I’ll admit that I was a little proud of myself taking the plunge and declaring my life free of Microsoft, but it would seem that was the easy part.

Of my Apple products, I’m down only one of three thus far. It’s amazing to realize how many times you would look at your watch for the outside temperature.

Out with the old. In with the new.

Microsoft:

Windows was replaced by Kubuntu 23.10 – an Ubuntu Linux distribution that uses the KDE desktop manager. I nearly made the jump a number of months ago, but this time it’s for real.

I’m debating between LibreOffice and OnlyOffice for the office suite. I don’t love LibreOffice. We shall see.

Neither of those suites has an email client, so I’ve been using Thunderbird for that. I also don’t love Thunderbird, but it gets the job done.

Apple Watch:

This did not receive a 1:1 replacement. I’m wearing a normal analog watch.

What’s next?

I have my sights set on the iPad as the next potential victim, but unfortunately it’s not that I feel it’s the most important to get away from…it’s just the easiest. I find myself placing value on the forward motion, and that’s fine I suppose. But the reality is that I have NO IDEA how I’ll replace the iPhone (and I may not…perhaps the reason deserves its own post), and don’t even get me started on Alexa, followed pretty closely by YouTube.

I suspect that the items on my list have a direct correlation in their importance to be removed and the difficulty involved in removing them. That’s not only because we’d have to flip switches instead of telling Alexa to turn lights on and off, though I can absolutely see my children suffering in their first-world troubles if/when that happens.

Stay tuned for the next Big Tech Breakup Update – coming soon(ish)!

Currently, the score stands:

• [ ] Apple
  • [x] Watch
  • [ ] iPad
  • [ ] iPhone
• [x] Microsoft
  • [x] Windows
  • [x] Office
  • [x] Onedrive
• [ ] Google
  • [ ] YouTube
    • [ ] as a user
    • [ ] as a channel
    • [x] All the other stuff
• [ ] Amazon
  • [ ] Alexa
  • [ ] Buying all the things