Greetings! Recently, i have ditched Windows for Linux. Why? Well, This all started with a Windows Update. I was working on a Discord bot, until my PC decided to restart without my consent. What was it? A Windows Update. I was like: "no big deal, ill just wait". Well, it was over 100+ updates. After all the updates completed, i saw the Windows 11 setup screen. Keep in mind that I was on WIndows 10 before the updates. Now at that point i really got angry. Like, I hate Windows 11. So then i went and completed the setup, and got met with ALL THE BLOATWARE REINSTALLED. So ofcourse, since i did NOT wanna use Windows 11, i backed up my data, and switched to the Secure and Free operating System, Linux. I went with arch, since i have used Ubuntu before, and it's terrible. And since i didn't wanna use any fancy Desktop Enviroments, such as GNOME, KDE, HyprLand, XFCE. I went with dwm. It looks very mininal and customizable.
Now that brings me to the question, What apps should i get rid of?
I know i did the same post like a few weeks ago, but for the sake of Privacy, i know Some apps contain Telemetry, and some Don't. But still.
Discord would be the obvious answer, but I understand why you might want to use it, my recommendation is using a client that disables some of the tracking like Vesktop. Spotify is also a major privacy concern, it can be replaced by Spotube (and to a lesser degree by Audiotube) which removes most tracking and is three and convenient. Also I’m not sure if I would keep using chromium, especially with manifest V3
Discord, definitely!! It might be hard to ditch but it's worth trying. I was never a big fan of it so it was kinda easy yet I still miss being able to contact some people on there. But the more people continue using it, the harder it will be to change things.
Spotify and Chromium, I agree on both as well. Try the options mentioned above concerning Spotify. And yeah, Music streaming is a hard one... I have a dedicated mobile device for Music streaming platforms of this kind if I feel the itch as well as a modded ipod for on the go. Besides that using Bandcamp on a seperate user profile on a Pixel with Graphene OS, no Google stuff installed however and it works pretty great. Highly recommend getting into a habit of buying Music (digital/physical) and listening stuff you actually own on desktop. Simple cmus or sth will do the job.
Maybe Librewolf or other Firefox fork for Browser.
Edit: typo. Edit 2: I'd keep a chromium-based Browser of some sort, you might need it sometime for something. Just use different Browsers for different things.