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,
AlterSend, encrypted peer-to-peer file transfers between devices with no size limits, no cloud storage, and no servers involved, FOSS, no account, Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android
If i wasn’t invested in the proton infrastructure to keep my family away from Google and shot, the only change I would suggest is mullvad VPN instead of protonvpn. Other than that, it’s a pretty sound setup you have there. Enjoy.
Brave 🤮
💳→💵
My first thought was “what app is that?”
I actually despise cash, but I might go back to it just for privacy.
every privacypack image has brave on it. is this some kind of rule?
No
Seriously. People need to stop suggesting Brave.
I lowkey think it’s viral marketing.
For real, any normal person would suggest Firefox and nothing else. People who have problems with Firefox are savvy enough to find the forks on their own.
I host nextcloud and Immich on an old laptop to replace google drive and photos respectively. Very nice, but nextcloud syncing with android is annoying. Looking for alternatives there. Self hosted is a requirement.
Hosting nextcloud also lets me sync my calendar and contacts completely on my own hardware too. I use davx5 to sync with the Fossify calendar app on my phone because I like it better than the nextcloud app.
Agreed, the syncing issue is what turned me off Nextcloud eventually. Now I have Proton Drive which also stalls and skips file synchronization. The only service that I feel did sync well (better than Google Drive) was MEGA which was super clean, but that was years ago so it might not be true anymore.
I’m currently trying out OpenCloud (I think a fork of OwnCloud, where Nextcloud was forked from). It’s working fine on PC where I had syncing issues with Nexcloud as well. I also host a syncthing server for the few things I really want to have in sync for all my devices (mostly my Obsidian Vault). It’s been really reliable, especially compared to other solutions I tried out
I didn’t mention syncthing, but I also use it for my obsidian vault and other small files that I want backed up. I think my ebooks are on there too. But what I’m really using nextcloud for is to offload large files so that my phone storage doesn’t fill up – but keep my files where I can easily download them when i want. Primarily audio books.
Also, my audio book player is not great for finding files when there are many. (Smart Audio Player) so I can only keep a handful but can easily download anything I’m missing from local storage.
What is the issue with syncing with nextcloud? What kind of files?
Nextcloud hosts whatever kind of files. IRS like a Google Drive, One Drive, Box, etc. I use it primarily for my audio book collection so that it doesn’t use up all of my phone space.
The issue is that nextcloud sometimes behaves in an unexpected way with file changes initiated on Android. Sometimes large files (like audio book files) placed into my phones local nextcloud folder don’t automatically upload to the server. I have to do extra steps in the app. It seems to work as expected with small files. From what I understand/interpret the file access API is not a favorable design for supporting an external (non-google ) cloud service. OE Nextcloud just doesn’t care about Android.
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.)
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.
Excellent. Ty for the open letter too. I hadn’t gotten around to understanding why there was a fallout, but now I know.
Except OsmAnd hiding functionality behind a cloud with paywall.
Try the OsmAnd open-source version, which has all the OsmAnd+ features unlocked for free: https://f-droid.org/packages/net.osmand.plus/
So this version gets all the paid cloud features, too?
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.
No Android Auto support unfortunately
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
📱➡️ 📴
i hate brave. use waterfox with kagi or librefox with kagi or startpage
Don’t use brave. Brave is a cult at this point.
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.
You can raise the issue to the developers but from what I see, they don’t have a public page for bug reporting so who knows how many issues actually exist within the distro.
Given that Nobara is just a fork of Fedora, and I assume you’ve gained a little CLi experience, why not just switch to Fedora?
I switched to Nobara last spring from MX Linux (Debian) when my brand new GPU needed brand new mesa driver, but MX said it was months away from being added to the stable channel. Nobara is (or was, Dev has slowed down) bleeding edge for most things. I no longer need that, but I like it okay, and my setup… Look, I’m just Lazy when it comes to setting up all my games and apps I have installed all over again…
Why not switch Linux distros then?
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.
I wonder why they are weirdly pushing Brave then huh.
dont use brave
Thoughts on Vivaldi?
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
If Firefox doesn’t work I just click away
Ty - I’ll give UC a try.
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.
have you tried to fake user-agent with Firefox? Most shitty sites I encountered which pull that off just do it for no reason whatsoever. They work perfectly fine in Firefox disguised as Chrome.
Oh, yeah - forgot about that extension. Will have to try that next time - thx!
