I’ve cancelled my subscription yesterday, conveniently it was about to renew at the end of the week, so I have a few days to migrate from Proton, here’s what I’m thinking of, but I’d love to hear what other people are switching to
I’m fien with Murena Workspace (France) and Filen (Germany) for Cloud, both OpenSource. I don’t use VPN, only Cyberghost Proxy extension to skip country restrictions, maybe the SPN (multichannel VPN) of the Portmaster app, if needed one day
Bitwarden is getting worse btw unless you’re running it yourself
What did I miss?
Moving towards closed source: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Bitwarden-Open-Source-Concerns
Which takes away the only good thing about them
Yea… God I hate the world… I started using Bitwarden like… A few months ago, and they’re already going in the shitter…
It seems it hasn’t happened yet. They are still open source for now. I am still using my Vaultwarden with Bitwarden.
It seems it might be going that way though.
If it goes fully closed source then I imagine the fix will be Vaultwarden devs coding some replacement apps.
As a google proton collaborative calc sheets/word etc etc i suggest Cryptpad
Is there any free good email service other than Tuta?
All pricing are too high for people with average wage of my country.
Happy customer of Mailbox for 3 years here! At first the UI was awful, but now they have redesigned it very, very nicely. Yes you have to pay but the price is completely fair, particularly if you are a heavy email user.
UI aside, I have had 0 issues with them. I have a custom domain, so I can create many aliases. Being able to sync my contacts and calendar via WebDav thanks to Mailbox instead of having to use a Google account is a great plus. On the computer I use their website, but many people prefer Thunderbird. On my phone and tablet I use FairEmail (I’m a big fan of the dev. That man is on the road to create the most flexible email app in the universe).
They offer a full suite with Drive, Notes, Calendar… But I don’t use them much, so I can’t comment on them.
Mailbox.org starts at €1 per month.
Other than that, there’s the old adage “if you’re not paying, you’re the product”
Dude, even when you’re paying, you’re the product. These companies can get dirty. Like why is he moving from Proton if he was paying for it?
Exactly! “I don’t call people”. I need the 911 button and the numbers for my family and that’s it. For everything else there’s Lemmy.
Exactly! “I don’t call people”. I need the 911 button and the numbers for my family and that’s it. For everything else there’s Lemmy.
… you have no friends?
FuckAI and what its doing to our world, economy, and to human beings but… why is Proton getting the hard treatment when so many other “AI first” businesses get a free pass to exploit/consume/destroy? Eli5: What is it about this specific privacy-focused business that has caused it to be so vociferously singled out for punishment? Like, have the people calling for migrating away from Proton stopped using Amazon, Atislan, Facebook, Twitter, Adobe etc?
Imagine you are a vegetarian eating food from a reputable vegetratian food company. One day they start putting meat in the food. The non-vegetarians are not upset with this but you are. Why?
In my specific case I’ve already emancipated myself from Meta, Amazon, et al so I dont really need to post about it
Main reason this comes up is that Proton has recently eroded their customers trust, it’s normal to talk about it, and it doesnt mean people don’t care about other companies embedded in AI
If anything you can expect fediverse users to already be a step beyond moving away from those you cited, they’re techy enough to know better
For meet, I just generate a Signal meet link and share with people.
Instead of bitwarden, I use KeePass with Syncthing.
Instead of Lumo(the app was terribly slow), you can use ddg ai, on fdroid there is a 1mb webview container application of ddg ai specifically so if you dont want to use ddg browser, yoi can use that for their ai.
For 2fa, i use stratumauth.
I need a vpn alternative too.
Bitwarden’s gone private equity. I’d hold off on switching to them; maybe try to live with KeePass if you’re not on a family plan.
I switched over to vaultwarden. I am stuck on an iPhone for the time being and I don’t care for all the Keepass ios apps.
Completely valid. I myself am still on Bitwarden, waiting for the other shoe to drop, but my family is already entrenched in it.
