Software Endorsements

[Betonhaus]

I appreciate its small footprint and it's saved me a lot of hassles in the past but I absolutely hate how poorly it handles any situation where there's no DHCP or multiple NICs. The Debian images for instance just DHCP the first NIC no matter what settings were provided to netboot and won't even ask you for config if it fails, just crashes out to initramfs with a timeout trying to reach github.com.

If GitHub is anything less than fast or randomly bans your IP, it's totally unusable too.

Its Windows booting can be described as anything but simple in my opinion. The best way to coexist Windows with netboot is to chainload WDS in my opinion.

https://ipxe.org/appnote/chainload_wds

I figured it would still be somewhat worth it to just throw on a Ventoy drive with a bunch of other ISOs, but I'll admit that it wasn't very reliable when I tried it.

 

[clipartfan92]

I need a program that will let me convert mp4s and webms into mp3s. Some video editing ability would be nice but isn't needed, I just want to convert a bunch of files so I can listen to them on the go.

Adjust bitrate as needed, but 64kbps works great with voice:
ffmpeg -hide_banner -i inputfile.mp4 -f mp3 -ab 64000 -vn outputfile.mp3

edit: If you want to select a certain portion of the audio, you can add the -ss and -to flags to denote start/end time.
-ss 00:00:00 -to 00:00:00

 

[888Flux]

SponsorBlock: A browser extension for Chromium and Firefox that lets you skip over all in-video sponsors instantly

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/

https://sponsor.ajay.app/

Also developed by the same person, DeArrow - an anti clickbait extension. It uses several methods to remove obnoxious youtube titles and replaces misleading titles with user-submitted titles to better reflect the videos content

https://dearrow.ajay.app/

This extension is paid however, unlike SponsorBlock. But it's $1. It's definitely worth buying and goes to support the continued development of SponsorBlock.

Spoiler

These two extensions along with "Bring Back Youtube Dislike" https://www.returnyoutubedislike.com and uBlock origin are now pretty much essential for watching YouTube.

 

[Creative Username]

SponsorBlock

It even has Invidious support IIRC. Definitely handy if you hate loading 20MB of JavaScript to watch a 30 second video.

 

[Lehoinabar Elur Bat]

https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/docs/dwebp

dwebp is a command line program that allows for easy conversion of webp images to png, bmp, tiff, and even RAW images. Although it does not support animated webps, it is still immensely helpful and has saved me alot of time with simple image storing.

 

[Richard_Wetpasta]

Its not free, its like 99 dollars. but its an OK deal when on sale. (70 dollars) (Used to be free, was called goyo when it was)

Supertone Clear (its not vodka) might be the absolute best background noise removing VST that exists for recording voice. You could effectively record in a room filled to the brim with box fans and it will somehow manage to clear the background noise amazingly.

I've not found really any good alternatives for live noise reduction in suboptimal recording spaces as far as I've observed unless someones found something else of quality. Lemme know.

https://product.supertone.ai/clear

 

[Yandex Captcha Solver]

https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/docs/dwebp

dwebp is a command line program that allows for easy conversion of webp images to png, bmp, tiff, and even RAW images. Although it does not support animated webps, it is still immensely helpful and has saved me alot of time with simple image storing.

I've had good luck with this Firefox extension to save webps directly as jpg/png. Saves a step from converting it later on. There is probably one floating around for Chrome as well.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/save-webp-as-png-or-jpeg/

 

[There Is Light At The End]

The KMPlayer. Versions from 3.0.0.0 to 3.5.x.x. plays everything from mp4 to mkv. Do not use anything from 4.x.x.x. It has ads.

 

[Null]

The KMPlayer. Versions from 3.0.0.0 to 3.5.x.x. plays everything from mp4 to mkv. Do not use anything from 4.x.x.x. It has ads.

Why would you not just use mpv player or VLC

 

[There Is Light At The End]

Why would you not just use mpv player or VLC

Personal preference. Got used to it for over a decade, and it smart enough to create a playlist of everything that it can play in the folder automatically

 

[⠠⠠⠅⠑⠋⠋⠁⠇⠎ ⠠⠠⠊⠎ ⠠⠠⠁ ⠠⠠⠋⠁⠛]

Why would you not just use mpv player or VLC

mplayer-based software- I use smplayer- will play some video sources (certain crappy security camera streams) that will immediately crash vlc.

The fact that VLC is so quick to crash as opposed to just failing nicely and displaying an error when you do certain things it doesn't like (like seeking just ahead of the completed part of a partially downloaded file, or 'playing certain RTSP streams') doesn't exactly fill me with confidence that they've really addressed many of their security problems. It's also really funny that it takes much longer to load a file when the filename has emojis in it.

