De-Googlifying - my journey

[Venom415]

Thinking of trying proto mail instead of gmail, would rather make my own Pi server but that can wait.
Anyone have any experience with it?

[redgek]

I only have free tier experience, and cept the fact that I can’t use POP3/IMAP it’s basically

I have nothing to complain about

experience

[Grim_Reaper]

gdrive - for nothing atm, but plan to host

I use Mega.nz I guess Nextcloud is better but that involves lot more investment.

Translate - it’s pretty good, eh?

For this I have no replacement. I have found few alternatives but they are all poor in comparison. I just access google translate through Tor.

[ro55mo]

I have de-googled myself down to

Android - To be replaced with a Librem 5 probably.
YouTube - I think I will be fine without an account. Also a lot of the people I like are on other platforms now. Patreon & Vimeo etc
Google Groups - For just one group.
Google Maps - Need to find a decent alternative.

Email - Self hosted Dovecot / Postfix
Cloud - Self hosted Nextcloud
Search - Startpage or duckduckgo
Firefox - Always been my go to browser
Signal - For messaging
Cloudflare - For DNSSEC
ISP - https://www.aa.net.uk/broadband/why-choose-aaisp/
VPN - PIA

On the non-google side with Proton / Steam Play / Vulkan hopefully I can dump my Windows 10 install. I do almost everything in Linux already. Its not a dual boot setup. I just swap the boot disks in BIOS.

I have no “smart” home speakers or automation.

[redgek]

Android - To be replaced with a Librem 5 probably.

Would love to do that too.

YouTube - I think I will be fine without an account. Also a lot of the people I like are on other platforms now. Patreon & Vimeo etc

YouTube have RSS feeds for channels, so might switch to that.

Google Maps - Need to find a decent alternative.

There are different OSM clients, many proprietary, tho.

Email - Self hosted Dovecot / Postfix

That is dope, how hard is to set up and maintain that, head a lot of bad comments about mail self-hosting.

I just swap the boot disks in BIOS.

Same.

I have no “smart” home speakers or automation.

I approve.

[ro55mo]

Email - Self hosted Dovecot / Postfix

I admit it took a lot of effort to get working (and I am sure Proton mail is way more secure) but once it was up it has been maintenance free bar updating the SSL certificate. You need a domain and a static IP of course. I am VERY lucky in that my ISP is fine with customers running servers off a domestic IP address.

It was just something I wanted to do for the sake of it and to educate myself.

Here is my guide.

It might be a tiny bit out of date but I built it on Debian 9 and that is still current so it wont be to bad.

For my web mail client I just use the app that comes inside Nextcloud. That plus my phone and Thunderbird for the desktop and you have it all.

I backup the email and its database to my FreeNAS and then an AWS S3 bucket.

[dsdhfhd]

Just an FYI if you want to get rid of the play store you can get an app called yalp on fdroid that you can replace it with. You can also use an app called /system/app/mover to move google services and other annoying/unwanted things to normal apps and then uninstall them. Some phones throw a bit of a fit when you do this but I’ve always been successful. Last, for youtube you can get skytube or newpipe if you watch on mobile at all. I like skytube a bit more for the interface but that is subjective of course. On both you can subscribe to channels and it will give you a new videos feed that is better than the one youtube gives you itself with an account, from what I hear from other people.

[geeklife]

I was all onboard with de-googlifying my life a few months ago. Then bought a Chromebook and that ship sailed. Good luck with the switch. I admire those who do.

[MFZuul]

Chromebook

what one?

[AnotherDev]

Email - Self hosted Dovecot / Postfix

You gonna blog that? I’m attempting the same. Would love to see battle scars and war stories lol.

Can’t be harder than Exchange, yeah?

SCROLLING FAIL. I SEE IT. Thanks!

[geeklife]

Samsung Chromebook Plus V2. Core M3 version.

[MFZuul]

I got Ubuntu working on the first Samsung chromebooks (but it was a pain in the ass not worth the time), looks like yours is locked down pretty tight. However you do have Linux program support now looks like.

Samsung’s Chromebook Plus now supports Linux apps

too bad you can’t be free, condolences

[geeklife]

I’m getting there. Already installed lubuntu dual boot. It’s a good machine just wish I could run linux bare metal on it.

[c0febabe]

Why de-Google?

[redgek]

goolagle is bad, mkay. Scroll up.

[c0febabe]

Ah, so as always, it’s just a meme?

[redgek]

You’re a meme

[c0febabe]

I got the message. I’ll leave you be.

[SesameStreetThug]

Why?

So why do this? There are a couple of reasons.

1. Privacy concerns. We all know Google tracks you, it doesn’t matter if they really do it for ads, I don’t like the concept.
2. All your eggs in one basket. What if Google goes down, unlikely, but what if they close a service (that happened), what if they get hacked? Having most of your computing (at least in web) done via Google is simply dumb IMO.
3. Not agreeing with Google’s polices. “Don’t like it, don’t use it”

read the OP

[AnotherDev]

Why de-Google?

Speaking for RedGek, I am a fan of doing my own thing. I wish I knew about cars like I know about computers.

I love infrastructure and systems administration. It’s why, after getting a Computer Science degree, I stayed on the Ops side and didn’t jump into being a code monkey.

It’s also a cool resume builder and conversation starter. My previous job interviews involved discussing my podcast, websites, and NextCloud server more than my job experience or education.

Lack of trust in the BIG CORP is another facet. Check out what Zed Shaw had to say about corporations killing open source. Relevant to the discussion:

My favorite bit:

Yeah, yeah. So it’s pretty straightforward to just say, like – let’s take just Google. Google’s entire company, up until maybe eight years ago, when they started making Go and their own stuff, their whole company was based on open source. They used Linux, they used tools, they used everything… I don’t really think they built too much of their own stuff. In fact, they got sued for that; they were using Java and they weren’t paying for it, so they got sued for it, right?

So if you take a company like Google - and they are worth 600 billion dollars, something like that; something really insane right now, 500-600 billion dollars. So they’re benefitting from open source, and then the average open source developer that works on the tools they need makes almost nothing. In fact, what we see is an open source developer is gonna die from cancer and he goes on GoFundMe and begs people for money for his funeral. And then there’s this company that’s making 500 billion dollars.

So that’s the thing - it’s really obvious, but for some weird reason programmers sort of all think that’s okay. They can’t really think about it. And in fact, they go so far as if you try to make money with your open source - like, you license it GPL; I remember I licensed something GPL, and all these people from Django started yelling at me that I licensed in GPL. Like, how dare I try to make money on it?

So we go with this thing, this sort of like self-loathing, “If you wanna get paid, you’re greedy”, but the company who’s making tons of money on your stuff is not greedy. They’re allowed to make that money, they’re a corporation. But you, the developer, you should be helping the universe with your free stuff, and you’re just a greedy jerk for doing that, for trying to make money?