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1. Narbray (narbray@varishangout.net)'s status on Saturday, 18-Mar-2023 11:53:23 JST Narbray
   >this one was quite long but the rest of post will probably be quite short lol
   
   lately i'm a bit bored and i have some free time, i don't want to talk only about anime so i want to try something different, i'm not a software expert and i'm quite far from being one, i haven't been dabbling in software and similar things all my life so i consider myself a noob so don't take so seriously the things i say i just want to share my experience using free software and getting as far as i can from Microsoft and Google (and obviously Apple) and what kind of software i have been using as alternatives, my intention is just to debate a bit about it and have some fun with it.
   
   
   it's been a few years since i decided to start changing all the software i use (as much as i could) and start using free and open source alternatives, and the truth is i don't regret it at all now that i have come this far i feel very comfortable with everything i am using and actually i doubt that there is anything that will make me go back, in general I know that many people have no choice but to use certain software, I for example have been forced all these years to use whatsapp, application that I hate and for which there are very good alternatives but unfortunately all my contacts use and I have no choice, impossible to convince them to use something else.
   
   but my real incursion began a year ago when I decided to abandon window and go to linux, and the truth is that I have become very fond of this distribution and I doubt that for a while I will change for something else, I also decided to eliminate google from my life as much as possible, currently I keep my google account and gmail, but I do not use them and I'm only using 3 google services; VirusTotal (due to limitations in my internet I find very useful the hash compare system they use when uploading files), Youtube (as there is no really valid alternative that convinces me) and google service on my android phone (believe me I have wanted to switch to a de-google system but it has been impossible, currently I keep it 'under control' with a firewall).
   
   this is just thread with all the alternatives I use and my experience with each one of them, I will try not to make it too long and tedious, my intention is not to recommend you the software, each one choose which software to use according to your preferences and needs, my intention is only to share my experience and as an extra maybe motivate you to use free software and leave the umbrella of the big multinationals.
   
   for most of the software I use I inspired on the following thread of the varis forum
   https://varishangout.com/index.php?threads/de-google.279/
   I am also going to base on it for the order of the software that I am going to post.
   • Narbray (narbray@varishangout.net)'s status on Saturday, 18-Mar-2023 11:53:20 JST Narbray

     in reply to
     Changing your email for a non gmail may be the most important step in the de-googe process, and the first big step I took, I have to be honest, it was a pain in the ass to switch all my accounts to new email services, but it is also the big step, some time ago I made my switch, abandoning Gmail completely, I currently have a gmail account that I don't use at all and it is replaced by ProtonMail ( https://proton.me/ ) my experience using proton mail has been wonderful, I don't miss Gmail at all and I have everything I need in my proton accounts, I deleted my gmail from my phone and instead I use the proton client and k-9 mail to manage my mails, for more privacy I also use AnonAddy ( https://anonaddy.com/ ) to create anonymous email aliases, I switched from the mozilla service and AnonAddy has been a good experience.
     My experience with the email switch has been excellent, and I haven't really seen the need to use a gmail account for anything so far, plus the proton mail account is good for all your services including vpn, cloud storage and calendar all with one account.
   • Narbray (narbray@varishangout.net)'s status on Saturday, 18-Mar-2023 11:53:21 JST Narbray

     in reply to
     Social Networks; how to live without them right? Well it is not a secret for anyone here that leaving a little bit of social networks like the one with the blue bird can be very good for our mental health, but it is also quite difficult, little by little I have been withdrawing from all social networks that I used to use before, however in some cases I have not been able to leave it completely, currently I use facebook for 'work' reasons but I don't use it for anything personal and I try to use it as little as possible, I still keep my instagram account from which I take some memes from time to time, but this only happens a couple of times in months and now that I think about it I should make a re evaluation of if I really need this account or there is a better place to take memes and videos from and delete this account once and for all. Getting out of social networks has been one of the hardest things I have ever done, nowadays I use more actively the Varis platforms (pleroma instance and forum) and twitter, I thought about switching to a front-end but as with yt I decided to go back to the original platform as it didn't convince me at all, I have an account that is in my biography and I use it from time to time although I don't really spend more than 20 min a day on twitter, I think that for now to reduce to the minimum the time I spend there would be a good option, for this I have started to use more actively pixiv although unfortunately it is not a good alternative to twitter at all, now in no case I use the applications for the respective social networks and I do everything through browsers, this way the tracking and shit is reduced a little. The place where I spend the most time is here, and people sincerely I tell you that you are the best community I've been so far and this is much appreciated and that's why every time I leave I end up doing my best to come back.
     
