My De-Googleing and De-Microsofting Journey
Highlight: Infomaniak kSuite
Infomaniak is a sovereign cloud service provider based out of Switzerland, and has replaced a number of Google and Microsoft services, including email, calendar, and cloud storage. They're great! I could tell you all the reasons I love supporting these folks but that's not the focus of this blog post, so I'll just suggest you check 'em out yourself:
I subscribe to kSuite Pro, which costs about $93/yr, and gives you 3 TB (!!!) of space for less than the cost of 1 TB through Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive.
Note:
I do not support everything these products' companies are doing. I use some of these products with some of their features turned OFF, for example: PDFGear tries to push me to use AI features, and I ignore them. Mentions here are not all necessarily recommendations (most are, though), just what I'm currently using and what is working well for my workflow.
Search:
I currently use DuckDuckGo for quick, simple searches, and things that have one canonical answer (e.g. a business address, a company's website, etc), and Kagi for anything that will require me to dig in to the results a bit more and do some research:
- Kagi (Kagi Starter, $5.49/mo)
- DuckDuckGo (https://noai.duckduckgo.com)
Honorable mentions:
- Ecosia.org (search that gives a crap about the environment)
- SearXNG (metasearch, e.g. aggregates search results from "up to 246 search services", and can be self-hosted. Here's a bunch of public instances)
- Waterfox Private Search (Google but private and ad-free, paid)
- Startpage (results sourced from Google and Bing)
Gmail:
- Dreamhost (domain + email)
- Thunderbird (by Mozilla, who make the Firefox browser)
Calendar:
- Infomaniak kSuite
Tasks:
- Tasks.org (synced to kSuite via CalDAV)
Honorable Mentions:
- Habit Maker (on github)
Keep:
- Obsidian (files stored on kDrive, and synced PC <-> Phone via Autosync app using WebDAV)
Google Drive:
- Infomaniak kDrive
Google Maps:
- CoMaps (not super happy with this one, still searching for a Maps replacement that has good up-to-date info and quality search functionality)
Android OS:
- GrapheneOS (Android but very secure and private, lots of bloat removed)
Google Play Store:
While I haven't replaced ALL of my Google Play apps, many of them now come from alternative sources:
GBoard (Android keyboard):
Google Assistant:
- Dicio, fully offline, no AI, basic voice assistant (F-Droid | github)
- Custom text-to-speech engine: SherpaTTS
- Custom voice model: GLaDOS from Portal
Launcher (Android home screen):
Chrome browser:
YouTube:
- Grayjay (video service aggregator app)
- Nebula (paid YouTube competitor, there's some really great, high-quality stuff on here that makes it 100% worth it to pay for!)
Microsoft
OneDrive
- Infomaniak kDrive (mobile app on F-Droid)
- Mobile document scanning: (FairScan | on F-Droid)
Office 365
- Infomaniak kSuite
- One-time purchase of Microsoft Office Home & Business 2024 (Microsoft Office applications with less nonsense and no AI, no cloud storage, install on 1 PC)
Teams
- Discord, meh. Hoping for something better sometime soon...
Music/TV/Movie Streaming:
- Plex (my own collection of media)
- Dropout (very good wholesome comedy network, feels good to support these folks)
- ArchiveTune (YouTube music streaming app)
- Bandcamp (directly support musicians)
- Kanopy (free streaming with a library card, support your local library!!!)
Misc other software and services
A list of other things I use and enjoy, and help reduce reliance on - and money being funneled to - big predatory companies:
- Link shortening: Infomaniak chk.me
- QR code generation: Infomaniak chk.me
- Secure sensitive information sharing: Infomaniak kPaste
- OCR (Optical Character Recognition): OCRSpace
- Two-factor Authenticator: 2FAS
- Windows File Explorer replacement: File Pilot - In beta. Has its issues, but also some super nice features.
- Messaging service aggregator: Beeper - Currently using this for SMS text messages, Facebook Messenger, and Signal. Syncs to both Android and Windows, which is quite nice.
- Cell service: Mint Mobile
- Photoshop: Affinity - Currently sticking with v2.6.4, pre-Canva's takeover of Affinity.
- Cloud sync to Android local storage: Autosync
- Share files locally between devices: LocalShare
- Reduce physical junk mail: Paper Karma - I have a lifetime account, it works well!
- PDF viewer and full-featured editor: PDFGear
- Securely connect devices via a virtual local network: ZeroTier
F-Droid apps
A list of F-Droid apps I'm currently using (sorry no links, search 'em yourself), some of which I've already mentioned:
- Bodhi Timer
- Catima
- CoMaps
- FairScan
- Fossify Gallery
- FUTO Keyboard
- Grayjay
- Immich
- Infomaniak kDrive
- LibreOffice Viewer
- LocalShare
- SherpaTTS
- SimpleTextEditor
- Tasks.org
- Thunderbird Beta
Roadmap
In-progress projects:
- Set up my Tablo + HD TV antenna (Live TV + DVR replacement)
- Explore the Zen browser (Firefox based, to reduce reliance on Google's Chromium)
- Immich (self-hosted Google Photos replacement)
- Explore 2FAS Pass for password management, to reduce reliance on web browser account and Google password storage.
Long-term
- Migrate accounts to my personal domain email address - this is my primary email account, and is around 15-20 years old, phew... gonna take a while to even just identify everything I've signed up for using that email address, and then decide what to cancel or move over, etc.
ISO
Looking for solutions, contact me with recommendations!
- Better Google Maps replacement - I understand Kagi is working on it
- Remote device access that supports accessing Windows, Mac, and Linux, FROM Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Currently using Microsoft RDC, and Jump Desktop.
- Microsoft Outlook replacement (needs mail-merge functionality)
- Microsoft Excel replacement (I HEAVILY use VBA, I'd have to replace a TON of bespoke code to use any other software, or find something that supports VBA)
Previous |