Zvezdin Besarabov: How to organise your digital life in a privacy-preserving, machine-agnostic, and practical manner
Zvezdin Besarabov held a talk at the Arch Conf 2020 last weekend where he shared what software he ended up using on his personal devices with after trying to find free software with a perfect balance between usability and privacy. He covers the GNU/Linux and the Android alternatives to less privacy-respecting commercial software for e-mail, calendar, contacts, task management, office applications, password management and cloud storage.
written by 윤채경 (Yoon Chae-kyung) 2020-09-12 - last edited 2020-10-12. © CC BY
The video is Copyright Arch Linux. License: Creative Commons Attribution.
"For a few years now I have been looking into how I can organise my digital workflow to be privacy-preserving yet practical enough that still allows me to integrate with society. I am looking for standard-compliant technologies which are cloud-first and end-to-end encrypted.
That is, if I lose a device of mine, I do not lose any piece of valuable data, and neither can anyone else access it. I have been experimenting with many FOSS alternatives to traditionally centralised systems, such as timetabling, tasks, personal archiving, emails, password managers.
In this talk I will present my top picks for FOSS projects which get the job done. I will put a particular focus on personal file management - efficient folder structures, cloud syncing, encryption, and cached access. Lastly, I will direct attention to killer features which you can contribute to and advance this field massively :)"
Zvezdin Besarabov recommends the following software to get privacy without compromising functionality
| Purpose | GNU/Linux alternative | Android alternative |
|---|---|---|
| Thunderbird (OpenPGP+imap) | FairEmail (from F-Droid) + OpenKeychain | |
| Calendar | Thunderbird (lightning) | EteSync |
| Contacts | Thunderbird (CardBook plug-in) | Simple Contacts |
| Task management | KOrganiser | OpenTasks / Tasks.org |
| Office | mailbox.org Office | |
| Password Management | KeePassXC | Keepass2Android |
| Botnet storage / synchronization | Rclone | RCX |
Zvezdin Besarabov dives into his personal folder management system for simpler cloud synchronization towards the end of the video.
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