I still use VLC for most media however.

 

[Flaming Dumpster]

It even has Invidious support IIRC. Definitely handy if you hate loading 20MB of JavaScript to watch a 30 second video.

Piped as well if you prefer that over Invidious. I've found Piped to be better at reliably pulling in new uploads from subscriptions and since its backend is NewPipe, it gets updated very quickly if YouTube breaks it. My only complaint with Piped is that it doesn't handle resuming video well if you've left it idle for a while.

 

[Creative Username]

Piped as well if you prefer that over Invidious. I've found Piped to be better at reliably pulling in new uploads from subscriptions and since its backend is NewPipe, it gets updated very quickly if YouTube breaks it. My only complaint with Piped is that it doesn't handle resuming video well if you've left it idle for a while.

Piped supports SponsorBlock by itself, it doesn't even need the extension in the first place.

 

[Flaming Dumpster]

Piped supports SponsorBlock by itself, it doesn't even need the extension in the first place.

Yeah I know, that's what I was talking about. It also supports DeArrow natively

 

[Gatdam Animal Person]

WebToEpub, it's an extension for Chrome/Firefox that, like the name says, scrapes and convert Web Novels to Epub.
You just go to the novel's main page, click on the extension icon (it should have found all the pages and metadata), then click on download.

Works on multiple platforms too!

https://github.com/dteviot/WebToEpub

 

[Sharpeteer]

Oh boy, I was hoping a thread like this existed. I get to talk about tech and computer stuff.

Computer OS - Manjaro:
If you want to move away from Windows and switch to Linux, I highly recommend Manjaro. I use it on all the computers in my house, and I love it.

It's Arch Linux, but it adds a GUI and tools to make it user-friendly, and is very easy to use for most common tasks. I currently use it with the Cinnamon desktop environment, been using it for a few years now, and I have no complaints.

Games on Linux - Lutris:
Wine and Lutris alone make 90% of my game collection run, and for the other 10%, I can use Valve's Proton to run those. Lutris is a GUI that makes setting up your games for Linux easier, and it even connects with Steam, or whatever other service you have. Lutris assists with arguments for fixing small compatibility problems, and running specific wine/Proton versions if needed. I can play my entire game library on Manjaro, and I'm most pleased with it, especially since gaming used to be the reason I had to keep Windows around. That's now a thing of the past.

YouTube:
On desktop - Freetube. Application that has Sponsorblock built in, and lets you do channel subscriptions without a Google account.
On mobile - NewPipe. YouTube replacement, no Google account or tracking of any kind. I tried Louis Rossmann's Grayjay for awhile, and while I love the idea, it's currently too buggy for me to use reliably. Plus NewPipe finally got around to fixing the issue where live streams wouldn't show up in your feed, but now they do.

I never use the stock YouTube site anymore, the experience is so horrible. These two apps have permanently replaced it for me, and I highly recommend them.

VPN - Mullvad:
The feds searched them, and found no customer data at all. If that weren't the greatest advertisement ever for a VPN, there are no customer accounts - your only identifier is a randomly generated ID number, and you can pay with Monero or Bitcoin completely anonymously. Or if you want to go super paranoid, you can literally send them cash in the mail. They got an application for Linux, and Windows (not sure about MacOS), and an Android app that you can get from F-Droid.

Password Manager - Keepass:
I do not trust any online password manager, especially one that's closed source. Keepass is an offline password manager that uses encrypted database files. Protected with a decryption key, and if you lose it, you're boned, so don't lose it. Is a very simple application that stores my passwords organized by categories. It's great. They have Linux, Windows, Android (one on F-Droid) and even iOS/Mac apps for it. But last I checked, the iOS/Mac app was subscription. Idk anymore though.

Android/Phone Stuff:
LineageOS - I think this is the best rom you can use on an Android phone today. Use it without GApps or MicroG for better battery life, and no GApps means minimal tracking stuff, and no Google tracking (unless you choose to use their apps on there). It's extremely lightweight, simple, and easy to manage, which is what a phone should be. Google's stock Android on Pixels today is horrid, I know, because my work phone had it. I hated it so much.
F-Droid - FOSS app store that just has free and open source software. No account system needed.
FUTO Voice Input - FOSS replacement for Google's text to speech. Made by FUTO, the company Louis Rossmann works for, and it's excellent. In my experience, works even better than Google's own service.
Massive - Gym tracking app. Free, offline, open source. Simple.

Browser:
I know in the OP Josh said Brave, but I'm going to disagree there. Just get Firefox, and all the good extensions to make it a good decently-private experience.

