Jeskola Buzz Tracker. Making tracks in a vertical midi step sequencer with no mixer was wild AF.

IIRC it came with an awesome drum kit called PSI Drums and a set of proprietary plugins (non VST) which included several cool synths abd Whitenoise Stereodist - the most brutal distortion I’ve ever heard, surpassing Ohmicide, Coldfire and Rift in its ability to turn things into aggressive digital terrain.

Migrated to Fruity Loops pretty soon thereafter

Very much in the AI skeptical and even anti-AI crowd. I appreciate the attempt and it does feel aligned with Proton’s overall direction / mission.

I just tries it in a web browser and it was 0/2 of the first two questions I asked it.

It is really exhausting and annoying to have assistants baked into everything now just so “ready to help”.

Will probably check back in a year and see if this still exists and if it is has improved. In the meantime I’m doing just fine without any AI whatsoever

From an outsiders perspective, element has never worked for me and never been stable enough to get anywhere close to discord. Joining servers is buggy AF and Element X is severely hobbied on mobile.

I’ve been refusing to use discord for about 6-8 months and am often invites to join various discords by IRL friends and online communities. I wish Matrix / Element was a viable alternative but I’ve never been able to get it working for anythung other than DMs, and I’m already happy with Signal for that honestly.

As a non developer I want to be sensitive to the amount of work involves, and the number of cooks in the kitchen, but the fact that we don’t have a FOSS- federated slack / discord killer app is leaving so much interaction on the table.

I’ve heard of Revolt but it doesn’t seem to be there with encryption

Ehhhh do you have more evidence than a couple policy-specific / sycophantic tweets? I’m not sure I’d personally describe it that way

That’s great news! I guess i should switch to nightly

This type of thing (+ the AI embedded shenanigans) is what sent me over to Obsidian for personal use.

Still use Notion a bit for work but I’ve peeled way back on it.

Correct me if I’m wrong but I think we are still waiting for true tab process separation.

I love IronFox and use it alongside Vanadium. When Fission is confirmed I will bump IronFox back up to most browsing - vastly prefer Gecko browsers as a user but concerned about tab isolation and tracking.

iIRC IronFox has Fission already but there was a dangling question regarding an inability to still isolate processes.

This isn’t on the IronFox devs either - it really needs to be fixed upstream by Mozilla

We desperately need a stable implementation of fission / true tab separation on android.

Just piling on to say that I have been unable to join any Matrix servers despite having set up two accounts successfully.

And why are there no usable android clients for spaces?

Just bought a 9 for Graphene. Up and running - works like a charm. Devs are not announcing end of the line for Graphene development- they are making daily updates on their way to bringing out Android 16. At this point I’d grab a 9 rather than wait for the 10. Get yourself up and running before Google tries to lock us out of more apps - right now everything I need runs fine without any play services whatsoever. The OS is solid, Vanadium is really good - I could go on and on. If you are onboard and interested in the project its 100% worth it from where I sit.

Nothing is ever perfectly future proof

I went with the 9 ultimately - and recently - and am very happy so far. I was prepared for a buggy or difficult experience but grapheme is really smooth in my experience so far.

After months of trying to degoogle a Samsung running stock OS, finally having control and proper security is a relief.

I also went with the 256gb and would recommend spending on storage whatever model you go with. Personally i don’t see much in the 9;pro that i don’t already have in the 9.

Signal, Lemmy (Voyager), Mastodon, PipePipe etc all running smoothly.

Learning that many apps you can get on Aurora will work, but most apparently rely on Google Play services to send notifications. So it’s annoying to not receive those or need to set up workarounds, but honestly think about that. The app is telling google every single item it wants to notify you and relying on google to deliver it. That really sucks as a strategy.

Thankfully Signal has its own way of delivering notifications

Many appa that seem to “need” Google Play Services to run will work without it, especially with Exploit Compatibility turned on in that specific app settings. Even worked for banking for me, no play services needed in that profile etc.

