HomeAboutMailing ListList Chatter /0/0 216.73.216.162

Brave+Ecosia+Proton

2026-01-21 by: Erica Wolf via chugalug 
From: Erica Wolf via chugalug 
------------------------------------------------------
I'm trying to make the switch from Firefox+Google+Lastpass to
Brave+Ecosia+Proton. I am due to renew Lastpass next month and I rather not
pay $36 for another year of a so-so tool. ProtonPass is free.

Next will be trying to get off DropBox and use ProtonDrive. Any hints?
Thoughts?
-=--=---=----=----=---=--=-=--=---=----=---=--=-=-
Erica Wolf (she/her)


===============================================================
From: Lynn Dixon via chugalug 
------------------------------------------------------
I really like Bitwarden. It=E2=80=99s open source but also a paid version f=
or cheap
if you want to support the work. You can even host your own vault somewhere
if you choose.

For mail I run my own mail server in a lamp stack that=E2=80=99s colocated =
in a
datacenter. A bit overkill but works great.


ot
-=3D-



===============================================================
From: Erica Wolf via chugalug 
------------------------------------------------------
FYI, I ran my own Mailserver that was colocated by meuon at the virtual
building. I no longer run my own mail server. Life is too short.
-=3D--=3D---=3D----=3D----=3D---=3D--=3D-=3D--=3D---=3D----=3D---=3D--=3D-=
=3D-
Erica Wolf (she/her)



 for
d in a
not
=3D-=3D-



===============================================================
From: Erica Wolf via chugalug 
------------------------------------------------------
From what I can tell, Proton drive lacks decent Linux support. BUt it does
support Rclone.
-=3D--=3D---=3D----=3D----=3D---=3D--=3D-=3D--=3D---=3D----=3D---=3D--=3D-=
=3D-
Erica Wolf (she/her)


On Wed, Jan 21, 2026 at 3:21=E2=80=AFPM Erica Wolf  wrote=
:

-=3D-
n for
ed in a
 not
=3D-=3D-



===============================================================
From: "Greg Laudeman, Ed.D. via chugalug" 
------------------------------------------------------
We are working on a coop to make open source apps/services easy to =
access and economical to use, Erica. I=E2=80=99m very interested in your =
experience and goals because you sound like exactly the type of person =
we=E2=80=99re focused on as prospective member. Basically, the goal is =
to provide attractive, practical alternatives to Big Tech.
=20
Nextcloud, which provides much of Google=E2=80=99s functionality, will =
probably be our =E2=80=9Cmeat & potatoes.=E2=80=9D We are just now =
starting to look a stuff like a password manager (IAM and SSO need to be =
addressed first) but will probably go with VaultWarden server with =
BitWarden as the client. Bitwarden provides free server account. =
KeepassXC also seems like a good option that doesn=E2=80=99t =
have/require a server. The coop will likely run its own search engine =
eventually but that=E2=80=99s a ways out. We are leaning toward not =
providing email services but have the basic systems to do so=E2=80=A6 =
It=E2=80=99s just too much of an administrative burden.

All, I would greatly appreciate any input you might have on how to set =
up the coop and what services it should provide, especially right out of =
the gate. Specifically, what would motivate you to become a charter =
member? We are looking for folks to serve on an advisory/steering =
committee if you might be willing to provide more extensive guidance.

More on this soon!

 wrote:
Brave+Ecosia+Proton. I am due to renew Lastpass next month and I rather =
not pay $36 for another year of a so-so tool. ProtonPass is free.=20
Thoughts?
-=3D-

=E2=80=94
Greg Laudeman, Ed.D.
Executive Officer and Principal
Eduity, LLC
www.eduity.net
greg@eduity.net
706-271-5521




===============================================================
From: "Greg Laudeman, Ed.D. via chugalug" 
------------------------------------------------------
 wrote:
colocated in a datacenter. A bit overkill but works great.=20

That=E2=80=99s impressive! Are you using Postfix, Lynn? We=E2=80=99ve =
implemented Stalwart for Chattanooga.Digital. I=E2=80=99d love to learn =
more about your set up.=20

Any thoughts or suggestions you might have for Chattanooga.Digital could =
benefit you would be greatly appreciated!

=E2=80=94
Greg Laudeman, Ed.D.
Executive Officer and Principal
Eduity, LLC
www.eduity.net
greg@eduity.net
706-271-5521




===============================================================
From: "Alex Smith (K4RNT) via chugalug" 
------------------------------------------------------
I use Bitwarden as well and are very happy with it. I use the paid tier for
business use, but the free tier is very helpful if you don't need advanced
features. I pay for the Yubikey support, as well as team support.

