely expensive, they pay $15m+ to Google and Amazon because they don’t self-host so around half of their donations go directly to tech oligarchy
Yeet Brave & element. add jabber and irc. Swap mint 4 fedora atomic.
Why should Element be removed?
Bluesky absolutely belongs in the left column.
It’s not Transparent, Decentralized or Open Source.
It is a centralized social media network exactly like Twitter. The only ‘open’ part is a protocol that lets you interact with their, private, service.
The fact that it is ‘open source’ is largely a red herring, if Bluesky decides to no longer support their protocol then it is worthless. It cannot simply be forked and remain useful.
Bluesky is simply engaging in a PR campaign to steal customers from Twitter. It is exactly the same as Twitter in all of the ways that matter. It can be purchased by Musk or manipulated by the existing owner in the same way as Twitter.
Making a Bluesky account is simply trusting a new corporation to not act like a corporation in the future… which is a pretty naive position.
Ecosia is not open source, or decentralized. It is a private search engine based in Germany that provides search results from the major search engines and sells advertisements via Yahoo and Microsoft ad networks. These ad networks are part of Surveillance Capitalism and earn their money primarily by spying on you, collating your data and selling it/using it to place ads.
Stremio is largely a piece of software used to funnel people into paying for monthly for pirate streaming services. It’s not getting rid of Netflix or Disney+, it’s giving you the option of paying Russian or North Korean supported cybergangs instead of Netflix for access to streaming content.
The real open source alternative is Jellyfin. Then using qBittorrent along with Sonarr and Radarr to self-host your own media server.
The other suggestions are mostly okay with minor gripes.
- They could add GrapheneOS as an Android alternative.
- Linux Mint is not a bad option but ‘What Linux Distro should we recommend to new people’ is a contentious topic in the community, Mint is fine but there are other options (EndeavourOS is Arch Linux installed with the Calamares graphical installer and some sane options for a desktop PC, btw)
- While Signal isn’t ‘open source’. It is, for the moment, a secure option that doesn’t require a lot of user knowledge to setup. It is a vastly superior choice than using social media for messaging without requiring a lot of technical knowledge on the user’s part.
It is exactly the same as Twitter in all of the ways that matter.
I think the fucking Nazi at the head matters.
There are Nazis at the head of Lemmy instances. Because it isn’t centralized it’s very easy to deal with.
When there is a centrally controlled social media and a Nazi takes over, it is a huge problem and requires a large amount of social effort to solve.
Bluesky could be purchased by Elon (or the current owner may decide they prefer the alt right by this time next year) and then we’d be in the same situation.
The weakness in Twitter and Bluesky is central control. Elon just provided a very poignant example as to why.
Don’t use Bluesky and also delete Twitter. Don’t support the idea of a single person or entity controlling the social lives of everyone else.
Delta Chat is European and is better alternative for messaging apps
lol… Brave… Come on man.
Yeah, I was gonna say… Recommending Brave isn’t a great look right now. Especially right in the wake of the Brave CEO going off on that unhinged ultra conservative rant.
And Firefox recently had its own controversy, with the removal of their “we promise never to sell your info” section of their ToS. When questioned, they basically responded with “well some jurisdictions define “sell” as “exchanging for money”… We don’t agree with that. But because some jurisdictions do define it that way, we need to remove that section. All we want to do is exchange your info for money. But again, we don’t think that should be considered selling your info.”
Mullvad has a search engine now (Leta)
Did you respond to the right comment? I was discussing browsers, not search engines.
Yeah Mullvad also has a browser (which is well-known), but now it has a search engine as well
Just wanted to say that it is the perfect replacement for brave
Fucking brave shows it’s ugly head again. The only thing worse than a browser owned by a greedy corpo is a browser that is owned by two greedy corpos, one of which is mostly a crypto scam corpo.
