The 5 most important free softwares existing right now - Please support them and have benefits of using them

According to me there are five “Free Open Source Software’s” that should be most sponsored and most prioritized in maintaining updates for. I think the following five, in order, are the most important free software’s existing:

1st. place: “Qubes OS”- http://qubesosfasa4zl44o4tws22di6kepyzfeqv3tg4e3ztknltfxqrymdad.onion/ - Most privacy friendly “Computer-OS” existing. Recommended by “Edward Snowden”. Is able to install on a “USB-Drive”/“Memory Card”, to get a portable “Operating System”.

2nd. place: “LineageOS” - https://lineageos.org/ - Most privacy friendly “Android-device-OS” existing. (There are “Android-TV-Boxes”, except the “Android-phones”, that’s why I call it “Android-device”.) “LineageOS” can make your “Android-device” get “Google”-free and replace all “Google-software” and other payed software/bloatware with good “FOSS” (“Free Open-Source Software”) and privacy-friendly alternatives.

3rd. place: “F-Droid” - About | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository - Provides “Android-devices” with “F.O.S.S.” (“Free Open-Source Software”). The only problem is that a few apps are harder to update then others, with “F-Droid”. But I hope this gets solved with time. So that people who only use “F-Droid” can get those updates the same day they appear in “Google Play” or other places.

4th: “SoundBridge” - https://soundbridge.io - Best free “D.A.W.” (Digital Audio Workstation) right now. And it’s getting better and better, with time. Soon a stable version 2.0 will be released, with lots of new features, making it better then some payed for “D.A.W.'s”.
The only bad thing about it is that it has no “Linux”-version or “Android”-version yet, only “Windows”- and “Mac”-versions. But with more money and people requesting it, they might probably start programming a “Linux”-version and a “Android”-version of it also.
I will mention it in their forum and try to make them interested in making a “Linux”-version by telling that they might get economical support from the “Free Software Foundation” (https://www.FSF.org/), if they provide a working “Linux”-version of “SoundBridge”.

5th: “Libre Office” - https://www.libreoffice.org/ - For computers it’s already good enough to work forever, but can still need a little update now and then. If not for other reasons maybe just for maintaining support for new versions/updates of “Operating Systems”. An exception is their “Android-app” “LibreOffice Viewer”, that still is a beta-version and has not been updated for about two years. Hope that it gets stable soon, they don’t seem to work much on it. I also hope that they make a fully functional app of it, that has the same features as “Libre Office”, for computers. They probably need more people skilled in programming for “Android” to make this happen.
It surprises me that “Microsoft Office” is still existing when “Libre Office” has all of it’s features and even more, totally free. It must be that people are to unaware about free alternatives. Someday I hope that we see the death of “Microsoft Office” and have everyone using “Libre Office” on every device.

Be free to share this post with anyone.

Best regards
“Free Open-Source Software”-supporter/activist

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Most privacy friendly “Computer-OS” existing. Recommended by “Edward Snowden”.

Did he make a security audit before he claimed this? Can we see the paper? Does Snowden even have qualifications for such research?

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Well you probably believe more in Trump.
Do you even know what “Snowden” is known for, to start with? He risked his life and career, publishing some reports, about secret and illigal american world surveillance. So why would he make that up with all knowledge about surveillance?

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Well you probably believe more in Trump. Do you even know what “Snowden” is known for, to start with? He risked his life and career, publishing some reports, about secret and illigal american world surveillance. So why would he make that up with all knowledge about surveillance?

Have you heard of Linus Pauling? He was an outstanding scientist, who even won a Noble Prize in Chemistry, but later started promoting vitamin C as a cure to cancer.

I’m not denying the importance of Snowden’s reports about surveillance, but they don’t automatically make all his claims the ultimate truth.

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That’s true but “Snowden” did not make the claim yesterday. He made the claim that “QubesOS” is the most privacy-friendly OS existing and the only OS that can’t be hacked or surveillanced by anyone, at the same time as he published “the reports”, some years ago. He also claimed at the same time that the most secure phone OS was “CyanogenMod”, which, the follow up, “LineageOS” is based upon, because the CyanogenMod project suddenly was discontinued and stopped some years ago. Maybe the result of “high position powers”, against phone-privacy. Who knows? But at least “LineageOS” is much more privacy-friendly then “Android”. Regardless of apps and settings “Android” will not get as safe as “LineageOS”.
There is also a secure alternative for phones called “Replicant”, but they only supports some “Samsung-phones” and nearly no other “Androids”, so that alternative really sucks, if you don’t have the right version of “Samsung”. “LineageOS” on the other hand supports all kinds of “Android-phones” and even a “Android-TV-Box” by “NVidia”.

