Freedom Tech Index

GitLab is one of the newer hot platforms for developing software on. It is open-source, and comes out of Ukraine. https://about.gitlab.com/ #GitLab

Here is the free "How to use Git and GitHub" course link for Udacity. (You may need to have an account and be logged in to be able see the courses) https://classroom.udacity.com/courses/ud775 Git is open-source software for tracking software changes. GitHub is a website where people put their software code for development collaboration. You can use any server you want with Git, but GitHub has become the standard one. GitHub was bought out by Microsoft back around 2018, so it is best to keep that in mind. Artix Linux branched everything to there own Git servers when that happened. Here are the "How to use Git" Course videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwygftUY318GeCz26jz45yuMWazLgJmxZ They also have a breakdown of the steps here: https://www.udacity.com/blog/2015/06/a-beginners-git-github-tutorial.html #Git #GitHub_Code_Repository

This channel is a collection of information and things that people new to Linux ask about, such as which alternate apps can be use in place of Big Tech's spyware/malware. Here's a link for joining the "Discussion" chat associated with this "Main" channel. https://t.me/+SfvY2GpsDPw2ZWZh If you join the Discussion chat: ——————— - You will see every comment made to any of the posts in the main channel - You can post your own questions and comments for everyone else to see and respond too. To navigate this Main channel, click the pinned Index message at the 👆 top ☝️, and scroll down through categories. Categories are slowly being added, so be sure to check back regularly. Make sure to share this channel with everyone. Let's help freedom lovers gain their digital freedom by getting them off of Silicommie Valley's tyrannical platforms and onto open source software. #JoinDiscussion

. Vivaldi is a feature-full, customizable web browser made by some of Opera's old developers. Neocities ranks Vivaldi as Spyware Level: Medium https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/vivaldi.html Vivaldi connects to the analytics platform Piwik, and makes a bunch of requests to Googles upon startup. The developers also have an insulting attitude towards users that bring it up and claim that Piwik, Google, Facebook, WaPo, Yahoo and such are not spyware companies. Vivaldi developers are not developers you can trust. Vivaldi also sets Bing, the anti-privacy search engine, as it's default search engine, and it cannot be built from source code, so it's not really open-source. #Vivaldi #Vivaldi_Web_Browser More Browsers Rankings in the Post

Tip of the Day (All Desktop Environments) Bind Flameshot to your "PrntScrn" Button Flameshot is a much better screenshot tool than the screenshot tools that come by default. To make Flameshot your default screenshot tool on Debain based distros, follow these steps. 1. Install flameshot sudo apt install flameshot 2. Make sure xbindkeys is installed sudo apt install xbindkeys 3. Add these lines to the .xbindkeysrc file. (.xbindkeysrc is in your home folder. If it's not there, create it.) # Bind Flameshot to PrntScrn key "flameshot gui" Print 4. Restart xbindkeys killall xbindkeys xbindkeys 5. Add xbindkeys to startup applications. (This varies between desktop environments.) #Flameshot #Flameshot_Bind_To_PrntScrn_Key #Screenshot_Tool_Flameshot

. Pine64 just announced today that the long awaited PinePhone cases are here! You can order them here: https://pine64.com/product-category/smartphone-accessories/

We now have reactions on Telegram! Update to latest version (3.4.1+ on Linux), and then hover your mouse over the post. Once the reaction icon shows, hover your mouse over that icon, and roll your mouse wheel up and down for more reactions.

. The Matroska Multimedia Container (.mkv) is a free and open container format, a file format that can hold an unlimited number of video, audio, picture, or subtitle tracks in one file. It is a universal format for storing common multimedia content, like movies or TV shows. MKVToolNIX is an open-source program that lets you create or modify .mkv files. Fix your downloaded torrent files! With MKVToolNIX you can: - Modify .mkv files (this is nice for changing default audio/subtitle tracks in torrent downloads from something like Hindi to English) - Add / Extract audio, video, and subtitle files (good for reducing files size by removing unnecessary audio tracks) - Create your own .mkv files To install MKVToolNIX on Debian based distros: sudo apt install mkvtoolnix-gui #MKV_ToolNIX #MKV_File_Editor

. See comments for some nice open-source tools that you can use for working with existing videos and movies. #Video_Tools

