One month ago I wrote about my project to switch to European companies for my personal use. The journey has begun and I'd like to provide an update, showing my progress and my doubts.
Social media
I moved my handle to Eurosky, a PDS hosted in Europe. This was a bit stressful but ultimately it worked, and I'm very happy about the move. Concretely my AT Proto data is now stored in the European Union.
Conclusion: success!
Web Browser
I'm trying hard to get used to Vivaldi. Somehow a little fatigue with this browser. I couldn't get used to the tabs on the left side so I had to put them on top as I'm used in Firefox. I find the options often overwhelming and I hated the constant spams I was getting from Vivaldi. I had to unsubscribe. I thought I would get one email from time to time but this is way too much.
Ploum mentioned recently on Bluesky LibreWolf, basically Firefox without ANY AI and that might be worth exploring instead.
I'm still using heavily Firefox (with AI features disabled).
Conclusion: meh.
I'm very happy with Proton Mail: I started to move some newsletters there and it's perfectly functional. I haven't decided if I will choose a paying subscription or go to mailbox.org, mailo.fr or one of the many other services.
Conclusion: email transition will be fine.
Notes
No plan to quit Obsidian.
Conclusion: Status quo.
Blog
If you'e reading this, you know I moved to Codeberg, an open-source Git forge from Germany (free). I was worried but it was in fact pretty simple. I wrote about the migration and the Forgejo action here.
Following this move, I made a small donation (24€) to the project. Yes, they need money like anyone else and it's only fair 😉.
Conclusion: "Great success!" (as Borat would say)
Git Forge
I moved most or my repos to Codeberg. I archived the GitHub ones that got transferred. I'll delete them, when I will have time.
Conclusion: Success.
Music Streaming
Qobuz has some bugs but it's mostly fine.
Conclusion: Still satisfied by my switch.
Video Streaming
No plans to cancel Netflix.
Conclusion: Status quo.
Storage
I wrote:
the scale of this migration is daunting.
Well, that might explain why I still haven't decided. I'm still hesitating about the best strategy: one-to-one replacement for Google services like Proton Cloud, Infomaniak kSuite or Managed NextCloud at Ionos?
Or specialized services for photos, like ente.io or PixelUnion combined with file storage at pCloud or Filen?
BTW: I found an interesting feedback on the Ionos Managed NextCloud experience (in French) here. In short, peace of mind and good pricing but release cycle far way from the official NextCloud releases, no quotas displayed per user and no possibility to share to special groups of users (let's say, the parents), and weak support.
Conclusion: Analysis paralysis. I spend more time thinking about this than I probably should.
Hosting
I bought a VPS at Hetzner and the same evening I realized it was a mistake: 1/ I managed with a lot of difficulties to even log in to the server and 2/ The amount of sysadmin knowledge you need to have to not get immediatly bot-hacked is overwhelming.
Conclusion: I will likely cancel it.
Domain Name
I have found a almost good domain name. The offers are more or less the same and if I want to combine it with my online identity that's basically a rent for life. I'll wait until I'm sure.
Conclusion: Status quo.
AI/LLM
Using intermittently Le Chat by Mistral for personal research, I'm mostly using warp.dev at work.
I haven't spend time to find a good local open-source model for coding assistance.
Conclusion: Status quo.
Overall Conclusion
I made some progress, but the main question is how I will replace Google Photos and Drive.
Progress Summary
| Service | Category | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Social Media | PDS | ✅ Success |
| Web Browser | Privacy | 🤔 Undecided |
| Communication | ✅ Good | |
| Notes | Productivity | 🟰 Status Quo |
| Blog Hosting | Web | ✅ Success |
| Git Forge | Development | ✅ Success |
| Music Streaming | Media | ✅ Success |
| Video Streaming | Media | 🟰 Status Quo |
| Cloud Storage | Data | 🤔 Undecided |
| VPS Hosting | Infrastructure | ❌ Failed |
| Domain Name | Identity | 🟰 Status Quo |
| AI/LLM | Development | 🟰 Status Quo |