Linux changed me – Lukas W. Mayer

My journey

In 2023, I went to a Cognitive Science summer-school. There, I spent a lot of the time between sessions with a roboticist who was really into Linux. Like most people who never seriously considered installing an operating system (OS) that did not come with my machine, I was pretty skeptical about the reliability of such obscure seeming software. However, what stuck with me from these conversations was something along the lines of “On Linux, you can remove everything you don’t like”. But I was not ready to take the leap quite yet.

Fast forward to about six months later, I had just installed the brand new Windows 11 on my laptop. I liked the new coat of paint, and felt like I was using the bleeding-edge of it all. However, after a bit more time with it, I grew increasingly annoyed with it. At least back then, Windows 11 had multiple “features” that provided recommendations I did not want but couldn’t fully turn off. This drove me nuts, and I kept thinking back to the roboticists’ ramblings - could jumping ship really be all that bad?

After a bit of research, on a bored day after work, I took the plunge and installed Ubuntu, a specific version of Linux. While Ubuntu is not particularly remarkable, taking this step really changed how I thought about technology. Namely, it opened my eyes to a much more mindful consideration of the products I use. There is a real sense of freedom in “voting with your wallet” as Americans like to put it.

What started with wanting to remove widgets I thought were annoying, quickly expanded into other areas. So today, I want to briefly list some alternatives you could consider if, for example, you are not too happy with whose pockets you are lining.

For the purposes of this list, I will assume you are not super duper techy. Just techy enough to follow installation instructions.

PC operating system

I started this post with my Linux journey, so let’s wrap this domain up.

For beginners, I’d probably recommend Linux Mint. It’s widely regarded as a super easy introduction where you will be able to do all of your daily tasks without running into problems.

There are two big things you should ask yourself before switching:

Is my hardware supported?
Do I use software critical for my job that is not available on Linux?

Thanks to the rise of web-apps, the second question is unlikely to be a huge problem unless your work is very technical.

Mobile operating system

If you happen to own a Google Pixel, you should consider Graphene OS.

There are some drawbacks to this though. There are a few apps that will not work or require some extra thinking on your part. In my experience, anything that requires location services can be a bit fiddly. NFC will probably not work. The banking app Revolut is known to be broken. If you don’t use these things much, feel free to go ahead. The installation of GrapheneOs feels a little scary, but is fairly straightforward. I’ve only had minor hick-ups over 3 years of use, which were all largely due to my own ignorance.

There are multiple other alternatives, but I feel they are unlikely to suit the needs of non-techy people. Perhaps try using your phone less in general?

App-store

For some things, you will need to use a big app store like Google Play.

But there are also tons of utilities that you could get from F-Droid.

F-Droid is an alternative app-store where app developers have to ensure their apps are ad-free, free of charge, and make their code public. Remarkably, many developers agree to this largely out of philosophical conviction. There are some surprisingly good apps on here that might just be good enough for your purposes. So my suggestion would be to try to find something that works for you from F-Droid before downloading an app from Google Play.

You could also try to reduce your dependency on apps altogether.

Email, Calendar, Passwords, Cloud storage

Be aware, migrating all of this takes some effort, as you may for example have to change the e-mail address associated with various accounts. On the bright side, you will hopefully only have to switch once.

I think Proton services are the most convenient alternative here. A free-tier account may be sufficient for you.

Make sure to forward email that arrives at your old account(s) to the new one so you don’t miss anything critical.

Messaging

This is another tough category make a full switch on, since you need to convince others to switch too.

Signal is likely the main alternative service popular enough where at least some of your contacts already have it.

You should probably at least have Signal installed, even if it’s just to allow Signal-curious friends to more easily switch too.

Browser and search engine

For normal people, I’d probably recommend switching to Brave.

It has state-of-the-art ad-blocking and I happily used their search engine for a long time.

You could also try Firefox and set your search engine to DuckDuckGo in the Search settings.

Maps

This is a category people don’t tend to think about. However, you are with 99% probability either using Apple maps or Google Maps/Waze. Map services are remarkably concentrated.

If you’re looking for a switch, OsmAnd is your best bet.

There are some drawbacks. You have to download the maps for areas beforehand. Business information will not be as up to date as you are used to. As a result, you may have to search for a business online, and then paste the address into the app. Review information may also be lacking.

As you can see, going off the beaten track is a bit more effort. However, I hope you found at least one thing listed here that caught your interest. If you have more suggestions, I’d love to hear from you in the comments.