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Recommendations

Programs and other utilities I use and recommend.

image: gentoo penguin

Operating systems

I primarily use Gentoo Linux. To quote, “Because I hate myself.” Gentoo is a source-based distro meaning the source code is compiled locally on the machine. Another aspect is USE flags, by which you can choose to globally enable or disable optional extra features, dependency, libraries in /etc/portage/make.conf resulting in a tailored system with reduced bloats. Gentoo is super demanding as it requires your willingness, time, patience and learning investment. In return you will be rewarded with a highly performing and fine tuned workstation plus a blazingly fast boot time over the top.

Here's a silly homage to gentoo I made years ago as I was learning web development.
Debian is stable, reliable, and a great starting distro. Unlike Arch, Debian is not cutting edge and will likely get major updates once every few years. This is both a drawback and a feature. You're risking latest updates of your favourite softwares for boasting a stable, NASA-level workstation. I use Debian when I don't feel like clinically insane.

Linux
- Firefox is a decent browser as it is, but it comes with telemetry and Google services. I use a custom user.js file of my own based on Betterfox. If you don't want to bother with customization, at heart, Librewolf is a custom version of Firefox, focused on privacy, security, and freedom. It's quite privacy-centric out of the box.
- For Chromium experience, I use Ungoogled Chromium. As it removes all Google-specific web services. It is bare metal browser which can be a drawback to many. You will have to customize it to your needs. Brave is another good chromium fork. It replaces google search engine with Brave search engine. They shill NFTs and brave wallet out of the box which I could not care less of so I turn them off. Otherwise it's a fairly decent browser.
Android
- Firefox is the official Firefox for mobile. Complements extensions. Fennec F-Droid is a better Firefox for android without proprietary code, telemetry, and ads. I personally prefer Fennec over official app.