I think if I have to move them again, I might seriously consider forking keepass, adding the features I use in bitwarden.
I do not look forward to dealing with IOS tho.
Vaultwarden is completely Bitwarden-compatible. You can export all data from Bitwarden server/service, import it into Vaultwarden server, and your family will not notice the change at all, except you’ll ask them to change address in their already installed Bitwarden app.
They don’t need to change anything else. To them, it will still be the same Bitwarden.
I would switch to KeePass if its sync method was more sane than “big binary file + Syncthing”, it seems like all the password manager options kindof suck in some way
i use Aegis for 2FA but it’s a PITA as there’s no Linux desktop program, so i need to reach for my phone for 2FA. Any recommendations for something running in Android and Linux desktop??
You can export your Aegis 2FA tokens and import them into a couple of different Linux desktop programs, including OTPClient.
https://community.linuxmint.com/software/view/com.github.paolostivanin.OTPClient
This allows configuring “one” MFA token with each service, but also having it on one or more Linux computers and even on multiple Android devices (Aegis can also import.)
I imagine it is unwise to go nuts with this. Each place the tokens are at carries some small risk.
But I feel much betfer having mine in two places than in just one.
Ente auth has both.
I’m tired
Have people stopped trying Mullvad VPN for some reason? Is it no longer the best privacy focused one?
There was some drama after one of Mullvad’s cofounders was outed for donating considerable sums of money to right wing organizations. It’s fallen out of favour as the default recommendation as a result
Ah, I had no idea. Are any of the others anywhere near as private and secure?
I switched from Mullvad to IVPN, no complaints
I’m not sure. Mullvad is still a good product, but what it funds is not.
If I’m entirely honest, I mostly see VPN services as a predatory market, inflated by their own marketing campaigns about the risk of personal privacy. There are some products who are true to their word, like Mullvad, but most are looking for a quick buck from the average user who might forget they have a running subscription if they keep the cost low enough.
Frankly, after seeing what’s happened with Proton and Mullvad, I’m not inclined to believe anyone in this market amounts to more than a paranoid libertarian at best.
Closest I’ve found to it, so far, is Windscribe
One of the owners made a huge donation to a right-wing, anti-immigration Swedish political party, I believe. Someone feel free to correct me on the details.
I’ve been looking at both ivpn and airvpn as potential replacements.
Bitwarden is pivoting towards the same enshittification path as everything else, so that’s not gonna be a good long term for a password manager. They hired a new ceo whose only noteworthy experience is prepping companies for mergers and acquisitions, and briefly removed messaging on their website about always having a free tier which they reinstated after backlash. All signs point to a sinking ship, imo.
I don’t have the answer for what to use instead since I’m still a paid subscriber with them, but I’m looking around. Probably keepassxc but I don’t know enough to host and sync my own.
KeepassDX on android. Any keepass .kdbx file opener on every OS. .kdbx file saved on a local network shared folder on an always on raspberry pi. Access the folder on all devices, open the file with keepass app.
No sync, no extra sync software, no dangling copies, changes are immediate, decryption happens on device not over the network. Step up to network share over sftp. Tailscale tunnel to access when away from home.
Bitwarden is pivoting towards the same enshittification path as everything else
Yeah… I’ve noticed as well… also interested in a good alternative.
Nextcloud passwords. If you don’t want to host yourself you get a free one when you sign up for a friendica account at libranet.de.
Vaultwarden is a great alternative.
However, Vaultwarden only implements the webvault, the client apps are still only supplied by Bitwarden, which they could make incompatible with Vaultwarden at some point.
the client apps are still only supplied by Bitwarden
Not true. You could also use Keyguard.
Which is a proprietary crap.
Their github page is public and you can review the code if you want to. What are you talking about?
I’m talking about the license. It is proprietary.
That is what gives me pause with vaultwarden… the need for bitwarden proprietary apps.
Edit: i stand corrected they are not proprietary. Dont know if they could kill compatibility for vaultwarden if they chose to. That is a better explanation of my concern.
