todo WIP page, stuff that still needs more testing is marked withNeedsMoreTesting
Here are my (Very opinionated) software recommendations with a focus on privacy and long-term reliability/usability
Communications
ProtonMail Overall, probably the best free mail you can get, the company seems better than the others, good product, good privacy and it does what it says on the box
FastMail If you want a premium experience that is not that expensive, this is probably it, pretty cheap, good product, good-ish privacy and the company seems one that cares
💬 Messaging
Signal Good replacement for WhatsApp-like platforms, really good privacy, simple, works well, EXCEPT that chat history is practically not a thing, if you don't care, this is most likely your best bet
Discord I mean, you know what this is, bad dm privacy, decent voice privacy, everybody uses it
Telegram Controversial place, dm privacy on here is.. debatable, probably ranges from decent to bad, "encryption but on our servers" is really sketchy but at least they use the benefits well, overall this is the platform with the most features
Matrix Really cool in concept, but overall a mess, decentralized and federated, you probably will like it if you like tinkering and trying weird stuff
Entertainment
🎮 GamingWIP
Steam Epic Games Heroic launcher GoGNeedsMoreTesting Itch Humble Bundle
🎵 MusicWIP
Youtube Music Apple Music Bandcamp Spotify
Browsing
🌐 Browsers
Brave The most complete package out of the box, speedy and with decent privacy, great replacement for something like chrome, edge or safari
Vivaldi is pretty decent out of the box but is the most powerful out of all of these, you can customize pretty much everything, its filled up to the brim with features and it can handle a power-user or someone with ADHD(i usually have a few hundred tabs open at a time and its almost never a problem)
Firefox is very independent and has good speed and can be expanded with extensions to be incredibly secure
Arc Browser is pretty good if you're on mac, it has had some issues through the years but its pretty good overall if you don't care too much about privacy but you care about cool features
🔎 Search engines
DuckDuckGo Results from Bing, decent/good privacy, ~~probably the one with the best results here~~ jk bing has now become even worse than google and the most used, supports !Bangs
StartPage Results from Google, good privacy and features, has Anonymous view(hides your ip and has a few shields for privacy, very handy in a pinch)
Brave search Independent results, decent results but good-er privacy, supports !Bangs
🛡️ VPNs
VPNs are great! but you need to be aware of their Utility and Limits, VPNs are useless for a lot of people, most of the ADs for them are filled with Bullshit, they are not anonymous, they aren't always needed to protect yourself, and most of them are less trust-worthy of your ISP of which they are telling you should be scared of
Mullvad(Paid) is one if not the most privacy focused VPN out there, almost(but not actually) anonymous, if you need to be anonymous, use Tor, a VPN is never a replacement for Tor
Good speed, decent reliability, good price, if you are willing to pay for a VPN, Mullvad is a pretty good deal
Cloudflare Warp(Free) had sometimes a few connection problems(packet loss in games for the most part) but overall a good experience and the company is trustworthy, this one is a good choice if you just want the small privacy benefits that a VPN can offer
Beware that you cannot change locations, you're stuck using the closest server, if you decide to use Warp+(Paid on mobile), you may see a better performance than using Warp or other VPNs, personally on desktop the performance of Warp+ was slightly worse than other VPNs but that depends on your location so you need to test it for yourself
ProtonVPN(Freemium) is probably one of the best free VPNs, the company behind it had a few controversies over the years but its probably much better than a no-name sketchy VPN that you have only heard from a youtube sponsor deal
Windscribe(Freemium) Decent service, best reliability and speed(in my personal experience), low security, high memery, I would suggest doing some research on this one before considering it because they had a few security accidents, but if you know what you want maybe it could be good for you
Misc stuff that i dont know where to put but i want to add anywaysWIP
TechPowerUp NVCleanstall
SimpleWall
OnTopReplica
Obsidian
Microsoft PowerToys
Parsec
Tailscale VPN
QuickLook for Windows