As 2025 comes to a close and 2026 opens up, Privacy Guides would love to hear your privacy and security goals to achieve in 2026. As always, beginners and experienced members are welcome to share anything regardless of how minor or significant it is.
I can start first as I made a lot of changes last year. After owning Apple products for the longest time, I finally was able to switch over to Linux and GrapheneOS after experimenting with our own recommendations. It took a while as I tried getting QubesOS and SecureBlue to work with my new laptop, but I settled on using CachyOS, an Arch-based distro, as it upstreamed the drivers for my device in its kernel far before other distros did. While the supply chain concern of using Cachy is not ideal, Secure Boot is a non-negotiable for me.
My 2026 resolution is to eventually experiment with self-hosting a bit with some old hardware here and there. And potentially switch to another distro if possible. Itās going to be expensive, but hopefully it wonāt be too bad.
Anyways, feel free to list them below! Lets make sure to keep everyone accountable this year
I escaped the Apple ecosystem earlier this year, now using GrapheneOS and have been on Linux for awhile. I do want to switch my distro from Mint and potentially see if I am able to use my phone without any SIM card at all.
Also more self-hosting but Iāll see if that is even tenable pricing wise this year.
I plan on continuing to save money on tech and services I use having moved to desktop Linux while I retain my MacBook Air as a backup and for when I need portability. Iāve already moved to GrapheneOS and enjoy using smartphone minimally (in other words, only for traditional smartphone use cases). Sailing the high seas and being in the Proton ecosystem is also another way I end up saving money.
I do plan to more seriously begin learning to self host select apps/tools, continue learning more about desktop Linux to up my tech know-how, and hopefully even start a small blog about privacy tech and cybersecurity policy to share my own thoughts and views in a more meaningful manner and as I see it.
I plan to fully move to desktop Linux as its gotten so much better in 2025 from my testings. Most likely will choose the new and shiny PopOS COSMIC but Iām really liking Fedora too. Might split the difference and go with Fedora COSMIC though I wish there was an immutable version available in this DE.
Besides that, I plan on finding a way to get my hands on a Pixel and finally begin using GOS on it. Itās my biggest tech goals of 2026.
In 2025 I moved from Windows 11 to Bazzite - which I really enjoy. I am hoping to move from Bazzite to Fedora Kinoite or Fedora Cosmic this year, with the eventual (maybe 2027) plan being to move to Secureblue.
There isnāt much stopping me from making these transitions, other then once I get something to work its hard to get the momentum to change it.
Hehe congratz for the move Kevin!
That transition is also quite a hard oneā¦
This year, Iāll also do more self-hosting (back at it, just like the cool kids! ), Iāll get my threat model a bit more reasonable and less paranoid to what it is currently and also finally will get my sh*t together by doing something fun and sharing it to the privacy/homelab community.
I plan on moving out of the Proton ecosystem to individual services - Mullvadvpn, Addy, Tuta, and Keepass. I havenāt been happy with Proton since I moved to Linux.
JMPChat is also on my radar. My current VoIP provider, voipms, is very unreliable and very much kyc.
In the past Iāve always paid for services with a credit card. This year, itās time to try Monero.
Iād love to remove Windows from my dual boot and learn enough about Linux to feel confident migrating everything to Fedora or another distribution that works well. In the meantime, Iām keeping the separation with Windows for gaming and Linux for everything else (I have an Nvidia graphics card and itās given me quite a few headaches )
Networking. Iāve done good work on individual devices in 2025, time to expand my scope in 2026 and lock down the whole LAN. OpenWRT looks promising, need to find the right hunk of silicon to run it
Mostly, its Protonās vpn app. If i want to use splittunnel, I have to give up netguard and the kill switch.
I cant connect to a specific city, only a server or country. On android, its no problem to connect to the fastest server in a specific city.
Another issue I have with proton is they keep introducing new services instead of using those resources on Linux support.
As for voipms. My inbox keeps failing. People call, leave a message but I never get notified. Once I find out there us a problem its an easy fix but its usually weeks of missed calls before I know about the problem.
Dual boot is still the best and simple way to go dip a little into Linux so thatās quite good already!
Fedora is also quite stable and cool to use, hence should be a good choice.
As for gaming, depends on the games youāre interested in but ProtonDB is a good resource to see if a game can be run out of the box on Linux or not. Most solo games (as in no e-sport like League of Legends) should run just fine.
And yes, Nvidia drivers on Linux are a huge pain last time I tried too.
Meanwhile some distros ease that one, like Bazzite!
I went through a similar decision path just recently and updated an answer of mine, in case you want a starting point.
I guess this feature is seen as a ānice to haveā and not necessary by the companies, hence why the support is spotty.
Itās a company, it will work on things that bring in the money and not the 0.5% of users using the product in niche ways. I know itās unfair and I donāt like it either but thatās the state of Linux as of today, if it ever becomes more popular it might change!
Isnāt that more of a soft phone software problem? What do you use as your client? Linphone, Jami or something else?
Iāve heard these excuses before. The simple fact is Iām paying the same price as everyone else on the Unlimited plan for less features. Funny how Mullvad managed to treat all their users the same across OSs despite the extreme financial hardship is must be causing them /s
The message inbox is on voipmsās servers, not my phone.
I would like to learn how to use Qubes OS this year.
I am considering getting a laptop from Nova Custom, with preinstalled Qubes OS however, it is quite an expense.
), Iāll get my threat model a bit more reasonable and less paranoid to what it is currently and also finally will get my sh*t together by doing something fun and sharing it to the privacy/homelab community. 
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