#europe #european #europeanalternatives #europeanalternative #privacy #opensource #software #freedom
Bitwarden is from the US. KeePass would be an alternative. But ProtonPass ist great. Nice List.
Arch Linux as the alternative to Windows will make people never try Linux again. It should just say Linux, no flavours or personal preferences needed, alternatively a listing of the most newbie user friendly distros ever. Everybody already into Linux know what they want.
My current recommendations.
Just play games? Bazzite.
Just need a work machine? Debian 13.
Want a little of everything? Fedora.Linux Mint as great middle
No one mentioning Le Chat for the LLM part?
Le Chat FTW
Haven’t heard of that. Searched it and saw mistral ai. Is that the right one?
Yup. I really like it but admittedly use AI lightly
What’s the benefit to this one over others?
At the level I use it, nothing. There are people that seem to think the American ones are far ahead in their ability to deliver what you want but even more reason to have a viable European alternative
Nope to proton, it’s weird how they always show up in these kinds of posts.
People say nope to proton and signal in here without offering a better alternative. I’m open to shitting on them (proton CEO really pissed me off by praising the trump admin), but just saying nope to them without functional alternatives isn’t helpful.
I guess I don’t care enough or pay enough attention to what CEOs say, nor know the context in which it was said… (Maybe brown nosing to play nice, idk) but I switched to Proton away from Google and Microsoft because it seemed like a good, complete, little ecosystem of apps. The company themselves based out of Switzerland has some of the best privacy laws to back their claims of remaining privacy-first and not sharing or selling user data.
Does it cost? Sure, probably a lot of that has to do with hosting the infrastructure, but I’m willing to pay for, and recommend to regular friends and family who aren’t as paranoid about using “no name” FOSS apps people haven’t heard of. I get the incentive of foss, but others won’t care to understand its benefits no matter how much you tell them, so Proton is a great “big” name company they can trust.
How and why is Signal not “American big tech”? It even runs on Amazon’ servers!
I read “American/Big Tech” as things that can be either the one or the other but not necessarily both. Telegram is a for-profit, publicly traded company based in Dubai that recently announced a partnership with xAI to include Grok into its services. Signal on the other hand is based in California and has been entirely non-profit so far. Pick your poison, I guess, but I know what I’m gonna pick.
You make it sound like there are only these two possibilities, that’s where it gets misleading…
I mean, I can personally also recommend Threema, but good luck getting people to use it.
Ecosia is debatable. Also, why the fuck would you introduce Arch Linux as an alternative for Windows?? Start them with Mint/Fedora/Ubuntu.
Linux is Linux. Archinstall+KDE is quite easy to install and get working. Sure, neon or some flavour of debian will be easier. But, it’s practically all the same these days. Also, Arch may have better compatibility with some laptops because of the latest Linux kernel. Moreover, if the person is a little tech savvy, the arch wiki is an excellent place to learn about Linux.
Also the arch logo is sexy AF
I just can’t unsee this.
Proton mail is MAGA now. I would remove it.
what?
The CEO of Proton publicly supported Trump in a tweet.
I’m moving to another service as soon as my current subscription ends.
That’s bad news. Can you share the original tweet? Thanks
He praised the choice trump made for the antitrust office back in December.
I have written my opinion on why this was way overblown, if you are interested.
Thank you, that was a long-but good-read!
I agree on the hoard -bash or bandwagoning where, already, too often on lemmy someone shits on proton because they saw others who pointed out “why it’s bad”, and then they feel the need to also say it’s bad without informed decision making or further explaining (because they can’t).
Like you, and hopefully others, I read through this privacy policy enough to where I felt I could trust the company and it’s services. Unless there is hard evidence to the contrary, I won’t be abandoning the platform.
For anyone else who’ll comment on this, you’re entitled to your opinions, but I won’t be listening to any arguments as to why I’m wrong for liking or supporting Proton.
How easy is it to switch completely from windows to Linux? Usability, feautures, costs?
That really depends on what you use your PC for. Are you deep into Microsoft Office suite? Do you play games such as PUBG, Battlefield 6 or other multiplayer games with a particular infringing anti-cheat? Maybe you use software from Adobe? Then no.
Otherwise, installing Linux is easy, if you know how to create a bootable USB-stick.
As a beginner, I would recommend Linux Mint.
I second Mint.
I used some EoL laptops around our warehouse with Mint installed so people could search stuff they needed, that was mostly web-based, and nobody really complained about anything not working. A few figured it out pretty well, a few said “it looks different” without really understanding what they’re using.
You could also start with a dual boot windows-linux, and then slowly slowly transition to Linux. That’s how I started and I never booted windows after.
imo its not that hard, but if its your first time with linux i’d suggest starting with a linux mint/fedora vm or install it on a spare laptop if you have one. this way you could learn it a bit before making the switch
I used it 20+ years ago. Is arch Linux now the “new” free/federated version? And on what non-US laptop can I run it?
Is arch Linux now the “new” free/federated version?
Not sure to understand the question. There are many non-corporate owned distributions, starting with Debian, not just Arch.
And on what non-US laptop can I run it?
Any non-US laptop is supposed to run just fine. One needs to set the correct locale (generally it will be the first question asked by the install assistant: what country are you in and what keyboard layout do you want to use)?
I run Mint and prior to it I was running Debian (and prior to that it was Arch) on my French Azerty layout laptop without any issue (the same with the desktop and it’s azerty keyboard)
The only potential issue will be disk encryption at boot but I can say it works flawlessly with Mint (and did so with Debian too, as far as I can remember)
![Some tech apps/services I personally use instead of their American/Big Tech counterparts [Updated]](https://feddit.nl/pictrs/image/c618c0c7-f37c-4336-a776-f7de4d9ccb3d.png){kind=link}