I’ll start by plugging Harvard’s free courses catalog as well as Udemy
Edit: Gonna add 2 more I remembered-
Blender - I wish I had more time to learn it, but I did start the infamous “Donut Tutorial” once!
Watch Cartoons Online - Lots of good older stuff!
Me
This is a great thread!
Not foss, but PortSwigger Burp Community
The cats and dogs out in the street are free. You can just bring a friend home. /hj
deleted by creator
Porn
Well, yeah, if you’re lucky enough to find an old magazine in the woods, but that doesn’t count, because it’s not usually free otherwise.
I know you’re trolling but the idea of someone not knowing about free internet porn and paying for it while somehow being on lemmy is so funny to me
You gents have convinced me to click around a bit more. I have my research cut out for me this evening.
If you can’t find something to get off to for free you’re either incompetent or a degenerate
Where!? Are you peeping on folks?
gestures broadly at the internet
Libraries. Most even rent video games, power tools, audio/video hardware, baking utensils…SO MUCH STUFF. All free.
Our library loans out state parks passes for a month so you can go to parks for free. It also loans out hiking gear, provides immigration resources, and oddly, a ukulele.
I have questions
This is amazing, I had no idea.
I once rented a whole reflector telescope.
That is…fucking crazy awesome.
On a whim I googled my city’s library and “tools” and I found a non-profit society that specializes in lending of hand and power tools! This is incredible and I wouldn’t have known about it without this prompt: thank you!
Can you share the name of this non profit society, is it a part of your local public library or it’s own independent thing?.
I need a spanner for like single hex nut and I don’t want to buy one for it to collect dust in my drawer lol
My local library loans dongles! Now if I can just manage to check one out without snickering …
👍
Free Office Suite which is excellent for personal use. If you are on mobile Collabora Office if you want an Android/iOS version
I’ve been using it for over a decade. Prior to that I used open office but it quickly became clear Openoffice couldn’t match the development of LibreOffice. There is no concrete reason to buy microsoft’s bloated ever changing garbage.
OnlyOffice is even better in several ways.
It’s also worse in that they hide the fact it’s made in Russia.
wow thanks! I haven’t been able to use LibreOffice as it is hands down one of the ugliest pieces of software I’ve looked at, and despite retrying for years, I genuinely could not tolerate it. OnlyOffice looks so great!
I hear you. It’a almost as bad as Gimp vs Krita.
How so? I’ve been moving between the two for years.
I find it faster, more stable, and just generally FEELS better than LibreOffice. Which I’m sure is because it isn’t carrying 30 years of Java baggage with it from the Star office/OpenOffice.org days. And ive had better luck with document compatibility in some cases.
The only complaint ive heard about it is just a smaller feature set than LibreOffice. But it does everything I want it to do.
Both are great, though.
Awesome thanks!
Your local city college may or may not offer free classes (in San Francisco, you just need to show proof that you live in the city with some legal status).
Some public transportation is free for certain groups (youth and folks experiencing homelessness can get free passes here).
“First X of the month” at the zoo/a museum/whatever — lots of venues have free events.
A jog, bike ride, hike — lots of great stuff outside!
I live in the Philly area. Senior citizens can use SEPTA (buses and commuter trains) for $1 a ride.
I second the biking … but that shit ain’t free. Even used bikes cost some money to buy and maintain, and brand new bicycles are solidly in the “insane” category these days.
Good point — it is “incrementally free,” although I guess if you count tire wear and tear that’s not even true.
In most eu countries the law requires businesses that give out food to also allow you to order free tap water. If youre in a city and dont want to spend money on a bottle of water, walk into mcdonalds and ask for free tap water. A lot of european countries also have strict laws about tap water so for example in france unless otherwise indicated with a warning, tap water is always potable.
Here in the US, this seems so normal that it didnt even occur to me that this may not be true everywhere else. And not need to be enforced by law.
A lot of places in the US will charge you for the cup or say they only offer bottled water for sale.
Ive definitely never, ever run into that. But I’m sure it happens.
