this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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186
Tech Guidelines For Europeans (ieji.de)
submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
44 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/58733010

Tech Guidlines For Europeans

top 44 comments
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[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago

These posts are already beginning to be tiring. It's always the same software, and always the same arguments against some of the choices.

Ditching open source projects for corporate European stuff doesn't solve anything, it just moves the problem. How can you be sure that every country in the EU won't break some trade deals and leave the EU at some point? And closed source software is not better at protecting your privacy if that's what you want.

And the "European based forks/open source projects"(whatever that means) is a stupid argument. For example, cryptography experts pointed out issues in threema, so why recommend it instead of signal which is open source projects, and by definition, not tied to a country?

And finally, I think we should stop recommending LLMs altogether. They're an ecological and sociological disaster.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Mistral --> pseudo-open-source

Linux --> not relates to Europe (but amazing choice)

Vivaldi --> only source available

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

It is not only about being european but also about being digitally sovereign

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 days ago (1 children)

From Wikipedia of Qwant:

Restructuring

In May 2019, Qwant announced that it would migrate its servers to an infrastructure based on Microsoft Azure, and also keep some of its indexing capacity on its infrastructure.[22]

Not only that, but they base their results almost entirely off of MS Bing.

So idk, but not that european other than data privacy.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago

Now it is working together with Ecosia on an Europan Search engine

[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Is using a fork of something really an actual solution? It's still enabling the dominance of the original corporation.

I dunno, maybe it is, but it sure doesn't seem like it to me

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

You mean Vivaldi?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

In specific for this, yes. But also in general

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

Honestly, due to how it's a paid app, I don't see any viable mass adoption. Possibly great for a professional/corporate setting, but considering that Signal is free and some people already have a hard time leaving WhatsApp, it'd be hard to convince anyone to pay for a messaging app.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 days ago (2 children)

I've been using Vivaldi more and more. Been aware of it for years, even used it back in beta. It's almost too kustomizable. It boarders on being an OS with how much is built in.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Vivaldi is based on Chromium. When Google kills manifest v2 in a few months, Vivaldi will be forced to follow. They can't maintain a full fork. So, no more uBlock in Vivaldi.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I've been meaning to do more testing with it's built in blocking. Guess we'll have to see when the time comes.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

if you want to test it by seeing how many ads do pages have after, I just want to point out that ublock is much more than an ad filter. you won't notice by looking at the website if vivaldi does not block data mining content anymore

[–] [email protected] 1 points 21 hours ago

Fair enough. I also run a local pihole too with a fairly extensive lists. (~2.2mil). It's mostly a concern for work. We have freedom of browser choices, but extensions are monitored. Though I can't make use of pihole on my work laptop.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I wish that Vivaldi was open source and not proprietary.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago

I agree, but knowing it’s from Norway makes me feel more comfortable with the idea of using it than if it was made in the US…. (And I’m American…)

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 days ago (2 children)

both Qwant and Ecosia are working with Microsoft. Not so European.

Monocles is SearX, which basically is boogle, bing &c behind a shroud. Like Leta also is.

Mojeek is the only "European" alternative, it seems

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago

if I recall right Ecosia and Qwant joining together to build a new Search Engine without the use of Bing and Google

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

+1 for Mojeek. I use it on a daily basis.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago (4 children)

Mistral sucks. Vivaldi is Chromium. Linux has terrible user experience.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

it has a great UX, it's just picky about who its users are

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (2 children)

It's awesome for software devs, sys admins, tinkerers. But that's it. Most distros still have too many issues for me to recommend it to every Windows user.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago (3 children)

No, Linux is also great for tech illiterate people who just need a browser and e-mail. It's only hard for people who think they know computers but really only know some Windows

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I tend to agree. but how do you automatize updates? tech illiterate people won't open the shell, and apt upgrade.

with some distros like mint and opensuse there's a paved way to set this up with a gui, but even that is just small updates. what will the user do with major distribution upgrades?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Most distros have automated updates, or ask to update on power-off. Debian and all derivatives do. As for major updates, I do those for my tech illiterate family. It's not like they can do that themselves, but they wouldn't be able to upgrade Windows themselves either.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

but they wouldn't be able to upgrade Windows themselves either.

wasn't that happening automatically since 7?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

Well first thing my mom asked me was where she can run Office. Second thing she asked was how she can go back to Windows as it has Office already installed.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I agree with that for daily tasks it's great and easy. It works until you try to connect an exotic device in the game or just use a external device most of the time you will have to do it manually or it will just doesn't work.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

On the gripping hand, if you're trying to connect an older external device, you're more likely to get it working eventually under Linux (which usually keeps device drivers until they bit-rot out of the kernel tree) than Windows (whose drivers are version-specific and only get ported forward if the manufacturer thinks there's money in it). Six of one, half-a-dozen of the other, as far as I'm concerned, and device setup is a thing you should only have to do rarely anyway.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The peripherals were mostly dead before it reach the end of support in windows. It's just plug and play for thousands of periphericals (gaming, music, etc...).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

The peripherals were mostly dead before it reach the end of support in windows.

Not my experience at all—I have stuff 20+ years old that's still in working order. Maybe you're particularly hard on your peripherals.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

What issues? And does Linux have more issues than Windows or different ones?

Often Windows has more issues, people have just gotten used to dealing with them.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Mistral is fine. Librewolf is Firefox. Linux has great UX if you choose the right distro

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

I tried Ubuntu, Pop, Mint, Xubuntu. They all have problems. Most of these problems like software or driver support are probably not their fault. But they are problems nontheless. I cannot recommend Linux as a daily driver for non-techsavy users.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago

I hope you don't try windows cause you'll find even more problems

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

Not to discredit your experiences with Linux but you just listed Ubuntu four times

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

I'm using Pop and I've definitely had fewer problems than using Windows, and while I've tried others in the past that have been pretty fiddly (looking at you Ubuntu), there hasn't been a single thing that any normal user wouldn't have been able to deal with so far

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago

I'm with you on the first two, but disagree on the last. To each their own I guess.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Okay, so go on... instead of only listing negatives, what are the alternatives to each of these that you use?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Librewolf is already listed. There are unfortunately no good alternatives to Windows and ChatGPT or Gemini.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago

If there isn't a good replacement for windows, then we can clearly say in your opinion, there are no good operating systems.

So why not support the concept you believe in most?

Because right now it sounds like you're just making excuses for Microsoft.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

Librewolf is just some customized FF variation, so it's from USA at the core. Same as Vivaldi, of course.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

What Linux distros did you try, though? Some are explicitly less user-friendly than others. Also, how about Llama?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Europe was trying to add censorship to all these software stacks. Maybe they should use Chinese software so that its already in place?

https://signal.org/blog/pdfs/upload-moderation.pdf