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How to Gently Move Your Non-Tech-Savvy Parents Away from American Big Tech (Without Starting a Family War) (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) by Kkk2237pl@lemmy.world to c/buyeuropean@feddit.uk

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Hey everyone,

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to help my parents reduce their reliance on American Big Tech (Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, etc.). They’re not tech-savvy, and I don’t want to overwhelm them or make them feel like I’m forcing a radical change. At the same time, I’m concerned about privacy, data collection, and the monopolistic practices of these companies.

Any ideas? First of all I thought about ecosia, I see that it returns more similar results to google than Qwant.

I want to buy them Threema licence.

I installed Le Chat as chatgpt replacement, moved some documents to Synology Nas

What’s next?

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[-] someguy3@lemmy.world 10 points 4 weeks ago

I say Linux first.

[-] Kkk2237pl@lemmy.world 2 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

My mom relies on office documents. We wanted replace office with libreoffice and that was painful for her :(

I gave her laptop with libreoffice and she still prefered to use old laptop with old office license

[-] Undaunted@feddit.org 6 points 4 weeks ago

She could try out OnlyOffice. Maybe she's happy with that. At least it looks very close to MS Office

[-] threatcat@infosec.pub 4 points 4 weeks ago

☝🏼 this — with OnlyOffice I’ve had zero formatting differences sharing docx or xlsx files with M365 or Google Workspace. This was using the desktop version. No idea how real-time collaboration is with the OnlyOffice Workspace version, and would love to hear any experiences.

[-] Kkk2237pl@lemmy.world 2 points 4 weeks ago

Thank you, I have never used it

[-] someguy3@lemmy.world 5 points 4 weeks ago

Warning that OnlyOffice is Russian, "headquartered" in Latvia.

[-] someguy3@lemmy.world 5 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

Yeah that's tough. Libreoffice is definitely not polished. Two solutions, 1) you can fiddle with the settings to make it look and act more like MS office . With the ribbon instead of the drop-down etc. 2) You can run old office versions for free using Wine. From what I hear, haven't done it myself.

[-] jjpamsterdam@feddit.org 2 points 3 weeks ago

I've moved my father to Softmaker's office suite. He's completely sold. They have the option of using a UI remarkably similar to the old 2003 Office look. He's been moaning about not being able to find anything ever since Microsoft moved away from that format. He's happy to have something he feels more comfortable with back. Softmaker is a German company and offers a free version of its office suite. If you buy the full license you also have a license forever - no monthly/quarterly/yearly renewal necessary.

[-] Koarnine@pawb.social 1 points 3 weeks ago

If you want no friction you could just ||pirate ms office 2021 ltsc|| or similar?

this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2026

163 points (100.0% liked)

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