
Our list of free software for remote work - fsflover
https://puri.sm/posts/our-essential-list-of-free-software-for-remote-work/
======
SkyMarshal
In case any PureOS people are reading this, consider making the info on PureOS
security in your wiki easier to find.

You say in your blog post to "See the PureOS wiki to learn more about the
extensive security features in PureOS." You link to your wiki's front page[1],
but the word "security" is nowhere to be found on that page.

And if you click through to the only page that seems like it might have
section on security, the "Overview and some general information about PureOS"
[2], the word "security" is nowhere on that page either.

I'm still not clear where in the wiki this info is, but the security features
and defaults are one of the most interesting things to me about an OS.

[1]:[https://tracker.pureos.net/w/](https://tracker.pureos.net/w/)

[2]:[https://tracker.pureos.net/w/pureos/](https://tracker.pureos.net/w/pureos/)

~~~
MarcellusDrum
Searching for this on Google give back 5 results, with only 1 that is semi-
relevant[1], which is their FAQ page. They don't have a question specifically
about security, but they talk briefly about it while answering other
questions.

    
    
        inurl:tracker.pureos.net/w/ "security"
    
    

[1]: [https://tracker.pureos.net/w/faq/](https://tracker.pureos.net/w/faq/)

~~~
seanpackham
Thank you, I've updated the link. Let me know if you'd like to hear more about
the security features and I can get Kyle (security) and Jeremiah (PureOS) to
jump into this thread.

~~~
SkyMarshal
Instead of having Kyle & Jeremiah elaborate on it in this thread, which will
quickly disappear into the aether, probably better to elaborate on it in your
wiki. PureOS’s main customer base are techies and hackers who will be very
curious about security, and a thorough writeup on it could be a strong selling
point.

------
KajMagnus
There's also Talkyard, [https://www.talkyard.io](https://www.talkyard.io) —
sort of a cross between Slack and StackOverflow and Discourse. It's open
source, I'm developing it.

~~~
castillar76
This looks really interesting—I could see our team using this for internal
support and discussions around our services!

Couple questions:

\- It does OpenAuth right now, and mentions enterprise auth as an advantage
for StackOverflow. Is enterprise auth (e.g. LDAP) on your radar as a future
thing you just haven't been able to get to yet, or not considered part of the
product at this point?

\- Is there a capability in the product to disable specific components? For
example, the discussion and StackOverflow/Quora-like features look great, but
we're already using a messaging system so we don't need the Slack-like
functions. Is there a way to not present those so users don't stumble into
them thinking they're going to be used?

Thanks for all the work you're doing--this looks really interesting!

~~~
KajMagnus
> Is enterprise auth (e.g. LDAP) on your radar as a future thing you just
> haven't been able to get to yet

Yes it is

> Is there a capability in the product to disable specific components? [...]
> we don't need the Slack-like functions

Yes, there's an admin area "Features" tab, with a checkbox for disabling the
chat.

(Someone else also wanted to disable it; they were using Slack already.)

Thanks you too for the questions

~~~
castillar76
Awesome, thank you! I'll make a note to keep an eye on it as it grows. Good
luck!

------
threeforks
Hi, Just wanted to say thank you for sharing this information. It will help,
especially for the small shops and teams which are only now having to adopt
these feature for the immediate future.

------
wardnath
A bit outside of the "work" domain, but I've found BigBlueButton to be a
really powerful tool for hosting webinars and online teaching [1]:
[https://bigbluebutton.org/](https://bigbluebutton.org/)

------
oever
Yesterday I discovered Jamulus for playing music together online. It has very
low latency and is available on Windows, Mac and Linux.

The time for sound to go from your instrument to the ear of the other
participants should be 30ms at most (equal to standing 10 meters apart).

I think low latency would also help make video conferences less tiring.

~~~
sitkack
[http://llcon.sourceforge.net/](http://llcon.sourceforge.net/)

------
chemmail
any recommendations on remote desktop? I was using Anydesk and now it freezes
every 10 seconds on a lot of my instances the past few months. Need to move to
something else.

~~~
catwell
I am an Arch Linux laptop user. Plain RDS through Remmina works great for
Windows machines. When not usable, I found AnyDesk to work fine-ish (but it
changes system keyboard settings, which is annoying). I can't use TeamViewer
which still doesn't support Wayland.

~~~
RMPR
Now I understand the grey screen under sway.

------
wiradikusuma
Is the best, free (not necessarily open source), email desktop client still
Thunderbird?

~~~
l0b0
If you don't need a calendar, PGP support or [censored list of broken features
so that the trolls don't descend], then it's certainly one of the most
_popular_ ones. But how would you even quantify "best"?

I personally migrated to Evolution at a particularly frustrating moment
relatively recently, and it's been less painful for a lot of things. It has
built-in calendar and PGP support, which certainly help. Unfortunately
searching through message bodies is unusably slow.

