While this seems like a decent starting point I’ve got a few issues with this list. As others have mentioned there is little in the way of justification for these suggestions, and while I happen to agree with plenty of them, I’d personally like to see more reasoning, if not to appease people that already have opinions then to help newer users understand their options.

On the topic of newer users I think an aggregate list like this should include a basic rundown on what adoption/migration/onboarding looks like for these services. Demystifying that process can lift a lot of the perceived weight non-“power users” might feel when faced with the leap from corporate platforms.

Overall I think this is a good resource, and at least gives people some starting points, but it’s not without its flaws.

Kind of an odd suggestion, and I know this might not work if you’re someone who wants to place themselves in the story, but if you’re looking for healthier, better adjusted men in literature, try some queer or gay romance. Not sure exactly your desired age/reading level, but Red, White, and Royal Blue is cute, and while socio economic status makes the main character slightly less relatable, it’s still a nice read. There’s plenty of other excellent queer romance that has well written men. If you also enjoy fantasy and political intrigue, Priory of the Orange Tree has excellent world building and a few romance subplots I think are very sweet.

EDIT: Somehow missed the “nerdier” part. Let me do some library diving and give more accurate suggestions

Yes absolutely. Back in the day I used Hamachi for Minecraft servers, now I run a server with offline mode enabled through Tailscale with zero fear of anyone but my friends accessing it.

Shocked ~~Donkstiny~~ Destiny 2 didn’t get mentioned yet.

Look up Syncthing and then never stop trying to replace closed source and paid software/services. Like any time you launch something ask yourself “does this hit the same way as when I swapped to Syncthing?” If the answer is no you then put “[name of thing you want to replace] foss alternative” into your search engine of choice. You’ll end up down so many rabbit holes, but you’ll come out the other side a whole lot better at making your technology work for you, not the company that made it, and with a suite of free open sourced tools you are in complete control of.

Here are some tools I use that are super easy to get going.

• Syncthing (cloud storage replacement)
• KeepassXC or Pass if you’re a command line person (locally stored password manager, coupled with Syncthing you have your own private cloud password manager
• Tailscale/wireguard (private VPN that allows you to easily connect all your devices without exposing any of the traffic to The Internet)
• PiHole (a DNS sinkhole that blocks a lot of ads and tracking on your entire network, bonus points if you set it as you Tailscale DNS provider to give all your devices ad block no matter where you are as long as the device was a connected to Tailscale)

Those are the ones that got me going and I personally believe act as a solid core. Most people will find all of those useful. Other services are more user specific, but that’s a lightweight bundle of software that your RPi will handle well. Much more and you might want to look at beefier hardware.

Okay, lots of other comments I didn’t read, and this might have been mentioned.

👏Syncthing👏

You mentioned OneDrive. I also jumped around storage solutions as I explored the FOSS world, and nothing hold a candle to Syncthing (in my opinion, but I want/need to try nextCloud). I won’t drone on about it, but if you’re looking to ditch another big data company that’s probably scraping your files, check out Syncthing

To be totally honest I didn’t look through everything you posted, but I’ve toyed with the idea of intranets myself and have come up with a handful of tools I really like.

• Tailscale can be used when there is a necessity to connect remote locations over “The Internet”. It is a private VPN that provides ip addresses for connected devices that are only usable to other devices within your Tailnet
• Syncthing can be spun up very quickly to distribute and sync files across devices on the local network, within your Tailnet, and yes over “The Internet” if need be. This is not full on web server level of hosting, but it can get some things off the ground quickly.

The way I’ve used this to make an “Intranet” is outlined here. I use Obsidian for a lot of note taking, link storage, and general information gathering and navigating. Obsidian stores all it’s files as plain text in a normal folder structure, but this could also be done with htlm files and a normal browser. I can target any portion of these folders with Syncthing and keep them updated across all my devices through my Tailnet. The broader usage of this begins to get into the idea of an intranet.

Let’s say I meet someone within this community, or maybe from one of the other locations. We get to talking and decide to exchange information from our respective collections. I fire up an ad hoc WiFi network off of say my phone, or a small portable router, add them to my Tailnet, which could even be optional given Syncthing’s built in encryption, add their devices Syncthing ID to the folder I want to share with them. They download a local copy of whatever data I want, and then can return to a hub of their own, maybe a home network, or a larger community wide network. Target the new data they have acquired, and sync it to the hub. We could then remove each other from our Tailnets and Syncthing instances, or leave them so we can automatically update differences when in proximity.

