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!
Bookmarking this. How about a photo library category under photos and grafics
Thanks for bookmarking! I will absolutely be adding a photo library, it was something that slipped under my radar. Thank you!
Edit: Added in version 5.2024.09.15.1
Not to disparage your effort, but I looked into music and I only see:
Audio & Music
Audacity Audire Audile
Aaaand I’m out.
This is so lopsided it should be titled “A random collection of free software that has caught my eye”
I’m sorry you weren’t satisfied with some of the software on my list. Audire and Audile are not options I preferred to add, but there are simply no better music recognition apps out there that I could find. I would love to know if you have any! As for Audacity, I’m not sure what concerns you have over that. If you have any constructive feedback, I’d love to hear it!
Tenacity is a telemetry-free fork of Audacity for a start
How about Music players, Sequencers, studio, DJ, Drum machines, Guitar software amps, software radios…
The fact that you simply ignored music players disqualifies your list. Also considering that Arch’s AUR, for example has over 90.000 packages, the idea of one person compiling a useful general “best of” list is deluded and doomed from the start.
I don’t write this acrimoniously, I simply state the fact that unless you enlist help (and a lot at that) your endeavor is useless.
Removed by mod
Hi! I agree that it is getting cluttered with emojis. I plan to revamp this today to clear it up a bit. Thanks for your feedback!
Edit: Decluttered in version 5.2024.09.15.1
use readme badges.
Yeah a table with text instead of emojis would be easier to read, the problem with emojis is constantly scrolling back up to remember what they mean. And you can’t really scan through quickly.
‘Open source’ is deliberately vague, a strategy designed to attack libre software to, led us astray, away from software freedom.
“Open source” simply means the source code is available to the public. Not all software on my list is Libre.
Banning us from control over our own computing 🚩, why would I ever begin to trust them with my privacy.
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.
So, it’s libre software?
All Libre software is open source, not all open source software is Libre.
As I already said, why would I ever begin to trust anti-libre software which already bans us from control of our own computing 🚩
You don’t have to. I encourage you to make your own list of preferred software, and share it with the community.
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!
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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.
Thank you. Was going to suggest matrix/elements. But you explained it better ;)
It has really improved the last years. Especially the e2e encryption key sharing, and verfication system vs what was before.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!
Element meets all of that criteria
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
Thanks for the list! Sharing this with lazy friends.
Love that you have Joplin on the list! I started using that recently to handle all of my notes and it’s been great.
I’m still on Google Keep. Please, tell me why I should switch.
- 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
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.
There’s obviously a zillion open source games you could add, but I’m partial to pixel dungeon and its many variants
I’ll certainly add it, thanks!
My latest favourite is missing: Note Taking Apps:
Joplin is good for organising text-based notes, so I’m not surprised to see that on your list. But xournal is a for mixed drawing / hand-writing / text, etc. So it’s a different use-case to Joplin. (It would be perfect if Joplin supported xournal notes; so that you could write with xournal and then organise with Joplin. … But that hasn’t yet come to pass.)
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/
I’ll be sure to check it out, thank you!
Gnome Health and my GNU Health works well. Linux only though
man i wish there was a more powerful alternative to gimp hope gimp 3.0 solves it and currently am using the affinity photo 6 month free trial
Email : tutanota (mail.tutanota.com) Notes : quillpad (https://quillpad.github.io/) Distro : mint
Hi! I appreciate the suggestions! However, this list is not designed to be comprehensive. It is designed to present the best and nothing less. While those are great pieces of software, there are already better alternatives available on the list. The Linux Distros section will be overhauled soon though, so maybe Linux Mint will be added!
My bad, I saw multiple app store listed, so I assumed you listed at least a couple options.
Imo tutanota ils still better than proton since they’ve never been compromises by sharing user data with the authorities.
As for Quillpad, I never tried Joplin but Quillpad is pretty awesome, deserves more recognition. Also it’s les than 5Mo whereas Joplin is nearly 100Mo and asking for permissions like geoloc. I get that it’s open source but this sub is about privacy, and Quillpad seems more adequate on that matter.
How about not hosting this list in Microsoft’s GitHub?
lemmy hosts their source code on github and alot of floss sites uses github also i agree with you not to use github dont understand why people use github for markdown
A lot of others do it, that’s your argument?
Creating mirrors on other platforms such as GitLab and Codeberg is on my to-do list. Thank you!
No rsync? No pass? I’d definitely have the xmpp and matrix protocols on that list with a few clients listed for desktop and mobile.
Hi! If you have any suggestions for software, please provide links to them and I will be sure to check them out! Ideally, open an issue on the repo (this is the best way for it to be added). Thanks for the suggestions!
pass - password manager https://www.passwordstore.org/
rsync - provides fast incremental file transfer https://rsync.samba.org/
xmpp - the universal messaging standard https://xmpp.org/
matrix - an open network for secure, decentralised communication https://matrix.org/
retroshare - private and secure commmunication and sharing platform. RetroShare provides filesharing, chat, messages, forums and channels. https://retroshare.cc/
