Software
On this page you will find a list of software that I would recommend to other people. Most of my recommendations are privacy-focused alternatives to big tech. Almost all of the software I recommend is Free (and open source) Software. This means that anyone has the freedom to look at the source code to see what it is doing or change it to their liking.
Applications #
Web Browsers #
- Firefox, with the uBlock Origin extension
- Brave, good built-in add blocking
Email & messaging #
- Thunderbird - Email, contacts & calendar, alternative to Microsoft Outlook
- Signal - End-to-End encrypted private messaging, WhatsApp alternative
- Matrix - Decentralised communication protocol with multiple clients like Element client
Office #
- LibreOffice - Open source office suite, alternative to Microsoft Office
Multimedia #
- GIMP - Advanced image editing
- Excalidraw - Online canvas, great for sketches & diagrams
- Kdenlive - Video editor
Password Managers #
Linux #
Distributions #
- Arch Linux - Great if you want to experiment with Linux and rice your desktop. Also so you can say: 'I have Arch, btw'
- NixOS - Reproducible setups for the perfectionists
Desktop #
- niri - Scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor
- Hyprland - Dynamic tiling Wayland compositor with the good looks
- Waybar - Status bar for Wayland
- greetd - Minimal login daemon for Wayland
Terminal #
Command line tools #
- ripgrep - Better grep, works on directories and respects gitignore
- bat - Better cat, syntax highlighted output
- fzf - Fuzzy finder for files, shell history etc.
- rsync - Transferring files over SSH
- rclone - Manage files on cloud storage
Multimedia #
- NewsBoat - TUI RSS reader
- MPV - The only media player you need
- MPD - Music Player Daemon, integrable in desktop environment so you can control music using shortcuts
- yt-dlp - Download music from everywhere
- beets - Automatic music tagger using MusicBrains
Code Editors #
Documents #
- zathura - Minimal document reader with Vi shortcuts
- pandoc - Document converter, generate PDF files from markdown, LaTeX etc.
- LaTeX - Typesetting system
Self-hosting #
- blocky - DNS proxy ad-blocker
- Caddy - Easy to configure web host & reverse proxy with automatic HTTPS
- Podman - Deploy software using OCI containers
- Tailscale - WireGuard-based VPN to easily setup private networks + a lot of extras
- Jellyfin - Media server
- Syncthing - Continuous file synchronization, replacement for cloud providers
Android #
Android privacy sucks on most smartphones by default, however depending on your phone's manufacturer there are quite some ways to customize it. If you have a Google Pixel, you can install GrapheneOS, an Android ROM focused on privacy and security. For other manufacturers there exist other ROMs like LineageOS which supports a lot more devices.
If the bootloader of your device is locked can do a rootless debloat using ADB with Universal-Android-Debloater (next generation), which aims to improve privacy and battery by removing bloat apps.
App Recommendations #
- F-Droid - FOSS apps on Android
- Obtainium - Download & update apps directly from their sources
- Firefox for Android with uBlock Origin extension - Web browser
- Niagara Launcher (not open source)
- Auxio - Music player
- Podverse - Podcasts
- NewPipe (Tubular fork) - YouTube client with adblock & background playback
- OrganicMaps - Navigation based on OpenStreetMaps
- KeePassDX - KeePass password manager on Android
- FUTO Keyboard - Keyboard
- Material Files - File manager
- Binary Eye - QR Code scanner
Windows #
I wouldn't recommend this insecure bloated spyware operating system to anyone but in many cases you simply have no choice... To massively improve your experience though, I highly recommend winutil an amazing tool from Chris Titus that debloats your Windows install. Lots of popular free software mentioned above is also available on Windows like LibreOffice, Thunderbird and 7Zip.