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uses

The software and computers I use.

Services #

  • Social — Mastodon is a great place to explore the small web. It has a unique culture and has taught me a lot about accessibility and art.
  • RSS — Artemis is a fun and simple way to follow your favorite websites.
  • Version control — Codeberg is what GitHub should have been. It’s built on the commons and run by a nonprofit.
  • Email — It sucks, but Proton Mail makes it better. It sells a service instead of your data and it supports encryption both in transit and at rest.
  • Search — Kagi provides magic results to anonymous queries. It uses the open standard privacy pass through an extension to allow you to use the paid service without signing in. I don’t recommend it though, since it’s paid.
  • Search (again) — Wikipedia is actually a great search engine. Think how often you search Google and click the first link: Wikipedia. Skip the middleman and make it your default search engine.

Laptop #

  • Operating system — Installing Fedora Workstation is an awesome way to start taking back your privacy and control over your computer. It’s built on GNOME, an exceedingly user friendly interface which has plenty in it for power users.
  • Editor — It’s not for everyone but Neovim feels like nothing else to me. It has a steep learning curve in which one learns a micro-language of semantic keystrokes designed to make editing text a quick and rich experience. Update: I switched editors, and something else feels like Neovim.
  • Editor (again) — Helix is Neovim, batteries included. It changes up some keybinds (move, then action, rather than action, then move), but other than that it’s strictly a simpler, more polished experience.
  • Terminal — Ghostty has a lot of momentum behind its development and is taking inconsistently implemented features from other emulators and building them in as proper standards. It’s built on the cross-platform libghostty, and supports native UIs on macOS and Linux.
  • Browser — Firefox with the right settings can’t be beat. I’ve switched to other browsers many times, but I always switch back. Brave’s crypto stuff was just too much. LibreWolf received security updates too infrequently. Zen Browser dropped frames on my hardware. Firefox is what you make it; an excellent foundation for user choice. Update: I switched again, and I think it’s been beat.
  • Browser (again) — Chromium with no google account is actually great at preserving privacy, and I understand it to have much better security than Firefox. It supports Progressive Web Apps, which are great for running privacy harming services without giving them access to your computer. The only problem is I have to sync bookmarks myself. That actually makes it a no-go for most people, but it works for me.

Phone #

  • Device — I need my phone to be cheap, supported for many years, and allow alternative operating systems. The Google Pixel 6a struck a balance of these needs that no other phone at the time did. When my phone is no longer supported I’ll likely buy a used Pixel 10a and aim to use it for its six remaining years, although I dearly hope (cope?) that a more ethical company is producing something better by that time. Update: Motorola phones will support GrapheneOS in 2027, and they have headphone jacks! They’ll still likely be expensive when I’m looking to buy, though.
  • Operating system — GrapheneOS is Android with some amazing privacy and security features. Android phones are usually terrible when it comes to privacy; Google is thoroughly ingrained into the system and tracks users in every app. GrapheneOS puts the power in the user’s hands to choose their place on the spectrum between convenience and privacy.
  • Messaging — I use Signal for almost all of my communication these days. It’s encrypted like nothing else is, and easy to set up and use. I felt odd asking friends and family to use it at first, but I’ve been having tons of success getting people on the platform lately. Update: I’ve switched to Molly for Signal, so I can get notifications without keeping Signal awake all the time.
  • UnifiedPush — I use ntfy connected to a self-hosted ntfy server for many of my notifications, where the app supports it. Since I’m running GrapheneOS with no Google Play Services, I don’t get notifications from FCM, so either my apps need to run in the background, or I just don’t get notifications. UnifiedPush fixes this by handling the notifications itself, and waking apps when they have something new to notify me about.
  • Podcasts — They’re one of the few open mediums that people engage with regularly. AntennaPod is straightforward, clean, and respects its users, which is all I want from a podcast app.

I’ve been tinkering with my phone a ton lately, and I’ve whittled down the app list to contain only free and open source software and use very little battery life. I’ve been experimenting with UnifiedPush to improve the efficiency of push notifications, and I’ve even set up some automations to receive messages for apps I don’t have on my phone.

Home Server #

I’ve been self-hosting a ton of services on my homelab lately. I’ll fill this in with more detail soon.

  • Link aggregator — Linkding.
  • RSS — MiniFlux.
  • Link saver — Linkding.
  • Tasks, Calendar — Rustical. It supports will soon support UnifiedPush for efficient and instant syncing with DAVx5.
  • Photos — Immich.
  • Music — Navidrome, with Feishin as a frontend.
  • Media — Jellyfin.
  • UnifiedPush — ntfy.
  • Search — SearXNG.
  • Torrenting — qBittorrent, with Flood as a frontend.