That’s a rough idea of how I think this system could be used for a more “personal” internet. One that focuses more on direct and intentional communication and data storage, where each user or group of users is basically selecting which data they value enough to commit drive space to. I have also researched medium and long range “WiFi” networks using radio or other signals to trickle sync nodes over longer distances. I’ve even been inspired by Factorio’s logistic drone networks and thought to attach portable routers, single board computers, and storage drives to drones or even solar gliders that can trickle sync to nodes they pass over.

Just some ideas that don’t quite fit the different systems you mentioned, but I think are a bit easier to spin up for individual users, and could decentralize the load of what you are trying to do even more. Could maybe post this in some of the other FOSS/networking/linux/privacy communities, but I’d maybe clean up the post a bit and make it clearer what you are after.

At my time of adoption, Telegram had a better feature set and I wasn’t honestly super focused on the privacy minutia. Knowing what I know now…I guess Signal, but honestly I’d probably go even more niche if I was after something truly private. Like P2P messengers or something like that. I don’t really treat any messaging platform as fully private. If I really need something guaranteed to be private and I don’t want to try to convince a friend to install a new, even more obscure app, I’d probably just encrypt text files and generate keys for each other and send them via something, maybe email idk.

Yup. Same system here. I really like it.

I do keypassXC and Syncthing. It’s cross platform with only a couple bucks needed for lifetime access to all all necessary features depending on platform. Besides I use Syncthing for a bunch of other stuff as well, so it fits right into my flow. I’m considering moving to a command line tool simply called Pass, and still syncing with Syncthing, but I’ve yet to pull the trigger on that switch yet.

Automated no. Maybe partially, but fairly easy to get up and running with the added bonus of being as close to “legal” as it gets. Read until the end for a more subversive option.

Libby. I cannot recommend a public library card and Libby enough. For avid readers you can probably just stop there. The loan times vary location to location, but if you are someone that reads a good amount each day you can probably get through whatever book before you have to return it.

Here’s the secret sauce tho. You can specify you’d like to read a book from Libby in a different app. This spits out an Adobe Digital Editions DRM locked book. Once opened in ADE the file is now a “normal” .epup but still time locked with DRM. Enter calibre and it’s plug-in support. My current setup is using an older version and a no longer maintained plugin, but that’s because I’m lazy and haven’t updated things. There is now a new maintainer of the project. noDRM’s DeDRM tool seems like the current standard and includes all necessary info I believe. Once you have the plug-in installed it’s simply a matter of dropping the .epub from ADE into your calibre library and then you have it forever.

As far as making this easy for you family, I would say direct them to Libby for general use, and then if they longer to read something resort to more drastic measures.

Kind of a grey area as I simply think of it as “extending” my loan while still being polite to the people waiting for the book behind me. I mean it’s not actually a grey area, like it’s not technically allowed, but I feel it’s very much in the spirit of public libraries and free access.

As far as automation goes I’m fairly confident I could write a script to get the download from Libby as I can post all the necessary requests from a command line if I want. The problem comes up with Adobe Digital Editions. This does not have any sort of command line interface as far as I know, and unlike calibre a file must be specifically imported through the GUI rather than simply dropped into a folder.

The true cheat code is z-lib, which when set up fully can be interfaced with a telegram bot that can be customized and automated all you want. In my opinion once the telegram bot is set up it’s easy enough for anyone. You put a book you’re looking for into the message box, the bot sends you search results back, tap the file you want and it sends it to you right in the chat. I use it all the time when book recommendations come up in conversation. I’ll search for it on my phone, tap the right one and have the .epub waiting for me on my ereader.

I’ve also got a system for ripping audiobooks from Libby, but it’s way more complicated and marginally more capable of being automated.

Yeah, I agree with other comments. You’ve just reinvented the library, but made it illegal. Libraries are not businesses (honestly thank god) and have no monetization model. A for profit library would be awful. Best come up with a different idea. Could stick with the theme and do like a data aggregation/search/sharing software, but even those I prefer to be foss which makes them not really “business model” friendly.

TL;DR you’ve discovered the library, now go donate to your local one