Edit: I guess ive seen places that charged some nominal fee for the cup but it’s so rare
I went to Philadelphia and there were hardly any places to get water at all. There were always stores selling water bottles literally $8 in one instance around nearly everywhere you looked
And even if they do give out free tap water … they might not mean lead-free.
Not true everywhere, actually never heard of it here (Germany and Austria).
But if you walk into a place and ask for a paper cup of tap water, a lot of workers are willing to give it to you, regardless of the laws.
Vienna has tap water straight from the mountains btw and it tastes amazing. Recommended.
I love how chill and helpful everyone is here.
Not being a dick is free too.
Yeah, I found some cool stuff for audio/music production
Pretty useful… when one site fails the other usually work.
A little late but OpenTaxSolver - free desktop tax software that gives you a printout of tax forms that you can mail in. And it includes a few states too. Way easier than the annoying corporate sites that constantly log you out and charge a fee for every little thing.
Edit: To my non-American friends, you don’t need to worry about this
Since you mention states and the site mentions federal taxes and the IRS, I assume this is for the tax system of the USA, it’s funny that it isn’t stated anywhere though.
the USA is the only country that I know of that requires such ridiculous measures to file your taxes tbh
Here in Switzerland, tax law is different per canton. So for our ~9 million people we have 26 tax laws! We pay taxes on three levels, communal, cantonal and federal taxes. And who collects which part depends on your canton. In mine the commune collects the communal and the cantonal part, and the canton collects the federal part. Yeah… it makes no sense to me either.
Though regarding the filing that part is not so bad;you only make one tax declaration from which the taxes on all three levels are calculated. And as far as I’m aware each canton offers a free software application for filing. The filings are a little complicated compared to some European neighbours from what I hear. For instance we aren’t source taxed directly out of our pay-checks, so we have to list our earnings and possessions manually and list various deductions.
Still, from what I gather we have it a little better than the US Americans
26 tax laws? You mean 26 volumes, right? /S from the US.
Thanks! I was pretty annoyed at having to pay TurboTax over $100 something to have my taxes filed. Opportunistic assholes.
Learn a little docker and start self hosting stuff! Pihole is a great one to start with, but there are lots of other awesome projects out there:
I agree, you can use an old desktop, laptop, or if you don’t have something I had good luck with the local university surplus store.
How do I “learn a little docker”? Where do I start?
Before you start can I ask what experience you have with computers, command line, and have you ever done any programming.
Programming isn’t necessary but it helps me see if you’ve been exposed to the kind of syntax you will see in docker.
Happy to help you learn this though.
I’m on a course to become full stack developer, and I know the command line (basics), have an old laptop running Linux Mint that I want to test to use as a docker, but I have no idea where to start.
I am going to be pasting a set of commands to get docker and docker compose set up, but please be wary of people giving commands to run in the terminal. You could use the information I’ve provided to help you find guides to confirm that no weird commands, but I copied this from my guide I use whenever I set up a new VM to use docker.
So the commands below add any dependencies for docker, adds the GPG key to verify and then installs docker and docker compose. I also set up a docker user add them to the docker group so I don’t need to use sudo to run.
I then use docker to create a portainer instance. Portainer allows you to use a webUi to see what you have running and stop start any of your services from there.
After this I have provided a docker compose file which would be named docker-compose.yml. Yaml sucks as it constantly moans about spacing, but essentially you want to use spaces and not tabs and each new line would be indented two spaces unless it’s a sub part of the section above then it would be two more spaces etc.
This docker compose might or might not be what you need, this one first sets up gluetun, which is a VPN layer which I can route other services through as you don’t want to torrent from your IP.
So gluetun is set up using ProtonVPN and you pass the username and password. Username has +pmp for port forwarding.
Then each service under here can choose to use the service:gluetun or bridge network. The former is for the VPN the latter is routed through regular network. Notice how anything routed through the VPN has the ports defined in the VPN service.
The others things you would need to be conscious of is the paths I have used for /mnt/vault/* as these are network attached storage from TrueNAS. Depending on how you want to store things you’ll need to just add the paths to these. The paths look weird but the part before the colon is where it is on your machine and the part after is what it is called inside that container.
You’ll notice that Plex requires a claim key but you can google how to find that.
