- LibreWolf, a privacy-optimized fork of Firefox
- Mull, hardened Firefox for Android.
- EteSync with self-hosted Etebase, an end-to-end encrypted solution for syncing calendars and contacts.
- Molly, a hardened Signal fork for Android.
- Accrescent, a secure, alternative app store for Android. Still in an early stage of development though.
- UnifiedPush, a privacy-friendly notification system.
- LibRedirect, a browser extension that automatically redirects you to private frontends for privacy invasive websites.
- movie-web, a web app that let's you watch any movie/tv show for free. I highly recommend it.
- Seal, an amazing Android app for downloading videos. YTDLnis is an alternative.
- Cobalt downloader, a website that let's you download basically everything imaginable from the internet. All kinds of posts, photos and videos from various social media platforms and many other websites.
- Linkwarden, a bookmark manager that can be self-hosted. Also check out Omnivore and wallabag.
- ArchiveBox, a self-hosted app for archiving websites.
- Tube Archivist, a self-hosted app for archiving YouTube videos/playlists/channels.
(I love downloading and archiving stuff lol)
Is EteSync free? It seems to be offering trials and paid plans.
That's for their cloud hosting. But the self-hosted variant is completely free.
This is fantastic! Just started switching over to Librewolf and Mull. I discovered xBrowserSync in the process, which is a great way to sync browser bookmarks. https://www.xbrowsersync.org/
If you only use Firefox-based browsers, you don't actually need the extension. You can simply enable Firefox Sync in the LibreWolf settings and it's end-to-end encrypted by default.
I gave this a brief try but it seemed clunky in a gnome environment. Should I give it another go?
Errm, Wireshark. Please bear with me.
Wireshark is a shining example of an open source project completely and utterly crapping on the closed source competition. As a result we all benefit. I recall spending a lot of someone else's money on buying a sort of ruggedized laptop with two ethernet ports to do the job back in the day.
Nowdays, I can run up a tcpdump session on a firewall remotely with some carefully chosen timings and filters and download it to my PC and analyse it with Wireshark.
OK, all so convenient but is it any use?
Say you have a VoIP issue of some sort. The PCAP from tcpdump that you pass to Wireshark can analyse it to the nth degree. Wireshark knows all about SIP and RTP (and IAX) and you can even play back the voice streams or have them graphed so you can see what is wrong or whatever. That's just VoIP, it has loads of other dissectors and decorators built in.
So what?
The UK (for example) will be dispensing with boring old, but reliable, POTS (Plain Old Telephony System) by 2025. Our entire copper telephony and things like RedCare (defunct soon) will go away.
We are swapping out circuit switching for packet switching. To be fair, a lot of the backend is already TCP/UDP/IP that is shielded away from us proles. When SoGEA (Single Order Generic Ethernet Access) really kicks in then the old school electric end to end connection will be lost in favour of packet switching, which never fails (honest guv).
If you are an IT bod of any sort, you really should be conversant with Wireshark.
Thank you for the detailed reply and the explanations to (mostly) all the jargon :-)
Sweden is also doing a lot of deprecation of old telephony systems, those that I know of is that 2G and 3G are going away by 2025.
The less tech debt we pass onto future generations, the better.
In the UK at least, the POTS (Plain Old ...) copper phone lines carry an electrical current as well as signals and can power the handset. There are certain guarantees about this so that in an emergency your phone will still work so you can dial 999 (our original emergency number) or 112. Our fire regulations require something like 30 minutes before things should start failing. In the real world, you get out immediately and use your mobile.
We have an emergency alarm monitoring system used by businesses. Its generally known as "Red Care" which was a brand run by BT (British Telecom). You have a small device connected to a phone line (and powered by it) and it will monitor your fire detectors and building access control systems and a 24 hour manned monitoring centre will notify you in the event of an emergency. Nowadays, these devices will use your wifi and internet connection. Sometimes: old school is best.
I respectfully disagree.
I had redcare via Age Concern for my mum before she went into a home with dementia - it was a few years ago and it was all that was available.
Nowadays, the panic alarms are, I believe, entirely self contained using a sim card and mobile connectivity and include location information - so they are not reliant on local power or internet connection. That locational information could be life saving - one time my mother got very confused, left her flat and was wandering around outside in freezing conditions. Luckily someone heard her calling out and took her home, but she could easily have died that night and was so confused that she didn't think to use her dongle which was still around her neck, and it is doubtful it would have been in range of her base station anyway. A modern system can also include geofencing and even positional data (if someone falls down), takes it off, or battery runs low and automatically alert. Just like redcare, the modern systems are manned 24/7 just the same.
Sometimes old school is not best.
