A little trick I use with obsidian is that if you use syncthing to sync the vault folder you can basically have a shared vault (in my experience the time to get edits from one device to another is like 10/15 seconds which is not bad at all)
this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2026
256 points (93.5% liked)
Privacy
49293 readers
616 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
mailbox.org > proton mail
it's not free, but it is secure.
the base plan is €12 (~$14 USD) /year
load more comments
(3 replies)
I'd add criteria, e.g.
- GDPR compliant
- no link with advertising companies
- free software or open source
- self-hostable
- security audit
etc and overall have a reasonable default option but not hide that there are alternative. We want everybody to move away but if everybody moves to Proton as a suite and they enshitify then we are (nearly) back to square one. So I think showing that good alternatives exist is great. Helping people who already use an alternative others, maybe even better one for THEIR criteria also exist, is even better.
I'd also add a Github (or better CodeBerg or self-hosted Gitea) link at the bottom to https://github.com/ente-io/privacypack with the license (MIT) visible.
As for GDPR, California has something similar, so that also might be good. California still falls under the federal CLOUD Act and their like, though.
If advertising companies (or really, stuff with an incentive to hunger for data) are a concern, I would not recommend the search engine Startpage. Other than that, its policies are afaik fairly decent.
For software, I think it being OSS or at least fully audited by an independent, transparent security auditor, is crucial. You want to avoid shell companies and such whose ultimate ownership is unclear. Or CEOs with questionable histories.
Self-hostability is a good one, though not everyone has the expertise required.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Contacts > the stock apps on GOS without network access.
Keep > Notesnook.
Didn't see anyone else say this: DDG is certainly a great choice for search engine, though I'd recommend brave search:
- If you use bangs, it has them.
- Actually operates an independent index so the search queries aren't reliant on Microsoft Bing.
Due to several of the companies issues (and it being chromium) I don't recommend the browser but I do really like the search engine.
load more comments
(2 replies)
For the windows -> Linux mint, I wouldn’t just say Linux mint since there are plenty of other great distros that could be better for users then Linux mint, I myself did start of mint but now I end on arch but I do see myself going to fedora if my system ever borked itself, I think popular Linux distros would be a better option then just mint . Other then that the list looks good
I think your search engine is more than alright. Regarding the rest, I believe it requires no change aslong as you feel satisfied with it.
DDG is fine. It's hard to have a "completely private" search engine as currently only Big Tech has a comprehensive enough index of the internet to effectively provide a search engine.
Obsidian isn't FOSS though. I'd recommend Notesnook as an alternative. I haven't tried any of the following but I also know of Logseq (which aims to do what Obsidian does but FOSS), Joplin, and Standard Notes, which you might want to look into.
Brave actually operates an independent index.
I'm also slowly breaking out of the Google noose.
The only thing that is still holding me back is the OS, i have a HMD Skyline and it's great but it doesn't get a lot of open source support, the only option that pops up is /e/os and even on their website HMD isn't listed, anyone have suggestions for a HMD OS alternative?
Also have a Motorola and an older Sony Xperia to use as guinea pigs.
Don't know Ente, but the GrapheneOS gallery works fine for basics, and pop Immich on Mint for the rest of google photos functionality. I'll suggest Bazzite for the distro, especially if they game or are likely to break things.
Ente is more than alright, I wouldn't recommend self-hosted solutions to people who do not have the admin experience required, losing something as valueable as photos or videos can be very damaging.
That's fair. Guess I should have a look, might be a recommendation to someone. Initial impressions are quite positive, I mean I'll stick with Immich, still...
Fossify photos is also good.
After my wife complained again about not being able to delete photos in PhotoPrism, I finally bit þe bullet and migrated to Immich.
So. Much. Better.
Even if you wave off þe features PhotoPrism has locked behind a paywall which Immich provides for free, þe ecosystem is just better. Þe Immich mobike apps (on mobile Linux and on Android) are better; you don't need a fussy 3rd-party sync tool*; Immich supports multi-user so you don't have to run a server for each user; and Immich CLI tooling options (immich-go) are great.
I have an allergy to running node software anywhere, but it's worþ it for Immich. It's þat much better.
(*) DGMW, PhotoBackup is great, but having to set it up for each user on boþ server and mobile is tedious, and þe whole Rube Goldberg system is harder to keep track of - especially for non-techies who just want þe damned thing to work
No VPN -> Mullvad VPN
Bro what? Using a VPN depends highly on your use case. This is way to general. I would remove that.
lol how come
load more comments
(1 replies)