Poster found on /r/BuyFromEU

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.
Why?

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.
- XMPP is more comparable to Signal, yes.
  
  Signal does need (yes, need) a phone number, and most people only have one so that is identifiable info.
  
  This puts it at mostly the same level as some competitors, including WhatsApp which is often advised against.
- 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.
- Chatgpt used to be a non profit. Now it’s almost half Microsoft owned. Sneaky! T&cs can change too (e.g. Firefox selling out google funds them a bit now apparently? ). Don’t give up just find European fully alternatives.
Also simplex is a good alternative, it's decentralized:)
- This? https://https/://simplex.chat/
  
  FWIW Matrix and XMPP are also decentralised, much like e-mail is, which is why I recommended it. I'm immediately skeptic about SimpleX's premise of having no user IDs; they'll likely need some unique field for each user, this might as well be a UUID or something like that... So what's the benefit?

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)
- 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.
- 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
- Every branch of engineering and design has technical cultures. In most kinds of engineering, the unwritten traditions of the field are parts of a working practitioner's education as important as (and, as experience grows, often more important than) the official handbooks and textbooks. Senior engineers develop huge bodies of implicit knowledge, which they pass to their juniors by (as Zen Buddhists put it) “a special transmission, outside the scriptures”.
is there anything based on khtml ??? Idk how it works but these forks are shady
- yeah, webkit (as in, the engine for safari, and the base of blink which powers chromium) is based on khtml. khtml is oooooooold.
- Although I found mojeek which feels like a browser????

Threema is a European secure messenger.

It's also a paid product with multiple flaws found in a recent-ish audit:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/01/messenger-billed-as-better-than-signal-is-riddled-with-vulnerabilities/
- 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.
@Zachariah It is worth it?

@Blaze

So your suggestion to "buy European" is to download a bunch of free shit...

I tried Mistral and it's awesome, I am upgrading to the paid version
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, ...)

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.
  
  https://support.startpage.com/hc/en-us/articles/4521498779156-What-it-means-for-Startpage-now-that-System1-is-a-publicly-traded-company
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.
Yeah, websearch is a huge undertaking, there is an European initiative but it's not ready for use ... Can't find it now though, ironically. It wasn't the one by Ecosia and Qwant but a European Union initated research project.

For more varied and detailed recommendations, these might be useful:

https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop/

https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop-browsers/

https://www.privacyguides.org/en/search-engines/

https://www.privacyguides.org/en/real-time-communication/

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.
So is Startpage, if I recall correctly.
- Startpage is based on Google.
So is Qwant, yes.

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.

Ew, Chromium

And why not DuckDuckGo?

It would've been perfect if it recommended matrix instead of american-owned signal.

If you want to use large language models or other generative predictive models (I refuse to call it AI) then I suggest considering self hosting those models for ultimate control of the information you provide.

If that’s not possible, https://duck.ai/ is pretty damn good privacy wise. (Not Based in EU)

I need an european search engine that supports bangs

Qwant apparently supports something similar

https://help.qwant.com/en/docs/qwant-search/searching/comment-utiliser-les-raccourcis-de-recherche-qwick/
- No, it doesn't take you to the website you used the bang for. Doesn't behave like duckduckgo or brave search

As an american I am switching to European apps I am disgusted with being an american citizen and if I could I would move.

Communications: Wire (what's everyone's opinion on that?)

Search engine: selfhosted searxng if possible.

No US non profits please. Case examples of selling out: chatgpt, Firefox. Even if we consider the country it’s based and it’s European look at the PEOPLE, their history of selling prev companies and to who? And their ethics who they do business with and if they stick to their word

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?

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.