     In the social networking topic is where I have made less progress in the open source and privacy aspect although I am quite open to recommendations, since the alternatives are not always very good and the front-ends do not convince me at all. For now my next priority is to abandon instagram altogether and to finish my account once and for all.
   • Narbray (narbray@varishangout.net)'s status on Saturday, 18-Mar-2023 11:53:22 JST Narbray

     in reply to
     the first software or service is the search engine; luckily there are many good alternatives for every taste, I didn't know there were so many alternatives until I started to investigate and some are even better than Google or Bing search engine, the main reason why I wanted to change was because of censorship, so I needed a search engine that did not censor as much as Google and DuckDuckGo was not a good option for this currently I think they even censor more than google, in the end after trying several search engines I decided to stay with Metager (https://metager. org/), a German web search engine with a pretty simple interface but that always gave me the search results I needed, it was privacy friendly, open source and had some good configurations, it also allowed to open links using anonymous proxies, that is until one day.... one day for some reason metager started to give me very bad search results, the links didn't even have to do with what I was looking for, I didn't understand what was going on, it was happening to me even using the German version, so before getting frustrated I decided it was time to change search engine, then I came across Searx, a Self-Hosted and open source search engine and I started to dig into the list of public instances (https://searx.space/), after seeing several red banners typical of this search engine, I stayed with this instance (https://search.neet.works/search) which I am currently using as my secondary search engine since my primary search engine uses only Bing for its results and I really love how this search engine uses a lot of search engines, which are also configurable and has a lot of other configurations, its interface is simple but very nice and tidy, but well recently I found the search engine YOU,com (https://you.com/) and this search engine is excellent, first the search engine does collect some information from its users and I even think it shares some of it with Microsoft, but this can be disabled using the 'private mode', however if you are not interested in this you can create an account and use the excellent benefits that this search engine brings, what I like about this search engine is that you practically don't have to enter any link to find what you are looking for, It is mainly oriented to answer questions and doubts of its users and it also uses an artificial intelligence that can be used to answer questions, this is why I decided to stay with this search engine since there are really many benefits that it brings and after using this intelligence I don't think I will change it for another search engine for now. I understand that the search engine is open source although this is not the case for its IA. The truth is that my experience so far with these two search engines has been excellent, you.com I have been trying it for a short time but so far I have no complaints although the results sometimes launch a little slow, its interface is excellent with everything well organized and getting the information very easy, personally I always use it in 'private mode' and so far I have no complaints with the search results, I guess they will be similar to Bing and unfortunately will have the censorship that this has and hopefully this will improve in the future, that's why I still use Searx as a secondary search engine which so far I have no complaints, is undoubtedly the best search engine I've used of all search engines without AI implemented. Anyway all this about search engines with AI is something that is still young and You.com is also a very young search engine that still needs a lot of development so we can't be so demanding.
     well, this is my experience with search engines as summarized as possible.
   • Narbray (narbray@varishangout.net)'s status on Saturday, 18-Mar-2023 11:53:46 JST Narbray

     in reply to
     the truth, stop using google maps was probably the easiest thing in my way to de-google me, OpenStreetMap (https://www.openstreetmap.org/) is a very good and complete service, personally I use in my phone OSMAnd (https://osmand.net/) an application that uses OpenStreetMap maps and so far I have not needed to resort to Google map for anything, and I live in a special country that I never thought I would have such a complete map, as for 3D/Satellite maps I thought for a while to use Marble, but I did not find the version for android and I had no idea how to use it so I discarded it, anyway I have not needed to use it so far, although it would be nice to have it as an alternative to Google Earth.
     In my mobile I also have installed GmapsWV, an application of f-droid that shows the web version of google map in a restricted way only for emergency cases in which OpenStreetMap is not enough, however seen that the application is only 33 kb and I haven't needed to use it even once I've been thinking about uninstalling it and installing it only when needed.