The software I actually run

2026-05-19

Endless subscriptions, ads stitched into everything, software you cannot see inside or change: it wears you down. Somewhere between Richard Stallman's stubbornness about free software and the EFF's fight for digital rights, I decided to lean on open source wherever I reasonably can. None of this is purity for its own sake. It is just the software I trust enough to install without thinking twice, and have actually lived with.

open source

The default. If there is a credible open-source option, it gets tried first.

• BalenaEtcher
• Amethyst
• qBittorrent
• VLC
• OBS
• Audacity
• 7-Zip
• Firefox
• GNU/Linux
• GIMP
• Vim
• OpenWRT
• DuckDuckGo
• Mullvad DNS
• OpenStreetMap
• Obsidian

free, but not open

Open source is the goal, not a religion. Sometimes the best tool for the job is closed, and sometimes the deciding factor is simply that it costs nothing. None of the following is open source, but all of it is free to use and good enough that I reach for it without hesitation:

• DaVinci Resolve (free, and paid)
• Reaper (free, and paid)
• Soulseek
• foobar2000

privacy first

Anything that holds something personal has a higher bar. For software that touches private information I want three things: it should be open source, it should encrypt (or let me encrypt) what it stores, and ideally it keeps the data local. Local is preferred, not required. What I currently trust with that:

• VeraCrypt
• KeePassXC
• Mullvad VPN (paid)
• Tuta (free, and paid)
• Yubico Authenticator (requires hardware)