I’m probably overthinking it, but I’m interested to hear how people approach this.

So I’m leaning more into FOSS and degoogling, so I ordered a Pixel for GOS.

However, I recently learned that GOS recommends Play Store before any FOSS app stores.

That kind of broke my brain and had me evaluating my goals and philosophy.

Do you folks just set up a different GOS profile for Google stuff and keep using apps from Play Store without a second thought?

Or do you lean into FOSS apps as much as possible?

Or do you try to self-host as much as you can?

I’m kind of just looking for a North Star to follow here.

I’ve been self-hosting with Immich and Nextcloud for a couple of months and thought I had a new philosophy to live by, hence the Pixel purchase and GOS plans.

However, learning that the values of GOS don’t align perfectly with FOSS has disrupted my posture a bit.

It’s not very satisfying straddling privacy-centric apps/services alongside popular services that want all your data, especially taking into consideration the efforts required to go down the path of more privacy.

  • yestalgia@lemmy.worldOP
    1·
    2 days ago

    Appreciate your reply!

    My plan is to do one profile for now.

    My concern with separate profiles was media playback stopping or being unavailable in the other profile.

    I was under the impression that if an app was downloaded from the Play Store (not just banking apps) then it’s basically reliant on Google services and should live in the same profile. Is that right? Or can Spotify and Whatsapp, for example, live in another profile from where Google services is installed and still get notifications and survive okay?

    If that’s the case and Google services only needs to be in a profile with banking apps, then that sure does change my mental model on how to set things up.

    • inbn@lemmy.zip
      2·
      2 days ago

      One profile is a good plan and helps a lot with sticking with it.

      Being downloaded from the play store doesn’t necessarily mean the app is dependent on play services. There’s an app called Plexus that can help you check, I have actually found basically all of my major US banking apps work without play services. I am not sure about living across profiles but I think for push notifications to work you need play services to be installed in that profile as well but I could be wrong.

      The method that worked for me was to install everything normally in one profile and then see what apps actually required play services and slowly transition one at a time to either an alternative or to the setup I have now which is degoogled main space and play services in the private space.

      • yestalgia@lemmy.worldOP
        2·
        2 days ago

        Thanks for the guidance! Proton relying on Google Play Services for push is already throwing a wrench in my profile plans. It will be fun to tinker with regardless and I’ll figure something out.