I shared a version of this guide earlier this year, but felt a website was needed to unpack the different options fully. So after an unreasonable number of hours, I put together the necessary data and website.
I hope this is digestible enough for the average person to help those looking to take that first step, or for people who are equally passionate and want to get their friends or family involved.
Details:
- Site - https://purchasewithpurpose.io/
- Code - https://codeberg.org/purchase-with-purpose/pwp-website
- Community - https://lemmy.world/c/PurchaseWithPurpose
Every time I post these guides, there is always feedback on things that can improve, or I got wrong. Please do share, as it is the best way for these to evolve!
Good choice! But for search engines, you missed SearX, Startpage, and Brave Search. SearX is a search engine where you can choose your favorite search engines to get results from various search engines privately, and you can also host it. Startpage is a search engine where you can search Google anonymously and without being spied on, and Brave Search is Brave’s private search engine that uses its own search results. Stop trusting DuckDuckGo, it depends on Bing, and if you click on one of its ads, you will be exposed to Microsoft tracking. For messaging, it’s fine, but you missed Session, which is a messaging app that doesn’t require a phone number and is anonymous.
Thanks for the feedback! The website goes into this level of detail and includes some of those suggestions you had: https://purchasewithpurpose.io/
Hard to include all of this in the graphic alone, but will consider how it can be improved.
Nice guide! Lemmy is missing though 🐭. Also, what’s the point of moving from Twitter to BlueSky? They are no different. Mastodon is a great option.
I haven’t been too focused on Social Media given that it is less about features and more about community. But will look at adding a Reddit replacement.
KDE is friendlier to Windows users than GNOME, but Mint is still a good option.
And KDE is predominately German.
I see Qobuz on there. IMHO, Bandcamp should be your first stop when buying music. If it’s not on bandcamp, Qobuz seems to have just about everything else, more or less, that someone might want. I’ve complained about them in the past for making me download my purchases one track at a time, which can be pretty annoying if you’re buying a super-duper-deluxe version of an album, but, I am pleased to say, they no longer do this; you can download the complete albums you’ve purchased in a zip file. But only once. Stuff can disappear for annoying rights reasons, and I think they even say, once you buy your music download it immediately, because it may not be there on a subsequent visit.
I’m not so sure. Last time I looked for an album it was cheaper on Qobuz than Bandcamp - also Qobuz had a Hi-Res version. Bandcamp I think takes 15% + payment handling which seems a lot for being a shopfront. I went to record label to get it in the end as I thought that was probably the best way of getting the money to the artist.
I think a lot of these guides could use more in-depth companion guides to go along with it. Changing your email provider for one is not a simple thing and there are concerns like loss of functionality (Gmail is a good product run by a shit company) and also how to make the process less overwhelming. Some services will give you the option to migrate all your emails from Gmail but maybe you want to start fresh, etc. Then there’s going to all of your providers and updating your contact email. Again, not as simple as signing up for another service.
I have started on that with a small intro section for most sections (still adding). An example is email https://purchasewithpurpose.eu/category/email, but I understand that an even more in-depth guide is warranted.
Thanks for making these! The mix of thorough structured data and qualitative disclaimers is so useful.
I’ve been curious about Infomaniak because I haven’t seen much about it until recently. Is “Open Source” the main reason Tuta and Proton are on the infographic instead?
I tried to limit it to 3-4 per section, and the email category was already so full - no specific reason. That said, I’ve since learned that Tuta’s free tier is a bit limited, so I might actually switch to Infomaniak Mail instead.
I use Infomaniak for my email and cloud storage.
They’re great, but lately their Linux app has had problems.
When I reported it, they were really efficient and friendly.
Also their data centers are heating buildings where I live.
I would always recommand them as they offer really good prices too.
Proton Sheets will save us all… Right?
You can always forward emails? All email providers (yes even the shit ones) offer this for free while you migrate from one email account to another
I am very bothered by the OS section. Bazzite should be the go-to for gaming, period. Ubuntu should never be recommended to anyone. Fedora is far more stable and reliable as a starter distro than either Mint or Ubuntu. Fedora Workstation for Mac expats and Fedora KDE for Windows expats.
I won’t fault anyone for putting Mint in there, but I loathe Cinnamon and would never recommend a distro that excludes KDE by design.
agreed, bazzite, nobara, and cachyOS would all have been better alternatives to popOS
I’d normally have Pop as as more of a starter distro, although I haven’t been recommending it lately just because it’s in a bit of an awkward spot in crossing over from GNOME to COSMIC. Not that I dislike COSMIC, I just wouldn’t want a newbie to install the GNOME version and then have to go through switching their whole DE right off the bat.
COSMIC is supposed to hit 1.0 in the next few days and I’m looking forward to it. I wouldn’t recommend it right now only because the beta still has too many rough edges. Once it’s more polished, Pop_OS it could be an excellent starter distro.
