Ew, Chromium
And why not DuckDuckGo?
this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2025
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Isn't signal owned by a single company with backend infrastructure all Managed by them and only them?
The current CEO is nice, for sure, but she won't be there forever. Look at what Mozilla just did, this eventually WILL happen to signal too
What alternatives are there form something like signal?
You can self-host Signal, although you’d need your friends to sign up with your server.
What we really need is a federated messaging platform. I don’t think it’s been done yet, but encrypted email efforts are kinda in that direction.
Federated messaging we've had for ages: XMPP
A modern messenger based on existing technologies, including encrypted email which you happen mention: Delta Chat
So your suggestion to "buy European" is to download a bunch of free shit...
Last spring Mistral (free tier) was better for my usage (mainly JS programming) than ChatGPT (free tier). No idea which is better now (esp. after openai launched chatgpt 4, but Mistral improved too) but at least Mistral isn't bad at all.
I don't think I have to elaborate on Linux > Windows. If that's really needed ask for it please. Summary: It's simply better, the times where it was only for nerds are long gone.
Search engine doesn't matter too much. I usually use DuckDuckGo and it works fine (does what a search engine should do without displaying ads, unlike Google).
Signal over WhatsApp also is pretty obvious, but it's the hardest one to change because so many people simply don't want to switch once one thing is running and you want to communicate with those people.
LibreWolf basically is Firefox (which is far better than Chrome in terms of privacy, ad blocking, customisability, ...)
I tried Mistral and it's awesome, I am upgrading to the paid version
For more varied and detailed recommendations, these might be useful:
https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop/
https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop-browsers/
Never would I have thought Lemmy would advocate installing Linux.
They're so entrenched in OS/2, it came as a complete surprise to me as well.
What happened to all the "Your games will run fine in OS/2", "it feels just like windows"?
I actually saw a pretty good YouTube recently about what happened to OS/2. In short IBM treated the OS as an afterthought, and didn't really invest in marketing. The OS/2 team did a spectacular job with what they were given, but the corporate umbrella didn't really care, so the market all went the win95 route instead.
I tried OS/2 v3 in the 90's and it was actually pretty decent.
EDIT: I think this was the one.
I had it as a secondary system and it certainly was quite good.
Its compatibility with dos and windows was also quite good. And technically, it was way beyond what Microsoft had. It should have dominated the market.
Why?
It meme
Signal is American
Opt for a Matrix or XMPP provider in Europe (magicbroccoli.de is a genuinely great XMPP provider)
While Signal's home base is the US, they are a non profit org that doesn't operate in the same way as for-profit corporations. Also, Signal collects basically zero data so there's no incentive to sell out, and who would want to buy them anyway when they have no data and the server and client are open source.
Matrix is great, but I wouldn't compare it to Signal. I use both for very different purposes.
Agree with the sentiment against signal. However, Matrix is terrible for anyone who doesn't want to bother with reading up on several hours of information just to use a text messenger. I will start recommending Matrix the moment someone actually manages to produce a feature complete client with usable UI/UX.
yeah been trying out matrix. Setup a server and tried various clients. They are all shit.
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librewolf is still dependent on firefox for development, just like vivaldi is on chrome. there is no european web browser.
For FF and Chromium to, their source is open so if there ever was a need to make it fully European, it would be doable. Or did I miss something? (novice question, here)
I got a security alert when clicking the link, I did not push further sorry ;)
Because it's not using https. While https is certainly preferable, as long as you're just reading info of a website (not making an account, entering data) http is pretty much fine.
Modern Browsers just don't like it (which is also understandable, because most users probably don't care about the nuances of when it is or isn't a problem).
I see, thx.
in addition to the other reply, the teams working on browsers are massive. over 500 developers for each, and that's only the core teams without external contributors. you don't just put together a team like that in an afternoon.
