Hi everyone! For… I guess over a year now? I’ve been observing and trying out lots of software recommended by the privacy community and internet as a whole. With that time, I’ve been able to slowly put together a list of all the software I personally believe to be the best for their own various reasons. I finally have enough to be able to share it with all of you!
I’m also looking for feedback. I haven’t tried all the software on that list, and I’m sure there’s software I’ve never heard of that needs added. I’m looking for your feedback on what you think should be added, removed, or changed. That includes the list itself, if you think there are any design improvements.
Do note: Any software marked with a ⭐️ I am not looking for feedback on. This is software that I firmly believe is the best of the best in its category, and likely will not be changed. However, if there is a major issue with the software that you can provide direct proof of, then there is a chance it will be changed in the next release. There are no grantees.
The sections marked with ℹ️ are lacking, and can use your help! Some software there may not be the best one, or may have many software or sections missing. I am absolutely looking for help and feedback here, and would love your help!
My goal with this project is to help people find the best software from many standpoints, and to prove that there really are good open source alternatives for almost anything! I hope this helps someone, and I look forward to your feedback!
Thank you all for reading and taking the time to look through my list!
Edit: This project has moved to GitLab!
Removed
“Open source” simply means the source code is available to the public. Not all software on my list is Libre.
Because you can look through the source code yourself to ensure that it respects your privacy, and make changes if there is something you don’t like. You don’t have to trust anyone with your own computing, because you can run it yourself.
Open source is generally understood as libre, and an OSI approved license.
I think you’re thinking of source-available.
Additional reading: https://news.itsfoss.com/open-source-source-available/
Anyway, thanks for the list!
Thanks! I’ll give it a gander. I was off hiking today, and used some crappy app to track my progress. I know there’s an open source ware that can do it, without invading my privacy; it’s time to start using that ‘ware.
Trail Sense mentioned in my list has options for tracking hiking progress. Unfortunately, open source health apps are few and far between.
For health apps I like medilog: https://fdroid.gitlab.io/jekyll-fdroid/packages/com.zell_mbc.medilog/
For instant messengers, I would also add Wire and Matrix/Element (Matrix is the protocol, Element is the messenger that uses the protocol).
https://matrix.org/ - https://element.io/
Both good open source secure messengers. Matrix is made by a type of non-profit foundation made to guide the development of the core protocol, and Wire is a Swiss company staking their future on how secure their messenger is for Enterprise applications. They both have different philosophies on how their operations are ran, but they’re both open source and secure.
They’re not as privacy respecting as Briar or SimpleX, but they’re also more aimed at organizations and groups that plan on self-hosting and potentially not federating with the rest of the network to help silo their organizational data. Wire obviously aims towards Enterprise customers, but Matrix does as well, despite a different approach. Matrix has had growth with both German and French governments for various secure communications systems within their government bodies based on the matrix protocol. So good messengers, just aimed at a different group of people as Briar/SimpleX.
So maybe they could have their own “Enterprise Chat” section? I dunno, just my thoughts.
Hi! Thanks for the feedback!
The “Video Conferencing Tools” section is my aim at enterprise applications. My goal there was to find an app that is available for Online, Windows, macOS, Linux, ChromeOS, Android, and iOS that supports group chats, video calls, and screen sharing. I was only able to find Infomaniak kMeet, which I’m not even sure fits the bill. If you have any suggestions that meet these requirements, I would be happy to add them!
In the meantime, feel free to make an issue on the repo suggesting these services!
To my knowledge, Element has no way to share the desktop/screen. If I am wrong about this, please let me know!
There is BigBlueButton. It’s more focused in educational usecases (online classes and the like) but it works just fine for everything else. You need to host it yourself, but there are hosted instances out there. I for example use senfcall.
But I think we are talking about different things here. What Chanuk was talking about (I think) is a ms-teams or slack alternative, not a zoom or oracle WebEx alternative. Basically Discord but for business. Sidenote: there is a open source Discord clone called revolt
Love that you have Joplin on the list! I started using that recently to handle all of my notes and it’s been great.
Your data has monetary value to google. Giving them access, without getting any money from them (or even knowing what ways it will be used) is not something you must do.
If the app provides enough value that is unique to it, then thats OK, but if a data-respecting alternative exists that costs nothing to download or use, and fits the same (or more) needs, then using it just makes sense.
If thats not you, then thats ok.
I also use keep, but thats because I haven’t degoogled my phone yet, so they already have most if not all of that data. Once I am in a position to be able to root and remove google without risking bricking my device (currently unhoused, and just cannot risk it rn), then I plan on never touching the damn thing.
To each their own.
Your data has monetary value to google. Giving them access, without getting any money from them (or even knowing what ways it will be used) is not something you must do.
To be fair, while you may not be getting money in its direct form (cash, bank deposit, etc) from Google, they are providing you a service which costs them money for free. So they are providing something of monetary value.
Only the individual can determine if their data is worth that free (to the individual, not free to Google) service. I’m assuming that most people in a privacy community would be against that, though.
- Joplin has a lot of customization
- Can store your notes wherever you want (Dropbox, WebDAV, OneDrive, Nextcloud, Joplin’s own cloud service, etc)
- Backups can optionally be encrypted (you set a password used to decrypt them and store that somewhere)
- You can make multiple notebooks in the hierarchy structure you want
- Open source
- Markdown (if you’re into that)
- Plugin support
- Tags
Why KeePassXC over Bitwarden or VaultWarden?
I’m no expert, but I think KeePassXC doesn’t need to sign in to a server somewhere.
This still requires a server setup, focused entirely on passwords. Why do that?
Why not just use KeePass or KeePassXC, and use Syncthing for this and general files, or KeePassXC’s keeshare sync to sync the files without any hosting, server, or other services.
Extremely simplified tldr: both of these are like a authenticated private bittorrent, where the “tracker” only helps you find yourself on another devices, no data is ever sent outside of your authenticaed devices, and all transmissions are encrypted as well.
One of many reasons is the nonfree nature of Bitwarden. You have to pay for a premium account to use certain methods of 2FA, for example (last I checked).
Yes. That’s true. Not to be argumentative, does KeePass have the features that are paywalled by Bitwarden?
KeePassXC has support for hardware security keys as a form of 2FA, so yes :)
