Retired teacher here. Just installed Mint on a 6 year old Windows machine. It has new life! 
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Hi, Iām Rachel. Iām very confused when it comes to stuff like this. Hoping someone can help me degoogle my phone. Tired of big tech bs.
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Hi! To find out what I can do, say @discobot display help.
@Rachel_G_Adams welcome to the first steps to regaining your freedom from big tech. The first question is what is the make and model of your phone. Post your question under the questions board and we will help. From there we can get you instructions for de-googling your phone. Cheers!!
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Hi everybody Iām so happy to be here, makes my learning into a deep Linux much better. Thank you all for your expertise, is been appreciatedā¦
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Hi everyone.
Complete novice here.
Neighbor is in a Linux club.
Gave me a computer with Ubuntu installed.
Put a password on. I was on for about 10 minutes just looking around.
I changed my password to something I thought would be easier to remember.
Now, I havenāt been able to log back in.
Please assist. I really feel stupid asking my neighbor to help me out after giving me a computer to learn Linux.
I donāt even know how to uninstall and start over, which would be good to know how.
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Hi! I did the same thing once. Did you try to log in with the original password? In my case, for some reason my password did not change and I was able to log in with my old password.
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I have tried the old one. No luck.
Thanks for responding. My son said he is going to show me what to do. I am hoping he can.
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Hi there @KatM
I am back in my computer. Woo hoo!
I tried the old passwordā¦didnāt work.Tried my new one in a variety of ways. Apparently, I had one letter capitalized and didnāt realize it.
So now, I am chatting with some robot to see what I need to learn on the site. I have a feeling it will be a long time before I get to learn how to do Linux but it will be entertaining for awhile.
Thanks again for reaching out to a newbie.
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Glad you got back on. Iām sure youāll pick it up in no time. Iām still learning new things all the time, but definitely found the basics pretty easy to learn. Good luck and have fun!
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It bites that I have to promote big techā¦ but there are thousands of videos on youtube for newcomers to Linux. Be carefulā¦ the rabbit hole is DEEP!
P.S. Welcome to freedom.
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Greetings from Salem, Oregon USA. Iām grateful for this forum and the folks at Jeff.pro and the Telegram channels for focusing on FOSS. Iām so ready to dump big tech!
If you care to know, here is my background and my adventures switching to Linux:
Iām 61 and have seen (and been fascinated by) the entire evolution of PCs and the internet. I learned on DOS and thought that GUI was for losers who couldnāt be bothered to learn commands, LOL. And of course, like many I worked in an office environment where Windows prevailed so here I am!
Accomplishments so far:
*Transformed my 2016 ASUS laptop from Windows to Mint
*Set up VPN
*Completed the LMS courses to date
*Set up account with Digital Ocean
*Set up Proton Mail account
*installed Libre Office for Windows on my desktop and am using it exclusivelyāso far every Word, Excel and PowerPoint file I have opened with it has saved over to Libre Office beautifully. Iām about ready to cancel my Office 365 account and am confident that my files will be usable.
Am working on switching my desktop to Linux:
*confirmed that we can access my husbands work email (Outlook) . We access it through our browser and It works exactly the same on my Linux Mint laptop using the Brave browser as it did with Windows and MicroSoft Edge.
*researched replacements for the Windows apps/programs I currently use, including:
Trello
Paprika recipe manager
Roots Magic genealogy software
Canva desktop
Cricut Design Space
Several of these have web versions I can use but I did choose to switch from Trello to ToDoist because it has a Linux versiĆ³n and I can sync it with my iPhone until I can switch to a āLibreā phone down the road.
The apps that donāt have a web version I plan to use with a Windows VM.
My next steps:
*Install Linux on my desktop
*set up VPS to host my websites (currently on Wix)
*set up virtual cloud for files and email
When thatās all done and Iāve completely dumped gmail, Dropbox and Wix I want to get more hardware for my very own server. Easy peasy!
Thanks for reading this.
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@Tamtay Congratulations!! This place ROCKS !! 
and @vasileios is the bomb diggity!!! Cheers!!
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Hello and introduce yourself!
Did I do that right?
Kidding aside, Iāve been quietly reading and learning for a while and finally decided to say hi.
@electronintegrity Welcome to the first steps to regaining your freedom from big tech. Cheers!!
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Hello, i am Ltrev. Honoured to join, very admirable the sharing for digital freedom. I appreciate the effort, Onya!
Welcome to the community. Congrats on taking the first step towards your digital freedom from Big Techā¦ Cheers!!
Greetings from Finland! I am musician and black magician into shamanism too. I have been using Linux Mint for a while and as a virtual machine Parrot OS.But somehow my laptop didnāt want to install Parrot OS or Kali straight, so I had to install Linux Mint. Iām here to learn about cyber security and privacy. And about Linux of course.
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@Turomir Welcome to the forums and the first step in taking back your digital freedom. Any questions that you might have? post it in the questions portion as a new question and someone will undoubtedly help. Cheers!!
With the first look it seems very user friendly but where do I start? Some seminars for beginners?