Why is vivaldi helping a chromium monopoly?
I understand it is based on chrome tech, and I guess that means it can use chrome extensions maybe? But how does it help chrome if people use it?
With the market share of Chrome and Chrome-derived browsers Google basically single-handedly decides how the web works. They decide to implement some functionality, everybody needs to do the same, every other browser “vendor” has to implement it as well now. The consortium deciding about it theoretically is a fig leaf at that point.
It uses Google’s browser
enginebase called Chromium, which Chrome is based on (the used engine is called “Blink”). A lot of websites are made to just function well on Chromium and maybe Safari
Just use Firefox with uBlock Origin and PrivacyBadger.
uBlock and Privacy Badger should not be used together.
Thank you stranger.
Firefox needs to add tab groups on mobile first
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 @cannedtuna@lemmy.world. It’s a summary of this article: https://thelibre.news/no-really-dont-use-brave/
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- Brendan Eich donated to anti-LGBT political organizations, politicians, and initiatives such as CA Prop 8 which banned same-sex marriages.
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- Brave promised to replace ads with privacy friendly ads that would actually pay publishers and even users with a volatile cryptocurrency while keeping a cut for themselves. This never actually came to life and was criticized as “blatantly illegal”.
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- Brave collected donations for popular content creators without actually involving or seeking consent from said creators. In short they accepted donations in crypto for creators, but would only pay out if it reached a minimum value of $100. When called out, Brave said refunds were impossible.
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2020 — Brave injects referral links when visiting crypto wallets
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- Brave injected their own referral links for services such as Binance without informing users or asking permission.
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- Brave turned their home screen image rotator into a place to serve ads, many of which were suspicious or crypto related.
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- Brave added a Tor feature which exposed users DNS requests
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- Brave refuses to disclose their crawler bot to websites since many websites want to block Brave Search. Brave will only chose not to crawl a website if it also blocks Google’s crawler.
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2024 - So-called “privacy browser” deprecated advanced fingerprinting protection
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- Brave removed a the Strict, Block Fingerprinting privacy feature from their browser.
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- Brave paid for targeted ads for users searching for Firefox in the Play Store and ran a campaign to “Forget the Fox”. When called out on this the VP publicly denied it and claimed it was photo-shopped.
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- The VP of Brave, Luke Mulks, frequently posts about all things crypto, from NFTs to FTX, and uses AI-gen images to promote them. He also frequently re-tweets right-wing activists.
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- Brendan Eich’s feed also frequently contains right-wing content and Republican propaganda despite his claims to be “independent”.
2026 - “pay $60 to REMOVE our bloat features”
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
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.
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.
2026 - “pay $60 to REMOVE our bloat features”
If you are on Arch, then I recommend to self host SearxNG meta search engine. There is an AUR package that builds from source and makes it easy to install and update. So if you are on Archlinux and value privacy a lot, then there is no excuse to not use this: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/searxng-git and https://docs.searxng.org/
# Archlinux, AUR # Build and install from source: yay searxng-git # Configure the search engine (shouldn't need to): sudoedit /etc/searxng/settings.yml # Start server when needed: systemctl start searxng.service # Or automatically start the server whenever you login: systemctl enable searxng.serviceSo do you just leave you computer on all the time or do you only self host when you turn it on for personal use.
At the moment it is just for my personal use on my own single computer. It is local only and I cannot access it from local network either.
My plan is to figure out how to set it up securely for access on other devices in the house. But for that I would need a dedicated little server computer that runs 24/7. Maybe an used laptop, maybe a Raspberry Pi, but right now I can’t afford it. I have a VERY old laptop and old Raspberry Pi 3b. I’m not sure if they are capable enough for this task. I have no plans to do a host for the internet.
I’ll just try what you’re doing an see if it will work.
Just noting you can have searxng on rhel and mint as well, I know those from experience.
Oh sure, I wasn’t implying its Archlinux only or anything like that. There are plenty ways to install SearxNG on other distributions, including using Docker in example. I just found the installation and setup in Archlinux thanks to the AUR package extremely easy, as it is not very different from installing any other package.
and mint
Go on…
I’m gonna make my own payment company and just call it “cash”
I highly recommend NextDNS. You can also filter domaims with it. It even has lists so you don’t have to filter every one. I use the “No Google” and “No Facebook” lists, along with several others.
