FINDING A TIMER

Really, how hard can this be? I started out thinking. All I wanted was a timer to encourage me to take regular breaks from using my computer.

But as I often seem to find, it was more difficult than I anticipated. I don't even want all that much really, I thought.

I'm running Linux Mint 22 so as far as Linux goes I'm totally mainstream 

To start with I was thinking I'd like an all in one app that included a repeating countdown timer, and a stopwatch.  

Maybe also with a clock, a world clock, and an alarm as well. And of course I'd like a cool looking moving analogue clock showing the time counting down. Also I'd like to be able to customise everything, and make it stylish and purple. 

And obviously I want it all free as well as ad free and open source.

But after trying half a dozen different apps that all sucked for one reason or another, I ditched all my expectations and just went for one that only did the repeating countdown timer part.

I decided upon "STRETCHLY" 

It's not flashy but it does the job, and yes it is available for Windows and Mac as well as Linux. 

Finally I found a timer that does the basics that I really need with no added stressors. But first I had to ditch any other extras and go full Swedish Minimalist.

Hovering over the logo (black & red yin yang) in the far right of my toolbar shows the remaining time until the next break.

I have it set to do a 3 min break every 30 mins. So every 30 mins it gives me a 30 second warning and then my screen changes to a plain blue notification screen telling me to take a three minute break.

At that stage I can't do anything on my computer, I can't even take a screenshot of the notification screen, so to get this picture I had to take a photo with my camera. 

And it works brilliantly. Because I have no choice, I actually do have a break! In fact I get up, bugger off and go and do other things often for a lot longer than three minutes. 

So I get other things done, and feel better after having a break as well.

When I come back to the computer my next 30 min session has started automatically, and already used up a bunch of time, so I right click on the icon and reset the session, starting it again from 30 mins.

I didn't quite grasp this before I tried it, but this basic app is exactly what I needed!

WEBSITE - https://hovancik.net/stretchly/

DEEP STATE COMPUTING

COMPUTING WAS A DEEP STATE SET UP 

At some point in the past few years, the penny dropped and I realised  Apple, Microsoft, and Google, were all set up by the deep state, they were never real businesses – we can use their tools, but they are all playing us.

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were both actors working for the CIA. Jobs faked his death and Gates was replaced around 2013. As was “Melinda” who is a very obvious tranny. “Bill” probably is as well – they appear to be inverts.

Linux – for years it has seemed like there was something not right about the development and marketing of Linux – by keeping it hard to use and underground for decades it has never posed a real threat to the deep state operating systems. It slowly improved, but was never really sorted out for mass use. 

 

In 2026 that seems to have finally changed, and some distros, like Mint, are now ready for mass use. I always wondered what was holding everything back? Did the deep state infiltrate Linux development too and deliberately hold it back?

Clearly that is not the case any more, as with Windows 11 Microslop have totally lost the plot, and I would happily bet on the reign of Microslop coming to an end now.

All those Windows software updates were not just for copying our data, one day all of those badly designed programs could “unexpectedly” create irritating and time consuming problems in unison – mass distraction at a key moment, and those Trojans were constantly being set up.

Logging us out of accounts and demanding that we SUBMIT (rather than just logging back in) is obvious mind programming. Any site that does that has revealed it’s true intentions. Pay attention to these little signs!

Another trick is spell checkers. Making spell checkers only work properly in US English has forced us to use US spelling – more programming. But it’s not just our computers that are trying to control us, nearly everything on the internet is a distraction, whether intentional or not, and social media is almost all just there to distract us – that is a major part of how we are being controlled.

Microsoft crossed the line after Win 7 – Microsoft is all spyware and I didn’t ever want to use Win 8 on, not for day to day use and certainly not for anything to do with cryptos. What I use these days is Linux Mint 22.

Mint is a good operating system, and like everyone who escapes the clutches of Microslop I will never go back.

Gimp and Krita are pretty good too. It wasn’t a good situation being locked into old software. Photoshop CS6 (2012) was the last version that you can use without having to rent it off Adobe for a monthly fee, which I would never do, so I was using an 11 year old program that I would never update. Same with Windows 7 (2009).

