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,
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.
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
My problem with OsmAnd is that it’s so very slow. Like, you zoom in and it takes seconds to display the map.
“Takes seconds” seems like a strange experience. I remember OsmAnd years ago performed like that for me – clearly, painfully loading in the individual tiles. But nowdays, it smoothly transitions between LoD and has no problem smoothly scrubbing over e.g. a major city.
I’m using offline vector maps, for context.
Edit: Trying online tiles again, I’m assuming your problem can be resolved by switching to offline. You can have the offline data update automatically such that you don’t have to worry about it. CoMaps and Organic only use offline maps, which is why they’re similarly snappy to offline OsmAnd.
This is under Configure Map > Map Source, and you only need to download for the region (usually e.g. a province) that you’re using.
Sadly that’s not it, I was using offline maps.
I’m not entirely sure what’s the exact issue, but it only really occurs when trying to change LoD quickly. E.g. clicking on an inter-city bus route and zooming out to see it in its entirety or zooming back in. From 10 km to 500 m can take 3-4 seconds which is enough to feel sluggish if you’re doing it often.
Probably not the most popular use case but it can get frustrating after a while nonetheless
dont use brave
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”
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…
Hage you tried MX’s AHS ISO?
I was running AHS at the time. I asked in the support forum about my GPU and they warned me against forcibly upgrading Mesa. They told me it would be months before they got to the required version (
25.3?25.0.2), so I started distro shopping.ETA: link to my post in MX support forum, fixed Mesa version
Did testing or deb-backports have a working version?
I think they mentioned that the (then) upcoming Trixie was running 25.0.1, but Phoronix listed the next version (25.0.2) as the first viable version. Either way, I figured if I was going to risk hosing my machine, I might as well just take a decent backup and try some of the distros I had been eyeballing.
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.
I have an older comment regarding GE supporting AI use by Lutris dev & using AI for Nobara’s wallpapers. I also felt like Nobara wasn’t too stable. GE has done a lotta work for that hobby project, but I’ve switched to CachyOS since & it’s been a much smoother experience.
Its been stable for me except for one update which broke basic privilege escalation prompts. I forget why as I struggle to sleep. I have been messing to try cachy next though
deleted by creator
This, I cringe when Brave and privacy end up in the same sentence. They’re shady af
Bro…
Adding to the list of people warning you away from Brave. It’s a complete scam. Practically malware at this point.
Malware in what manner?
I don’t know why you are getting downvoted for asking a question. I think if Brave is malware, it is important to bring awareness to what the actual problems are and talk about it. This is the right place. I’m not aware of anything that makes Brave malware, maybe besides the crypto stuff. But I’m not sure if that counts as malware, or if anything else is going on I’m not aware of.
every privacypack image has brave on it. is this some kind of rule?
Seriously. People need to stop suggesting Brave.
I lowkey think it’s viral marketing.
No
Jumping on the bandwagon here.
I didn’t know proton had contacts
Don’t use proton. Ceo is maga, and they are funding french far right YouTubers.
Worse stuff like them shutting off their transparency should be more relevant than random US politics. The company isnt even murrikkkan
I don’t care where the company is from. If they support fascism and oligarchies, and the far right, they shall not have my business.
Being in Europe is positive in that maga cant legislate them into obedience. But if they’re willingly maga, then its irrelevant.
dude, the world isn’t orbiting us fake left/right dichotomy lmao
they wut
LibreTub
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Does Tuta sponsor one of these privacy roundups every month or something?
Tuta is the best option for encrypted email I’ve seen so far. I used to think proton mail was good, but the ceo supporters maga and they are funding french far right YouTubers. Their reddit subs are also actively trying to censor that fact.
the issue is the inability to use imap and smtp - i use mailbox.org instead
That’s twisting the facts
How so?
The ceo made a pro maga tweet, and they are advertisers on a french far right YouTube channel.
What is twisted here?
Someone bad used an affiliate link, something anyone can do
If you use a Chromium Browser there is Vivaldi, instead of GDrive, Filen is good, but kDrive or Murena fit it better (both including online Office and workspace, EU), for YT there is also Aluga, AI > Andisearch, Sketchapedia, WhatsApp > SecureBit Chat, Google Photos > vgy.me
Vivaldi has essentially no fingerprinting protection, and it also inserts affiliate links by default without your constent.
Yes and no, it use affiliate links and search engines (DDG, Startpage, Ecosia…) which pay some money if you use these, but you can delete these without problems if not. Vivaldi use this to create incommings, instead of selling user data and browser logs to third parties as other do. Fingerprints, well, it protects some fingerprints which are an privacy risk, but spoofing all can break some webs. Fingerprint protection is always an balance between what is necessary (eg. tecnical data to show correctly a page, eg your screen resolution) and what is not. Your Public IP is always shown in any browser, if you don’t use an VPN (Proton VPN inbuild in Vivaldi) or Proxy, but the public IP only show the one of the server used by your ISP which can be hundreds of km from your real location, but it made that the page is shown in your lenguage (if it has this feature). If a website use Fingerprinting (not often), it use those from the whole device and OS, not only from the browser. Vivaldi never logs your activity or track you, never share your data with third parties, no third party sponsors in Vivaldi. Sync is encrypted end2end, no knowledge (if you loose your encryption password, you loose your sync data!!!). stored in own servers in Iceland (green energy). IMHO Vivaldi is pretty private.
https://vivaldi.com/blog/shared-networks-tracking-fingerprinting/
It uses “direct match” by default which inserts affiliate links when you type in a shopping site and press enter. It is opt-out, not opt-in.
You can also use fingerprint.com and CreepJS to see how much it is leaking.
I tried Kdrive but unfortunately its only for EU citizens.
Thats sad, sorry, but Filen probably will work, also Murena
I use LibreOffice BTW
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.
You are doing a good job here! I’ll let others fight over your software choices, and just add some things that you might want to add:
Keyboard app (Android): I’m using Futo keyboard, but there are other options if FUTO isn’t your cup of tea.
Translation app (Android): “Translator” on F-Droid is a feature rich, fully local.
These two can replace respective apps from Google that you like have installed by default.
Thanks, currently using Heliboard. Thx for the translation app, will try it.
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 your 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…
Just to throw it out there self hosting docker containers you could use your local PC but I started out with 30 dollar 1 litre PCs. I had three 1 hosted my firewall and the other 2 dockers. I had most everything I could need.
Just curious for the firewall one, did it have two built in NICs or were you using a USB dongle? If two NICs, what model?
It had a wifibcars ibpulles and put Ina 2.5GB card in its place. I don’t recall the model. Mini PCI maybe?
I meant the model of the mini PC, but that also helps. Thanks!
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
I’ve found NewPipe to be a good YT alternative for Grayjay.
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.
cause heliboard already does a great job. no need to reinvent the wheel.
I installed Heliboard last night and the autocorrect only works half the time with settings set to always on and force. Yeesh…
first thing to disable is autocorrect. let me type what i want. if i make a mistake ill correct.
Futa apps
You’re right, “Futo” kind of sounds like that slur. What a good joke.
Ty, comedy is my passion.
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?
