VLC! No ads ever, that’s insane!
But does it whip the llama’s ass?
I think not.
- this is a really old Winamp reference for you younger folks.
Bitwarden is one I use several times a day. They do have a support plan for like $10 a year that gives a couple extra features like TOTP support, but the base level is incredibly robust. It’s open source, too. I know a lot of folks also host their own servers with Vaultwarden, but that’s a little beyond my skill level.
I pay for it just because it’s cheap and to support them
I did this too when it first came out, and then the product became robust enough that I recommended we implement it at work because secrets management was non-existent. We have a bunch of licenses on the Enterprise plan now and it just keeps getting better each update.
My only complaint is that migrating the data to a new server is a pain in the ass and never works correctly, even when following the migration instructions to the letter. Always have to open a ticket with them for that. Not enough of a pain to move to another product, though.
I also still pay for my personal plan. It really is a fantastic product.
I just recently started using their totp function and I can’t believe I didn’t switch sooner. Just the fact alone that it automatically copies the code to your clipboard is such a Time saver not having to open up a separate app.
It’s a wild time saver. I can’t believe other folks go to a whole separate app for their codes! Hitting Ctrl+L to autofill passwords and user names then Ctrl+V for TOTP feels like a hack when I watch other people struggle with their other solutions.
I use a separate app for my codes, if someone somehow gains access to my Bitwarden if they have TOTP as wellcthrn they have all my accounts. With my TOTP in another app they still can’t access them.
Right! I was using Authy so I didn’t have to grab my phone every time, but even that was still having to open the Authy app and wait for it to load, copy+paste. But using the keyboard shortcuts for Bitwarden is just so fast. Like you said, feels like a hack. It even auto copies on Android and with the autofill, makes it so easy.
FYI, This product is 100% marketed on Lemmy for a profit. I’ve seen astroturfed threads multiple times now.
It kinda does feel like it’s being promoted here, which seems unnecessary for a free, open-source program hahaha
I kinda thought that too, but it’s free and open-source… so that would be weird.
Looking into password managers, though, it does really seem like the best choice. Lastpass had breach lately, KeePass requires self-hosting, and other offerings cost more (and aren’t open-source.)
Firefox. I couldn’t imagine using the internet without it.
I’ve never thought about it, how do they make money? I’ve never seen an ad or sent them money.
They make a large amount from Google paying them to be the default search engine. Also they have been making additional projects that can be subscribed to as add-ons for Firefox (like a VPN and an email forwarding service that allows you to make fake email addresses or phone numbers to use on sites that will forward the messages to your real inbox/phone). You can use a limited version of the email thing without paying though so it is easy to try out. And they are always ready to take donations of any size and can be reoccurring. I personally pay .99/month for the email service even though I don’t use it often. As it is nice to have if I need it, and it is basically a donation at that point. lol.
Here are links to those products if you care to read more about them or at least see pricing.
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/products/vpn/
But even just making a point to donate some one-offs here and there does help in small ways to keep a real option in browsers that isn’t just another Chromium-based project.
https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/
Everyone hated when IE was the only browser that sites were coded for, and we are seeing more and more Chromium only sites. Which means a bad vulnerability in Chromium will impact all the browsers based on it. Also privacy add-ons for Firefox tend to work better and block ads well.
You make a fair point. I started using chrome when ie was still the top browser, because chrome was more secure in many ways. One being that not too many people used it. Chrome is still pretty secure in general, but it steals my data and it’s the default browser for all of humanity basically. It’s time to switch again, has been for a while now, but chrome is just so damn convenient.
Mozilla seems to be pretty transparent. You can see their financial statement at State of Mozilla.
They get paid by Google to feature their search engine as the default primary search engine. In Fennec, the non-google-play version of mobile browser Firefox, Duckduckgo is set as default, even though both versions are maintained by Mozilla, the non-profit organization behind Firefox.
I adore Firefox but several years ago, Google Suite (Docs, Sheets, Forms, etc) decided to change their font system in some bizarre way that they’re never formatted right on Firefox and cause spacing issues. It sucks because I use Docs and Sheets so frequently that I end up needing to keep two browsers installed and switch whenever I want to work on some of my projects.
Fennec is only for Android, because the desktop Firefox doesn’t have have weird app-store shennanigans to begin with, so there’s no point of maintaining Fennec for desktop.
And I do use Fennec for Android, just to keep the Google-Play shennanigans out of my browser.
7-zip
It’s said that when Jesus comes back, you get to go to heaven if you paid for it.
Microsoft is adding extensive archive format support (using libarchive) to Windows 11. I’d like to thank 7-zip for its service over the decades, though.
The way Msoft are going with right click options I’m doubtful it’ll complete.
If you’re talking about the more limited set of options you get when you right click a file in Windows 11, just hold shift while right clicking to get the original options. You’ve actually been able to hold shift to get additional options going way back, I think to windows XP.
There’s a lot of extra useful options in there too like opening command prompts to the current folder and copying file paths to the clipboard.
Linux
On this note it’s crazy there are people who will spend over $100 on a Windows license, when all they do is use a web browser or simple productivity apps like spreadsheets or word.
I can get if you’re using some adobe products, or some game that hasn’t been updated to the Linux compatible EAC, but for the vast majority of people paying over $100 (or having that cost passed onto you from the manufacturer if Windows is preinstalled) is crazy.
