Cool Tech I Used in 2025

This year, I made an effort to adopt more free and open-source software because I like privacy and control of what I use. Hopefully, this post will help you if you're also looking to do that.

Note

This post is not an advertisement for anything. I just found these tools really nice and worth talking about.

Using a Password Manager

If the headlines are true, roughly 70% of Americans use the same password for more than one account. Of course that's just a biased sample, but it does put into perspective how little people value security. To be fair, I didn't care too much either until someone I knew personally was hacked.

Before a password manager, I used an online password generator to generate my passwords and then stored them in an encrypted .7z file on an external drive. This approach was already 99% more secure than the average Joe, but it's really inconvenient to manage because I have to extract it every time I need it. Additionally, a smart hacker could find an unextracted version of the archive because 7-Zip temporarily stores them to disk.

That's when I settled on KeePassXC for managing my passwords. KeePassXC pretty much addresses every issue listed above, on top of supporting more advanced features like automatic password filling and passkeys for passwordless logins. It even supports TOTP for two-factor authentication, effectively replacing Microsoft Authenticator and Authy from my app collection. I also have backups of my passphrase-protected .kdbx database file on an offline computer running Nextcloud and on Dropbox in case I lose access to it. That ensures I'll never be locked out of my accounts.

If you don't like KeePassXC, Bitwarden/Vaultwarden and the original KeePass are pretty decent alternatives. I personally prefer the more integrated feel of KeePassXC over the original, though.

Managing Emails with Thunderbird

I use Thunderbird to manage my emails because it makes them all easily accessible in one place, messages can be read offline, and it supports much better privacy features. On top of that, it's just generally much faster and more lightweight than Gmail's UI. Thunderbird even supports super old school stuff like RSS feeds, which is pretty awesome for getting updates without the annoying ads. There are also great user-created extensions out there for Thunderbird such as Send Later and Web Translate.

Ironically, my emails are running on Google's servers. I'm considering adopting ProtonMail and DuckDuckGo at some point to better maximize my privacy, but Google is just too reliable for me at the moment.

Other Cool Stuff

Mullvad VPN

My preferred choice for a VPN because it actually values privacy. Mullvad uses a UID system instead of emails to sign up to avoid linking personal identifiers to your account. Unfortunately, it's not free, and it's a bit pricier than other VPN options. Furthermore, they removed port forwarding in 2023 which makes me a little sad. It's still pretty solid for torrenting, though.

SmoothCSV

A free and open-source CSV editor that's pretty good if you just need something simple and lightweight. Other FOSS alternatives exist, but they're way too ugly for my taste. One of them also has premium features despite being free.

Smart Home Future Plans

My home server is mostly for tinkering around, but I want to make it more integrated into my home with Home Assistant. Another goal is to design a proper home theater powered by Jellyfin, Kodi and Radarr. Once it's all working, I can finally cancel subscriptions to all five of my streaming services and save like $600 per year.

Building a gaming room could also be awesome. It probably wouldn't be a man cave with figurines, arcade machines, and video games collections, though. I'm mostly just imagining it being a quad computer setup and a TV for console gaming.

Wrapping It Up

It's nice to have some privacy back again, but there's still more work to be done. For example, I still use Google's ecosystem on a daily basis. That probably won't change realistically; slowly moving away from them could be a new goal this next year.

Anyway, hopefully everything FOSS improves over the coming years. Maybe 2026 will be the year of the Linux desktop? Who even knows, man...