" 'With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the
first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all
irrevocably.' Those words were uttered by Judge Aaron Satie as wisdom and
warning... The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we=E2=80=99re al=
l
damaged." - Jean-Luc Picard, quoting Judge Aaron Satie, Star Trek: TNG
episode "The Drumhead"
- Alex Smith (K4RNT)
- Lacey, Washington (Olympia, WA metropolitan area)



 for
d in a
not
=3D-=3D-



===============================================================
From: Lynn Dixon via chugalug 
------------------------------------------------------
I run a small boutique hosting company, and have been doing so for over 15
years. It is currently running across three VXrails that are co-located at
Peace Communication / VPNtranet / Scipio.  Currently I am running Exim and
Dovecot, and its all managed via Directadmin.  DirectAdmin gives me a great
way to handle resellers and end users and give each a very nice control
panel.  My hosting business is currently hosting around 80-85 websites.

My total environment is around 1.75 TiB of RAM with about 800GiB of that
being used.   For CPU, I have a total of 6 sockets of Intel Xeon Gold 6226,
and I am running a clustered storage setup that gives me around 76TiB of
storage.  All of this is spread over 3 hypervisors and each hypervisor has
NVMe cache for the storage.  10gb networking, and I use a Cisco Nexus 5K
for switching and some Layer3 stuff.  It's all behind a pfSense router.

So, I don't consider my hosting service to be "small" or hobby.  :-)

Feel free to unicast me if you like.


d in a
lemented Stalwart
.



===============================================================
From: Michael Harrison via chugalug 
------------------------------------------------------

And I still run a few mail servers, sadly the geeklabs/chugalug one is
the least maintained of the litter.
I'll toss out because life is too short to deal with others hosted
mail server black boxes when sending email to thousands of domains.
Having the log files to show the error messages is very useful.

No dropbox: SSH/SCP and SSHFS to a server. SSHFS is slow but really
easy and fits my needs.
No password manager:  GPGTar'd text files, edited with a CLI editor
and a script that encrypts/decrypts.
Browsers: Generic Chromium for the Google-ish web stuff , Firefox for
work, Vivaldi for the weird.





On Wed, Jan 21, 2026 at 9:25=E2=80=AFAM Erica Wolf via chugalug
 wrote:
uilding. I no longer run my own mail server. Life is too short.
-=3D-
n for cheap if you want to support the work. You can even host your own vau=
lt somewhere if you choose.
ed in a datacenter. A bit overkill but works great.
sia+Proton. I am due to renew Lastpass next month and I rather not pay $36 =
for another year of a so-so tool. ProtonPass is free.
Thoughts?
=3D-=3D-





===============================================================
From: "Greg Laudeman, Ed.D. via chugalug" 
------------------------------------------------------
 wrote:
over 15 years. It is currently running across three VXrails that are =
co-located at Peace Communication / VPNtranet / Scipio.  Currently I am =
running Exim and Dovecot, and its all managed via Directadmin.  =
DirectAdmin gives me a great way to handle resellers and end users and =
give each a very nice control panel.  My hosting business is currently =
hosting around 80-85 websites.  =20
that being used.   For CPU, I have a total of 6 sockets of Intel Xeon =
Gold 6226, and I am running a clustered storage setup that gives me =
around 76TiB of storage.  All of this is spread over 3 hypervisors and =
each hypervisor has NVMe cache for the storage.  10gb networking, and I =
use a Cisco Nexus 5K for switching and some Layer3 stuff.  It's all =
behind a pfSense router.


Wow! Very cool. That=E2=80=99s one heck of a =E2=80=9Chobby=E2=80=9D! We =
could definitely benefit from picking your brains, if you=E2=80=99re =
willing.


Email me at greg@eduity.net, please, since list server doesn=E2=80=99t =
show posters=E2=80=99 addresses.