This isn’t going to get you up and running and you will likely run in to permission errors and other errors along the way. I would suggest coming back here with your errors or giving them to ChatGPT, just don’t blindly copy commands if you don’t know what they do.
Once your docker compose is complete you can run docker compose up -d to spin it up. Then in portainer you can see all the containers and then login to each and do the setup. Docker compose down to stop them all.
When I set this up I did the gluetun and then Radarr. Get that working and then add your next thing and then the next and so on until you have what you want.
As I said this isn’t a complete solution and you will run into roadblocks, but that’s the fun for me and I am happy to help when you get stuck along the way.
Edit: A few more things you should know. The volumes section. The ones starting with ./ means they’re in the directory where the docker compose file is. And as I have perms to 1001 you would need to ensure that is the PUID of the docker user and then for each folder, plex for instance you can run “sudo chown -R 1001:1001 ./plex” and “sudo chmod-R 755 ./plex” which is change ownership and changes permissions for that directory.
### Docker
Install dependencies
`sudo apt install apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl software-properties-common -y`
Add the Docker GPG key to the server’s keyring
`sudo curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/%E2%80%8Blinux/ubuntu/gpg -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc`
Add the latest Docker repository to the APT sources
`echo “deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc] https://download.docker.com/%E2%80%8Blinux/ubuntu $(. /etc/os-release && echo “$VERSION_CODENAME”) stable” | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null`
Update the server package index.
`sudo apt update`
Install Docker
`sudo apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin docker-compose-plugin`
Verify
`sudo docker --version`
Enable the Docker system service to start automatically at boot time.
`sudo systemctl enable docker`
View the Docker service status and verify that it’s running
`sudo systemctl status docker`
#### Install docker compose
`sudo apt install docker-compose-plugin -y`
Verifiy the installation
`docker compose version`
#### Portainer
Create a Volume for Portainer Data
`docker volume create portainer_data`
Deploy Portainer as a Container
```
docker run -d \
–name=portainer \
–restart=always \
-p 8000:8000 \
-p 9443:9443 \
-v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
-v portainer_data:/data \
portainer/portainer-ce:latest
```
Acess Portainer
`https://your-server-ip:9443`
#### Running Docker without Sudo
Add your user to the docker group:
`sudo usermod -aG docker $USER`
Log out and log back in, or restart your system.
Verify by running:
`docker ps`
Below is the docker-compose.yml file.
services:
gluetun:
image: qmcgaw/gluetun
container_name: protonvpn
cap_add:
- NET_ADMIN
devices:
- /dev/net/tun:/dev/net/tun
ports: # These are the qBittorrent ports, I like to use random ports and not the default ports 49152
- 49893:49893 # This is for the qBittorrent WebUI Port
- 6881:6881 # Listening port for TCP
- 6881:6881/udp # Listening port for UDP
- 7878:7878 # Listening port for Radarr
- 8989:8989 # Listening port for Sonarr
- 9696:9696 # Listening port for Proxlarr
environment:
- VPN_SERVICE_PROVIDER=protonvpn
- OPENVPN_USER=USERNAME+pmp # REPLACE with your OpenVPN username (+pmp for port forwarding)
- OPENVPN_PASSWORD=PASSWORD # REPLACE with your OpenVPN password
- VPN_PORT_FORWARDING=on
- SERVER_COUNTRIES=France # These countries must support P2P
volumes:
- ./gluetun:/gluetun
restart: unless-stopped
qbittorrent:
image: lscr.io/linuxserver/qbittorrent:latest
container_name: qbittorrent
environment:
- PUID=1001 # to find your current ID just type “id” in the terminal
- PGID=1001 # to find your current group ID just type “id” in the terminal
- TZ=Europe/London
- WEBUI_PORT=49893 # Must match the port used on gluetun for the WebUI
- TORRENTING_PORT=6881
volumes:
- ./qbittorent/config:/config # this will create the config folder in the same folder as the yml file
- /mnt/vault/Downloads:/downloads # adjust to your desired download directory
network_mode: “service:gluetun” # must match the container name of gluetun
restart: unless-stopped
