Not your point, but I actually do recommend torrenting linux ISOs… often much faster than direct downloads from the devs’ websites. ;-)

Came here to say this^

If you have to use Windows, the Chocolatey package manager knows about most great foss apps in the base config, including LibreOffice. You can first ‘choco install libreoffice’ and later ‘choco upgrade all’ to keep apps updated.

I rarely need to spin up my Windows vm, but after discovering Chocolatey it’s been much more pleasant keeping those apps updated. Same idea as homebrew for macOS; providing *nix-style pkg management. Enjoy!

Just the Invidious instance I found on the official list a long time ago. I like them because they’re relatively local, super reliable, and unlike a lot of other instances they actually have the download feature enabled. But yeah, their domain name is a bit awkward, lol.

This one’s my favorite: https://vid.puffyan.us/watch?v=BHkhIjG0DKc

Check out the Chocolatey package manager for Windows. It makes updates for all our common packages available through git/yum/brew easily installed/updated on Windows. PowerShell will never be anywhere near as nice as sitting at a proper linux terminal, but Chocolatey makes the Windows experience slightly more bearable when you need to use it.

+1 for Cloudflare.

That said, there are a number of folks rightfully concerned about the sheer mass of information Cliudflare has access to through their Content Delivery Network (their primary service). This raises potential privacy concerns, especially for self-hosters, who tend to prefer not to rely too heavily on any one large company. However, you don’t actually have to use their CDN service to make use of their minimally-priced Registrar functionality, and personally I really appreciate the services they offer. Their free tier is really impressive, and incredibly useful.

I can’t speak to the paid ProtonVPN service, but their free tier doesn’t allow torrenting. They’ll disconnect you with a slap on the wrist error about it.

https://stackdiary.com/brave-selling-copyrighted-data-for-ai-training/

+1 for pihole! Stupid easy for linux geeks to setup and maintain, but probably a pretty hard sell for the more general public. A cloud service like NextDNS might be more appropriate for average Joes. I can’t speak to AdGuard since I don’t use it, but I know that name gets mentioned frequently in privacy circles - favorably, I think…

Problem seems to be the main site page doesn’t work on modern iOS, at least not with Lockdown Mode enabled. It loads fine on desktop, but not in any popular iOS browsers (all browser use the same underlying WebKit rendering tools from Apple anyway). That’s a bummer

I got far enough on pixelfed.social to confirm my email address, now I just get a blank blue screen. Not an encouraging first impression. Perhaps I tried to join during a media-caused mad rush or something?

I discovered and installed it a long time ago, but it won’t run on my SO’s old phone and I haven’t been able to convince anyone else I know to help me test it. So, I love the concept but can’t vouch for its usability. Widespread user adoption is always an issue with mew privacy or security tech.

No one has mentioned OBS? If I understood OP’s need correctly that seems like the obvious choice to me.

Calibre is my goto. It can be somewhat complex but is feature-rich