DDG is also amazing, although yes its not European but its open source and is not affiliated with any other search engine
this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2025
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Buy European
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The community to discuss buying European goods and services.
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DDG has open sourced a bunch of projects, but I don't think their actual search engine code is open source. And they use Bing results.
Thank you for posting here
Linux Mint is better for average person. See Linus' comparison video.
Also, Floop is a fork of Firefox by a Japanese dev that removes old compatibility libraries to make its performance up to 30% faster. It should run on any machine bought in the last 10 years. It's only missing DRM, so you can't watch Netflix on it.
Papago is a nice complement to DeepL. It's Korean.
Changing your machine's DNS should also be mentioned. AdGuard is from Cyprus. I personally use Cloudflare though. NextDNS is from US by two French devs. Quad9 is Swiss.
Minor correction: browser plugins and extensions are not the same. Please rename the 'plugin' section to 'extensions' :)
I would suggest adding uBlock Origin, since it can block american ad-tech like Google Analytics
In the Maps>OpenStreetMap section, I would love to see Organic Maps linked, as it is one of the best mobile apps for OSM, and apparently Estonian
With the Linux distro recommendations, you opened a can of worms, I'd add Fedora to the big boys and Bazzite in the minor section for gamers
Please rename the โpluginโ section to โextensionsโ :)
Done.
I would suggest adding uBlock Origin
Done.
I would love to see Organic Maps linked
Done.
With the Linux distro recommendations, you opened a can of worms
I sure did. I will keep your suggestions in mind, but I'm not changing anything right now. I'm in the middle of other stuff, not a lot of time to test these distro's.
Thanks for all the feedback!
Fedora is open-source but American btw as it is used to be a pathway for redhat
- Firefox is owned by the Mozilla Foundation, which is US-based and I say that as a lifelong Firefox user, mind you. Waterfox is a UK-based fork of Firefox. Not owned by Mozilla. Also, based on Chromium (the open source part of Chrome) there is the cool Vivaldi browser (Norway).
- Why Ubuntu only? Promoting almost any GNU/Linux distro would be a good move. I will promote the one I'm using: Mint. I'm happy to say that everything works out of the box and have been working great for 4 or 5 years nowโand I never have to use the command line if I don't want to... which, frankly, I don't mind using, quite the contrary ;)
- Cloud: I tried following the suggest links and gave up on the 3rd one. It's too technical, at least for me. depends what you're looking for but here is a couple of EU/European cloud storage providers I use: Infomaniak (Swiss, works great, more features than just cloud), Filen.io (German, works great, more limited in features but offers full end-to-end encryption).
Firefox
I explained that here: https://better-tech.eu/web/article/switch-browsers/ In short, this is the only thing where I believe keeping the web open by using Firefox is more important than using a "European" browser like Vivaldi. If everyone uses a Chrome-based browser, we will end up in an IE6-like situation where it will be extremely hard to create a 100% European browser and get any traction.
Why Ubuntu only?
There are more options here: https://better-tech.eu/infra/article/operating-systems/
Cloud
Cloud computing is always going to be a technical subject, but this is also the part where I still have to do a lot of work and add a lot of content. Maybe I need to make separate pages for home users and for companies to make the information more accessible.
Btw, Infomaniak is mentioned here: https://better-tech.eu/cloud/article/workspace/
Distributions can be hit or miss depending on the user and hw for sure.
Mint 22.1 still runs Kernel 6.8 whoch means you'll be hitting the terminal to either upgrade to mainline kernel or add extra repositories for the latest drivers if you have f.e. an AMD Radeon 9070.
Mint 22.1 still runs Kernel 6.8 whoch means youโll be hitting the terminal to either upgrade to mainline kernel
The last two major updates of Mint were done through some GUI. There were a few warnings (about a few extra apps I had installed) but everything was done through that app and went smoothly. Edit: and so quickly (yeah, I'm looking at you, macOS)
or add extra repositories
I don't think I use extra repositories but I did add two PPAs and did it through the GUI 'Software Sources' that comes with Mint. I just checked, it also offers the option to add 'Additional repositories', if that means 'extra'?
Re: Kernel Version. The latest Linux Mint 22.1 still runs Kernel Version 6.8, if you want a newer one than that you must add it yourself without depending on Mints own updates.
Re: PPAs and repositories.
Might be that there is an option through GUI to add the kisak/kisak-mesa and get the latest Mesa drivers, but I've not found a single guide that mentions how to do it through GUI.
[SOLVED]Can't get a singe game to run on Mint or POP
Original Post here:Hi guys, itโs me again.
My issues is that no windows game on Steam will run. With any launch option or proton version (tried about 10). Most just doesnโt open at all. (Click play, nothing happens)
Solution: Pop!_OS and Linux Mint doesnโt have a kernel new enough to support the Mesa 25 drivers needed for my 9070XT. These commands in the terminal was the fix for this:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kisak/kisak-mesa
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
https://sopuli.xyz/post/25130506
My point was that if the distro had instead been say Nobara (Fedora-based gaming-focused distro made by GloriousEggroll for ease of use for his dad) then no fix would've been needed at all as it already run new enough linux kernel and come prepackaged with all the goodies a gamer need.
There is an application called Mainline, or Ubuntu Mainline Kernel Installer, which should work on every Ubuntu based distro. It lets you install kernels up to the very latest one (currently 6.14.2). It has a GUI, or you can just enter sudo mainline install-latest in terminal to install the latest kernel.
