I don’t run Linux anymore, though this should change sometime next year. I use Blender and Krita for work, QOwnNotes for note-taking, Firefox for the web, QBittorrent for sharing holiday films, etc. For image editing I use Affinity, probably the only notable proprietary program on my system apart from Windows.
Did a fresh install of linux mint recently, because of that a good chunk of my software has been FOSS, however, when it comes to all the gaming related stuff I’ve installed (drivers, clients, etc.) its been a hit or miss with more proprietary software then i’d like.
Will say, I’ve struggled for a while to find a good open source music player for local files, I’d love some recommendations (currently trying Rhythmbox but I don’t feel I’ll love it)
Try Strawberry, Audacious, and Lollypop. There’s a lot of options, it just depends on what you’re looking for. I could give better suggestions if I knew what features are important to you.
I don’t know if I’ve used Strawberry, but I used Clementine, from which it was forked for several years. Like OP, Rhythmbox wasn’t doing it for me. Clementine/Strawberry is definitely worth a look.
On my home PC everything is FOSS. I’m a serious hobby user of Inkscape and GIMP. No advantage to using commercial alternatives.
Work PC is all commercial software. For me FOSS CAD doesn’t come close.
Production/Laptop
Framework laptop with x86 Intel CPU, running OpenBSD. All drivers are free, non-free firmware includes intel, inteldrm, iwx (intel wireless device), uvideo (webcam), vmm (virtual machine). BIOS/UEFI is closed.
Hopefully intel, inteldrm, and vmm firmware can be removed after I switch to the RISC-V mainboard that is releasing for the Framework 13 inch soon. iwx firmware can be removed as soon as OpenBSD has better atheros drivers, whenever that patch arrives (or whatever other foss wireless card comes along). uvideo firmware might be unnecessary, but I haven’t checked.
FOSS score: Medium-Low, after switching mainboard, Good.
Phone
OG Pinephone running postmarketOS. I don’t think there’s any non-free firmware (GPU maybe?). ARM64 CPU, only closed firmware I know of is the modem, which I’ve replaced with a free version here. Don’t know about the UEFI/BIOS.
FOSS score: Good, Medium if UEFI/BIOS is closed or there is non-free firmware.
Gaming
Steam Deck, x86 AMD cpu, running proprietary SteamOS. May replace the OS at some point if a good alternative comes along, as SteamOS’s immutable design and lack of real package manager besides flatpak annoys me.
FOSS score: Terrible, will always be Terrible because of all the games, even after replacing the OS.
RISC V probably doesn’t have the performance you will expect. It is equivalent to a budget smart phone from a few years ago
Honestly, good enough for my usecases.
Daily computing is mostly FOSS programs and my laptop is sold with Linux preinstalled (though I bought the higher spec Windows version and installed Linux myself. Cloud is FOSS, self-hosted in the public cloud (until I get fiber). Phone is rooted Android w/ FOSS apps wherever they meet my needs. I’m about 50% through degoogling and de-Microsofting. Ereader is KOReader (FOSS) running on old Kindle brand hardware. Keyboard is Ergodox Ez which I think the firmware is FOSS. Smarthome is still Smartthings which is not FOSS.
I’m going to give myself a C- 70% FOSS
You shouldn’t use root on Android. It throws the security model out the window. Just run something without google
Going to probably try this after I build my pihole and I can VPN home for ad blocking. Currently I need root to avoid seeing ads.
Can’t you just use ublock origin?
The browser ad on doesn’t work in apps, and if they have a blocker outside of that, it probably uses a VPN on the loopback interface to strip out the ads. I run a VPN a fair bit, so I would only be adblocking when I’m not on the VPN. Are there any non-root methods that can do full system ad blocking other than the VPN thing?
Don’t use apps with ads. They are a privacy and freedom risk anyway. Use apps from F-droid.
Why not set Adguard as private DNS?
other than games/steam pretty much everything else is FOSS.
Libre hardware:
- Turris Omnia router with their OpenWrt-based distro. Bought in 2017, upgraded to Wifi-6 in 2022. Great product.
- 3x system76 laptops with Coreboot and Debían
- The desktop is a system76 darter pro with a broken hinge, so it’s connected to a widescreen monitor and external mouse, keyboard. Also Debían.
The non FOSS systems are:
- HP Dev One running proprietary UEFI, and Pop!_OS
- a couple of Pixel phones running stock OS
- an iPad Pro with keyboard from 2018
- X201 Thinkpad with AFFS upgrade running Debían. Connected to some AudioEngine speakers and Spotify, this is our media player.
- a Thinkpad T43p with XP for Age of Empires and Freecell
- an Apple TV.