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The problem is that Librewolf, ungoogled chromium etc are soft forks, meaning they are completely dependent on the original projects. If for example Trump made a law banning releasing software as open source because that’s communism, Librewolf would likely cease to exist
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Threema is a European secure messenger.
It's also a paid product with multiple flaws found in a recent-ish audit:
Paid means you’re more likely a customer than the product.
I can’t verify the security claims either way, but this article is a counter point to the one one linked: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/threema-claims-encryption-flaws-never-had-a-real-world-impact/
"While some of the findings presented in the paper may be interesting from a theoretical standpoint, none of them ever had any considerable real-world impact. Most assume extensive and unrealistic prerequisites that would have far greater consequences than the respective finding itself." - Threema.
Paid unfortunately also means that it's way harder to convince anyone to use it, even though the price seems very low for what you get. The other problem that brings is that I don't know what I'm buying exactly until I bought it.
Yeah, that’s a fair point. I’ve bought it for three people I know, and I’ve had three people buy it themselves.
I’ve only suggested it to people close to me who use Android because my main phone is iOS and texting between the two is a way worse experience than Threema. I also have Signal, but no one has asked me to use that. I also find it annoying that Signal needs my phone number. I hear they’re working on changing that.
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Startpage? (based in Netherlands). I mean it’s a frontend for google, but ecosia is a frontend for bing. And startpage has a no log policy which beats ecosia.
System1 acquired Startpage and they are based in the US.
Well that's a bummer, but at least the company who owns Startpage will remain in the Netherlands for now it seems.
Startpage gives very good results, I recall reading somewhere that they use search results from Google, but I honestly don't know. I use it over Ecosia because it has slightly better results and is more privacy focused. Plus I never click any adverts, so Ecosia wouldn't generate an awful lot of trees from my usage haha.
I also used Qwant, but the search results weren't great for more complex search queries.
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Linux
Okay, is there any debugger with a GUI, that isn't just the command line interface in either a separate window or just a tab in VSCode?
What's wrong with command line?
I divide my work between 3 things: code IDE, browser, and command line. I have a pop down console that has some 20-30 tabs, each with some 2-4 command line consoles each. It's awesome, fasr, and efficient. I pretty much never use GUI tools for anything at all.
I'll do almost any task you do in 30 minutes on GUI in at most half that time on the command line.
I know that the command line isn't for everyone, but if you're a developer, or DevOps or anything alike, get the command like and get twice the work done
You mean like a code debugger not in VS Code? I mean... IntelliJ offers pretty amazing built-in debugging functionality. And as a bonus, they're located in Prague, so you're supporting a EU company by using IntelliJ.
No, I meant something like this, but for Linux. Not a command line tool, not some janky wrapper around the command line tool, not another IDE that would force me to abandon my current setup (Kate + Language Servers).
And no, I don't care about "scripts", my usecase (game development) isn't about creating software with minimal interaction. I also don't care about Mortal Kombat Fatality-tier key combinations a la Vim.
I don't know what to tell you, but a debugger is usually shipped with an IDE. If your IDE doesn't ship with a debugger then that's an issue completely independent from any OS that you're using. When I write C# programs in Visual Studio, I use the Visual Studio debugger. When I write games in Godot, I use the Godot debugger. When I write games in Unreal, I use the Unreal debugger. When I write Web Applications in IntelliJ, I use the IntelliJ Debugger. Your use case just seems extremely strange.
That being said, I'm sure there is a tool out there that does what you're looking for. I'm just not sure you should be looking for it.
Already done most of those, whatsapp is the hardest to replace for me from this category.
Whatsapp/Facebook is probably one of the biggest offenders. They're one of the ones that got us into this mess.
Isn't ecosia paying ~~Google~~ Bing for its results?
Edit: changed Google to Bing.
Yes, but ecosia is currently building a European search index together with qwant. In my view, the two are therefore worth supporting
They're planning to eventually switch to a european index alongside Qwant.
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