prowlarr:
image: lscr.io/linuxserver/prowlarr:latest
container_name: prowlarr
depends_on:
- gluetun
environment:
- PUID=1001
- PGID=1001
- TZ=Europe/London
user: “1001:1001”
volumes:
- ./prowlarr/config:/config
network_mode: “service:gluetun”
restart: unless-stopped
radarr:
image: lscr.io/linuxserver/radarr
container_name: radarr
depends_on:
- gluetun
environment:
- PUID=1001
- PGID=1001
- TZ=Europe/London
user: “1001:1001”
volumes:
- ./radarr/config:/config
- /mnt/vault/Downloads:/downloads
- /mnt/vault/Movies:/movies
network_mode: “service:gluetun”
restart: unless-stopped
sonarr:
image: lscr.io/linuxserver/sonarr
container_name: sonarr
depends_on:
- gluetun
environment:
- PUID=1001
- PGID=1001
- TZ=Europe/London
user: “1001:1001”
volumes:
- ./sonarr/config:/config
- /mnt/vault/Downloads:/downloads
- /mnt/vault/TV:/tv
network_mode: “service:gluetun”
restart: unless-stopped
jellyfin:
image: jellyfin/jellyfin
container_name: jellyfin
environment:
- PUID=1001
- PGID=1001
- TZ=Europe/London
volumes:
- ./jellyfin/config:/config
- /mnt/vault/Movies:/movies
- /mnt/vault/TV:/tv
restart: unless-stopped
ports:
- 8096:8096
network_mode: “bridge”
plex:
image: lscr.io/linuxserver/plex:latest
container_name: plex
network_mode: host
environment:
- PUID=1001
- PGID=1001
- TZ=Europe/London
- VERSION=docker
- PLEX_CLAIM=CLAIMKEY
- NVIDIA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=all
volumes:
- ./plex:/config
- /mnt/vault/Movies:/movies
- /mnt/vault/TV:/tv
deploy:
resources:
reservations:
devices:
- driver: nvidia
count: all
capabilities: [gpu]
runtime: nvidia
restart: unless-stopped…casually just post an entire setup.
I miss my nas.
This isn’t likely to work without some whack a mole with errors though but it should be enough for someone curious enough to be able to get a working solution.
My NAS currently has a sole 10TB HDD and funds are too low to justify an additional one so I am very nervous.
You could follow a guide to install portainer, it’s got a web gui to manage docker. It can handle installing most types of docker containers.
When you find a cool project to install, they almost always have a docker compose template you can use to install their container.
The docker compose tells docker which containers to install and how they might rely on each other as well as which ports to run on and where all their config and/or data files should be stored.
Using a docker compose makes things super simple to update by using portainer to repull the images to the latest versions and run those. The new containers running the new versions will have all the same config and see the same data/config directories that you specify in the docker compose.
I run a bunch of containers, some good examples are the ARR stack to download tv shows and movies. Radarr, Sonarr, Prowlarr, Transmission are all defined in one docker compose. Another couple of great containers I run are Actual Budget for budgeting software and Tandoor for saving and managing recipes and grocery lists. Actual Budget and Tandoor have their own docker compose configs.
That’s great you’re starting from a place that should make this easy.
Let me jump on my PC and get some information to help you get started.
YouTube. Duckduckgo.
Personally I’m running 13 containers for various things. Worth it.
But I googled docker, and only found apps that can be installed. Does it both require something to run the docker apps in?
It’s great, customizable, I sent a suggestion to the volunteer development team, and they made it happen.
Let me be perfectly honest: If you like AntennaPod, just stick with it, OK? You’ll save a lot of frustrations and headaches.
I used to use AntennaPod and listened to lots of podcasts.
Then one podcast host mentioned some other app, I tried it, and liked its Web interface, even when it didn’t have all of the AntennaPod features. I think it didn’t have “stop playing a podcast at the end of the episode, even if it’s queued”. (I like to queue stuff and listen to them at no particular order. I’m a whimsical girl like that.) Then I think this app got discontinued/went pay only, I can’t remember.
Went with Google Podcasts. It was a pretty limited and janky experience (also no ability to stop at the end of the queued episode), but it did its job and I hoped it’d get better over years. It didn’t. It got discontinued. Google sometimes can’t do a good thing.
