TSHP-Ep06 How to take back control

Ep6 How to take back control

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How to take back control

https://switching.social/guide-to-switching/

First we need to look at what we need to replace to rid our lives of these companies.

1. Communication/Email/Chat/Conferancing
2. Office/Doc/Colaboration
3. File storage/Sharing
4. News
5. Social Networking
6. Education
7. Entertainment

To truly get rid of Google you will need to replace your Android phone! More on this towards the end.
These can all be covered using some ethical and free companies such as Framasoft. But then again its your data on a server (cloud) owned by some company ran by real people you dont personally know. So your options are to purchase a VPS from a reputable, privacy concious company or host your own server in your home. Both of these options can solve all 7 of those pretty cheaply. And it will all remain in your personal control.

For me what I have chosen to do is to host on my own personal server in my home. It covers everything I need for those 7 things. I have installed Yunohost on an old Dell Optiplex 330 desktop computer. It doesnt need a monitor since it is a server and is just sitting on the floor next to my desk. Yunohost has provided me with everything on that list and they have even more available than I can probably ever use.

Here is the run down of what I am currently using.

1. Email/XMPP chat - Roundcube for my web mail. On the laptop I'm using Thunderbird and that also takes care of a chat room for me. On my phone I am currently using the stock email client from LG on my G6.
2. and 3. Nextcloud is handling my office/docs and collaboration stuff. Nextcloud is awesome and has many, many extras you can use. From Nextcloud Talk, which is an implementation of JitsiMeet (Skype) to syncing your files just like Google Drive, Dropbox or icloud.
3. News is being taken care of currently by Tiny Tiny Rss which is awesome but ugly as sin. Lol
4. My social networking now consists of Mastodon.social and Pixelfed which are not my own instances. I dont have the time to spend adminstering an instance of anything.
5. Education - Isnt something I'm currently doing so I include it with the News category. Since I do like to read.
6. Entertainment is something that I love. This is covered through several apps. Partly through TTRss and partly through Nextcloud. My podcasts are subscribed through TTRss and my music files are currently used in Nextcloud and I just listen to them through the phone app. I am also using PeerTube. This is my own instance and I have it locked down to where I am the only user. This is to make my life easier so I dont have to do any administraion outside of myself. I also have Funkwhale instance setup to share my podcasts files but havent yet talked about it. Why? I'll tell ya in a minute.

Now as I mentioned earlier to truly get rid of Google you need to replace your Android phone. Either by purchasing a new phone that has another rom installed on it or intstalling an alternate rom yourself. Now I'm not that much of a techie yet to do this and I dont have the funds to go out and purchase a refurbished phone with one already installed. But what I can afford is a dumb old flip phone and a hotspot from my carrier. I plan on eventually getting a used tablet, most likely a Samsung S2 Tab and attempting to install LineageOS on it. Untill that happens since I cant find a rom to go on my LGG6 I'll use it solely for putting podcasts on to consume while working.

Now here is the kicker. I'm not going to keep all of this set up like this. I'm going to change nearly all of it. Why? Because I can! But also because again I didnt really think this whole thing through. And the beauty of self hosting is you can change it at your whim.
Plus it will give me some content for the Vidcast, lol, thats the real reason.
I'm going to completely redo the site boneheadmedia.com but I havent decided if I'm going to switch it Wordpress or not. I like WP, dont get me wrong but it has become a giant bloated peice of crap. And its a huge securtiy risk since it is so popular. I want something as easy as WP with the same functionality but somewhat safer and easier to maintain. Dammit I want it all and I want it now!

The PeerTube, Mastodon, Pixelfed and my feed at Fediverse.blog will not change. I am completely happy with that. But the Funkwhale instance is going to go on NTROradio.com and be home to the podcast media files in high quailty FLAC files.