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!
I also like OnlyOffice as an alternative to MSOffice/Google Office Suite, has free tiers and real-time sessions
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.
If someone uses Oracle DB I can only pray for their soul 🙏
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…
Why does every search engine look exactly the same, and push the exact same AI chat feature, and have identical options for filtering arranged in out in the exact same order in the exact same location.
I think there’s only one search engine.
People are all copying what they are familiar with, and that is Google. I list the providers that have AI Summaries as part of their offering; you can find one that doesn’t. https://purchasewithpurpose.io/category/search-engine/
Probably because it’s the same use case?
That’s like asking why all keyboards have the same letters in the same arrangement, with mostly the same options.
If you want something different, try Kagi. It has other controls you don’t see elsewhere
Why Tidal? I get the part against apple, but why tidal?
Tidal
It is hard for me to be the arbiter of what tools are ethical enough, so I try to make these facts as easy as possible to find for people. In the end, it educates and ultimately most decide against using such tools (for example, Spotify). There is a note on Tidal’s profile about Jack Dorsey’s and Jay-Z’s involvement. https://purchasewithpurpose.io/software/34R8h9DOVPhaJ7CZMmKW48/
Spotify often gets bad press, some probably promoted by competitors. Its payouts look lower mainly because it offers a free ad-supported tier and serves markets with lower subscription fees - if it were subscription-only in high-fee markets, payouts would be similar to Apple, Tidal, or Qobuz. Also, I haven’t seen Spotify play me any AI-generated tracks, unlike some other platforms.
Replace Ubuntu with Zorin OS
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.
y no searxng?
They are on the website :) Just too many options to include them all on the infographic. https://purchasewithpurpose.io/category/search-engine/
I personally enjoy marginalia search and duckduckgo lite. I never enjoyed/appreciated the current search engine market with all generative AI enshitification. Marginalia search is similar to a database, where you have a limited number of keywords to get a decent search, they also offers filters if you dont want websites with JS and much more. duckduckgo lite is similar to this, but instead of having a specific tab to find website domains, it has it built in the search engine functionality.
I can use marginalia as default search for Firefox!
Yea that’s what I’ve done as well, I do enjoy it.
Someone posted Narrow32 on lemmy then when I was trying it out I discovered Duckduckgo lite. Now it’s my default search. Brings me back to when Google was a search engine.
marginalia
Hadn’t heard of Marginalia search. Will look to include that on the website :)
Pretty small development team. I’m hoping over my break I can contribute.
Anyone have an alternative for Google Keep? I just want shared notes and checklists across all my devices
Joplin maybe?
On the list, will get there maybe in 2-3 weeks time! But if you want something sooner, maybe post on the community https://lemmy.world/c/PurchaseWithPurpose
I recommend notesnook
Upnote or check out a new one called Lockbook
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
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 👍
Why avoid Safari if it’s one of the browsers with best privacy rating?
While privacy may be fine, I think Apple as a company is pretty deplorable.
It technically isn’t. There are better browsers for that. That said, the ultimate goal of these guides is to move away from big tech, so it won’t help going from one to the other.
If that isn’t a concern of yours, then no need to more.
But I don’t get Beave that is selling user data is being recommended instead of Safari https://stackdiary.com/brave-selling-copyrighted-data-for-ai-training/
Brave certainly doesn’t come recommended. They are shown as they are a well-known option, but a big disclaimer is included to educate people on why not to use them: https://purchasewithpurpose.eu/software/3vx2w2oHoySUVasOnOa3aV/
Safari isn’t open source. They could in theory add a backdoor anytime and it would be more difficult to audit.
WebKit is open source, Safari is just a front end for it.
What about https://www.privacyguides.org/en/ ?
Doesn’t that already serve the same purpose? … without also recommending to use a closed source browser as Vivaldi like you are doing instead?
Privacyguides is an excellent resource, and in fact, it is often linked on the website. You might be interested in https://privacy.purchasewithpurpose.io/, which prioritises tools validated by them.
However, it isn’t meant to serve the same audience. PurchaseWithPurpose is there to make moving more digestible for the average user, while educating them on more advanced topics.
What’s wrong with Safari?
Big Tech
Missed that part?