I don't know whether my standards are unreasonably high, but several
colleagues have expressed similar views on both.

~~~
acidburnNSA
Not trying to troll but I use Thunderbird for calendar (synced with phone and
family via my radical server) and PGP (for the one friend who has a public
key). Are you saying these need to be built in and not provided as plugins?

I find the search in Thunderbird to be amazing. I have archives going back 20+
years and it searches them instantly.

Self-hosting email with dovecot, if that makes a difference.

------
Softcadbury
Any recommendations for some party games ? We tried
[https://jackbox.tv/](https://jackbox.tv/) with some colleagues yesterday
evening, that was pretty fun.

~~~
williamdclt
I find that Minecraft always works, for all kind of people!

~~~
5etho
No, I passionately hate Minecraft and his looks

------
zie
What do you use for back-office things, like accounting, inventory, etc?

~~~
LeoTinnitus
Gnucash or Kmymoney.

I used to hate gnucash but I have basically become an accountant with my own
life. For businesses it can definitely be used for minimal crm tracking and
invoices.

~~~
nicolaslem
I love Gnucash but I am not sure that it is the best tool for
remote/distributed work since it cannot be used by multiple users concurrently
without corrupting data.

~~~
LeoTinnitus
I understand the allure of it, but why would you want multiple people
manipulating an accounting like file at the same time? That seems like
something complicated enough that you wouldn't want multiple people in it at
once.

~~~
pergadad
In a bigger environment you'll have more than one person handling payments,
contracts, commitments, ...

~~~
LeoTinnitus
Ahh yes now I get what you mean. I guess I didn't think about it like that. I
was just thinking like a simple small business.

------
ipnon
I'm glad to see Mastodon is gaining commercial acceptance.

~~~
LeoTinnitus
It's like Twitter to me when it first launched. What honestly is the allure of
it? It's really just real time Twitter with chat functions but I am probably
really naive to it's uses

~~~
zdkl
My very personal opinion is that the allure is mostly to people with
PR/Marketing/Comm tendencies. It's basically crack for individuals or roles
who thrive on attention & engagement with others (or the illusion of it, if
we're going to be cynical).

~~~
LeoTinnitus
But thats every social media site. Mastodon feels more like a techy or "in the
know" journalist oriented of a site...and apparently hookers too.

~~~
robjan
Each instance tends towards being an echo chamber for a particular niche
group. This had advantages and disadvantages.

------
userium
Another free tool for setting weekly goals with your remote team:
[https://teamsuccess.io/](https://teamsuccess.io/)

------
ShorsHammer
Does anyone know how to maintain permanent chats in mumble?

It's wonderful software for audio but for text it's rather useless. A quick
disconnection means losing everything.

~~~
cycloptic
Don't bother, use something else like Matrix for text chat. Mumble is
primarily designed for voice chat.

For reference, there is an open feature request for this, but nobody is
working on it at the moment. [https://github.com/mumble-
voip/mumble/issues/2560](https://github.com/mumble-voip/mumble/issues/2560)

~~~
RMPR
The developers fully embrace the "do one thing and do it well" philosophy.

------
julieplec
We've also been using team.video - its a new free video conferencing tool for
remote teams that has a built in collaborative doc feature.

------
steveharman
No mention of Jitsi for video conferencing?

There's a free to use hosted service or host your own via a 10min install
including https setup (runs fine on a $3 2GB Ubuntu VPS)

[https://jitsi.org/](https://jitsi.org/)

~~~
rnestler
They do mention Jitsi. From the article: > At Purism we use Matrix for team
chat, 1 to 1 calls, video conferencing via Jitsi (open source video
conferencing), adhoc file sharing and all our community chat channels.

------
gregoriol
Why does everyone look for "free"? Doesn't anyone want to support the tools
they use and that help them? There are developers, teams, people behind all of
them.

~~~
znpy
I think that free in this context has to be interpreted as "free as in
freedom" and not as "free as in free beer".

You can still support the authors by donating and/or buying licenses,
services/consulting or support.

------
daniel_iversen
Not sure if we are in a tech, “like to fiddle with things” echo chamber, but I
would not recommend any of these tools to a team in general (even if it was a
small product team).. slack and zoom and the likes (who all have free tiers) I
find much better, simpler and successful to get started with.

~~~
holri
> I find much better, simpler and successful to get started with.

It is a trap. Traps are especially effective and harmful in panic mode when
everyone catches the first bait. In the long run, free software (not as in
beer) is much better for everyone. Especially in panic it is essentiel to
think thoroughly through your decisions.

~~~
Polylactic_acid
Especially zoom which is insecure spyware. Not long ago there was an exploit
that allowed any website to grab your webcam feed from zoom. Even if you had
uninstalled zoom because the app leaves behind a web server service listening
on localhost so the malicious website can just reinstall zoom and grab your
webcam.

~~~
LeoTinnitus
Wow. This kind of crap is one of the reasons I just hate windows. I still
don't understand why installing and uninstalling stuff isnt as simple as it
should be.

~~~
ncheek
This was an issue on macOS too:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20387298](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20387298)

