It’s that time of the year - it’s Christmas, which means I actually get some free time to post something on my blog.

I decided to chronicle my move away from US-based software to alternatives that are either developed in the EU, open source or, preferably, both. I’m sure there are a bunch of other options out there that I didn’t consider, but I figured I’d document this just in case anyone looking to do the same stumbles upon this blog.

E-mail, calendar and browser

I started migrating my e-mail service slowly - first setting up a mailbox.org (based in Germany) address and moving some of my accounts to it, but not yet redirecting Google e-mails to it automatically.

I later decided I should get a custom domain, which would make any future migrations much easier if I ever want to migrate again and would give me complete control over my e-mail address. I’ll make the switch in early 2026, since it’s easier now than doing it once I’ve moved more accounts to the mailbox.org address.

For the e-mail client I decided to go with Thunderbird (open source, based in the US) for both desktop and mobile, but the mobile version of Thunderbird doesn’t have any calendar functionality. Instead I went with DAXx5 (open source, based in Austria) for the backend and DigiCal (based in the Netherlands) for the frontend on mobile (which was also a cool learning opportunity about how the Android calendar system works, pretty neat).

On the browser side I things I went back to Vivaldi (based in the EU) after having used it a couple of years back. I had given up on it due to severe stability issues, which I later discovered were actually caused by my slowly-failing CPU.

Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop

I still have Microsoft Office, but I’ve moved from a subscription to OEM licenses.

I have installed LibreOffice (open source) as well and started using it as my primary office solution, but I still wanted to keep the Microsoft option for now as a back-up. I’m not yet 100% confident in sending out documents to Office users if they were authored in LibreOffice, but we’ll see how that goes.

On the Adobe Photoshop front I went with Affinity Photo 2 and so far the experience has been pretty good, though getting used to some of the UI difference has been maddening at times. Additionally, shortly after I moved to the new software the company behind Affinity was bought by Figma and Affinity Photo was made free, with the only purchase-locked portion of the new version being some AI BS I don’t care about. I’m curious what will happen with the software once the AI bubble bursts, but apparently my purchase of the license is still perfectly valid and I don’t need to move to the new version of Affinity.

Other software

Cloud storage - moved to filen.io (based in Germany) with most of my files, but I still have a Google Drive subscription and a few files on AWS S3. Moving the S3 completely won’t be hard, but the Google Drive will be trickier since I’m not the only family member using it.

OS - still running Windows on all machines, with Linux Mint as a secondary OS on some of them, but I don’t plan to move away from Windows for now.

RSS reader - Thunderbird for desktop, Feeder (based in Sweden) for mobile.

Social networks - uninstalled Instagram, reduced Reddit usage a lot, installed Mastodon (open source, based in Germany); I don’t use any other social networks and I’m not planning to.

Version control - moved from GitHub to SmartGit (based in Germany) and I am so much happier with the workflow.

Streaming, e-books and audiobooks - I’ve set up a Jellyfin (open source) server for local streaming for movies and audiobooks. I’ve also started using non-US based e-book stores like Kobo (based in Canada), especially after Amazon removed the ability to download e-books I previously purchased. I’m planning to move away from Audible as well and purchase from other stores, then stream using Jellyfin, but to be honest I still have quite a backlog of audiobooks I’m going through and I haven’t needed to buy any new audiobooks for now.

Coming up in 2026

Some things I’m looking to do next year:

  • set up a custom domain for e-mail and migrate to it completely (instead of using a mailbox.org domain);
  • finish migrating from Google Drive / Photos and AWS S3 to filen.io;
  • migrate my other uses of AWS (such as this website!) to EU-based services;
  • support more EU-based game developers and purchase games through GOG rather than Steam whenever possible.

It has taken quite bit of work to move away from US-based software. Has it been worth it?

Hell yeah. I’m a big believer in voting with your wallet and not relying on politicians and companies to choose the best options for us, so I want to be intentional about where the money from my software / subscription purchases goes to.