I would rather see people use Firefox than Vivaldi. We need a more diverse browser engine market to keep the web open. More here: https://better-tech.eu/web/article/switch-browsers/

Startpage got bought by System1 in 2019. System1 is an American advertising company. I personally use Qwant for privacy reasons - They’re also in the process of building their own search index together with Ecosia.

well looks like estonians will be proud of bolt now

OP writes “instead of their american counterparts”, and then puts signal.

Firefox as well any opensource doesn’t have a country. You can build it and use it. Avoid any centralized service.

The 4 freedoms of software are:

Freedom 0: The Freedom to Run

    You can use the software for any purpose, without restrictions.

Freedom 1: The Freedom to Study and Modify

    You have access to the source code, allowing you to study how the software works and make changes to suit your needs.

Freedom 2: The Freedom to Distribute Copies

    You can share copies of the software with others, whether for free or at a cost.

Freedom 3: The Freedom to Improve and Share Improvements

    You can modify the software and share your changes with the community, helping others benefit from your improvements.

as long as these freedoms are observed it doesn’t matter the country of origin.

Awesome stuff. Also don’t forget European DNS companies like Quad9.

Signal was made in the US and paid for with US funding though?

Some of these products would not exist without their American counterpart, which directly fuel their existance.

Librewolf is just a hardened version of Firefox. It would not exist without the Firefox team continuing to develop Firefox and to fix its security issues.

Ecosia primarely uses Bing and Startpage uses Google for search results. Both would not exist without the search engines backing them.

I’m not saying these are bad products and I don’t mean to criticiseze. I’m actually a librewolf user myself. I just think it is important to point out that the European label might be deceiving in this instance and might mislead people into thinking they are using something different than they actually are.

It might also not be so important. Perhaps focusing our energy on good open source projects and NGO-backed initiatives is desirable regardless of their origin?

idk food for thought

Decent list, but I’d recommend Threema instead of Signal

As a Google Maps alternative I could recommend Osmand and Cartes.

Not very beginner friendly to recommend Arch instead of Mint or Zorin.

EDIT I misunderstood the post, this is what you’re using, not what you’re recommending, sorry about that!
I will still include my original comment below.

Still, I use and can recommend XMPP and the provider magicbroccoli.de! Arne the admin is also a swell guy!

Bold move recommending US Signal over European Telegram!

I’d personally trust neither very much; one’s US funded and the other clearly not as secure outside “secret chats”.

But what about Threema? Or a European XMPP provider like the excellent magicbroccoli.de?

Not sure it’s a good idea to recommend Arch Linux to newbies migrating from Windows; maybe prioritize Mint or similar?

Signal is based in California, but they’re a nonprofit.