FreedomBox

My personal notes about using FreedomBox and self-hosted applications.

Tips and Tricks

Software

• Matrix Synapse works for voice and video calls over LAN. It seems to be P2P.
• Use Syncthing with Orgzly/Emacs for writing lists.
• Use Boostnote with Syncthing for note-taking and lists if Orgzly seems too weird. Boostnote has Github-flavored markdown.
• Use Mediawiki for taking notes as I'm doing right now and as a personal knowledge base.

Tiny Tiny RSS

• Tiny Tiny RSS web UI is unpalatable for people used to things like Medium, but the official Android app is really good.
• Follow medium blogs using Tiny Tiny RSS without having to create an account.
• Follow activity feed from GitLab sites (e.g. Debian Salsa) using TT-RSS.
• Backup Tiny Tiny RSS feeds list (the opml file) to a Syncthing folder.
• Add feed subscriptions to Tiny Tiny RSS from Firefox.
• Use Privoxy for ad-blocking on all the Android devices on the Wi-Fi by setting it as a proxy.

Hardware

• Make sure the device is getting adequate power supply (e.g. 2 Amp for a Raspberry Pi) or the performance will suffer.

Unsupported Software

NextCloud

NextCloud is a Google Drive replacement that

• can update itself
• can play a lot of multimedia formats and display epub files
• has a simple project-tracking tool similar to Trello
• can be a personal content server with streaming capabilities
• can be used as a CalDAV/WebDAV server (contacts and calendar sync)
• can store your bookmarks
• has cool mobile apps