hellfire103

hellfire103, 7 months ago

Privacy, from my point of view, means I have control over where my personal data goes and I am not being surveilled by governments or by ad companies. I generally use Techlore, Privacy Guides, and this community for reference and recommendations.

If not for Play Books, my YouTube channel and a few services still using Google SSO, I would be completely off Google.

Current Google Substitutions:

• Google Search --> Startpage
• Maps --> OpenStreetMap / Organic Maps
• YouTube --> Invidious / Yattee, and PeerTube
• Play Store --> F-Droid and Aurora Store
• News --> NetNewsWire (using Sky News, Gay Times, them., and a few comics and oddities)
• Gmail --> ProtonMail
• Meet --> Jitsi Meet
• Drive --> Filen
• Calendar --> Proton Calendar
• Translate --> TransLite
• Photos --> Filen
• Chrome --> LibreWolf / Orion
• Chat --> WhatsApp, Discord, and Instagram (I would prefer to use Matrix, but my increasingly distributed friends won’t move)
• Google Workspace --> LibreOffice, GOffice, and ONLYOFFICE
• Blogger --> Neocities
• Keep --> Cryptee
• Forms --> FramaForms (I plan to start using Purplix once it’s out of alpha)

hellfire103, 7 months ago

Well, for all of the above, I’d personally recommend using https://linuxmint.com/ to get started. I’ve always found that it’s too much work to debloat Windows, and it’s considerably less secure than Linux (normally).

Most Steam games run on Linux, but there are a few that do not. Music production could also be a bugbear, as a lot of popular software does not run. You could always try using WineHQ to run the Windows versions, however, or try a compatible alternative.

If you simply must run Windows, you have two options. Dual-booting is a good idea, as this lets you select whether you want to boot Windows or Linux when you turn on the computer. Another option is using a virtual machine; this would allow you to run Windows inside Linux. For this, I’d recommend VirtualBox to start with.