Honestly, I never really liked the idea of beeing like everyone else. I also hate ads and software bloat. I'm now trying to systematically find less obvious solution to each of my online needs, and there has been ups and down.
Instead of Ubuntu, I switched to Debian. My web browser now manages to start almost instantly, instead of the ridiculous 5 seconds I had to wait on Ubuntu to launch Firefox in snap format. I'm intersted in FreeBSD, but I haven't made the switch yet. Of course, windows and macos are out of the question.
Instead of Chrome, I use Firefox. This has been a real joy. I can use a proper ad blocker everywhere, and it makes it a bit easier to de-google. Sometimes I wish Mozilla forced me to pay a 15€ license to use their software, and then worked full time on making a really good browser. Now I see ads creeping in and don't feel so comfident in the future of Firefox.
Instead of Gnome I use i3 as a window manager on all my machines. It's such a pleasant window manager, and syncing my config is easy.
Instead of VSCode I keep paying for webstorm (now free for non commercial use) and sublime text. I really don't want windows to have a monopoly in developer tools, when I see what developing on windows feels like.
Instead of git I'm now trying fossil, and it looks really neat, minimal, with a clearheaded design and strongly opinionated choices.
Instead of github, I host my git repos on my VPS. I haven't quite done the work to make them public yet, because in the end I feel like very few projects actually interest people. I'll host a public instance of fossil at some point to give those projects an home page, but for now they are not really public.
Instead of Google Keep, I just have a folder of markdown files, synced with syncthing between my different devices. I then use sublime text to edit them on PC and quickedit+ to edit them on mobile. I gave Obsidian a try but felt like it was over complicated for my needs.
Instead of Google Photo, I just sync my phone's photos with a folder on my desktop with syncthing. I've set this up for my parents too, and it's just so convenient to have an automatic backup and sync of your files without having to think about it.
Instead of Cloudflare pages, I now rely on letsencrypt certificates for HTTPS, and some nginx config on my VPS for website hosting. I have a *.lecaro.me rule that lets me create a static site for a project by just creating a folder on my vps, very convenient to spin up a static website in 10 seconds.
Instead of Steam, I now exclusively buy my games on GOG and itch.io. I no longer need to "upgrade steam" for 10 min before playing a 5 min run some game. Sadly, many games are locked in the steam walled garden, so I still have to turn this adware on from time to time. Humble Bundle has been sold to an ads business so I'll stay away from now on, and I backed up the offline installers of the games I bought there.
Instead of commercial news readers, I use two programs. The first one is an open source app called Feeder, which is capable of pulling the original url of each article in an RSS feeds for offline reading. The second is my homegrown solution, an rss2md js script that pulls rss feeds, loads each article in reader mode, converts it to markdown, and then concatenate it with the other articles of the day directly in one markdown file that I can sync with syncthing. This script runs on a cron every day, to give me one file to read to have my news. The feed list is another markdown file, which means I can append a feed url and see articles the next day.
Instead of MIUI, I've flashed a LineageOS rom on my Redmi Note 7, and enjoy a very clean and responsive system. I get and occasional reboot and the camera app handles some colors strangely, but I don't need to accept cookies before opening the stock calculator app, so there's that.
instead of the play store I now always first try to find a solution on F-Droid. It's a bit chaotic, they don't offer any rating or public feedback system, and therefore you need to try a few apps before finding gold. But the apps are ad free, clean, and made by people motivated enough to code them but not enough to go through google's dreadfull app store review. I've been burnt by that review process a few time as an indie dev and I can see the value of skipping it.
instead of a normal home screen, my phone just lists all my apps in alphabetical order with Text Launcher. Seeing such a simple home page paradigm reveals how overcomplicated phones have become. This list contains all installed apps, so I undestand why OEMs that try to cram bloatware on your phone prefer to have it a bit more hidden, instead of it taking space in your home screen.
instead of google search, I use duck duck go as the search engine of firefox, on my computer and phone, with ad blocking off. Results are full of SEO spam, but so are google's ones, so I'd rather not be spied on while clicking them.
instead of photoshop, I use photopea, which comes very close in terms of UI and functionnality, but is sadly ad driven. I tolerate it for occasional use, and would pay for it if I needed it more.
instead of premiere, I use kdenlive, but it is a bit harder to use than some mainsteam closed source apps.
instead of figma, I use inkscape, which is great for local use but cannot do online collaboration.
instead of google photos for backups, I tried to use digiKam but couldn't really got the deduplication of photos to work.