I manually migrated my subscriptions to some other app. (As one last hurrah Google then implemented OPML takeout.) Wasn’t happy with this app. Couldn’t help but notice my podcast listening habits were drying up due to all these minor snags. ADHD thing I’m sure.
Then I remembered AntennaPod and how perfect it was and how happy I was using it. I wanted to export OPML from this other app. It had OPML import but no export of any kind. Shit.
So I imported my subs manually again. And screw me if I ever have to do that again. But I’m happy again and that’s what matters. I don’t think I’ll need to migrate again, I’m glad AntennaPod has nice backup features. (Which I already used to move the app from my tablet to my phone.)
Worth noting: Android only
I second this one. Only one I’ll use.
I tried so many other podcast apps, at least 3 of 4 others. The only thing I dislike is that about AntennaPod is that there is no comprehensive removal button that deletes, marks as played, and removes from queue—but all the other apps failed at even consistently downloading eps or playing them back. AntennaPod crushes all competition by light years.
I’ve been using Podcast Addict for years, and when I tried to switch to AntennaPod, I couldn’t figure out how to configure it in such a way that I can listen to the back catalogue of a podcast in chronological order and have the app automatically download a rolling buffer of a small number of episodes. When I looked around online for solutions, I found a forum thread of someone who had the same issue, and the maintainers of the project responded with confusion and dismissal as to why anyone would need that functionality lol. So I’m still on Podcast Addict.
Huh, incidentally, that’s one I haven’t tried! You may end up swaying me over…
Actually, is it closed-source? That’d be a deal-breaker for me, if so, since I’m not that desperate for such a feature as to lose open-source status.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned it yet:
With just a cheap computer you can have your own Netflix and Spotify.
Is Jellyfin good with remote access?
You can do that with VPN. I’m using Tailscale, just had to make an account and install it on the computer I mentioned and on my phone.
How is it different than Plex?
Does it find the movies for me, or do I still need to figure out the Usenet or BitTorrent?
Since no one really answered you, there are generally two routes.
If you use newsgroups you can run sabnzbd, which is a service that downloads from newsgroups. I’ve been out of the loop for a while but there used to be something like CouchPotato for movies or SickBeard for TV (which migrated to SickChill, though you shouldn’t use that anymore as it installed a crypto miner last I heard). Lastly you sign up with a news indexer (look up Nzb.su or nzbgeek.info). CouchPotato could be linked to your imdb watch list.
Plug all of those together with API keys, and now movies on your imdb watch list just show up in your plex library as they become available.
Now if you use Torrents instead of newsgroups, there are similar things that all exist, I’m just less familiar with them.
Ah, interesting. I’m actually only (barely) familiar with torrents, insofar as I have downloaded qBitTorrent and enabled its embedded search. I search for thing, sort by most seeds, and choose first relevant one. Usually it all goes well. Plex on my Mac watches the downloads folder, and the TV has Plex installed.
It works, but at least from my limited view of its search results, the seas seem to be drying up. I feel like there are better, non-default searches I could be adding. There was some kind of Jacket plugin that refused to load so it’s just disabled.
Am a very inept pirate 🏴☠️
Jellyfin Is completely open source, fully self-hosted, and free. With Plex the software still has to phone home to a central server for authentication and some features are locked behind a paywall.
No streaming software is going to find movies for you (without paying for content they’ve licensed) because that would be a sure fire way to get the project taken down for copyright violation.
It’s a FOSS plex alternative… yes you will need to stock your own library Then install SonArr, RadArr, some other Arr 🏴☠️just learn Linux nub. Jk but not really
It’s Plex but free and without a central login server handled by a third party
It’s also got a few fewer/not as functional features and no live TV (whoopty do?)
The Arr Suite are what you’re looking for to find content, works with either Plex or Jelly in (or others)
Aside from the FOSS that people love.
I will add something real world. I have Plex and Jellyfin running. Now Plex works fine for the most part but certain codecs when I am watching on iOS just has issues and freezes a lot so I have to use Jellyfin, but the UI in Jellyfin is pretty sparse and not as polished.
