Moving To Free And Open-Source Software (FOSS)

• Recently I made the move to FOSS–Free and Open-Source Software.
• I changed my whole digital life over. Programs I used every day have been replaced: phone apps, my web browser, and even the operating system on my main computer.
• What sparked this decision?
• I got fed up with the few massive companies that control our digital lives. Two main events caused this:
• First, Gooogle announced that G-Suite will be changing to Workspace and the plan I had been on for two years, Gmail for my business email and unlimited storage on Google Drive, will be going up in price and the storage will no longer be unlimited.
• In fact, the storage for the same price point is dropping all the way down from unlimited to 2 TB.
• Second, about a week after the first announcement, Google announced Google Photos would no longer allow free storage of "high quality" images. After a certain storage limit, users will need to pay for mor storage.
• Both of these changes are understandable. Companies need to make money and Google was offering very cheap/free services.
• The problem arrises in the fact that Google made these services extremely cheap or free until most of the competition had been eliminated since they could not afford to compete. Once they were gone, Google was free to up the price.
• These events also made me realize my digital life was too reliant on one company. Just as I do in my investments, I needed to diversify.
• So, that's exactly what I've decided to do. I'm diversifying my digital assets.
• I felt that my subscriptions had gotten out of hand.
• I was spending a lot every month for services that I realized I may be able to replace with free alternatives.
• This had a snowball effect: every time I canceled one service I wanted to cancel more. After all was said and done, I had canceled fourteen subscriptions and seven domains!
• I'm tired of greed.
• I became fed up with everyone doing things and creating things for no reason other than to make money.
• My biggest qualm was with myself–every business idea I had was not to fulfill me, but to put money in my pocket, and I wanted this to change.
• FOSS is, obviously, free.
• It's awesome to use excellent software created by people who love what they are doing and expect nothing in return.
• Remember how you felt when you started receiving Netflix DVDs in the mail and each one felt like punching Blockbuster and their late fees in the face? That's how using open-source software feels to me.
• What apps have I replaced, and what did I replace them with?
• Google Chrome -> Firefox
• Google Chrome is free, and its underlying architecture, Chromium, is open-source. So why did I switch to Firefox?
• The first reason is for the aforementioned issues I have with Google.
• Second, almost every browser these days, including Microsoft Edge and Opera, are built on Chromium. That means by using anything other than Safari or Firefox we are contributing to a single-browser internet, which paves the way for one company to hold all the power.
• Third, I've fallen in love with Firefox.
• It has some really great privacy features. It blocks all social media cookies by default, and there is an add-on that keeps Facebook stuck in its own tab so it cannot track you while you browse other pages.
• Spotify -> Amazon Prime Music
• I have been sick of Spotify for a long time. The app sucks. It's missing many features and it's super slow, especially on slow internet.
• I'm also weird, apparently, and I don't listen to much music. When I do, I mostly listen to the same 2-3 albums.
• This ended up being easy for me to replace. I already have a subscription to Amazon Prime (I decided to keep that one for now) and Amazon Prime Music has almost everything I normally listen to available for no additional charge.
• Google G-Sutie -> Local Storage
• I wrote about this in my article about G-Suite, so I won't go into detail here, but I traded Google Drive for three external hard drives that I backup everything on. One is kept in another location in case of a house fire or other disaster.
• Squarespace -> Bluehost
• Squarespace is expensive when compared to standard web hosting. If you know how to build a website, you can save a lot of money by doing it yourself, especially if you run multiple websites.
• I happen to enjoy web design, and decided to save over one-hundred dollars per year by designing a website myself.
• Evernote and Roam -> Obsidian
• Evernote is where I have been taking notes for years, but when I found Roam I was blown away. I immediately signed up for the paid service.
• When switching to FOSS, I found Obsidian, a free, open-source application like Roam that does everything I need and then some.
• I immediately fell in love and exported all my Roam notes to markdown to be imported into Obsidian.
• Obsidian runs locally and uses standard markdown, so as long as you backup your data there is no risk of losing your notes if the company goes out business.
• Adobe Creative Cloud
• Lightroom -> Darktable and RawTherapee
• I need more time to decide if these are good enough to replace Lightroom, since I am a photographer, but so far they seem great.
• Photoshop -> GIMP
• GIMP definitely does not have nearly as many features as Photoshop, so this is another that I have yet to see if it can be a permanent replacement, but so far so good.
• Premiere Pro -> Kdenlive and DaVinci Resolve
• Davinci Resolve is not open-source, but it is free and it's excellent software that is used by professionals.
• These two programs together (or each alone) can easily replace Premiere Pro for me.
• Illustrator -> Inkscape
• I never used Illustrator very much, only for logo design, so Inkscape is a perfectly good alternative for me.
• Acrobat DC -> ??
• At the moment I am using Okular to view PDFs, but it is not as powerful a PDF editor as Acrobat DC. I still have not found a good FOSS alternative to Acrobat DC, so if someone knows of one, please let me know.
• * I want to add here that if I find the replacements for Lightroom and Photoshop insufficient, I will purchase the photography edition of Creative Cloud, which is only $9.99/month as opposed to the $49.99/month of the full suite.
• Microsoft 365 -> LibreOffice and Thunderbird
• I don't use an office suite much, except for basic tasks, so LibreOffice is more than powerful enough for my needs.
• I would recommend anyone planning to keep Microsoft 365 to at least switch to Thunderbird.
• Not only is it free, but it is far superior to Outlook in just about every way.
• Microsoft Windows 10 -> Arch Linux
• This is by far the best switch I made of any of the above.
• Not only have I now gone all-in on supporting FOSS, but I feel as though I have more freedom and control as well.
• Arch is the distro I chose because I'm a super nerd, but if you want something that will more or less work out of the box I recommend Ubuntu.
• There you have it, those are all the subscriptions I replaced with free and open-source software!
• I should mention, playing around with software and computers is extremely fun to me. If you don't like messing with computers, Linux probably isn't for you. It is not nearly as easy to setup as Mac or Windows.