Note: This setup is both for my android and pc Edit: For those recommending paid services and selfhosting, I don’t have the money nor resources for either. Also it seams some people are confusing my android setup with my PC setup so I’ll write it down. Android: Brave(movies) + Ironfox, Search: Brave + DDG, VPN: Proton ( not always on), GPay = Cash, Auth= Aegis Auth, Pass: KeepassDX, PC: Firefox= Librewolf, VPN = No VPN (VERY slow internet), Search: Searxng + DDG, Pass: KeepassXC,
Aegis is redundent since KeePassDX now has authentication built in.
Suggest adding keyboard to the chart. Replace google or other proprietary keyboard with fossify keyboard or heliboard. No keyboard should need or be granted internet permissions.
I wish Nobara Linux would move off it. Every third or forth update, the Brave repo I disabled is re-enabled. Not a huge deal, but I’d rather see the Librewolf repo instead.
I bet one of the maintainers is a cult member (or is being paid to re add it) either way eww.
IIRC, the sole Nobara Linux maintainer is GloriousEggroll, AKA, the creator of GE-Proton that is the go-to for some windows-on-linux gamers.
Would switch Organic Maps to its fork CoMaps. (See: this open letter)
And I would never recommend Brave as the first choice; it’s run by a shady corporation and reinforces Chromium’s hegemony.
I think it’d also be reasonable to add ProtonMail to email and Mullvad to VPN since you can have multiple.
How about OsmAnd? Is that still a decent project without world domination plans? I actually have CoMaps as well, but have sort of stuck to using OsmAnd.
Yeah, OsmAnd is really good; it’s what I use as my daily driver. CoMaps/Organic to me feel too limited, but some people may like that.
(I use Vespucci for editing on Android.)
Excellent. Ty for the open letter too. I hadn’t gotten around to understanding why there was a fallout, but now I know.
Its installed in my android head unit in my car, and it just works, and there’s a lot (and I mean a lot) of stuff it can do, so I really enjoy it as my daily driver (ha! Get it?) in my car.
Try the OsmAnd open-source version, which has all the OsmAnd+ features unlocked for free: https://f-droid.org/packages/net.osmand.plus/
I’m not sure if I know all of the paid cloud features in the current version (and I don’t really want to download it). You can download unlimited maps, which made me switch back in the days.
I think OsmAnd is great, but I personally prefer the cleaner feel of CoMaps. Just preference.
Something I’d suggest if OsmAnd feels too cluttered for you is to change the settings; OsmAnd lets you change a lot, but one of the ones I do is to change “Map Style” to Osm-Carto.
Carto, for context, is the vector map that you’d find by going to the OSM website. Much cleaner color scheme, imo.
Tried it out, but since I was so used to the standard OsmAnd style it just felt wrong some way.
It really like how OsmAnd allows for so much customization e.g. in map styles
Still a proprietary black box you shouldn’t trust and chromium based so you reinforce the chromium monopoly
Agreed, but occasionally I have to use a site that doesn’t work properly on Firefox-based browsers. I mostly use Cromite to deal with that, but want a backup in case Cromite dies like its predecessor Bromite did.
Firefox is my daily drive and I use Ungoogled Chromium for the rare times Firefox doesn’t work
I agree. Firefox is “almost everything” for me. The example that comes to mind for it not working is WebSerial. That’s when the UC comes out. Also there was a brief period where the Papa John’s website checkout didn’t work in Firefox.
Can you tell me why? I found out ddg was just repackage bing results so I’ve been trying brave for now.
Here’s a good summary of some of the shady practices that they’ve done by way of @[email protected]. It’s a summary of this article: https://thelibre.news/no-really-dont-use-brave/
2020 — Brave injects referral links when visiting crypto wallets
2024 - So-called “privacy browser” deprecated advanced fingerprinting protection
I jumped onboard in the beginning (2016?) when they would show you “tailored” ads in exchange for their crypto. I made about $30 or so before I got bored of the endless crypto scam ads, despite having that category disabled.
Then came the referral link scandal, and I went back to FF until I found Librewolf.
Oh? I haven’t used their browser since ~2018, good to know that I continue to have made the right decision. I now use librewolf on my desktop and IronFox on my phone
It includes a lot of crypto bullshit, and I believe the founder is a right wing weirdo, but don’t quote me on that.
To also point out the good stuff: their browser has some pretty good anti-fingerprinting and privacy measures build in.
I don’t see much love for Futo apps in here or Reddit (new here from Reddit). Why is that?
They are source available instead of FOSS which puts a bad taste in many of the FOSS advocates on here. I believe they also have backing from Curtis Yarvin. I hate that Grayjay is one of the only consistently working youtube front ends.
