Hmmm,that could come in handy as my FOSS voice memo app doesn’t transcribe them like the google recorder wood. Thanks for the recommendation.

I have to assume that the tightening will continue, so I’m trying to get ahead of it by voluntarily giving up anything Google, and any non-FOSS apps, even if I could technically keep using them until google gets even more strict. I’m also active in the self-hosted community, so I have alternatives in place for a lot of things already. I have so few dependencies left at this point, I feel like I’m finally within reach of being deGoogled. What I was trying to do with this spreadsheet was figure out what was blocking and what things would look like if Google went full-authoritarian lockdown mode tomorrow and I could only use F-Droid because they blocked 3rd party play clients. Also yes, you deduced correctly, Graphene.

In regards to some of your suggestions:

• Aurora Store, I’ve used it before, but I didn’t know about the auto-update thing. If there’s apps I cannot live without, I may have to go this route.
• Proton Calendar, I’m sooooo picky about my calendar. I’ve tried 10-20 apps. I remember feeling like the views on Protoncal didn’t work for me especially the simplified month view. Essentially, I have a lot of ical subscriptions and I sometimes need to toggle them on and off and overlay them. In addition, I have calendars coming in from Nextcloud. I should look again to see if there are any apps I missed.
• Obsidian/Notesnook, Xplore/MiX/Fossify, these are all functionality blockers. There are open source alternatives, but they’re not as good. I like Xplore and MiX because they handle network locations, archives, every view or sort you could imagine. I would assume Fossify is a lot more basic. That said, it would do in a pinch. Mix is distributed via apk and on Play, but in the end, I think X-Plore is the absolute best file manager available for android, hands down. I will give it up if I have to, but I don’t want to.
• Discord/ElementX WhatsApp/Signal, I’ve had surprisingly good luck with getting people to accommodate my communication preferences. I’m seeing Signal users in the wild a lot more now though Matrix is still 100% nerd stuff. Europeans and South Americans love WhatsApp though, so I’m kind of obligated to use it sometimes.
• Google Maps, they got me with street view. My brain is wired very geospacialy and I spend a lot of time just exploring on Google Earth or whatever. It may be the hardest Google product for me to give up. I feel your frustration with the maps thing. Since most of the alternatives rely on Open Street Map data, the limitation becomes the completeness of the OSM data in your area. That’s why Street Complete made the list for me. I wanted to contribute data about my city to make it more competitive with Google Maps.
• Tidal, I was on Spotify (like seemingly everyone) and they pissed me off 1 too many times so I switched. Like you, I saw that Tidal paid the artists better and I also had some hardware that could utilize the various audio formats they provided. The apps were nearly clones of one another. Currently I’m working on sorting my old mp3s with MusicBrainz Picard and then adding them to my Jellyfin or something so I can stream them back to myself. Once I get that up, the drop in functionality from switching to a 3rd party youtube music frontend might be acceptable.

I guess the moral of the story is that I’m like everyone else. I have an excuse for just about every piece of proprietary crapware I use. :-(

hahahah

Thanks for your feedback. I hear you and I used Aurora store the last time I redid my phone. It certainly works as a stopgap to avoid installing the Play Store. Your right that most don’t need the actual Play appor even the services because I have pushed them to an empty profile before and only 1/10 of the apps freaked out about not being able to see Google Play in their new profile. My concern is that as Google policy shifts, I’ll be trapped without functioning software when I should have spent the time searching out and supporting nonproprietary and non corporate alternatives.

The Vanadium thing is more or less my plan. It played a big part in getting the list as short as it is now.

Is their Source Forward license just a cut/paste agpl?

https://gitlab.futo.org/videostreaming/grayjay/-/blob/master/LICENSE.md

They are doing some good work on their various projects. I’m generally a fan, and I’ve seen Louis’ videos about why they licenced it like this instead of something else. No hate on my side, I just made them yellow because they’re worth keeping an eye on because they are a bit weird.

I struggled with the HA integration, so I put it off for later. I’ll take another whack at it. As for WG, that sounds useful. When I redo my phone again, I’ll have to work through the quirks because play store apps may not be an option anymore.

Did you have any exposure in Linux before eventually switching, or did you just step straight from the Windows world into the great Linux unknown?

Windows 3.1 has a bit of a fond spot in my heart. Even though we didn’t have 3.1 at home, the school computer lab used it. We used to scare the teacher by typing “dir stat” or something like that into the terminal to make the text scroll like we were hacking stuff in a movie 🤣 (she didn’t know anything about computers, just there to make sure we didn’t run off with them). I also recall those colorful all-in-one Macintosh computers making an appearance at a different school.

I’m a year or so longer on my self-hosting journey than you, but also get humbled like a noob on a regular basis. I was a Linux user for over a decade when I first started self-hosting but I knew nothing about networking because I always lived places where someone else managed the internet. I’ve learned a lot since then, but I have a lot left to learn. It really does take time to get a comprehensive understanding of what you are doing and why, but the good news is you can learn a lot through osmosis and we are already doing it just by being here.

I think “$hell-shocked” might work.

Hard to believe isn’t it? If you’re not ray tracing your spreadsheets you don’t need to update that often. :-P

Dell’s Linux support has carried my ~10 year old XPS through a lot of changes and updates. It still runs almost brand new. Not much to complain about.

I see that now. I must have missed it in my excitement. Thanks!

Does this have a heat overlay? As in, can I see which routes I take most commonly my filtering and overlaying a years worth of data? That’s the only thing that’s kept me on Strava. I know there are a few open source tools, but nothing has looked this complete for me. This looks super cool.

The meme is spot on. The more we learn about Google, the more glad I am that some of the steps are already behind me.

Also, congratulations on your journey.

True. Starting with a fresh install can be more of a performance boost than buying a new drive. Add them together though and your computer is going to feel like future tech. I’d also just reinstall, unless its a server or a pain to rebuild.

Agreed on the exclusivity thing. Matching apps could be a big benefit. I don’t read across devices (or if I do, it is for different books), but I want to give cross-device syncing a try once I get my Calibre library all fixed up.

Good point on the AMOLED. I actually like the different UI. It keeps me zoned into my book and zoned out of Android.

I got shareware vibes from it when I tried it. Currently I am using Kanboard and Vikunja, but I haven’t found the perfect set up yet. All of them are an improvement over Ticktick or Todoist, but I have yet to find perfection.

You already received a reply to this, but I recently had both installed and also recently reviewed my apps to uninstall duplicate-purpose apps.

KOreader looks like what comes on a Kindle, Nook, etc. I have it loaded on an old Kindle 4th Generation I inherited from my Grandpa. If you like eBook readers, this one is for you. Librera is for people who are Android users, especially those who download and store books on their devices. It follows more typical Android design conventions and functions more like a full eBook suite vs a reader tool.

I think I’m going to go with KOreader for my uses, but have immense admiration for the developers of both.

I had a similar experience with the XPS 13, which is odd because Dell explicitly supported Linux on this laptop. It was a good device and ran well for at least a decade.

Yeah, it’s been a few years since phones really changed that much, even for normies.

I know I’m not the average consumer, but I don’t want a new one either, especially an expensive one. There’s nothing they can offer me right now that makes the upgrade worth it. Short of a fully open source device fully under my control, there’s not much on my wish list. My phones have had oodles of free ram, at least 1080p displays and decent battery life for 5-10 years now. The app system is so scummy and degraded I don’t see a reason to upgrade to run anything new.

If anything, on the hardware side, I’d like them to:

• unround the corners of the display
• put back the headphone jack
• put back the removable batterys
• add the IR blaster back in
• give me an SD slot

But that’s not going to happen.