I’m going to suggest an alternative to Samsung Internet or Firefox : https://github.com/uazo/cromite

Out of the options I’ve tried, it’s probably the best bet for reducing tracking, fingerprinting & increasing security without turning to Tor browser (which while it is more anonymous, is frustrating for general browsing)

For clearing cache, there are two options. There’s a dedicated clear browsing data button in the hamburger menu, it can also be configured to “sanitize on close” (similar to Firefox on desktop, or Brave on desktop / mobile) [In cromite, this can be found under Security > Clear the data at open]

I can’t recommend Firefox on Android in good faith, until site isolation (fission) is enabled on the platform. This is a major security regression compared to desktop Firefox, or chromium based browsers on Android

Edit: It seems like Iron Fox (continuation of Mull / fork of Firefox) has site isolation enabled - but it is still buggy and does not have all features enabled e.g no isolated process SELinux labels.

If you don’t mind me asking, what music client is pictured?

One of the advantages of Relay is that it is agnostic of your email provider, making it easier to switch providers without having to change the email on every account that has an alias.

Considering this, I’d be tempted to go with Addy.io instead of ProtonMail / SimpleLogin (subsidiary of Proton AG).

If you’re concerned with having to trust a third-party to process your emails however, Proton may be the better option with built-in aliasing. Mailbox.org is another option recommended by privacy guides with built-in aliasing.

If you’re concerned with Mozilla’s TOS change however, you may also be concerned with the Proton CEO implicitly supporting the current Trump presidency, believing that the Republicans will do a better job reigning big tech in (While I’ll agree that the democrats are not anti-corp, that died with Bernie, I think it’s foolish to believe the republicans will be better). They also pulled their entire media presence on Mastodon, and recently integrated Zoom despite explicitly stating that it has privacy issues in their blog.

I think some people are being a bit extreme in their characterization of Proton AG right now, but it definitely feels like they’re making some peculiar choices when looking at their guiding mission of privacy / security.

Passwords I would recommend Bitwarden or KeePass (both of which are in the PrivacyGuides wiki, particularly usefull for KeePass where there are different clients depending on OS)

Email / contacts / calendar I am still struggling on to be quite honest. I am debating right now on Mailbox.org + EteSync OR just using Posteo.de (while it has some security regressions compared to Mailbox.org, it has encrypted contacts and calendar). To be quite honest though the options available in this space are quite frustrating, it is really hard to find a solution that allows for interoperability / data portability as well as E2EE / elevated security.

I would say the only potential “benefit” is if the account contains non-public facing personal information - you are reducing the chance it gets leaked via data breach (assuming, of course, they actually erase your data properly)

But I would say it is at least worth it to reduce that potential risk, but you should also go into it assuming that anything that was publicly accessible has been archived / saved by someone.

I for some reason recall at one point WhatsApp’s encryption was actually an audited implementation of Signal’s encryption. But that is so long ago that I doubt that holds much weight now ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Would it run ok on a SBC, such as a raspberry pi? I don’t mind self hosting, but I don’t have the space for a full blown server setup in my appartment sadly (as fun as it would be)

I see in the FAQ they mention that “If you would like, you can encrypt your calendar and address book with your password. Therefore, only you have access to your data” (translated by myself into English, sorry if it isn’t exact)

Is there any “downsides” to this in terms of interoperability with other calendar / contact apps?

Thank you so much for your suggestion, this seems like it fills the issues I had when researching mailbox.org

How reliable is the syncing? I currently sync a lot of things with Syncthing, and while it is great to not rely on a shady centralized cloud service, decentralized syncing also has its own problems (potential sync conflicts in my KeePass databases mostly)

It definitely seems like an interesting option though! Thank you so much :)

This is sadly what I was fearing running into, but I thought I would ask here nonetheless to see what other options people have even if they require some compromises on my goals

Do you self-host or do you pay? Just curious what your experience has been with the two options :)

Thank you for the suggestion!