Thanks!
=E2=80=94
Greg Laudeman, Ed.D.
Executive Officer and Principal
Eduity, LLC
www.eduity.net
greg@eduity.net
706-271-5521




===============================================================
From: Erica Wolf via chugalug 
------------------------------------------------------
TBH, I am surprised that anyone makes money hosting websites. In 1994, it
was easy, as long as you knew your way around /etc/apache/httpd.conf. But I
guess there is a market for boutique services. I'm looking at a simple
WordPress host for about 3Euros a month (including a .de domain name). For
a while it seemed to be the thing to try to see what you could get out of
AWS at the Free$ price level. But I am trying to pare down my costs for
cloud services. The main requirement is that it "just works" and that is
why I stuck with DropBox and Lastpass. I could install any OS (Mac,
Windows, Linux, Android), install a browser, then the LastPass extension.
Then I could get into DropBox. It didn't matter what I was coming from or
what OS I was using now, I was usually up and running in a couple hours.
The exposure to GDPR and "Datenschutz" has led me to not trust US
companies, and explore Brave and Proton.
-=3D--=3D---=3D----=3D----=3D---=3D--=3D-=3D--=3D---=3D----=3D---=3D--=3D-=
=3D-
Erica Wolf (she/her)



3D----=3D3D---=3D3D--=3D3D=3D
d
6
?
-=3D3D----=3D3D---=3D3D--=3D



===============================================================
From: Lynn Dixon via chugalug 
------------------------------------------------------
Erica,
I do far more than hosting websites.  Those 80ish sites are less than 3% of
the resource consumption in this environment.  It's a small piece of what I
do with these environments.
For file sharing, I've switched to using Nextcloud which is also a part of
the services I run in my co-lo.   I bounce around on browsers, but seem to
always land back on Firefox.

Greg,
I'll reach out from my personal email address.  My co-lo is a small
business, and I also use some of the resources to host tools and solutions
that I sell in my job. I'll go into a bit more detail in the unicast.


 I
r
-=3D-
l
=3D3D----=3D3D---=3D3D--=3D3D=3D
id
s
=3D3D----=3D3D---=3D3D--=3D



===============================================================
From: Dan Lyke via chugalug 
------------------------------------------------------

Given the political beliefs of Brendan Eich, and the crypto
associations, why Brave?

On Wed, Jan 21, 2026 at 5:30=E2=80=AFAM Erica Wolf via chugalug
 wrote:
a+Proton. I am due to renew Lastpass next month and I rather not pay $36 fo=
r another year of a so-so tool. ProtonPass is free.
oughts?
-=3D-





===============================================================
From: Erica Wolf via chugalug 
------------------------------------------------------
Brave is designed to be more private and not as bork3d as LibreWolf. Maybe
Opera? I've had good luck with opera before.


-=--=---=----=----=---=--=-=--=---=----=---=--=-=-
Erica Wolf (she/her)

On Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 21:30 Dan Lyke via chugalug 
wrote:




===============================================================
From: Keith via chugalug 
------------------------------------------------------
DuckDuckGo has a browser and it works fine for what I=E2=80=99ve used of it=
. I=E2=80=99ve
switched my search to Kagi, but it is paid which I acknowledge isn=E2=80=99=
t going
to work for a lot of people.

I noped out of Brave pretty fast bc of what Dan said.

Thanks,
Keith


On Wed, Jan 21, 2026 at 14:30 Dan Lyke via chugalug 
wrote:

3D----=3D3D---=3D3D--=3D3D=3D



===============================================================
From: Dan Lyke via chugalug 
------------------------------------------------------

I think Opera got sold to private equity and is being mined, I
wouldn't trust them any more.

For Chromium engine browsers I'm pretty happy with Vivaldi, like the
public stances the developers have taken, the fact that they're taking
recurring donations for support.

I've also got Waterfox installed on my various devices for a Gecko
engine browser. They, at least, don't fuck up PDF rendering as much as
Firefox on my Mac machine, and seem to have less clutter.

None of those do the URL rewriting that Brave does, whether you
consider that an asset or a liability is =F0=9F=A4=B7

On Wed, Jan 21, 2026 at 1:20=E2=80=AFPM Erica Wolf via chugalug
 wrote:
e Opera? I've had good luck with opera before.
-=3D-
 wrote:
osi=3D
 fo=3D
 Th=3D
=3D3D----=3D3D---=3D3D--=3D3D=3D





===============================================================
From: Michael Harrison via chugalug 
------------------------------------------------------

On Wed, Jan 21, 2026 at 10:55=E2=80=AFAM Erica Wolf via chugalug
 wrote:
 was easy, as long as you knew your way around /etc/apache/httpd.conf...

I still host about a dozen domains and "generic" websites for things I
care about or as part of other projects.
https://wiki.virtual-scan.com/doku.php?id=3Dlibrary:mri_brain
is a good example. I don't even charge for them. That one is a favor
to people that are part of a major project.

