Updated 03-Aug-2025 See also: Part 1: Stop using their stuff For me, both open source (defined below) and sustainability (some kind of appropriate life-span and level of health) are both important, together. Though also I believe that reasonable business models around closed source (proprietary) should also be sustainable (in a non-rapacious sense). What is Sustainability? ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Thunar is the Saxon name for Thor. Thunar is the default file manager for the XFCE desktop but can of course be installed on most distributions. In general it is low-resource, highly flexible, and extensible (supports plugins, and custom actions). It can easily be used for SFTP connections as well. See also Thunar ... Read more
Updated 12-Aug-2025 See also Symfonium Quod Libet is an absolutely brilliant music player / library tool, with a nice community and set of plugins. Open source and cross platform (Linux, OSX, Windows), it can't be beat in terms of speed (fast), resource utilization (low), and flexibility (UI, streaming, podcasts, etc.). Truly a gem. The last ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 See also: Part 2: Open source project sustainability -- not yet available This article is a work in progress See also Against venture capital We really need to learn from Google, Twitter, etc. The fact is, these large companies are unaccountable, and not only illegally scrape but also can scan your stuff, delete ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 I guess I'll be using Golang. Go Getting started Go packages Go for web programming I provisionally agree with the idea of starting with simple libraries that are idiomatic with Go, rather than some larger framework that cannot be replaced without trashing all the code. In this case, I'll be using go-chi an ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 (Pictured: Kindle Paperwhite 2018, 2022, paper Manga) See also Ebooks and where to buy them which discusses DRM from each ebook seller. Kindle and other Ebook Readers Calibre Ebook Library, De-DRM, Conversion Jailbreak Kindle KOReader open source ebook reader Top Note: This page needs to be reworked as it is several articles concatenated ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 See also Ebooks and where to buy them which discusses DRM from each ebook seller. Kindle and other Ebook Readers Calibre Ebook Library, De-DRM, Conversion Jailbreak Kindle KO Reader open source ebook reader Ebook formats Ebooks are ubiquitous, though generally the are in the form of pdfs, .epubs, .cbr (for manga), and a ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Venture Capital has a way of despoiling a product or service by focusing only on growth and (ultimately) profits. This means that the typical approach is to invest a lot of money (edging out less-endowed competitors), and then jacking up the revenue streams, usually by lowering quality and increasing enshittification. Cory Doctorow used ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 There are many choices for PDF readers and editors for the Linux platform. I've used a variety over the years. Lately I had preferred these two: Xournal++ (xournalpp), which is a reader and editor, and is touted as a handwriting notetaking software with PDF annotation support ... supports pen input from devices such ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Looks like Library Genesis has been hit hard by some courts. And so we turn to Anna's Archive. Libgen and related news Publishers Ramp Up Pressure vs. Anna’s Archive, Sci-Hub, Z-Library & Libgen (Torrentfreak) Pirate Libraries Are Forbidden Fruit for AI Companies. But at What Cost? (Torrentfreak) Copyright reform is necessary for national ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Upon installing XFCE, the xfce4-screenshooter is also installed. Create keyboard shortcut for screenshots Note that the Below will initiate a selection screenshot so that one may select the appropriate screen area using the crosshairs. It will also automatically save the screenshot in the Downloads directory and name it appropriately. In order to have ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 I am far from a China-apologist, so this criticism is nothing knee-jerk. What the US so-called intelligence community is doing to Deepseek, is a huge failure of imagination. It is obvious that state-sponsored attacks are trying to smear this brilliant AI competitor through DOS attacks, breaches, and outright legal chicanery (see Australia's new ... Read more
Updated 20-Oct-2025 These are more-or-less protocols (well, maybe Signal is not). So instead this article could be named: Signal, Element, Dino / Movim / Conversations I've used Signal for the past number of years as a chat / videocall app, having switched from Telegram after it went full Nazi. But there are other options, some ... Read more
Updated 14-Sep-2025 Sometimes there is a confluence of innovations, both technological, and economic, which conspire to prompt a purchase. Now it is that time for me, concerning the 2024 BYD Dolphin Standard Range. Incidentally, I rode in a BYD Dolphin driven by a GRAB car, driving home from the hospital after getting stitches in my ... Read more
Updated 08-Aug-2025 Note see also Sandisk Clipjam and Portable Music Players and Linux Because the Sandisk Clipjam appears to be no longer manufactured, the most approximate portable MP3 player (with clip, suitable for running/bicycling) is the Ruizu x52 mp3 player. It is about $25 USD on Lazada, sold by Ruizu itself, with good reliability ratings. ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Google is such a tool. Even with apps only mode they show full-screen background ads on top of everything. Without that mode, nearly every element on the screen pushes apps and content that is unwanted and unneeded. It is now impossible to remove this without changing Google TV / Android TV launchers. Thankfully, ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Codium aka VSCodium Alternative to the instrumented VSCode. Less tracking, same Open Source flavor. Another option is Pulsar, the resurrected Atom editor. Ignore Pulsar, vscodium is fine. Note that with Foam, Codium can provide some level of Obsidian-like functionality, though not nearly as extensive functionality and constrained to a desktop (no mobile apps). ... Read more
Updated 29-Nov-2025 I use Obsidian which is a closed source application but focused on open data standards, and with a thriving community of extensions and use cases. The main competitors of Obsidian are Notion (closed source cloud service) and Logseq (open source). So, why Obsidian? Why Obsidian? Freemium model, including various ways to help fund ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Git is great, and even better as a core part of a full development / deployment toolchain. These days there are choices as to which more robust Git platform to use. First, those not to use: Github (owned by Microsoft), proprietary Gitlab (owned publicly traded company), open core Both of these are worrisome ... Read more
Updated 18-Aug-2025 This is meant to help with selecting and installing a chrome-based browser, with minimal tracking and other cruft. Ungoogled Chromium for Debian Actually there are a variety of OS builds for ungoogled Chromium, many of which lag behind. There does not seem to be an up-to-date apt repository anywhere. Therefore manual installations are ... Read more