There are hardly any alternatives for people who don’t have the time to self-host and setup everything.
“Oh but Firefox!” the tools that Mozilla provides are indeed good - but there’s no Mozilla Photos, Mozilla Notes, Mozilla Assistant, and so on.
“Oh but Microsoft!” and why would that be better than Google?
“Oh but mix Firefox with Proton and this specific GitHub project for photo management and this FOSS notes apps with a Docker backend for sync and thi-” I wish I had the time to do that, truly, I actually prefer many of the FOSS alternatives I’ve seen lately. I do not have the time nor hardware to do this correctly.
I wholeheartedly agree. I’m a technical person, I run Linux as my primary OS and use FOSS software. But I also have a full time job and 2 small kids, and frankly I just don’t have the time or patience to be a full time sysadmin. Proton has come a long way in providing alternatives to Gmail, GCalendar, GDrive, etc., but like you said if you want to replace ALL of Google you practically have to self host a gazillion Nextcloud instances or whatever.
Fully automated or fully integrated? And how do you know? Not trying to be confrontational, but whenever I think a tool doesn’t exist, it totally does. It just isn’t popular enough.
There isn’t. Closest there is is NextCloud, but you need to self host it, since it isn’t E2EE so using a provider would just put you back in square one. Proton is a close second but its still miles away, they have a lot of products but their devs seem to be spread thin between then.
I kinda agree with you. Before my exams I had lot of time. I used to self host nextcloud, email and invidious etc. But during exam had no time to manage instances or update my packages, one after than another they kept showing error and they went offline.
I stopped my VPS and started using Google Drive(it was already available on my android) to share my notes temporarily with friends, soon I kept using it. I hope protonmail becomes better so I can start using them instead of other products
What I don’t like about Proton is that I can’t combine Mail Plus and Pass Plus. I don’t need a 500 GB Proton Drive or Proton VPN, but I like their Mail and Password Manager. Now I use Mail for free and Password Manager for €12/year. I would like to pay €3.99/month for the Mail offer, but for that I would have to upgrade to the much more extensive Proton Unlimited.
I would pay 7.99 for Proton Unlimited. But I can’t pay alnost 200 Euros for it all at once. I’m not a big fan of the huge cost difference between monthly, 12m and 24m subscriptions.
It’s a hard fight between all the time maintaining your own stuff takes and the utter resistance by other users who just won’t learn anything new or use any real security.
Microsoft is arguably worse than Google. They make you pay for the software they use to harvest your data for free.
These businesses should be paying for the data, the raw materials, they collect and use to build their products. You can’t assemble a car without paying for the nuts and bolts, but that’s what they do.
There are hardly any alternatives for people who don’t have the time to self-host and setup everything.
“Oh but Firefox!” the tools that Mozilla provides are indeed good - but there’s no Mozilla Photos, Mozilla Notes, Mozilla Assistant, and so on.
“Oh but Microsoft!” and why would that be better than Google?
“Oh but mix Firefox with Proton and this specific GitHub project for photo management and this FOSS notes apps with a Docker backend for sync and thi-” I wish I had the time to do that, truly, I actually prefer many of the FOSS alternatives I’ve seen lately. I do not have the time nor hardware to do this correctly.
I wholeheartedly agree. I’m a technical person, I run Linux as my primary OS and use FOSS software. But I also have a full time job and 2 small kids, and frankly I just don’t have the time or patience to be a full time sysadmin. Proton has come a long way in providing alternatives to Gmail, GCalendar, GDrive, etc., but like you said if you want to replace ALL of Google you practically have to self host a gazillion Nextcloud instances or whatever.
Why does it have to be Mozilla everything? I want Mozilla to continue doing what it does best: build browsers and (maybe) mail clients.
Not everything has to be unified. I’d be quite content with Teehee Photos, Hoho Notes and Huehuehue Assistant as long as they’re decent tools.
I’m not implying it needs to be unified. I’m implying there aren’t solutions similar to Google, as in, fully automated.
Fully automated or fully integrated? And how do you know? Not trying to be confrontational, but whenever I think a tool doesn’t exist, it totally does. It just isn’t popular enough.
There isn’t. Closest there is is NextCloud, but you need to self host it, since it isn’t E2EE so using a provider would just put you back in square one. Proton is a close second but its still miles away, they have a lot of products but their devs seem to be spread thin between then.
there are hosted nextcloud servers available. the nextcloud website has some listed on their website.
I kinda agree with you. Before my exams I had lot of time. I used to self host nextcloud, email and invidious etc. But during exam had no time to manage instances or update my packages, one after than another they kept showing error and they went offline.
I stopped my VPS and started using Google Drive(it was already available on my android) to share my notes temporarily with friends, soon I kept using it. I hope protonmail becomes better so I can start using them instead of other products
This is how they do it. They wedge themselves in via convenience with the hopes that we’ll stay on their ecosystem eventually.
I hope you’ll soon find the time to regain your independence from them. Best of luck.
What I don’t like about Proton is that I can’t combine Mail Plus and Pass Plus. I don’t need a 500 GB Proton Drive or Proton VPN, but I like their Mail and Password Manager. Now I use Mail for free and Password Manager for €12/year. I would like to pay €3.99/month for the Mail offer, but for that I would have to upgrade to the much more extensive Proton Unlimited.
I’m in the exact same position. The pass manager for €12/year is awesome and I want the Mail Plus but the 500GB drive is overkill for me.
I would pay 7.99 for Proton Unlimited. But I can’t pay alnost 200 Euros for it all at once. I’m not a big fan of the huge cost difference between monthly, 12m and 24m subscriptions.
It’s a hard fight between all the time maintaining your own stuff takes and the utter resistance by other users who just won’t learn anything new or use any real security.
Microsoft is arguably worse than Google. They make you pay for the software they use to harvest your data for free.
These businesses should be paying for the data, the raw materials, they collect and use to build their products. You can’t assemble a car without paying for the nuts and bolts, but that’s what they do.