How I Do My Computing
This page is inspired by Richard Stallman’s page of the same name.
Devices
I use a laptop, a ThinkPad X200T computer with Libreboot.
I use a mobile device, a Google Pixel 4a, mostly for the camera and playing music.
Operating Systems
On my mobile device, I use Graphene OS.
On my laptop, I use Trisquel GNU/Linux.
Services
I run Syncthing to sync my photos from my mobile device.
I run Jellyfin to stream my media to the Roku TV.
I run Tor to transfer large files over the internet with OnionShare.
Apps
I install most of my apps with Flatpak so that they are sandboxed and independent of the operating system, and are up to date.
I do use Flathub. Sadly, it contains proprietary software. But, I steer away from that and only install the free packages on Flathub. I did experiment with making my own Flatpak remote and would like to make a mirror of Flathub that contains only free software and complies with the GNU Free System Distribution Guidelines.
Most of what I do on my computer is email and chatting. I have several apps for that.
- Trisquel’s Pidgin, for XMPP, and SMS via JMP
- Fractal for Matrix
- Trisquel’s Icedove, for my personal mail and business Gmail
- Mumble, for voice chat
- Polari, for IRC
- Telegram
- qTox, for Tox
For web browsing, I use Trisquel’s Abrowser. For running proprietary web apps, I use Firefox installed with Flatpak.
For downloading large files, I use OnionShare and torrent with Trisquel’s Transmission.
For watching videos, I download them with Video Downloader and watch them in Trisquel’s VLC.
Web Apps
Web applications are apps, too. Sadly, most of them are proprietary. I’ve tried doing without them several times, but I keep going back to them. Reddit, not so much, but Discord has amazing language-learning communities for Yiddish and Hebrew that I can find nowhere else.
- Discord
- Microsoft Outlook, for work
- Paycom, for work
- Online Banking, for Sundays when the bank is closed, since I shouldn’t bank on Shabbat.
Mobile Apps
Though I try to keep my mobile use down to just music and a camera, I’ve started installing more apps so I can do things away from home. I install most of my apps from F-Droid and a few from Aurora Store.
- VLC for playing music
- Syncthing for transferring my photos to my laptop
- Sefaria for studying Torah. Free software, but only available on the Aurora Store.
- Telegram FOSS
- Revolution IRC