Thank you. Nevertheless, I should have voiced my frustration, which was not directed at you, differently.
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There is always ways to make your friends and family move. it starts with simple things like Signal and e.g. watch “The circle” … that movie is creepy for a lot of people. and then you can do things like protonmail or mailbox.org family plan
which then gets you calendar and everything.
it really isnt that hard.
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I subscribe to and use the whole Proton suite. That was part of my plan a few years ago. But I still can’t escape Google. To do so, I’ll have to convert one account at a time, which would take a long time.
Gmail alternatives? Suggestions please. I have my own domain and email through Gandi, where I route some messages. I am in the habit of giving any business I deal with my gmail address because it has much better spam filtering and is pretty good with unsubscribing me from all the endless email crap/corporate propaganda sent my way…
Not sure of the veracity of these claims, but I have read that messages sent from some alternative gmail services will not get through, and/or that some services like Protonmail are also in the hands of…not the most trustworthy entities.
My general position with providers such as Google is to use them but always be in a position where I have the ability to migrate away at zero notice.
Many years ago I used to host my own e-mail server. It was quite a bit of work (IMAP, SMTP, a webmail service, keeping things updated, handling DNS, SPF, etc.) and wasn’t always easy to get e-mail accepted by large providers. So, I switched to Gsuite (paid Gmail). Of course, in this scenario I still own the domain and so could easily switch to another provider without having to change my e-mail address. This for me represents a nice compromise.
The key thing about these providers (at least for me) is not so much that they are reselling your data but that they can disable your account for pretty much any reason they choose, without having to give notice, and without opportunity for recourse. This is why I think being in a position where you can migrate away quickly is so important.
Ask yourself the question how bad would it be if Google disabled my account tomorrow?
Regards, Freddie.
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The book is even more disturbing…
Nearly every paid provider is better than Gmail. @darix already pointed you to mailbox.org which is in my opinion a fantastic alternative. There is as well posteo.de, which is in my opinion as well great. Both are German providers, but I bet there a many many more.
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Adding to the list
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and both are probably just scratching the surface of bullshit that the techbros do.
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de-Google is not easy but there are more and more alternatives every new day. Proton is a big one for many services. I’m using Proton Mail and Calendar. Filen and Proton Drive are good alternatives to Google Drive. Ente.io to Google Photos. OpenStreetMaps was the only one I tried that didn’t persuade me to switch from Google Maps. And of course there are many alternatives to Chrome such as Brave, Librewolf, etc.
Speaking of Hyprland… I’ve just watched this and and it felt so relatable 
It is also describes well enough what’s keeping me from using full time Linux, especially one that’s not Ubuntu 
I hope you are not expecting from us to watch a 40 minutes video. 
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I actually watched it all the way
And I gotta say it was worth it
There are reasons why I wouldn’t recommend Ubuntu based distros anymore. But that’s a different story and for everybody there are reasons for this or that distribution. I feel at home with Debian and I tried them all - well, nearly. Others will have a different sight on things, however it is nice that there are so many different options.
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we just added hyprland-plugins and hy3 to OBS for opensuse
Going Manjaro or OpenMandriva way is kinda attractive to me, but I don’t have much experience with RPM distros. And assuming I have a system ready for Linux use, I’d have to research A LOT.
TBH many distros come with a live image. put it onto a fast USB stick.
boot from it and you can play around 
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Yeah, I think both distros should offer such live images. The thing is, if I happen to like either of them… I don’t have a computer that I could put this on and I’m possibly a few years from being able to get one.
for Tumbleweed you can find here /tumbleweed/iso - openSUSE Download
Not interested in OpenSUSE tho