I don’t think BlueSky is a great alternative, it’s still American and also still pretty big tech
But it needs to stay. Mastodon is better, but Bluesky has momentum, and anything to get people off Twitter.
Mastodon is still there, and first.
I also still don’t fully understand if it can be categorized as decentralized.
Nope, its a twitter clone
Don’t use Brave. It’s got a lot of privacy issues, even compared to the Mozilla foundation. Underneath, it’s still Chrome.
Plus the CEO is MAGA
Could you clarify some of these issues? I’m a long time brave user and have really enjoyed using it and haven’t noticed any issues besides some if their Web 3.0 integrations that you can turn off.
Always happy to find Better options though.
Instead of downvoting you, as is the style on these types of platforms it seems… I’ll actually try to link a few websites. One moment.
EDIT:
Crypto is dumb and bad for the environment
“reward” system, which is not cool
Further issues some have with the browser
And really, it is just YET ANOTHER Chromium browser, which gives Google MORE dominance on the web, which is a really really BAD thing. They are the ones who are trying everything in their power to not only siphon data off of you to sell to shady businesses, but also don’t like how we can block ads, which I care the most about, personally. I’m sure there are plenty more people who are way more knowledgeable than I that can explain the domino effect of what happens when a company has total domination in a field, be it technology or otherwise.
EDIT2: Opera (and Opera GX) for those that like it for some reason…
Thank you for the assist with the reply. I’d also like to add some recent comments the CEO has said…
Thanks for actually answering my question. It was a genuine question based on my opinion for what I knew.
Based on those articles, the crypto stuff doesn’t necessarily worry me as much as the affiliate highjacking that they were caught doing. I wasn’t aware. Honey recently got caught up In a scandle just as bad if not worse (by scale of users).
And yeah, I heard Opera was pretty terrible. I wanna say I heard the developers of themselves opera left and created Vivaldi and Opera is Chinese owned I think? I could be wrong on that.
Either way, thanks.
Also, the new owners run payday loan schemes.
https://hindenburgresearch.com/opera-phantom-of-the-turnaround/
Of course! I’d rather send links to someone than sit there and just downvote and move on, even if said person ignores every thing I sent. I tried to help!
My go to is this: Is it Chromium? Move on!
I want to see more Gecko and Webkit browsers than yet another freaking Chromium browser!
The Chinese ownership is stated in the “opera is shady as fuck!” link I sent! When you have time, and if you care enough, I’d recommend looking at the myriad reasons why they are both just really bad browsers, even for someone who can ignore the crypto garbage!
Anyway, have a good rest of your day, Jack! :)
Yeah, I’m not exactly thrilled on chrome either but at a certain point I think it comes down to “who’s fucking me the least”. Which I totally understand it’s probably still chrome but I think just like with privacy, there is no sweet spot with browsers. It’s all subjective on each person’s threshold and what they want/need.
Call me crazy, but an example I’ve been thinking about is this:
Firefox is great. But with their recent TOS addition a lot of people want to jump ship of which ive seen a lot reference forks of Firefox. If, hypothetically, mozilla followed suit and became the next google, wouldnt a lot of those forks just be getting their updates from upstream (depending on the type)? And either way, they would be gecko which is developed by mozilla. So if 10 years from now mozilla goes the data route then we could be back in the same predicament.
Of course, those forks might not add crypto or screw over creators by affiliate link highjacking so I get there’s more to it then that.
But either way, I kinda look at these things like the Signal messenger argument. Is it a perfect solution? No, some people say go further because it’s centralized but it does offer a great mix of security and eas of access. And I think those trade offs apply to browsers as well.
Anyways, thanks again and have a good one as well! I appreciate the discussion!
Lots of these are still American, and Bluesky isnt any-less of a walled garden, they just haven’t reached enshitification-critical-mass yet.
Yeah, the list does not fit this community
Headquarters Seattle, Washington, United States
I like how it starts with getting off Twitter and trying out Lemmy and ends with switching to Linux.