Here’s what I read that laid out this issues.
https://drewdevault.com/2025/10/22/2025-10-22-Whats-up-with-FUTO.html
Oh, that’s so cool to hear, I love comedians. Tell me a similar joke about a dance-tracking app called “Jigger.” I’m sure you’ll come up with something that is funny and consistent with the joke above.
TIL a racial slur with over a hundred years of use to demean and insult billions of people is the same as the word used to describe big titty dragons having penetrative sex with automobiles.
Please post the updated slurs.txt so I can call you them.
Oh, so slurs aren’t funny if you have empathy for the people whose suffering they reference? Interesting, I wonder what that says about your perception of trans women. I have a hard time believing you give a shit about African Americans or any African diaspora at all either, you just know that there’d be more consequences for making fun of that slur and its violent history.
Good joke, chud. Now go eat shit somewhere else.
Hey since you know a lot about this stuff, can you settle the balls/no balls debate?
Why would I trust a commercial venture
At least with hosting or VPN services there’s the excuse of you have to pay for a finite resource that costs money.
Oh. I had no idea it was a commercial venture. I thought it was just another FOSS team. Just found the keyboard the other day and it’s been far better than Fossify.
Try heliBoard, making sure to add swipe library. Futo for voice transcription doesn’t have a match yet.
Close to what I normally use. I prefer CoMaps instead of Organic, Mullvad VPN instead of Proton & Artix instead of Arch.
Try Aves Library, from fdroid, it’s really nice and has a metadata viewer built in
My one complaint with Aves is how mind-bogglingly terrible its library management is. It uses a blacklist approach with no whitelist (most other galleries use a whitelist with blacklists on top to narrow down where they search) so it scans your entire device by default, and unlike every other implementation I’ve ever seen, blacklisting a folder isn’t recursive.
That means if you use a different app for video and want to exclude your Movies folder in Aves, you need to manually add Movies as well as every single folder inside of it, plus their subfolders etc, to the list of hidden directories. It also means if you ever add or rename a folder anywhere on your device and it contains media files, it’ll appear in Aves regardless of your previous settings.
And you can’t pick exclusions to add to this blacklist using a file browser interface. No, that would be too easy. You need to go to the Aves tab that lists every single folder with media on your entire device (displayed/sorted by folder name without their path, naturally, so two folders in the same directory might be dozens of entries apart) and manually find all the folders you want to exclude. The blacklist is also displayed in settings showing only the folder names without the path, so good luck checking if that img folder in JoiPlay is blocked when there are twenty other identical entries labeled ‘img’!
I know this sounds minor (and it is), but it’s such a headache dealing with what should be a basic feature of any gallery app. Fossify Gallery may be slower at detecting new media, but at least using it on my gaming tablet doesn’t make me homicidal.
Brave nor duck duck go can be trusted.
Brave has been known to inject their own referral links in people urls.
Duck duck go serves bing results and has to give Microsoft special acces to do so.
The actual alternatives are:
Firefox based browsers (waterfox, librefox)
Self hosted searxng for search-engine. This one will get results from all possible configurable engine and allow zero trackers.
Notable mention: self hosting isn’t for everyone, startpage.net is to google what ddg is to bing, but it hasn’t had any scandals proving that they give special acces to google yet. Still self hosting is not that hard with docker, i do recommend a local searxng.
Lol, it’s littered with predatory ads.
I appreciate the attempt but self hosting searxng is free, has no ads and
You can include presearch results as part of your searxng results, its already listed by default
It is getting to that point tbh. If you work with people who have to use office suites often, there is a growing presence of the LibreOffice guy.
My recommendations:
Organic Maps -> CoMaps (they got forked because of some bad decisions.)
Brave -> Helium (has full uBlock Origin and Ungoogled Chromium patches, and no crypto bloat)
LibreTube -> PipePipe (has some nice features like live chat, and less buggy in my experience)
LibreOffice -> OnlyOffice (has better Microsoft Office compatibility, and easier to use in my experience)
Disable your third-party DNS, that only works to make you more identifiable as you’re already using a VPN. You can also use Syncthing to sync your password vault etc. between your devices. I’d also recommend using Posteo instead of Tuta because it is cheaper and its privacy policy is kinda better.
Onlyoffice is a little bit shady tho, it might be worth considering staying with libreoffice. But the eu wanted to switch away from ms office and made their own fork of onlyoffice, because of said shadyness, so that might also be worth looking at.
Brave -> Helium (has full uBlock Origin and Ungoogled Chromium patches, and no crypto bloat)
Does it have a way to sync between devices? This is one of the things Brave does fairly well that the recommended alternatives tend to lack.
I use Librewolf on desktop and Ironfox on mobile, and they sync using the Mozilla encrypted sync service. I haven’t heard of any shady business with their sync yet, and it works pretty well for me.
That said, I don’t store passwords, addresses or payment methods in my browser, so YMMV.
open source software ≠ privacy
though it is preferable. 3rd party verification of closed source can be accepted in some cases.
