Copying Tracy Durnell's homework by way of Matt C, Chris Coyier, and drew dot shoes. (Some fantastic RSS subscriptions, btw.)

For a few years now, I've been trying to hone my free-as-in-freedom software garden. I really like to properly own my data and make it reside on my server(s), which is a bit of an edge case sometimes. I tweak this list a lot less frequently than I did even a year ago, but it's always fun to share and look back at past years.

Since a lot of this list is up for fine-tuning, I thought it'd be fun to include how happy I am with each solution:

• 👍 = pretty much set in stone
• ❓ = I have a solution, but it might change
• 😕 = I don't have a good solution

📨 Mail Client - Thunderbird on both desktop and mobile (!!). I've been waiting for a "Thunderbird on Android" for a literal decade, and this year a polished version was finally ready. I was already using K-9 Mail, so the switch was seamless. (👍)

📮 Mail Server - iRedMail running on a VPS. Cheap and easy to update. Probably worth its own post at some point. (👍)

📝 Notes - For the last year or so I've been self-hosting Outline. It's quite good, and supports a lot of polished features like publishing and real-time collab. Biggest con: No mobile app/offline access (though the web version is good on mobile). (❓)

✅ To-Do - This year I started tracking my to-dos as normal calendar events, and it's worked really well. I put an item on my calendar the date it's due and set reminder notifications for, say a week before, a day before, and an hour before. (👍)

📷 Photo Shooting - My Pixel 6a most of the time, sometimes my Canon EOS Rebel XT. (👍)

🎨 Photo Editing - Very occasionally, I use darktable for grading and GIMP for touch-ups. (👍)

📆 Calendar/Contacts Server - Radicale. Another absolute champion that's easy to update. Simple, and I've never had any problems with it. (👍)

📆 Calendar Client - GNOME Calendar on desktop and Google Calendar on mobile. I use DAVx5 to sync my calendar/contacts on mobile. I'd love to get away from Google Calendar, but the UI is just by far the best option. (Desktop: 👍, Mobile: ❓)

📁 Cloud File Storage - Seafile. I switched from NextCloud a few years ago and never looked back. It's simple, lightning fast, and reliable. I sync all of my xdg-home folders (Desktop, Documents, Pictures, &c.) no problem. My one gripe is that the mobile app is… okay. Sharing and integration w/ the Android filesystem never seem to work for me, but the core functionality (downloading/uploading files) works great. (👍)

📖 RSS - NewsFlash on desktop and Feeder on mobile. Currently I periodically sync my OPML file from my desktop to my phone, but I'd like to find a self-hosted solution to sync my feeds/saves/reads. I've used CommaFeed in the past, and might return to it. (❓)

🌐 Browser - Firefox on both desktop and mobile. As a professional software engineer, I still legitimately prefer Firefox's developer tools, multi-account containers, and overall UX, despite Mozilla's best efforts. (, though I'm watching Ladybird)

💬 Chat - By volume, Android Messages, Rocket.Chat (professionally), and Discord. One of my intentions for 2025 is to start moving to E2EE for everything (hopefully the increasing adoption of RCS will help with that). (❓)

🔖 Bookmarks - MarkMark (shameless plug). I'm in the process of switching over from my Outline note full of random links. (👍)

📑 Read It Later - Currently, the aforementioned Outline note full of random links. One of my intentions for 2025 is to build a Firefox extension to automatically add read-it-later articles to my MarkMark file. (❓)

📜 Word Processing - Personal: I've been doing most of my drafts in Outline documents, which works pretty well (especially since I can download them as markdown). Professional: Google Docs. (👍)

📈 Spreadsheets - Personal: LibreOffice Calc. Professional: Google Sheets. Both are fine, though the ever-encroaching Gemini features in Sheets are getting a bit old. (❓)

📊 Presentations - Personal: none. Professional: Google Slides. Exceedingly infrequently. (:thumbs_up:)

🍴 Meal Planning - A whiteboard on the fridge, and a folder full of saved recipes a text documents. Sometimes it's about knowing when to take it offline. :wink: (👍)

🛒 Shopping Lists - We keep a running list on the fridge whiteboard, which I transfer to a physical piece of paper when I go to the store. Way easier to use in-situ. (👍)

💰 Budgeting and Personal Finance - The venerable GnuCash. It's not the greatest user experience, but I wanted something FOSS, offline that doesn't require a server, and that I can trust to be around in 5 years. It works. (👍)

📰 News - I get most of my news via RSS. I have a lot of thoughts about it (maybe another blog post at some point). I've been trying to seek out more local news when possible. For example, I read WFYI Indianapolis and NUVO Indianapolis. (👍)

🎵 Music - Spotify. I rely on Discover Weekly a lot to find new music, though I don't love supporting Spotify. I've been thinking about taking another page out of Tracy Durnell's book in 2025. (❓)

🎤 Podcasts - Also Spotify :( I know it's not great, but the few times I do listen to podcasts, I want to make use of Android Auto. (😕)

🔐 Password Management - Vaultwarden. I recommend Bitwarden/Vaultwarden to anyone looking for a good password manager. The browser extensions and mobile apps are first class, fully-encrypted, and keep a local copy (read: backup) of your vault on every device in case the server is unavailable. (👍)

🧑‍💻 Code Editor - IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate. I've used JetBrains IDEs both personally and professionally for about a decade now. I still think they have the best Intellisense and code navigation of any editor. Lately, I worry JetBrains has a bit of a Mozilla thing going with Fleet, though. I have no interest in a "next-gen" VS Code clone, but I would like remote development (JetBrains Gateway) to have better latency and a file-bar that doesn't freeze every time I go more than 2 layers deep. This is something VS Code excels at. (❓)

✈️ VPN - Wireguard. I made the switch last year from OpenVPN and I wish I'd done it sooner. It's fast. And, once properly configured, it'll run for ages. For my personal setup, I use wg-easy to great effect. (👍)