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:

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!

  • Blizzard@lemmy.zipEnglish
    291·
    1 month ago

    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.

    • FallenWalnut@lemmy.worldOP
      5·
      1 month ago

      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.

  • Alas Poor Erinaceus@lemmy.mlEnglish
    15·
    1 month ago

    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.

    • puntinoblue@lemmy.ml
      2·
      1 month ago

      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.

  • BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world
    121·
    1 month ago

    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.

    • zebidiah@lemmy.ca
      3·
      1 month ago

      agreed, bazzite, nobara, and cachyOS would all have been better alternatives to popOS

    • Random Dent@lemmy.mlEnglish
      2·
      1 month ago

      I’s 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.

      • BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world
        1·
        1 month ago

        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.

  • BoycottTwitter@lemmy.zipEnglish
    91·
    1 month ago

    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.

      • BoycottTwitter@lemmy.zipEnglish
        2·
        1 month ago

        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.

  • Gloomy@mander.xyz
    3·
    1 month ago

    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.

      • puntinoblue@lemmy.ml
        1·
        1 month ago

        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.

  • whome@discuss.tchncs.de
    2·
    1 month ago

    What stumped me is that YouTube music and apple music are the starting point, and not Spotify.

    Also isn’t using your own Mailserver with your own domain on any webhoster plus Thunderbird a viable alternative? I’ve been doing this for like 20 years. That’s the beauty of email imo