I recently took a new look at the VPN market because of this and because my subscription was nearing empty. So many providers are untrustworthy. I narrowed it down to Mullvad, Proton and iVPN, where iVPN would be the most ideal (no political drama yet)... But then I read complaints about the speed from their servers. I ended up buying more time with Mullvad, but I'm not thrilled about it so if anyone has different experiences or insights please share.
Are any of the map apps actually any good? I used organic maps when I went out with a friend but couldn't find the izakaya we were supposed to meet at. I don't even know if I can search in Japanese.
for me, Comaps is pretty perfect. except when a road gets closed off or something i need to use Magic Earth as they actually did know the road was closed..
Dislike Proton and Mullvad for political reasons, but I understand they provide good services.
I also dislike Firefox-forks. Not because they are bad, but the only reason to use Firefox is to avoid Chromium. However, if you don't use Firefox, usage statistics go down, ad-revenue goes down, and Mozilla will struggle to maintain Gecko. If Gecko goes down, so will LibreWolf and Waterfox.
I don't use many of these services (I keep photos local, use my bank's payment app etc.) but some recommendations are very interesting. I still stick to an Android phone and wonder how reliable /e/OS really is.
I use Xeovo instead of Mullvad personally. I guess there is also sailfish OS instead of Android but i don't know how compatible it is. Pretty good list, i am actually trying out element instead of whatsapp which works to a certain extent. But whatsapp is the final boss here to me
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Cool! I should also visualise my stack like this!
Maybe you can also anonymously declare your switches to switchdigest.eu. Would be cool to show others what we are switching to!
Might want to be aware that if you give money to Mullvad, some of it ends up funding the far-right in Sweden: https://www.theregister.com/software/2026/07/21/some-mullvad-vpn-customers-tunnel-for-exit-after-co-founder-donates-millions-to-populist-party/5275012
Similar story for Proton with the far-right stuff: https://theintercept.com/2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-trump-republicans/
Yeah that's not even close to the same story.
I recently took a new look at the VPN market because of this and because my subscription was nearing empty. So many providers are untrustworthy. I narrowed it down to Mullvad, Proton and iVPN, where iVPN would be the most ideal (no political drama yet)... But then I read complaints about the speed from their servers. I ended up buying more time with Mullvad, but I'm not thrilled about it so if anyone has different experiences or insights please share.
I really like Immich as an alternative to Google photos. It has face recognition and allows for context searches. "Person X on the beach"
It can be run completely local on a Raspi.
And if you give it a GPU it can do ML based context searches
You don't even need a GPU. I've got it running on a pi 5
Are any of the map apps actually any good? I used organic maps when I went out with a friend but couldn't find the izakaya we were supposed to meet at. I don't even know if I can search in Japanese.
for me, Comaps is pretty perfect. except when a road gets closed off or something i need to use Magic Earth as they actually did know the road was closed..
I use Xeovo instead of Mullvad personally. I guess there is also sailfish OS instead of Android but i don't know how compatible it is. Pretty good list, i am actually trying out element instead of whatsapp which works to a certain extent. But whatsapp is the final boss here to me
whatsapp indeed is very impossible, my friends dont wanna ditch it 😭
Anyone have a good recommendation for a better messages app than Googles?
FOSSify
Tried it, it's a bit too bare bones for my taste. Also got some weird garbage characters in received messages.
What's wrong with Netflix?