Dont know if they could kill compatibility for vaultwarden if they chose to.
Well bitwarden.com has made changes that broke compatibility with rbw for certain things, but the main problem here IMO is rbw not getting updated
Are they proprietary?
They are not. They are GPL licensed.
My mistake. Sorry
the community already made a custom server that’s compatible with Bitwarden, I imagine if Bitwarden cut them off then they could make a custom client for it as well.
in fact I believe there are community made Bitwarden apps already for Linux desktops, although I never tried them because I just use the browser extension.
Yes, there is this one for example for Linux Mobile and Desktop:
Indeed, and I do not like that I have to have another repository just for the bitwarden app.
I am not really worried though. If they completely fuck up, a fork of the app will be a matter of seconds.
AFAIK the concept behind keepassxc is that it’s an encrypted
.kdbxfile that you sync yourself among your devices by any means you can. There are official apps for Windows/Linux/Mac, browser extensions for Firefox/Chrome/Chromium/Vivaldi, there’s integration with ssh-agent, and 3rd-party apps for Android and iOS.I don’t think Keepass does syncing. I just leave the database in my Nextcloud sync folder on my desktop, and I can always pull the latest version to my phone. It’d be a bit more annoying if I routinely added new entries from my phone since Android won’t let the NC app maintain bidirectional sync, but I pretty much always do it from my desktop, so the workflow is fine for me personally. If you do it on your phone, you can upload the changed version, but I think you’d have to do it manually, so not a great flow, but if it’s a rarity, not too big a deal to me.
write a bash script that rsyncs your keepass database to your other devices and run it once in a while. i have seen way too many online password vaults get hacked to ever bother with them.
I’m tired of keeping a book of grudges everytime a CEO says something. I’ll be waiting for now.
yeah, you know, a security company CEO saying to ignore security. Just sleep on that… what could happen?
Like, it’s my business email, it’s on my cards and my site and pretty much everything else related to the business. Just change all that!?
Your business email is a @proton.me address?
You mentioned a website, wouldn’t you rather have an address @ your website domain?
Site is hosted by the accounting software I use, template based and I do no e-commerce.
Proton Mail is free and reasonably secure/not fucking Google, and I don’t computer enough to host my own site.
I cut lawns and maintain gardens, I just need to be reachable.
I don’t computer enough to host my own site.
You mean savvy or cost?
If it’s cost, you can have a simple site and email with your own domain for something like $30 a year.
I cut lawns and maintain gardens,
Do you own your rake and gloves or rent/borrow them?
It’s the same thing having a domain. Really basic but essential tool that it makes sense to own it and have no surprises or changes at anybody else’s whim.
Honestly, keep it regardless. None of your emails are encrypted anyway once they’re sent. It has to be another proton user or pgp or similar. 🤷
Unless you’re doing some illegal gardening or mowing someone down (literally & pun intended), there’s no reason to switch.
For the future, it might be worth buying your own domain. Besides looking cool, switching providers is as simple as changing your MX records.
For real. A CEO is a figurehead and can be removed at any time
people better get familiar with docker
Mind giving a bit of a breakdown of why? I’m new to Linux and heard a lot about docker (I think its like separate boxes for an apps?) after I switched and it just seemed too much at the time so I’ve put it on the back burner (was stotally new to terminal stuff).
I’m about to try rigging up an old laptop for self hosting and trying to learn. Was thinking of figuring out docker first before trying immich, keepass, calendar with calDAV and it’s all pretty overwhelming lol.
A piece of advice from someone who’s 3 years on Linux and still finds Docker a mess:
Try Proxmox. It’s a Debian-based server OS that is all about containers and virtual machines. It uses LXC containers and manages them in the same way you would treat a normal Linux install.
The interface may look a bit scary at first, but I promise this will be the only thing that scares you in the whole experience and it will take just a day or two to get used to it. I suggest finding simple “getting started” guides that will quickly get you up to speed. It’s easy, it just has too many buttons on the screen at once. Oh, and yeah - it’s fully graphical. No CLI unless you specifically want to.
