Since the election of Donald Trump, the topic of digital independence has been in the focus of more and more people. Personally, it was already important to me to know where my software comes from – so I wanted to do a stocktaking of what I actually use.
Disclaimer: I am aware that even if a system comes from a specific country, it often contains components from other countries. The following representation is therefore highly simplified. It is mainly about where the companies have their origin or headquarters – even if they are active in multiple countries.
The idea came from the video by the native web:
Unfortunately, European hardware is where it ends.
I use:
The only exceptions are monitors and screens from a large South Korean company with “S”. 🇰🇷
On my laptops and desktops I use:
In virtual machines and containers I often use Debian. The assignment is difficult here: Although Debian is legally based in the USA, it is developed by volunteers worldwide.
On my smartphone, GrapheneOS is installed, which originates from Canada. 🇨🇦
I currently use three chat systems – unfortunately historically grown:
I use Startpage, a provider from the Netherlands 🇳🇱 – even though Google provides the search results in the background.
I was a big Sublime fan – until the prices went up. After that, I worked a lot with Vim. The original developer, Bram Moolenaar, came from the Netherlands 🇳🇱, and the project is now maintained by Christian Brabandt from Germany 🇩🇪.
However, today I almost exclusively use VS Code from Microsoft 🇺🇸 – because of the many extensions.
I use Firefox – but even here all the major alternatives are from the USA. 🇺🇸
Even though I use frontends like NewPipe or Grajay, YouTube remains the undisputed number one. Competition? Rarely – and when, then mostly from the USA. 🇺🇸
For hotel bookings I often use Booking.com. 🇳🇱 For navigation, Google Maps is hard to beat. 🇺🇸
While OpenStreetMap has very good maps, it unfortunately has no real city navigation.
The dominant providers in the field of generative AI are:
I have used the following providers so far:
Contabo is cheap, but the service did not fully convince me – I would use Hetzner again in the future.
When it comes to digital independence, Self-Hosting is of course the gold standard – ideally with self-developed or controlled services.
I rely on:
I was surprised myself by how many German (and European) alternatives I already use – or at least know about.
I mostly use the big US software companies only because of the network effect: You are where everyone else is.
For mainstream hardware components, unfortunately there is hardly any way around the USA.
