De-Googlifying - my journey

SesameStreetThug · April 18, 2019, 11:59am

One point I see rarely brought up is the search bubble. Google controls what search results you see and places you in a bubble. This means google can lower the search rankings of their competitors (as they did in the past to protonmail). I can think of many other bad ways it can be used.

domsch1988 · April 18, 2019, 12:03pm

How does this handle existing Passwords? Do you have to change the ones you currently have? I have several sites where i’m not able to change the password for various reasons.

I’ve been using DuckDuckGo for really long because of it. On top of it, for IT People it offers “direct Answers”, which are often the top Stack Exchange results or complete Cheat Sheets right in the search. That’s incredibly convenient. Plus, dark themes!

redgek · April 18, 2019, 12:05pm

ah, yeah, in that case it won’t help you.

SesameStreetThug · April 18, 2019, 12:06pm

Duckduckgo has bangs which are also very useful. I’ve used !w to search wikipedia. !translate for reading runes. Even !susepkg for looking up software packages on opensuse.

redgek · April 18, 2019, 12:08pm

!arch arch way

AnotherDev · April 18, 2019, 12:09pm

His first article on the matter was in 2005 I believe. He’s written several justifying his making money as an open source developer.

His biggest target is Google, but there are more.

SesameStreetThug · April 18, 2019, 12:10pm

Ironically Microsoft has done more for open source than google it seems.

AnotherDev · April 18, 2019, 12:11pm

Microsoft also pays for contributions, AFAIK. Could be wrong on that. I know Russinovich was paid before he was an employee and I believe Allen Underwood and Chrissy LeMaire have received monetary compensation.

Could just be an MVP thing.

Sorry for the off topic, Gek. Feel it’s somewhat relevant though

redgek · April 18, 2019, 12:15pm

off topic is natural part of forums

ro55mo · April 19, 2019, 9:48pm

Leaving aside all the discussions around privacy and the ethics of google as a company Its fun to learn to do things for yourself.

MFZuul · April 21, 2019, 6:09am

Do you use google docs often?

Have you used or seen sharelatex?

You can pay for the hosted version, but also self host.

sounds like a good alternative to Google docs, something we freedom land uni peeps use a lot on group projects.

redgek · April 21, 2019, 1:46pm

only at work, coz they are goolaglecucked

AnotherDev · April 21, 2019, 1:50pm

MFW Office365 runs the office

redgek · April 21, 2019, 1:52pm

I love how they have us write a changelog in the 1st page of the docs.

I am sitting there like:

doesn’t google docs have history and you can name the changes
Just use plain text or LaTeX and git it

then I realize how much of a tist I am

AnotherDev · April 21, 2019, 1:53pm

All of our documentation is in Markdown files or Confluence pages We only get word documents when it’s something from HR or Marketing/Sales/NonTechPeopleThatDoNotKnowAnything

redgek · April 21, 2019, 1:54pm

I literally wrote my first design doc for a thing in md and gitted in in a repo, they asked me to upload it to gdrive lol

had to convert it

mfw

MFZuul · April 21, 2019, 4:58pm

I was told there would be good news updates, were at?

redgek · April 21, 2019, 5:24pm

I slept for 13 hours. and am wasting the rest

MFZuul · April 21, 2019, 5:52pm

the biggest of reees

redgek · April 22, 2019, 8:55pm

Shit, here we go again

So I installed Lineage OS 16 on my phone. No Gapps, microG instead. Tried to debloat as much as possible, without being too in the way.

BTW, the phone is Samsung Galaxy A5 (2017)

The ROM

Battery drain is like 2x/3x compared to stock ROM
max volume on the speaker seems to be lower. Not that I use it much, but sometimes I put someone I talk to on the speaker while doing other shit
weird screen brightness scaling, seems like the last 20% controls like 80% of the brightness
The ROM build is third party, as there is no Android 9 official LOS build (maybe build myself later)
seems snappy
no bloat (including Samsung and Google bloat) cept what I installed, more free space
ease of control of the device (as in what is turned on, what is installed)

All in all, wouldn’t recommend on my device.

The Apps

Magisk - for root
AdAway - now that I am rooted, I can ad block all I want
AFWall+ - firewall on my phone? yes please!
Simple Apps - File Manager, Gallery, Notes
F-Droid - duh
Yalp Store - to download proprietary shit from Play store (like bank and security app)
Firefox - web
Forecastie - weather (just trying out, based on OpenWeatherMap)
NewPipe - youtube that plays in the background (recommended by @SesameStreetThug)
Open Camera
OsmAnd+ - offline maps, instead of HERE WeGo that I used to use (free on F-Droid)
QKSMS - sms (recommended by @SesameStreetThug)
ProtonMail ( is actually proprietary )
Telegram ( is actually garbage coz needs ur phone#)
Gadgetbridge - fitness band/“smart” watch
https://masterpassword.app/ - password manager

And a few more propriety I had to have.

The apps generally seems to be good, or at least good enough. As most of them are open-source I don’t complain at all.

Thoughts

I’ll roll with this for some time, even though the battery life is horrendous. I’ll try and use the OsmAnd+ maps and compare them with HERE WeGo. AFAIK both use OpenStreetMap data.