cross-posted from: https://reddthat.com/post/37106126

Right now a lot of us are trying to divest and diversify from having our entire lives on Google both because of the way Google spends its money and the long-standing privacy concerns seeming a bit more scary now.

What services have you switched to and what has your experience been? What do you like, what don’t you like, would you recommend them?

  • tabris@lemmy.world
    2·
    1 day ago

    I’ve installed GrapheneOS on my phone, liking how clean an OS it is. There’s a bit of a learning curve to set things up, but it’s working nicely. I feel more in control of my phone.

    I’ve been working on a personal cloud server, hosted on a VPS running NextCloud with Collabora for file management and document editing. I’ve got some other apps on there as well, still setting things up but I’m enjoying the infrastructure challenge.

    I’ve switched over to OpenStreetMap for navigation. It’s certainly not Google maps, but the navigation works well.

    Using my hosting provider for my email as I can use my own domain, running on a simple exchange server. Migrating from gmail after 20 years is a long and arduous process, I think I’ll be finished some time this year.

    • tfmOPMAEnglish
      1·
      22 hours ago

      Wow that’s an awesome transition. In what time period did you do this?

      • tabris@lemmy.world
        2·
        20 hours ago

        Oh it’s still very much a work in progress. I’ve been on GrapheneOS for a little over a month now. The VPS I’ve had for a few weeks. There’s still a tonne to do to properly degoogle, but the plan is coming together.

        The app I’m missing most at the mo, is GBoard. I’m using FUTO keyboard as a replacement, but its swipe to type is nowhere near as good as GBoard. I have to be a lot more precise with where my thumb swipes, and I end up correcting or manually typing around 10% of words. You could be quite imprecise on GBoard and it would figure out what you wanted, FUTO takes more effort.

          • tabris@lemmy.world
            2·
            19 hours ago

            Yeah I looked at Fossify keyboard, but it doesn’t have swipe typing, which I find quicker on my phone.

            I’ll eventually be putting together a personal blog of my mini cloud server setup, when I have something written, I’ll post it here.

            • tfmOPMAEnglish
              1·
              19 hours ago

              it doesn’t have swipe typing, which I find quicker on my phone.

              Oh, didn’t know that. That’s unfortunate.

              putting together a personal blog of my mini cloud server setup

              Sounds cool! What have you planned?