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

Most of these are on all platforms

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.

Kodi Open source media center. What I currently watch all my downloaded tv and movies on.

Virtual Box - Open source Virtual machine manager. This is the most noob friendly recommend using it to test out any new operating systems in VMs before you install them. Or keep it around to run that one windows xp app or whatever. Doesn't have full processor pass-through so if you want to run something cpu or GPU intensive you'll need to use something that supports kvm or qemu.

Libre Office - Like office but Libre, Open source, Some documents will get fucked converting between MS office and this because MS refuses to use their own standards, but most things work pretty good. If you need advnaced excel shit this won't really work either. If it's for you keep it in opendocument format and then convert to pdf to send to anyone.

Thunderbird - Open source email client. Made by the same guys who make firefox. A good alternative to Outlook if you use a desktop app and need the advanced features. Personally I just use the webmail pages for all my emails.

TOR - The Onion Relay Networks Browser. Open source firefox based. For improved anonymity and circumventing censorship. Don't use it to download big files if you don't have to it has limited bandwidth. If you're going to use it for crime make sure you read all the info you can and actually understand what it can and can't do. Consider using it legally just to add some cover to people who need it. (you won't find CP unless you look for it)

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.

Mostly linux only some might have windows versions.

Virt-manager - Open Source, Virtual Machine Manager Linux only. Has all the bells and whistles and with passthrough almost no loss of performance a bit of a confusing whore to get started with though.

Filezilla - Good remote file transfer program especially on windows has pretty much all the protocols.

Powershell - Windows has finally made a command line system that isn't total dog shit. only took like 30 years. Has ssh and I think can run many linux programs through windows linux compatibility layer or whatever.

Terminal - just use whatever terminal manager came with your linux distro unless you want something fancy. OSx has a terminal as well.

ssh - remote connections to servers running ssh. Industry standard. Disable password logins and use token only if you want to login over the internet. Use sshfs to mount your remote files securely from linux desktops. Windows Powershell implements ssh as well, dont think sshfs works though.

Wireshark - See whats going where on your network. Used to be able to use it to lift logins from coffee shops before everyone went to https.

Samba - Implements windows shares on linux servers. It's the easiest to use for sharing things with every pc on your local network across OS's.

ssh server - so you can login remotely

tmux - terminal multiplexer. Did your internet crash partway through a big operation logging you out and fucking you? no more. Reattach to existing sessions and keep your programs running, along with multiple tabs and split windows. Mandatory if you want to do things remotely.

htop - command line process viewer

nano - command line text editor humans can use

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. Allows root and customising anything you want 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.

These can also be used for desktop too if you want.

Debian - 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.

OSMC - Open Source Media Center, Kodi optimized for Rasberry pi, Vero, and Apple TV. What I currently watch all my TV on.

Kali OS - For if you want to be a leet hacker like on Mr Robot. Don't run this outside a vm, its made to be used from a vm for pentesting. Has lots of handy tools to see why your network is fucked too.

Linux From Scratch - To bake an apple pie from scratch you must first create the universe. More of an educational tool than something youre supposed to actually use, but you could use it.

TAILS - Run TOR on the go from a usb stick so you don't leave a trace on the computer you use. Theoretically more secure than just the TOR browser especially if youre using an OS you cant trust like windows. Same caveats as TOR it doesn't make you completely anonymous. The NSA/whoever likely run a large amount of TOR nodes.