LibreWolf browser
Agreed! It is an excellent choice and is part of the recommended list on the website. https://purchasewithpurpose.io/category/browser/
I just tries Lemmy now instead of Reddit 👍
Where are the password managers? When changing your accounts to another email provider, this is a really good time to also make sure all the accounts have a strong, unique password or phrase.
That is true; I am planning to do Password Managers next, but can see now why it would have made sense to include them sooner.
Well, a short guide to make your own unique passwords that are strong, and that you are able to memorize, would be enough there… Otherwise, Firefox has a build in password manager.
For frequently accessed sites that will work but what about a site that is only needed once a year? Password managers secure a lot more than passwords.
Oh, what do they secure more?
I have a system, I do change it sometimes, and it’s simple for me to remember, but makes strong passwords.
Security questions. For me to log into my income tax portal, I need to answer 1 of 5 questions. None of the answers to their questions are something that can be looked up in breach data - for example “Name your first love” my answer could be “the moon”. I log into this once a year so forgetting my fake answers is a real possibility.
Medical information about my family such as current prescriptions and allergies.
My password manager also can create email aliases.
Basically, anything that needs to be kept secure, private, and accessible.
Here’s a simple question. Isn’t 2-factor login safer than what you describe there?
Why would you need aliases? Do you often login to places that is so insecure?
Well, seems like you have a hard time with security. Me, I manage with 2-factor and my password system, that makes me have unique passwords for every site or app I need… :-)
2FA isn’t an option for my income tax portal but would be a safer option.
Aliases are used so I never share my actual email address. If any service I sign up with starts spamming, I know that email has been compromised (probably in a breach) or the service spams their users.
Security is very easy for me. Password managers are the norm among the privacy/security community.
And yet some of those managers has been breached and is continuously targeted, because they are a security risk in themselves.
Strange to have a tax portal with poor security.
Reddit -> Lemmy is a recent switch that I’m happy with
I don’t know where this would fit in on the website but one company that is really important to boycott is Oracle. Larry Ellison is a mega right-wing donor and his son is buying up media companies for the purposes of turning them into right-wing propaganda machines.
One way everyone can make a difference is by uninstalling any Oracle software on your computer. You might have the Oracle JRE installed or if you’re into virtualization you may be using Virtualbox. It’s especially important to avoid Oracle software in a corporate setting because their lawyers may come after you. If you work for a company and you’re either involved in purchasing software or a software developer I would strongly recommend avoiding Oracle not just because of ethical reasons but also because typically they have their products are not as good from a technical standpoint as well.
For the Oracle JRE or JDK you can replace it with Adoptium. Adoptium is run by the Eclipse Foundation which is based in the EU.
For Virtualbox you can replace it with QEMU or Xen. For QEMU there are a lot of good GUI or CLI front-ends that make using it easy. See this article: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/QEMU/Front-ends note that some of the front-ends listing in that article also support Xen.
For Oracle’s database some say that PostgreSQL is a good competitor. For this one I acknowledge the topic is more complex. I’m just going to leave it at for new designs please consider avoiding Oracle’s database if you can. Oracle has a bad reputation among programmers for a reason.
Oracle definitely fits under the tech giants to boycott… and also fuck Larry Ellison. Will keep this in mind for future tools, but feel free to post this on https://lemmy.world/c/PurchaseWithPurpose in the meantime.
I posted it there! Before I was worried to post there because I didn’t see any recent posts.
I was just thinking, one way to start adding Oracle might be to create a Database section and mention Oracle’s database and perhaps other closed source/bad solutions like Access and suggest open source alternatives like PostgreSQL and MariaDB.
I use the VirtualBox stuff all the time! Time to look for a replacement…
If someone uses Oracle DB I can only pray for their soul 🙏
Correction: Ente is also self-hostable.
Sorry, I did include that on the website https://purchasewithpurpose.eu/software/49nBOpWnyCdLNGVJ71k6SJ/ - but forgot to update the guide.
Here is my set up:
- Browser: Helium
- Email: My own domain thru Spacemail
- Search: DDG
- Music: Deezer
- Office suite: Jotta
- Files: Jotta
- Photos: Jotta
My set up:
- Browser: Librewolf on PC and Duckduckgo on phone
- Email: Protonmail
- Search: Ecosia on PC and Duckduckgo on phone
- Music: Locally stored music and VLC (on PC) and Musicolet (phone) as music player
- Office suite: Libreoffice
Thanks for putting this together. Stuff like this is good for making it more approachable. I definitely have relatives that would benefit from this.
One note though, it would be good if the key included all of the icons and not just the three causes.
As the other commented pointed out, it would also be good to differentiate decentralized services, for example in the category with Mastodon and Bluesky.
Agreed, I’ll look to update the main guide infographic with all the causes. The website itself has these listed, though, if you prefer to share that.
This is me, but i did it in reverse. Once windows was behind me it kind of opened up the door to more change. Took me less than a year to arrive at not using my google account at all.