After you figure out the interface, you’ll get an ultimate server solution - or an ultimate playground. Wanna test that thing? Spin up a container/VM. Screwed something up real bad? Destroy the container and get a new one. It takes two clicks, and you’re up and running again. You can easily back up your containers and VMs, so if you screw something up when actually hosting something useful, you can easily revert.
For every program you self-host, you can make its own container - they add very little overhead - and never think of it again. Should anything ever happen to a program - consequences will be limited to that program only.
Oh, and if you DO want to mess with Docker? Make a VM and play with Docker there to your heart’s content. Everything got borked? Throw that VM out the window and spin up a new one. Proxmox makes it very easy.
Running apps directly on Linux is like cooking in a shared kitchen where everyone shares the same spice rack. If one app needs an updated spice that breaks the recipe, your whole kitchen suffers.
Docker is like giving every app its own private kitchen pod with all its exact ingredients pre-packaged inside. Nothing leaks out, nothing interferes with the rest of your system, and if an app breaks, you just throw the whole pod away and start fresh without touching your main computer.
Once you get used to docker, you can stand up 20 apps in a night with standard configs and it all just works.
Later on, if you start really homelabbing it, you can stand up 3 small computers and cluster them to keep a copy of each container you’re using up. If one of the boxes go down, they just shuffle and start the container on other nodes.
Agreed on all of this. I run docker on one of my PCs and have multiple containers running. But I didn’t know you can cluster multiple PCs to run a copy of the containers and I was just wondering about a week ago if that’s possible. Would you have a resource on how to set up a 2nd PC to do this and cluster with my server?
You need docker swarm for that, it’s pretty easy to setup and it works as an extension to docker.
If you selfhist eg. DNS, or another static app that you want highly available but from a single IP, you can use keepalived directly on the host and this allows you to have two machines that share a third virtual IP, and if server A fails, the IP moves automatically to Server B and you don’t even notice that the server failed, because everything failed over to the other server.
Awesome, I will be looking into setting this up tonight. Thanks for the info.
First, this makes more sense, thanks for the write up. Second, I really wish I knew this stuff when I went head first into fuck Microsoft mode (I have a feeling I’m gonna be resetting my main PC at some point to do it right, and really dreading that). I have an old laptop returning to me that I’m gonna throw Nix on and fuck with it.
Well I don’t know much on docker myself. I use it for selfhosting containerized server stuff on local network only. Since Flatpak apps are sandboxed already (only install verified ones and intall Flatseal).
You can mimick a lot of cloud services with docker containers, that’s why I mentioned it. It’s the surest way to have control over your data. Don’t forget to make it rootless after installing.
Best you can do is get on with it at your pace, treat it like a fun hobby, try stuff, break stuff, read documentation, look at examples and learn.
Also regarding using a laptop as a server, don’t forget to remove the battery. Still running it 24/7 might chew a bit on your electricity bill. ARM devices are more beneficial here.
Don’t forget to make it rootless
Or, alternatively, use Podman. It is Docker-compatible and doesn’t need root at all, even where Docker does.
ARM devices are more beneficial here
For power consumption - undoubtedly yes. For native app support - no. I think an x86 system is a very reasonable starting point, removing as much friction as possible.
this is exhausting
It is. I just made the switch last year and spent forever making hide-my-e-mail adresses for every service , web page and online store I had subscribed to. My Proton subscription just renewed so I guess I’ll wait another 11 months to see how this pans out before I make a decision.
Hide-my-emails keep working after you leave proton if you have your own domain. I left proton last year and the alias I created there still point to my email address. But you have to have it point to a custom domain email address
I started with those, but then thankfully quickly realized it’s a great form of vendor lock.
It’ll still be a pain to migrate, but at least not AS bad as it could have been.
Don’t worry, it’ll keep going. There are so few exceptions to multi-product companies becoming shit in the long term