I used to really like Brave because it made a good out-of-the-box private experience. But now they seem to be really pushing hard into collecting analytical data, and now upon fresh installation you have to go in and turn all this stuff off. The whole point of having a privacy-focused browser was to not have any of that shit running. But I also know that on the Windows version, they will install a service that runs quietly in the background that you will likely only notice by checking startup processes in the Task Manager. Ever since finding that out, I swore them off. If Brave works well for you or whoever, then good for you. No harm no foul there.

I just stick with Firefox with lots of extensions to "fix it." Get uBlock Origin to block ads, Privacy Badger to stop a lot of the background tracking,

 

[Slav Power]

The KMPlayer. Versions from 3.0.0.0 to 3.5.x.x. plays everything from mp4 to mkv. Do not use anything from 4.x.x.x. It has ads.

I'd recommend K-Lite Codec Pack. I know, a codec pack in 2024, but, it comes with MPC-HC, a simple but powerful and competent media player, LAV Filters, and just about everything you need in your system to play any sort of media. It's also an essential for me because it comes with a very good thumbnail shell extension which is a must whenever I sort/browse multimedia with Total Commander as it relies on those. It also has a handy utility by the name of MediaInfo that's very telling about metadata and codecs in any given audio/video container. Oh yeah, all the codecs it installs are system-wide, so other software can decode HEVC material and so on and so forth. Generally a better all-in-one multimedia deal than VLC, albeit it's Windows only.

 

[Flaming Dumpster]

F-Droid - FOSS app store that just has free and open source software. No account system needed.

I suggest checking out the Basic version. It's basically the same as full but doesn't have useless features like apk sharing over bluetooth and it's what CalyxOS now ships with on new installs

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.fdroid.basic/

There is also Neo Store which is an F-Droid client with a pimped out UX. Looks way nicer, search works and built in selection of repos is very good.

https://github.com/NeoApplications/Neo-Store

I know in the OP Josh said Brave, but I'm going to disagree there. Just get Firefox, and all the good extensions to make it a good decently-private experience.

I was back to shilling Chromium browsers for ayylawging due to the profile feature but Firefox is winning me over again by just running it with -p --no-remote though I'm still using Brave with profiles for the farms etc. Vencord is something I use a lot (3 of my Brave profiles are just Discord-related) and it's a pain they rage quit AMO.

This kind ching chong man made instructions for creating a Vencord build for private distribution at least https://gist.github.com/XiaoPanPanKevinPan/3cceb1d84ea97c04fe17ad087df8def6
Private distribution releases from AMO aren't human approved and usually takes about 5-10 minutes to do a release.

Password Manager - Keepass:

KeePassXC if you want a single multiplatform client (rather than juggling different implementations) and support for hardware keys (e.g. Yubikey), TOTP, and browser extensions out of the box https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/keepassxc-browser/
Old school KeePass can do all of the above but only with dodgy extensions

LineageOS

CalyxOS is also good if you have the right hardware for it.

 

[Slav Power]

KeePassXC

I also recommend using KeePassDX for Android and synchronizing your database with Syncthing. That's the setup I have right now and it works well. Been using KeePass for well over a decade now and my database has outlived some of the accounts it has the credentials for.

Neo Store

There's also Droid-ify that I use, but with the recent major Neo Store update I might move back to it. Regular F-Droid doesn't have the root installer option which I like to use since then I don't have to confirm installing every update. Both Droid-ify and Neo Store have that option.

 

[GNU Abyss]

To add on to what you suggested -

On mobile - NewPipe. YouTube replacement, no Google account or tracking of any kind. I tried Louis Rossmann's Grayjay for awhile, and while I love the idea, it's currently too buggy for me to use reliably. Plus NewPipe finally got around to fixing the issue where live streams wouldn't show up in your feed, but now they do.

BraveNewPipe, a fork with Sponsorblock built-in that also supports heckin' problematic websites that devs of the original NewPipe have vetoed, i.e. Bitchute and Rumble.

LineageOS - I think this is the best rom you can use on an Android phone today. Use it without GApps or MicroG for better battery life, and no GApps means minimal tracking stuff, and no Google tracking (unless you choose to use their apps on there). It's extremely lightweight, simple, and easy to manage, which is what a phone should be. Google's stock Android on Pixels today is horrid, I know, because my work phone had it. I hated it so much.

In a relatively recent development, the MicroG guys have started to supply LineageOS builds with MicroG built-in. You get a system with spoofed signatures out of the box, MicroG can pretend to be your phone's Google Play Services "officially" and you get the full benefits of that without rooting your system or messing around with Magisk/Zygisk modules (helpful because they can't signature spoof on the latest Android versions.) Your own Google account is not needed for things like Google Cloud Messaging and push notifications to work.