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Software Recommendations

Operating systems

  • Debian is a 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.

Web browsers

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.

Mobile applications

Also read: Android’s state of freedom

  • Droidify, the better F-Droid, material you, fast.
  • Aurora Store is a lightweight Play Store alternative. Lets you use Play Store without login by anonymous session, spoof device location to access geo-locked apps. shows trackers in the app.
  • Gramophone is a slick and minimal offline music player that can play .mp3, .flac, .ogg, .opus, .m4a, .mka and .wav files.

  • ReadEra, a beautiful, all-in-one, multi-purpose document and ebook reader. Available on play store.