If you don’t mind me asking, what makes gnome more adaptable in terms of functionality than KDE?

I think it’s important to see these types of efforts, while I’ll never go out and buy a MacBook the effort isn’t wasted since it gives current users more freedom and future people buying used laptops more options for Linux compatible hardware.

Without a project like this, that hardware will end up being e-waste a lot sooner than it should be, when Apple drops support. At least to me I see an ethical and moral imperative for projects like this, but I also understand people’s grievances with Apple.

You have a few options on what you can do to limit your child’s usage of a device.

NextDNS has some interesting features for parental controls, as well as some options to try and prevent bypassing it (i have yet to try it though). On iOS it can be installed as a device profile and you can prevent them from being uninstalled, I’m not sure how to go about this on android but I’m sure there’s a way of limiting the child’s access to changing the settings.

Otherwise the built in parental control features on Android and iOS seem to be very useful as well, since you can limit what your child can install, set screen time limits, etc. I am pretty sure you’d want a more recent version of Android however to get all of the features here which may not be possible depending on the budget.

If you just want the ability to call / text then perhaps a dumb phone is a good first step? But a smart phone may be more useful if they’re older.

You and someone else have mentioned the deadman switch, does the other person need an account or can credentials be made for them? I haven’t used bitwarden in a while (since I migrated to gopass and then to keepass), so I’m guessing this is a new feature.

That is a very fascinating feature and I think I’ll look into it!

What exactly is the deadman setup? I did a quick search and found someone asking for a feature from last pass. Is this what you’re referring to?

I’ve debated on using a bank safe but I’m still unsure about the regulations in my country regarding them. Notably what can law enforcement do without a warrant etc etc.

In terms of self hosting I think that’ll likely be the route I go as well, where family can just “shut it down” upon my death. I’m sure my partner might want to keep a few things (e.g. my kodi setup) but the things they would want to keep aren’t too difficult I feel.

The plugin that brings the “starter” / “welcome” screen when nvim is called without a file is mini.starter, a lua module of the mini plugin. My primary use case for neovim is closer to a feature complete text editor rather than a full fledged IDE, although there definitely is some overlap in my setup.

My set of plugins are roughly as follows

• vim-plug, I will likely replace this one with packer at some point
• goyo.vim and limelight.vim for distraction free viewing and editing
• nnn.nvim to integrate the nnn file manager into neovim
• mini.nvim according to the Github, “Library of 35+ independent Lua modules improving overall Neovim (version 0.7 and higher) experience with minimal effort. They all share same configuration approaches and general design principles.”
  • mini.surround feature rich surround actions
  • mini.statusline a very simple no-frills statusline
  • mini.starter aformentioned start screen
  • mini.pairs inserts the paired character, e.g typing ( will automatically place ) behind the cursors
  • mini.move move selections
  • mini.map has a little map of the file similar to VScode among many other IDEs & text editors
• barbar.nvim Tabbar plugin
• a whole bunch of LSP / autocomplete engines / snippets / git commit messages & signs
• nvim-treesitter for syntax highlighting

And the remaining things in my init.lua file are just keybindings, setting up the plugins, and disabling the swapfile etc. when editing my password secrets in gopass among other ‘secret’ files

It definitely is rather reminiscent of older Windows versions with the seperate application launchers, fully expanded task bar entries that show the name of an app that are ungrouped (until necessary). And the widgets are very reminiscent of Rainmeter.

But I also bring some things from macOS that I enjoyed such as the global menu on the top (sadly Firefox flatpak does not support), virtual desktops with the pager widget on the bottom, and I use Krunner a lot (plasma’s equivalent to macOS “Spotlight”)

I hope your switch to Linux goes well if / when you switch!

I’d much rather use a separate Firefox (now Mozilla I think) account for my professional work. I also would prefer having separate extensions, notably Zotero connector is kind of useless for my personal browsing