Hello from new member
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Hello everyone. I became a member today and I am very happy to be here. I am a recent convert to libre software and hardware.
I started out at age 15 in 1983 with a Sinclair ZX Spectrum and until the mid 90s I thought computers were the most exciting things in the world. However since the mid 90s I thought the whole scene got more and more boring. Faster and faster boxes running boring OSes and apps. Even though I have been working in IT since the mid 90s I haven't experienced the same excitement I had during the Sinclair/Amstrad/Amiga days. I have been using Windows since the late 80s but it was always all about convenience. I remember running Minix from a 360 kb floppy disc around 1990 and since the late 90s I would also install a Linux distro (which I now of course would refer to as GNU/Linux) about once a year to try it out. However there would always be something that didn’t immediately work out of the box and I would scrap it after a few hours and install Windows again. Luckily I (re)discovered Richard Stallman last year and understood what I didn't understand (and didn't really read) about GNU in the 80s and 90s. Now I am again super excited and I am trying to learn and implement as much as I can for freedom both in the digital world and the analog world. There are so many things I previously took for granted and it was all about convenience at the expense of freedom and happiness.
My new journey started at the end of 2015. I am trying to be as Libre as I can both concerning software and hardware. Some of the things I have done so far:
- Got an Lenovo X200 (without Libreboot), a Penguin Wireless N USB Adapter, installed Trisquel 7.0
- Bought a Lenovo T400 (with Libreboot) from Minifree
- Got the ThinkPenguin VPN mini-router
- Deleted my google account that I had been using heavily since 2007 (email, gdrive, calendar, search etc etc). Switched to Protonmail, DuckDuckGo and OwnCloud. I also deleted my Facebook account. Getting rid of Google and Facebook was a very interesting process.
- Stopped using my Galaxy S6 smart phone and get a dumb phone instead. Will possibly install Cyanogenmod at a later stage.
- Got rid of my Xbox One
- Supported the EOMA68 crowdfunding project. This is a very exciting project.
- Started buying/reading the «Linux Voice» magazine
- Got involved in the Norwegian Unix User Group and I am getting to know some great people. They hosted Bradley Kuhn in Oslo in June and his talk «Tales from 20 Years of Copyleft Enforcement" was great.
I am looking forward to participating on the forum. I have read lots of great threads and I have already found answers to several questions I’ve had during the last 6 months.
I am a translator!
welcome here *larsen !!
Yes, welcome. I'd be interested to know if the process of moving from gmail was difficult? Were you able to keep a copy of your past mail. I understand protonmail is quite limited in its mailbox storage. You may be interested by http://www.33mail.com/ to avoid your protonmail being spammed from sites that force you to sign up etc.
My ONLY issue with leaving Gmail is that most non-famous providers (specially if you host your own mail server) are classified as spam by default.
That means you can send email, but unless the receiver explicitly allows your address to pass, it will go unnoticed.
For personal use, it's annoying, for professional use, it's a problem.
Thanks for the 33mail info.
Yes, I only recently discovered 33mail myself. One of the guys behind it (the other is his brother) is the same guy who started and still heads up the freenet project which is another plus.
Sounds good, thanks doolio!
Thank you. I will try out the 33mail.com. Looks good. So far in the last 7 months I haven't had any problems with spamming or legit email being recognized as spam. I am more careful signing up for stuff and I rely much more on pulling of information than pushing. In the past I would sign up for anything and everything but now I will mainly actively visit websites or use an RSS reader. Now I enjoy getting very few emails!
I had 30 thousand emails in gmail and I spent hours and hours manually purging my inbox. It was interesting going through all that stuff. It triggered lots of memories and it was fun. I kept 15 thousand and saved it in mbox format. I did not export/forward any of them to protonmail. I was not sure if I would need any of the gmails again. Actually in the last 7 months I only needed info from the old gmail ONE time. There was an email address that I forgot. Therefore I imported the mbox into a local Evolution client today and I found the address.
While I was going through my gmails I wrote down every contact/address/service I would need to change to protonmail. It was interesting to see how much I had been relying on gmail and Facebook for logins for all kinds of pages and services. Tentacles going everywhere after eight years of use/abuse. It took a while but I kept unsubscribing stuff and moving to protonmail and when I thought I was finished I saved the remaining to mbox and deleted my gmail account. The files I needed from gdrive I moved to Owncloud/Woelkli and to jottacloud. I saved my personal videos from youtube and uploaded to jotta. I didn't do any email forwarding whatsoever from gmail to protonmail. I did it all manually and I enjoyed the process.
So the process of moving wasn't too difficult but it was time consuming. But I enjoyed it. I realized I had to cut the cord completely instead of just deactivating my Facebook and forwarding gmail to protonmail. I needed to get rid of it and start fresh. I am glad I did.
Thank you for the feedback. It sounds like it was a worthy activity and I can see how such a task can be quite nostalgic. Thanks again.
So far in the last 7 months I haven't had any problems with spamming or legit email being recognized as spam.
Sweet, I have to try this! Buh bye Googleland? I hope so.
Welcome!
Welcome, and thanks, I didn't know about Linux Voice or Protonmail.
Welcome, mate!
I hope you have some good times and enjoy your newfound software freedom while you're here. ^_^
Thank you. At first I thought you wrote "enjoy your newfound software freedom while you have it", LOL!
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