But few people want "simple", Wix, Shopify and other solutions work
better for most purposes. [violent rant about wordpress deleted].
The handful of weird things I've ended up building, hosting/admining
for people in the last 20 years ain't cheap. Those commodity hosting
skills are useful. Just gotta find people with problems and a budget
to solve them. Or start a business that those skills are useful in.





===============================================================
From: Aaron welch via chugalug 
------------------------------------------------------
Speaking of which, we need to do lunch soon.



Aaron Welch
Chief Mechanic @ Geek Ventures
423-505-9999
n2nightfall@gmail.com
"Enabling people to do great things with their own ideas."






===============================================================
From: Erica Wolf via chugalug 
------------------------------------------------------
WordPress is a necessary evil. It is well understood, but far from great.
As a user it has problems as a dev, it is shite. As an admin it's a hmm...
Some things I've found over the years with Drupal and  WordPress: go at it
as a user only, don't try to write code. Pay for a theme.

-=3D--=3D---=3D----=3D----=3D---=3D--=3D-=3D--=3D---=3D----=3D---=3D--=3D-=
=3D-
Erica Wolf (she/her)

On Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 05:20 Aaron welch via chugalug 
wrote:




===============================================================
From: Erica Wolf via chugalug 
------------------------------------------------------
Sad about opera. It was a good option  but it's demise creates room for
these others to go. I specifically want to use ecosia for search because I
have a friend who works there and they are a good part of the Berlin
community: 4000-tonnen.de, they also host Pyladies events.

Which is why I'm avoiding duck duck go.
-=--=---=----=----=---=--=-=--=---=----=---=--=-=-
Erica Wolf (she/her)

On Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 23:50 Dan Lyke via chugalug 
wrote:




===============================================================
From: Wil Wade via chugalug 
------------------------------------------------------
I'll also jump on the Bitwarden bandwagon. It works well for all our needs.

My wife and I have also swapped over from Google Photos to Ente Photos.
Does a great job at an encrypted photo backup and is fully OSS with
self-hosting options. (I pay for storage via their hosting)

https://ente.io  (my referral code if you want for some extra storage on a
paid option: CP1DNQ )

If you use Android, I also suggest the open source Futo Keyboard:
keyboard.futo.org Does great and so much smaller. (Even has a local voice
to text model that is quite good)


I'll also drop in a few non-oss, but some other services I like and used to
cut out parts of Google and other larger companies:

- List App: https://www.anylist.com
- And Finance (although my annual budgeting is still in a spreadsheet from
an export): https://tender.run


.
t
-=3D-
,
.



===============================================================
From: Erica Wolf via chugalug 
------------------------------------------------------
Why Ecosia:
https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/ecosia.org/dfe853a7-cc23-4ed8-9b57-102e9c9a1dbd?ut=
m_source=3Dq2Km6WlbOa

The office is short bike ride (or less than 3 Ubahn stops) from home. I've
been to the office twice for Pyladies events. And they sponsored
4000-tonnen.de - an effort to give away 4000 tons of potatoes in Berlin.

-=3D--=3D---=3D----=3D----=3D---=3D--=3D-=3D--=3D---=3D----=3D---=3D--=3D-=
=3D-
Erica Wolf (she/her)


On Fri, Jan 23, 2026 at 1:45=E2=80=AFAM Wil Wade via chugalug 
wrote:

s.
m
.
..
it
=3D-=3D-
..



===============================================================
From: Dave Brockman via chugalug 
------------------------------------------------------

I have settled on Passbolt.  It meets my workflow needs, and the phone=20
apps are good enough.  Annoyed that I have to install the Extension in=20
the browser to log in, as I find it easier and quicker to copy/paste=20
from the vault than the autofill steps.

I have an email server that is FOSS, although it uses a commercial GUI.=20
I would be willing to donate some cpu cycles and storage to host email,=20
for a single domain.  POP if free.  IMAP could be negotiated.

With Gratitude,

Dave Brockman
Senior Network Engineer
Gig City Cloud, LLC

r=20
to=20
probably=20
ook a stuff like=20
d=20
 run its=20
ing=20
=E2=80=A6=20
f=20
e.
=20
=3D-=3D-






===============================================================
From: "Greg Laudeman, Ed.D. via chugalug" 
------------------------------------------------------
Dave, email me at greg@eduity.net if you would. I'd love to discuss this with you in more detail but the list doesn't show your email.

Thanks!


--
Greg Laudeman, Ed.D.
*Executive Officer and Principal*
Eduity, LLC
www.eduity.net
greg@eduity.net
706-271-5521