IIUC it requires particular CPUs, and recommends TPM (and Intel ME).

This seems problematic.

Feel free to support whatever you wish, but for my money, Torproject, Debian, or Tails are at least as worthy of First place. Top, 0th, place, of course, should go to F-droid, because what good is LineageOS without F-droid. :smiley:

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How comes that you can’t have “F-Droid” in “Lineage”?? That seems really weird. Is “F-Droid” blocking “Lineage” because they offer not “FOSS” “Google-content” or what? That would be messed up, when the only alternative is to keep your “Android” that has even more “Google-content” and not free apps.

“Guardian/Tor Project” could probably need to update some beta apps until they get stable. The two most important beta-apps to get stable are “LocationPrivacy” (which could get improved features for always making your position private, except when you share it) and of course the more updated, but never getting a stable release, “Orbot”. Two other apps worth to mention, because the description sounds good, which still are beta and has not been updated the last six years is “StoryMaker” and “GnuPrivacyGuard”, but at the same time some features in them depends on a stable “Orbot”. There is also a app that seams to be good that has not been updated for seven years, called “CACertMan”.
“Tor Browser” and “OONI Probe” seams to get updated regularly.
Other apps from “Guardian/Tor Project” seams like a total waist of time and ambition like “PixelKnot” and “ObscuraCam”. Who the hell would need that, seriously?
Hiding a message in a picture when you’re capable of encrypting it totally and make it hundred times safer before you send it and a cam that makes everything blurry. Whats the point of taking a picture then? Is this really useful for privacy and worth spending time on when better projects does not get a update within six or seven years?! They also have a app described as “Unknown Application” in “F-Droid”, called “Courier”, that also hasn’t been updated for six years. I have no idea if it’s useful or crap but it’s many been years since the last update. Which was the first and the last according to “F-Droid”.

I also wonder why “Guardian/Tor Project” has a mail for contacting them, on their homepage, when they don’t even answer?!
I mailed them some questions and suggestion about one and a half year ago, they still have not answered.
So it’s not the easiest thing to get in touch with them.
I was asking among other questions if they could start a project to try to make a complete “FOSS” replacement for the “Google Phone-apps” in “Android” (a replacement for “the phone”, “the contacts”, “the SMS” and “the call history”, by “Google”). With a “phone-app”, that is able to select as main “phone-app” and a “SMS-app” that is able to select as main “SMS-app” in “Apps-Settings”.
But when it takes more then seven years for them to update some of their apps, maybe I should expect about the same waiting-time when it comes to answering mails.
Who knows?

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Snowden also recommends Signal…but…yeah :slight_smile:

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Yeah signal should be much more secure then Facebook partly owned fake-claimed to be secure “What’s App” that is based on signal but has the extra stupid extra feature to share your position on Facebook. We can hardly guess that there is anything secure about that ability, even if they claim to have encryption, but What’s apps encryption is also weaker then that of signal. But in someway “What’s App” has went so popular that they have more users then the more secure alternative “Signal”. Probably advertisements to blame or i don’t know. Maybe "I call on you Whazz-Up sounds cooler to say then I call you on “Signal”. I have to admit that i think actually think that the name “Signal” sounds stupid. It doesn’t sound like a cool phone name at all even the word phone sounds better to me. But whatever…

There is a kind of LineageOS with FOSS “micro-G” instead of google-apps that supports and installs “F-Droid”.
Here is a link to it: https://lineage.microg.org/

I wouldn’t dare try to run QubeOS from an USB drive. Running multiple virtual machines at once requires a fast SSD to be anywhere near usable.

CyanogenMod was never the “most secure phone OS”.

Replicant is based on old Android 6.0 sources that not even LineageOS maintains anymore.
It a number of months behind monthly Android security patches.
And most of their currently supported devices run Linux 3.0 or 3.4, missing years worth of security patches and hardening.
Here take a look at android_kernel_samsung_smdk4412/replicant-6.0 patches:
https://gist.github.com/SkewedZeppelin/090522d89a9888b5b623f6bc241a78b0
They are however working on a new Android 10 based ROM with mainline Linux.

Orbot is quite stable, ignore the version tags.

Those apps are actually quite nice.

WhatsApp was released in 2009 with iPhone OS support from the start.
RedPhone, the voice only precursor to Signal, didn’t come out until 2010.
TextSecure, the text only precursor to Signal, was another year after that.
Signal, the combined version supporting text and voice didn’t gain iOS parity until 2015.

You shouldn’t expect anything, because we are all here volunteering our time.

