Software and Services / Websites I use. I have a strong preference for open source software because it means you are the on controlling your data and it gets out of the cycle where someone makes a good app and then makes it progressively shittier to “monetize it”. And if you dont own the software do you really own your device? Consider donating to the ones marked open source if you like them they're run mainly by donations and volunteers.

https://ssd.eff.org/ - Has a ton of good info on why you should give a shit about online security and privacy as well as good guides for people from scrubs to tech nerds. Consider donating they do a ton of good advocacy and software dev work.

https://www.startpage.com/ - Get google search results without the tracking

https://duckduckgo.com/ - privacy focused search engine. learn how to use their bang! commands to search other things fast ie g! will let you search google, i! will let you search images, bi! bing images and so on

https://proton.me - Decent web email that is encrypted and privacy focussed, paid accounts have calendar, cloud storage, and vpn. Based in Switzerland so a bit harder for people to get warrants for the info and your info is all encrypted so all they can give away is whose account it is really.

https://mullvad.net - VPN that I use. Pricey compared to most but Swedish based and they store no logs. Good clients for most platforms. You can even pay by bitcoin or cash by mail if youre into that.

https://bitwarden.com/ - Password Manager. EFF Password Guide good guide on what makes a password good. Using a long passphrase with lots of words might seem annoying but it only took me a week or so to memorize and now I don't have to know any of the others. Keep your master password written down somewhere safe until you've memorized it

https://signal.org/en/ - Encrypted messaging as well as text messaging. If a contact has signal then you'll automatically send them encrypted messages over signal. If they don't then it will send them a regular text message instead. ios android pc

Element - Open Source Messaging and group chat app. Make your account on PC first if you can there are apparently still some bugs if you first make your account on web. I have a web client for it up at https://element.melm.xyz I recommend singing in there once and verifying it too so that you can always get your encryption keys back. If you lose your device and arent signed in anywhere else you wont be able to see old encrypted messages. ios android pc

Firefox - Open Source web browser. The only browser I recommend it's also one of the only ones not using googles webkit. Not all the extensions work on mobile but the adblock does and thats the most important one. Here are some of the extensions I use. Works on PC android and ios.

• uBlock Origin Free and Open Source adblocker. The best around works on mobile and PC
• bitwarden auto fill your passwords
• Start Page

Transmission - Open Source Torrent Client. Does all the things most people need with a simple ui

qbittorrent - Open Source Torrent Client. For people who want all the torrent options imaginable

VLC - The open source media player. If it won't play it it's not a media file. Can even stream files from remote sites. The Developer was once offered a million or so dollars to put ads in it and told them to go fuck themselves so that's pretty cool.

FDroid An open source google play alternative, all the apps here will be completely open source and wont rely on google services. More software repos can be found Here They're unoffical so use at your own risk.

All of these will be open source. They should all have live cds you can use to try on your hardware before you install. I recommend testing them in a virtual machine first to try out lots of them without installing.

You can use these for your server if you wanted to too.

Linux Mint a good linux desktop for beginners based on Ubuntu so it will have good software support and the cinnamon desktop should be easy to use coming from windows. My main desktop.

Ubuntu The most popular with the most people using it.

Open Suse Tumbleweed - I've been trying this one lately looks like it is good for people who want up to date software and lots of config options. Lots of supported desktop environment options

Arch Linux - If you want to know exactly whats installed on your system and why and if you want the very latest packages set up exactly how you want it. I used to use this as my main but I couldn't be bothered to keep up with the updates.

Pop! OS - Supported by a laptop vendor. Ubuntu based as well, seems like a good alternative to linux mint I've only played with it a litle.

Free BSD - The only non-linux one on this list FreeBSD is BSD based, apple actually based their operating systems off of freebsd. Had basically no wifi or graphics card support last time I looked but it's fun to see how other systems do things. recommend installing in a vm.

Windows is a privacy disaster. Can't comment on OS X but still requires trusting apple.

Graphene OS - Best privacy focused OS no google services by default but you should be able to run almost everything but bank apps through their compatability layer. Only works on pixels

Lineage OS] - Has the most devices supported based on android open source project. I noticed my samsung camera performed significantly worse. Apparently thats because a lot of cameras use closed source drivers that the open source devs cant use. So if camera is a super important thing for you that might be a problem. Stock android is pretty much a privacy disaster. Funny enough iOS is very secure but you still have to trust Apple. ==== Server ==== These can also be used for desktop too if you want. [[https://www.debian.org/|Debian - One of the oldest and most stable OSs older than you and named after buddies girlfriend. Old packages but very stable. Ubuntu actually bases their packages off of Debians work.

Ubuntu The most popular with the most people using it. Download the Server version to get it set up without a desktop and with server programs preloaded. Most of my server VMs are running this, mainly for software support. I'm always looking for the perfect one though. Ubuntu makes some weird choices that make DevOps and admin super annoying.

Arch Linux - If you want to know exactly whats installed on your system and why and if you want the very latest pacakges set up exactly how you want it. I used to use this as my main but I couldn't be bothered to keep up with the updates.

Proxmox - Debian based for running multiple virtual machines and managing them remotely easily, even has options for load balancing between different location or machines if you manage to get fancy. It will nag you to upgrade to pro but you can just remove the package that does that the community edition has all you'll nee and is completely opensource. melm.xyz currently runs on this as it's base.

OpenWRT - Open Source Router Software, has good device support and has pretty much every option you could possibly want while still being pretty user friendly, currently running this for my router.

OPNsense - Open Source Enterprise grade router software. BSD instead of linux so it doesn't support very many wifi radios. I'm going to be switching to this in the future for the better performance and better networking options.