Don’t get me wrong, Graphene would still be my choice for privacy & security. But what started out as a quest for privacy has somehow morphed to include FLOSS idealism, even AOSP derivatives feel “too google” now and I feel bad carrying a Pixel.

It’s a neverending process. 😄 I’ve been at this for some 3-4 years now, and was ready to delete WhatsApp only about 6 months ago, and it’s already left me out of some local groups. Worth it though, and one group moved with me. And just now in the process of hopefully moving from Graphene to PostmarketOS (functional on an OP6) or Ubuntu Touch (to be installed on a FP4), just a matter of deciding which one. In retrospect, I could have skipped this Graphene phase and just gone from Divest to Linux, but I wasn’t ready then.

IMHO if you try to do things before it feels like “okay this works, next I want to try…”, you’re likely to just get overwhelmed and take a step back.

1. “Easy and painless” depends on your point of view, and we here tend to be biased. For example, just a couple of months ago I had to explain to “a normal person” how to make backup copies of a folder to a pen drive. She did not want additional backup software (and I still don’t know if W10 would have had the functionality out-of-the-box). Copypasting files was too difficult. In the end she decided to go with “save as”, which sounded like a horrible idea to me, since she’couldn’t remember how to open anything in Word that wasn’t in the recently used list when starting the software, and she is going to lose track of which file is which at some point. I doubt it would be “easy and painless” for people like her, who are very common outside our little bubble.

2. Making someone change their opinion is not a sprint, but a marathon. State your opinion openly when relevant, don’t get into an argument, let it brew, mention it again when it comes up, live as you “preach”. That person I mentioned? Happily using Signal with me. Eager(!) to try Linux once W10 support runs out. I’ve told her I’ll install Mint DE on my laptop and loan it to her for unhurried testing and learning this summer while having her familiar backup to lean on if it gets difficult, and to install the same on her own computer when the support runs out, if she still wants me to.