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okay maybe you got some good points.
But I have booted “Tails” operating system from a USB with no problems at all. I don’t think it would be worse with “Qubes OS”?
Yeah, Replicant seems to really suck actually, I don’t get why FSF(FreeSoftwareFoundation) supports them except that they are 100% “FOSS”. They could support the microG version of LineageOS instead of being strictly harsh in banning them totally from support because the original LineageOS provides the alternative to get “Google Apps” and other not-free software through different repos. Or use the free existing codes of “LineageOS” and “microG” to create a new operating system by only changing the codes that allow not free software to be installed on a Android.
If you are part of the “Guardian Project” (some call it “Tor Project”) I would like to ask you about the apps I mentioned earlier from you that has not been updated for six or seven years: Are they still maintained and will you release a Android 10/11, supporting version, of them? The apps I’m asking about is “GnuPrivacyGuard”, “StoryMaker” and “CACertMan”.
Thanx for patience with giving answers. I have talked about many subjects at the same time in this thread. But I guess that some people will earn some knowledge from following the discussion and catching the details about most things. It’s never wrong to bring up questions about software with potential or without potential to change the world to a better place, or to change your life to more/less private, or to request updates, support or donations to free software’s with true potential to be a better alternative to payed for software’s.

Tails is a compressed read-only squashfs. It is explicitly made to work from USB drives.
QubesOS on the other hand has heavy random read/write requirements, that only an SSD can sustain.

Repicant does not suck. They’ve done many things no other projects have.

Because they are 100% FOSS.***

Replicant already uses LineageOS sources.

I have no relation.

Tor Project and Guardian Project are two distinct entities.

Use OpenKeychain instead of GnuPrivacyGuard.
CACertMan functionality has been built-in to Android for many years.
There were a few StoryMaker alternatives, but I don’t remember their names. Someone else can provide an alternative.

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Com-Phone Story Maker (Create, tell, share and enjoy multimedia digital stories) - Com-Phone Story Maker | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository

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As far as I can tell, SoundBridge isn’t FOSS, unfortunately.

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Owned by Roku.

It surprises me that “Microsoft Office” is still existing when “Libre Office” has all of it’s features and even more, totally free.

some very big misconceptions there. Libre office fails by MILES for my use. Miles - no exaggeration. It is soo buggy, lacked so so soooo many important features. I was inserting a photo in it for a document and geeez, i couldnt position it correctly, kept jumping. Couldnt rotate it. It doesnt have the different frame shapes in it. It was such an embarrassing experience. if i recall correct, it doesnt even have slide master. So pooor thing. And the Morph feature in MS powerpoint is literally like a life savour thing.

I aint saying it has got nothing, it has many MANY good features of its own - many better than MS (like EMF interpretation and conversion to SVG - read this: Copying shapes from Office applications results in weird artifacts (#1229) · Issues · Inkscape / Inbox · GitLab ) , and sure it’s best FOSS alternative out there, but “all MS’s features - so much that MS shouldnt exist” - lol, big big NO even if i approximate all with most.

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@anonym_i_ous,

Welcome. With all due respect, this sounds like mostly user error, possibly with a touch of FUD.

If you don’t take the time to learn how to make the software do what you want, and you assume it should work just like the proprietary products you were familiar with, then you may be disappointed.

As someone who has put plenty of photos into Libre Office documents, I know it can be a little difficult at times, especially if you don’t Read The Fine Manual, but it does the job. It also may help to reduce your photos with other free software tools like Gimp or aaphoto, before putting them into Libre Office documents.

Of course microsoft still exists. They own the biggest nerd^H^H^H^H Developer social media development site.

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That’s destructive workflow. Most of the time when i am working in office, i keep things to be easily editable later (i.e. keep it non-destructive).

and you assume it should work just like the proprietary products you were familiar with

i agree i have some bias. Other than that, even if i ignore the feature that arent there, those that are - are still needlessly convoluted and dialogs could have been much simpler (as in improved/streamlined) even if taken without in comparison to other softwares.

last parah is about github but what does ^H mean? I dont quiet get the first para either.

also like i said, i dont have much problem with LOS - different people have different preferences for different toolsets. I also dont want to stay dependent on MOS and want that LOS replace it in future. That is all the other things u are saying are good, i aint saying anyth against about those, the main thing i am saying is that the above quoted phrase is just stupid/ignorant in current context.

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The photos I put into documents usually don’t need all the exif or other data, nor the high quality of my best camera. Call it what you want, but I call it prudent and sensible.

what does ^H mean?

Wikipedia generally sucks, but they got this OK: