I have started to degoogle bits and pieces. I self-host the majority of the services I need and really enjoyed the journey so far since I learned so much. I am approaching the stage in my life where I have less time to spend on personal hobbies so I fear this path may not be sustainable. In my opinions here are the pros and cons.
Pros:
Full control of my data
Pick the ideal tool from the open source community
Learning experience
Engagement with community
Cons:
Technical knowledge needed to setup and maintain self-hosted tools
Self-hosted environments have security risks (best to put everything behind VPN)
Disparate tools don’t connect together (requires additional automation configuration)
Additional costs for services including and not limited to: domain name, email, backup storage, self-host server hardware, VPN, and donations to devs
Higher personal downtime due to lacking features, server and service maintenance
Time sink to learn, research, general devops of tools, maintenance of server
Key services to name a few:
File storage - Nextcloud
File sync - Syncthing
Office - Nextcloud + Collabora
Email - Mailfence
Photos - Photoprism
So far there are more negatives than positives, but the positives still outweigh negatives. I do have to say degoogling is getting easier than before.
I have started to degoogle bits and pieces. I self-host the majority of the services I need and really enjoyed the journey so far since I learned so much. I am approaching the stage in my life where I have less time to spend on personal hobbies so I fear this path may not be sustainable. In my opinions here are the pros and cons.
Pros:
Cons:
Key services to name a few:
So far there are more negatives than positives, but the positives still outweigh negatives. I do have to say degoogling is getting easier than before.