FOSS-y
- 3D: Blender
- Automation: Python, Ansible and Bash
- Calendar: ProtonCalendar
- Chess: Lichess
- DesktopOS: Pop!_OS
- Drive: ProtonDrive
- eBook: Calibre
- E-Mail: ProtonMail
- FOSS Android Apps Center: Droidify
- Flashcards: Anki
- Git Repos: Codeberg
- IDE: AstroNvim
- Keyboard: Keychron Q1 HE QMK
- Laptop Firmware: Coreboot
- Maps: OpenStreetMap and OrganicMaps
- Messenger: Signal
- Music Player: cmus
- Office: LibreOffice
- Password Manager: Bitwarden
- RaspberryPi: Raspbian
- Raster: GIMP
- Recording: OBS and GPU Screen Recorder
- Shell: Fish
- SmartphoneOS: GrapheneOS
- Terminal: Alacritty
- Torrent: qBittorent
- Tried Game Engines: Bevy and Godot
- Typing Test: Monkeytype and Keybr
- VPN: Mullvad
- Vector: Inkscape
- Video Player: mpv and VLC
- Virtualization: Quickemu
- Weather: OpenMeteo
I don’t know what to say about people who I told about lichess but still think chess.com is better
Chess dot com tells me what opening I played
(Because Lord knows I don’t)
Lichess does tell too.
Not during the play though, only during analysis
Ah I see so you can look up in game what are the best responses for your opening. Smart.
Maybe just say why it is better:
- No ads / subscriptions
- No tracking
- Free software is really fast
- You can do many projects with Lichess
- Clean non-cluttered UI
So, in summary, it’s not hyped up (marketing), clean, no tracking, free chess.com experience.
I don’t know what are the advantages’ chess.com has over Lichess right now. The chess should be free.
Why Obsidian when there’s so many good foss note-taking apps?
You could list it, but I tried to migrate Obsidian to Logseq. For now, I have no time. I mostly write MarkDown though.
Why todoist and not tasks.org
I cannot get the same features on the desktop so it’s synced up. Besides that only Taks.org on Android is even better than Todoist.
I use nextcloud for tasks and then use tasks.org on android, not sure what features you need, but that has worked great for me
I have to try NextCloud Tasks then. I’m also considering Vikunja.
Linux on all my computers and GrapheneOS on my Google Pixel 6a with 99.8% FOSS applications. Maybe 96% FOSS softwares on my stationary computer and 100% on my laptops.
With GrapheneOS do you still get the same quality photos as you would with the stock OS?
I use Open Camera and the quality is very good. Especially the night mode! What you see with your eyes in a dark room with the TV on, that’s what you will see in the photo. Not the same quality on the TV in the photo, of course, but very close.
Just a +1 for Open Camera - it’s a great bit of software.
Indeed. Far the best camera for Android I’ve ever used. Kinda addicted to the timestamp/watermark/something, though, haha! Mighty good feature!
On my main profile on GrapheneOS there are 7 closed source apps and 1 self build technically closed source (for now) all out of total 71 apps.
Currently running majority FLOSS, and glad for the excellent options that these very capable people have released.
Desktops, laptops, HTPC:
Trisquel GNU/Linux on Libreboot BIOS hardware
–//–
Phones and tablets are:
GrapheneOS + Fdroid only apps
–//–
Rockbox audio players
(+ Open Tunes from FMA, Argofox, CC netlabels, jamendo, bandcamp etc)
–//–
Gadgetbridge + Amazfit Bip (watch)
[Looking to switch out this watch for a FLOSS smartwatch like: pinetime or bangle.js]
–//–
and dd-wrt on the router
This guy has mad FOSS cred. I bet even his socks are made of free range organic open source wool released under a Creative Commons attribution share-alike licence.
Seriously though, that sounds like an amazing setup. I always wanted to mess with gadget bridge some more. I have a number of old MiBand devices lying around as well as a Bip. The third party apps for that thing had more features than almost every fitness tracker I’ve had potentially even including my Garmin watch. What tools do you use to analyze/review/visualize the gadget bridge data?
Thanks for the props :]
I usually look at the session graph data on Gadgetbridge, or export a bike GPS track to OSMand to look more in depth at position, height, speed etc.
OpenWRT is going to be better than DD-WRT. It is certainly more flexible
Thanks, I was checking both before going with ddwrt.
Looks like OpenWRT has more options and less hand-holding. Would that be right?
Yes but the wiki is very solid. Also the basic functionality doesn’t require much to setup. Just make sure you set the WiFi country
I have a raspberry pi as a print server but that’s about it. I tried a few distros on an old laptop but none really worked that well.
Like sub 10% maybe.
Phone 1: iPhone
Phone 2: Android (pixel 4, stock rom)
Desktop 1: Windows
Desktop 2: Mac OS
Laptop 1: Windows
Laptop 2: Mac OS.
Laptop 3: Windows/KDE Neon, no attention paid to whether or not the drivers are foss.
Server: Proxmox with Debian and Truenas VMs.
Router: pfSense.
I just use what works for me, and what license the software uses is not at all a factor in that choice.
Is there a reason to us pfsense insteaof opnsense?
No.
Quite near 100%. The device driver for the DVB-S receiver card is my exception.
A bunch of older Chromebooks now running a Free firmware, and Debian.
Which chromebooks? if you don’t mind my asking… thinking of going this route, but I’ve read not all chromebooks are created equal wrt installing Linux.
I had some chromebooks from 2014 to 2019, and these specifically worked with the MrChromebox’s firmware. There’s a list on his website about the models supported.
