been looking for github alternatives

i don’t really like microsoft that much believe it or not. i used to think they were cool as fuck, u know back when windows 7 was a thing, but not so much now. honestly i’ve had an okay experience with windows 10 most of the time, now that it’s been almost a decade since it’s launch failure, but there’s always been things about it that have kept me interested in the idea of staying far away from it these days. and now that windows 11 is a thing, that’s only interested me in staying away even more. i really don’t get what they’re trying to do now. ‘new, modern UIs’ that don’t make anything easier whatsoever, AI shoved into every corner of the OS, more bloat to make the thing even slower (apparently even on 1600 USD Intel Core i9 CPUs, if twitter is to be believed). all i want is a usable operating system, and i’m sure that’s all a lot of others want too.

but i’m getting beside the point. or am i? i mean they’re starting to shove all this crap down into the throat of github and everything else they touch too, hence why i’m even writing this now. all i wanna do is code in peace man, i really don’t care for github copilot or windows copilot or bing copilot or any copilot. i just want to be my own user. i have no need for any of this and it seems as if a lot of others don’t too. so as a result, i’ve been looking into alternatives to github. and i think i’ve finally found one that i like:

codeberg.

the first impressions are pretty damn good, hosted by a nonprofit outside the US, claims no tracking and when you load into it the first thing you see isn’t this:

i cannot begin to explain how much i don’t care about AI for my own code.

instead, what you see is this:

yeah they have the obligatory big ‘register now’ button but i don’t really blame them funnily enough

loads better in my opinion. not only does the page just look nicer to me, the contents of it are more about how they care about your data and not about how all they want to do is steal your data. how kind of them.

few days later (and a few months after originally making my account), i start using it. it is indeed safe to say that i love it. looks nice, runs nice, UI just works and it’s taught me how to use git too, so i can ditch even more microsoft software! next up, vs code. anyone know any good alternative IDEs?