They're increasingly divisive I'd say. For me the fact that they rage-quit mastodon after a stint of bad publicity is all I need to know. If they were truly dedicated to a better internet they would be committed to stand up against big tech everywhere, not just wherever there's money to be made from it. I'm migrating away from my proton mail account.

I get my VPN from Surfshark. Not because I necessarily trust them, but because it's cheap and they don't insist on doing anything else than just being my VPN provider. And I trust them more than Proton at this point, anyway.

When it comes to VPN my choice is always Mullvad.

I use Proton because they are no longer a "VPN company". They are slowly rolling out a suite of privacy tools that compete with Google's Workspace (or whatever the hell they're calling it these days).

If you want a "VPN company" I would recommend Mullvad.

If you don’t need port-forwarding, Mullvad is the best choice IMO. Eggs in a basket as well, if you already use other Proton products but don’t want to lock yourself into one vendor for everything.

Libre office is a fine tool, I use it myself. Calc is a somewhat capable spreadsheet application, although it has its fair share of issues and quirks. But that's true for most software these days, although I do wish the windows would be on a random monitor at a random location and random size all the time.

However in this case they state their solution is a Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel competitor. These are tools one uses online in a browser to access files stored on the server of the provider. That's pretty different from what Libre Office Calc offers. It's a bit confusing because Microsoft calls their app Excel, which can refer to the online service or the offline local app. But with Google sheets it's clear it's the online service they refer to.

So the comparison isn't a straight one. If a local app is an option, I would prefer that over an online service. So Libre office is the way to go. But many people prefer something that's available on any device, including underpowered tablets and phones, and want their files to be accessible everywhere. For those people it's good to have competition to Microsoft and Google.

or only office, or crypt pad.

If they actually cared about privacy, they would just contribute to CryptPad and host an instance.

Yeah, that mess was quite disappointing. I'm still waiting for them to make a clarifying statement on it. I suppose removing it and just not getting further involved in politics is at least "better" than continuing to double down.

Privacy first, yes, but who are Proton and can they be trusted? The amount of times they have responded with an immature or unprofessional reaction is too many to believe they are not going to sell or fuck with the data.

Privacy first for the authoritarian mindset is a walled garden, like Apple. They want to prevent anything from connecting or working with stuff because "security" and meanwhile harvest data about you.

My go-to online suite, but their spreadsheets, documents, and presentations have some big limitations as they use embedded OnlyOffice.