Proton Calendar is working well for me. I send and respond to invites from friends and family within it, and it is even able to view my work calendar which unfortunately has to live in Google. I can view work events from my personal device without needing to use any Google login on my own devices so it works for me. Proton Calendar’s UI and UX is pretty similar to Google Calendar IMO

As always, these guides are highly valuable and easy to understand!

I found a search string that cycles through available public instances of SearXNG. It has been an awesome experience

I’m planning to experiment with my own instance soon

While true, I think many have been motivated to take much further action, get organized and get knowledgeable by the clear collaboration between the far right / neo reactionaries and the tech right in the US in the last decade. So basing the guide off of that will draw attention

1.Email –

proton

2.Cloud storage / file sync–

pCloud (lifetime storage purchase FTW)

3.Maps & navigation–

Magic Earth works pretty well

4.Search engine–

Qwant for daily driver, exploring SearxNG

5.Web browser–

Waterfox on desktop and mobile, exploring LibreWolfe and Fennec as well but Waterfox is smooth and fast

6.Calendar–

Proton

7.Contacts management–

Fossify

8.Notes / to-do lists–

Obsidian MD (free) with paid vault sync upgrade

9.Office suite (docs, spreadsheets, etc.)–

LibreOffice & Obsidian

10.Messaging / chat–

Signal, Line. I really, really tried with Element and Element X - would love a federated discord alternative - but honestly I was not even successful at adding friends with confirmed accounts. Could be user error.

Signal is great.

11.Video calling–

Line, Signal

12.Social media / microblogging–

Mastodon, BkueSky

RSS reader / news–

TBD open to suggestions -

13.Music streaming / podcast app–

Podcasts - AntennaPod is great, switched over from PocketCasts and haven’t looked back. Fuck Spotify.

Music – Bandcamp (must try it!) + CloudBeats on mobile (streaming my own flac files to myself) + MusicBee on desktop. Also, fuck Spotify.

14.Video streaming / YouTube alternative–

PeerTube, PipePipe

15.Password manager–

Proton

16.VPN / DNS / Firewall–

Proton

17.Launcher / Android OS (if you use custom ROMs)– Android with I hope all the right settings and no g-apps in the main profile. Looking at Lineage (my device can’t do Graphene)

Never wanted a pixel for any reason but might try it for next device solely for graphene - we’ll see.

18.App store / APKs–

Aurora / F-Droid

19.Photo backup / gallery–

Fossify Gallery

20.Weather–

Ehh. Still on MyRadar but probably time to switch

21.Smart assistant (if any)–

None

22.Anything else you’ve replaced?–

Left audible for Libro.FM, so far so good.

Left Amazon, been buying books on Thriftbooks.

Pixelfed seems to have potential as an IG replacement.

RedReader when looking at Reddit .

Looking for a meaningful Goodreads replacement with a mobile app…

Goal is to potentially try Lineage this summer…

Thanks! Yes I had intended to include links, trying again now:

https://blushresponse.bandcamp.com/album/sprawl

https://blushresponse.bandcamp.com/album/in-exile

I have found that Waterfox is slightly, slightly faster on both Windows and Android and am loving it so far.

The PurchaseWithPurpose community here on Lemmy and other platforms does a great job of pointing at achievable change by dissecting nine differences between available alternatives.

Privacy is a spectrum; I agree with comments here saying to look at these much more hardened principles still even if you won’t ultimately be taking them up on all their suggestions

On this note, I’ve been having a decent run with Qwant. No AI chatbot, seems to be referencing some of the big indexes but also recently partnered with Eccosia to start working on building an independent index.

Mojeek was underwhelming but I’ll try it again

Kagi was appealing to me as well, especially the quality of their results. However the requirement for a user profile (allowing them to build a profile based on your searches) and their involvement with AI soured me.

Would possibly pay for a search engine if it could somehow avoid the above pitfalls.