Here's a guide how to install it: https://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2020/08/mainline-install-latest-kernel-ubuntu-linux-mint/
If you are gaming, it's recommended to use the latest kernel. Newer kernels not only provides support for newer hardware, but can also improve performance.
I'm not much of a gamer (I play chess, though), I only wanted to say I needed no 'fix' nor terminal in order to get my Mint to update to its latest versions ;)
I don't really like naming specific instances (lemmy.world, mastodon.social) and distro (Ubuntu) instead of at least offering a few choices + a full list of instances.
Many people don't want to get into the topic that much, they wan't it accessable and easy to use. That's also the reason that many Big Tech firms can bring out products to get your data and sell it because those products are easy to use. If we want people to join our alternatives then we should make them accessable and not judge them for their disinterest in the details.
That is exactly why I made this page. If you want more details you can follow the links and dive into things, but if you don't then the options on this page are much better than doing nothing.
I'd prefer terms like 'Switch from Reddit to Lemmy by joining https://lemmy.world/ or another instances which you might like, see join-lemmy.org for a list.'
Full disclosure, I upvoted and agree with you.
Still, this leaves open the question of how you reached your idea of sensible defaults. Are these just the most popular in each category (e.g. most successful search engine, highest user-count Lemmy instance, etc.)?
I strongly disagree with putting Ubuntu front and center. I realize that Canonical is headquartered in the UK (although with many subsidiaries including ones in the US, Canada, and China), is one of the most corporate-controlled "community" distributions. Even if something is European, other points of criticism should not be forsaken.
Agree with this, but in a tldr there shouldn't have a lot of disclaimers at the same time. Maybe just adding words like 'for example' or 'such as' or 'a popular choice is' can already say enough.
Agreed, I'd take OpenSUSE over an Ubuntu flavour any day if european is important. Generally I roll Debian servers and a Fedora desktop though.
Like others have mentioned, those of us in the know probably don't need much help picking alternatives here, as we're likely to know what the options are and how they differ. For the regular Jane and Joe to even stand a chance in a pretty confusing landscape it needs to be as simple as possible to get going with an alternative, or else I fear most people will just fall back on the well known, well marketed options.
I suggested to a non-techy coworker (a Reddit user) he'd give Lemmy a shot, and when I asked him how it went a couple of days later he said he got confused during the sign up process, "what the heck is an instance, which one should I pick?".
Since we're in Buy European, I'm going to plug Softmaker Office. I bought it to replace MS Office at work and no one seems to have noticed. I used see formatting issues in word docs when using LibreOffice.
Added. Thanks.
Hi again. You can actually buy Softmaker Office versions outright (a non-subscription purchase), but they seem to have made the option harder to find these days: https://www.softmaker.com/en/shop/softmaker-office
I missed that, but I have added it now. Thanks.
Cool. Your site is a great resource!
Read, and already done all that.
I suggest you add another link: donate to projects you enjoy via Liberapay (or switch to helping projects and creators you enjoy through this rather than patreon/paypal).
Also
Nice resource!
I have to say I really like the idea of TLDR page. This is my first time bumping into a website that has a dedicated TLDR.
I like it. Keeping it simple, with sensible opinionated defaults. I don't necessarily agree with everything, but the choices is in no way bad.
Can I recommend that you make it FOSS, so that there can be discussions on what to add, why something was added/removed etc? Privacyguides have a good system for this ๐
Also the links that are :visited are dark purple and not very visible anymore. Consider a brighter colour
Also the links that are :visited are dark purple and not very visible anymore. Consider a brighter colour
I don't see what you are seeing. On which page and with which browser?
Nevermind, it appears that the links follow the color of the section. Seeing that purple is hardcoded in my head as :visited ๐
The colors for the links on several of the pages still have too little contrast in my opinion.
Browser is the chromium based Vivaldi
I see what you mean. Is is better now?
Yes, thanks for fixing it ๐
~~I know it's kinda obvious in this post (lemmy username), but due to our rules:~~
~~OP could you add a disclaimer in your post body that this resource is owned by you :)~~
Edit: Thanks OP!
Sorry, done.
All good, thanks! :)
Switch to HERE WeGo for your mapping needs. Read more here.
I tried them and was pleasantly surprised, also tried a bunch of OpenStreetMap based options but they work better for browsing than navigating in my opinion. Especially for looking up public transport options HERE WeGo does a much better job.
I've switched to HERE for navigation too. I've used Citymapper for public transport both at home and on holiday and think it's great.
Added. Thanks.
Nice suggestion, I'll keep it in mind when I find HERE or Organic Maps lacking. Tried to look into their business model, which seems to be advertising and selling tickets but they are very open about it which I like. Unlike here, which give me the 'everything is free and we're not gonna tell you how we can afford to do that'-vibe.
I see it's from the UK so if you want @bettertecheu@lemmy.world, you could add it to the overview.
I will look into Citymapper. Thanks.
HERE is owned by a handful of billion euro companies, like VW, BMW and Mercedes. My guess is they don't need to make money on their consumer apps, but use them to improve their data for their in-car products.
Yeah, what I think too. Rather support FOSS but in this case an eu corpo just does a much better job. Kuddos to you for taking in all these suggestions here, keep up the good work!
For cloud PaaS solutions, you are missing two of the most attractive offers in my opinion, namely Scaleway and Upcloud. They are not โdirect to OpenStackโ solutions which is not necessarily a disadvantage cause OpenStack isnโt that user friendly. But they seem fresh and offer plenty, with Scaleway doing lots of features and Upcloud being more flat, also regarding pricing.
Thanks for the suggestions. I will look into them asap.