A recent report has proven that Telegram sticks to its promise of keeping its user data private, while apps like WhatsApp give real-time user data to third parties, and despite their numerous claims about "E2E encryption", can also disclose message contents. The report has confirmed that Telegram is one of the few messaging apps that doesn't breach their users’ trust. I am not surprised. Most other apps couldn't guarantee privacy to their users even if they wanted to. Because their engineers reside in the US, they have to secretly implement backdoors in their apps when the US government orders them to. If an engineer speaks publicly about it, then can go to jail for breaching a gag order. In most cases the agencies don't even need a court order to extract private information from messaging apps such as WhatsApp, and in other cases, court documents are shrouded in secrecy. Some supposedly secure apps have been funded by government agencies from their inception (e.g Anom, Signal). For many years the National Security Agency (NSA) has been making sure that international encryption standards are in line with what the NSA can decipher, and all other approaches to encryption are labeled as "non-standard" or "home-brew". Through their proxies in the encryption industry (like this one), the NSA imposed flawed standards onto the encryption used by the rest of the world, cautioning everyone else from "rolling out their own encryption". No wonder US-based apps such as WhatsApp are plagued with backdoors – intentionally planted security loopholes that governments (and anybody else) can use to hack smartphones and extract private data from people. I hear our US-based competitors are frustrated that they can't match Telegram's growth, despite heavily investing in marketing (something Telegram has never had to invest in). But in order to match our growth, they have to first make sure their actions match their marketing claims. Until then, data breaches and security issues in their apps will, unfortunately, remain unavoidable.

Here's a good message (👇next post) from Durov (founder of Telegram), the best known technology personality on Telegram, who supports freedom of speech much more than "other" tech personalities here on Telegram.

Here's a good message from Durov, the best known technology personality on Telegram, who supports freedom of speech much more than others here on Telegram.

. One thing keeping people locked into Big Tech is their use of Adobe products. You can replace Lightroom with Darktable to bring professional post-processing to your photos using open-source software on Linux. Darktable is powerful professional grade photo post-processing software that competes directly with Adobe's Lightroom, and is a great replacement for Lightroom. Darktable now integrates into GIMP if you have the latest versions installed, and allows you to open and edit raw camera files from within GIMP. Here is their homepage, where you can get more info: https://www.darktable.org/ #Darktable #Darktable_Lightroom_Replacement #Lightroom_Replacement

. One of the things keeping people locked into Big Tech is their use of Adobe products. You can replace Lightroom with Darktable to bring professional post-processing to your photos using open-source software on Linux. Darktable is powerful professional grade photo post-processing software that competes directly with Adobe's Lightroom, and is a great replacement for Lightroom. Darktable now integrates into GIMP if you have the latest versions installed, and allows you to open and edit raw camera files from within GIMP. Here is their homepage, where you can get more info: https://www.darktable.org/ #Darktable #Darktable_Lightroom_Replacement #Lightroom_Replacement

Merry Christmas everyone!

. This has been tested in both Ubuntu and Linux Mint. 1. First go through the Firefox smart card install in this 👉 post to get the proper software and certificates installed system wide. 2. Make sure opensc is installed sudo apt install opensc 3. Create link to the Smart Card library where VMware Horizon is looking for it: (VMware Horizon looks in the old location) sudo mkdir /usr/lib/vmware/view/pkcs11 sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/opensc-pkcs11.so /usr/lib/vmware/view/pkcs11/libopenscpkcs11.so 3. Create link to the MMR libraries where VMware is looking for them (needed for V 5.4, not sure for V8: sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgstbase-1.0.so.0.1405.0 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgstbase-0.10.so.0 sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgstreamer-1.0.so.0.1405.0 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgstreamer-0.10.so.0 sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgstapp-1.0.so.0 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgstapp-0.10.so.0 #Smart_Cards_VMware_Horizon #Smart_Cards_AnywhereWorkspace

1. First follow steps in this 👉 post: 2. Make sure NSS Tools installed sudo apt-get install libnss3-tools 3. Add Smart Card Module -Make sure you close Chrome and are in home directory before next command(s) -For using the coolkey module type: modutil -dbdir sql:.pki/nssdb/ -add "coolkey Smart Module" -libfile /usr/lib/pkcs11/libcoolkeypk11.so -For using the opensc module type: (this one gives more certificate options) modutil -dbdir sql:.pki/nssdb/ -add "opensc Smart Module" -libfile /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/opensc-pkcs11.so 4. Add PKI certificates Go to the dot menu and: - Settings -->Privacy and security -->More-->Manage Certificates -->Import -Browse to folder with PKI certificates and select the chain.pem file 5. To list installed modules on Brave modutil -dbdir sql:.pki/nssdb/ -list 6. To delete a module from Brave, use the module name in step 5. - if module name is "Smart Module" modutil -dbdir sql:.pki/nssdb/ -delete "Smart Module" #Smart_Cards_In_Brave #Smart_Cards_In_Chrome