I think we might be writing at cross purposes. The system you had for your mum obviously worked effectively for you and that is the important thing.
POTS provide(s|d) a fixed point of reference - your address is registered against the number for 999 etc; it provides power for a handset or device; Its been like that for a lot of decades! These are cast iron guarantees. A POTS line has guarantees, enshrined in UK law, that mobile etc does not have. POTS is circuit switched (well it was) which means there is a physical path between the ends for the duration of the conversation.
So, by old school, I mean that you currently have important guarantees about telephony in the UK that will evaporate in future. In 2025 or so, we in the UK will have finished migrating from our old school POTS copper lines and will enjoy our smart new SoGEA lines instead. Single Order Generic Ethernet Access. Instead of an emulated circuit switched line we will use VoIP across the entire country. Nothing wrong with that but it probably won't have the guarantees that POTS had.
Red Care is no more - BT have dropped it on the floor as of Feb this year which may indicate that things are not well with our future comms promises. The general system that Red Care was one product of is still available.
This is the important point: Promises (in law) that we used to be able to rely on for comms may (will) be binned.
Joplin for notes, and Rclone drastically improves any cloud services.
Gadgetbridge lets you connect and get data from supported smart or fitness watch without manufacturers app. Completely local.
pivpn for wireguard setup:
- https://www.pivpn.io
newpipe and libretube for youtube:
- https://newpipe.net/
- https://libretube.dev/
And the entire Fossify app suite in Android:
- https://www.fossify.org/
scrcpy for connecting to my Android screen from my laptop:
- https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy
kde connect for general android/laptop connectivity:
- https://kdeconnect.kde.org/
It’s project management software made by and for worker cooperatives. It’s useful for any kind of organization where you want to be able to scale without introducing management hierarchy, want members to be able to come and go, and just generally value transparency and spontaneity.
It’s open source, so you can use their official hosted service or you can self host for free.
naps2 for printer/scanners. Better than anything I've used for scanning. Also great for arranging small documents.
- lets you rearrange page order easily before saving the scan as a pdf
- has OCR
- lets you import documents into the pdf so you can layer scanned notes/typed documents easily into a single doc
- quick interface
Software that comes with printer/scanners usually suck
Together with the ShareX extension (FF and Chromium), using with FileCoffee (setup script), a killer app
(FileCoffee isn't OpenSource, but i recommend it as one of the most private host and sharer (images, multimedia, video, documents, presentations, text.....), 100% free (account (free) optional), made in the EU (Netherland), best replacement of Imgur, which is a little less than spyware.)
I use also
And to turn off the bad habits and sniffings of Windows
Cheers for recommendations.
I use:
- proton VPN
- Portmaster
- Wintoys = Windows debloater (I also have another tool that has almost all debloaters for Windows)
- Xnviewer = image viewer (will be checking out the one you’ve suggested)
- CopyQ (Clipboard manager)
- Start11 (Not open source but a good tool for taskbar customisation)
- QuickLook (selecting a file or folder then pressing the space bar, you can view a document, video, folder, or song without having to open it)
- HotKeyP - App launcher (I turn off all start-up apps and use this tool to launch all the desired apps with a single hotkey)
- Flow Launcher - I can’t use Windows without Flow Launcher; it’s my universal search engine for everything.
Instead of Start11, use Rainmeter (FOSS), to customize not only the taskbar, but almost the whole UI + all kind of widgets. You can create your own skin (scripts), or use one of the hundreds made by the community in Deviantart and other sites (links in the homepage). Complete Wiki and tutorils. Before i forgot that i use also FreeTube and SMplayer as externplayer, if FreeTube fails, Gimp and Krita, but i think that these are already well known apps.
Never heard of wintoys. How does it compare to win-debloat-tools?
It’s not that powerful but does the job, but if you want more advanced ones. This tool has almost every single one of them. With one click, you can download any debloater.
https://github.com/xemulat/XToolbox
Edit: it also has windows optimiser tools.
rclone - you can use cheapest cloud or s3 provider and sync encrypted data. Syncthing - sync across devices.
Recently, UnifiedPush where I can (currently just Megalodon for Mastodon sadly) as an alternative to using Google's push notifications.
Barrier: https://github.com/debauchee/barrier
Edit: Input Leap looks like a promising KVM replacement for Barrier, thanks for sharing!
ddcutil is a daily driver for me, lightweight, hyper compatible, full monitor control. I primarily use it to lower brightness at night but also constantly switching inputs with simple macros so I can share multiple monitors with multiple systems.
Paperless has taken me from various stacks of important documents strewn around my apartment, to having all of these things nicely organised and searchable.
I switched from Shotcut to Kdenlive as it seemed a lot more feature rich to me, still FOSS obviously