A DECENT BROWSER

The internet is littered from end to end with articles that have titles like "The 10 best privacy browsers of 2026" but then they go on to list 10 browsers that usually include only one good choice (Brave) along with nine complete lemons ranging from relatively poor privacy options like Safari or Opera, down to full on blatant spyware like Chrome or Edge.

This clueless list from Nord VPN is a fairly typical except that it includes 13 browsers. Note that it doesn't include Floorp or Mullvad, and it's supposed to be a privacy ranking. Google's controlled puppet browser Firefox is rated as #1? - Yeah right...

https://nordvpn.com/blog/best-privacy-browser/

Nord VPN really blew their cred posting that bunch of crap! 

I'm not a geek and I'm not being paid to promote anything. I'm looking for simple and effective solutions for myself and my friends. So what do I recommend? 

Keep in mind that I use Linux myself, and have no idea what works best on Windows these days. But if you are using any post Win 7 version of Windows (especially Win 11) you don't actually have any privacy, so your browser is the least of your problems. Same with Apple and even more so with Google.

As well as sticking to using Linux I recommend these three browsers:
 

BRAVE

 

FLOORP

 

 WATERFOX
 

After trying out the Mullvad browser for a couple of weeks I became frustrated with it's slow loading speeds and intermittent bugs, so I decided to use Waterfox for my #3 browser.

 Waterfox is another Firefox fork. It's probably not as private as Floorp or Mullvad, but it works pretty well. It's very similar to regular old Firefox, but doesn't have all the Google's pet puppet browser privacy concerns. 

On Firefox browsers I think this theme looks quite stylish:  Blue Firefox Theme by Sinine (it looks like the Aston Martin turquoise colour)

 Why on earth do I need to use three browsers? My default browser is Brave, which is a chromium fork. Most of the time that works fine and it's the best browser for practical everyday use that I've found.

But some sites just don't work properly on Chromium, I don't know why, and nobody seems to talk about this, but some sites work far better running on Firefox forks. So I switch back and forth between Floorp and Brave, using Floorp for sites that work better on a Firefox based browser.

I don't use Floorp as my default because there are actually more sites that don't work properly on Firefox browsers, and most of the time I want a Chromium browser as my default. So Floorp is my #2.

I actually prefer many aspects of Firefox browsers, especially their menu system, but unfortunately Firefox have sold out to Google and these days they are just a bunch of woketard puppets who can't be trusted an inch. But some of the Firefox forks are much better.

And finally my #3 browser. I know this sounds obsessive, but I have multiple accounts on some platforms, and for some of those I need a third browser to stay logged in on the third account. 

The other thing is that I'm running the Stay Focused app with certain sites (mainly YouTube & Facebook) restricted to a combined total of 15 mins a day. And on Floorp I'm doing the same thing using an app called LeechBlock.

This works well and curtails my last two social media weaknesses, but it means that if I actually really do want to watch a YouTube video, I need a browser that I can watch it on without it shutting down after 15 mins. 

LINUX NEEDS BROWSERS

Don't panic, I'm just kidding. Linux doesn't really need any more file browsers, it already has at least 32. What it needs are some more that are as good as the ones that come standard on Windows.

 This seems to be an issue that Linux developers have been refusing to properly address for decades. In 2025 I switched full time from Windows, and I think it's one of the big issues that send so many Microsoft refugees straight back to Windows. Most Linux file browsers suck...

This is the process I went through looking for a good file browser when I was trying out some different Linux distros. 

 

Articles like this one proudly proclaim "there are 32 options for Linux file browsers" but I actually tried out about half of them (the others were mainly total geek stuff such as command line based ones, so clearly not what I was looking for), and there was only one I liked that did everything I wanted - NEMO (Which is the default file browser on Linux Mint). 

 

The first thing I would do to a fresh install of Linux Zorin is add Nemo and make it  the default file browser. 

 

 

There was actually only one other file browser I liked at all (Dolphin, which is the default file browser on most KDE distros), but even that had an issue I would need to sort out before I could happily use it (it didn't display my PCloud drive), and I thought most of the others ranged from not very good to completely hopeless. 

 

 

In fact there were less than six that I even thought were almost as good as the default file browser on Windows XP (Yes, XP from 2001!) but as with many things, this elephant in the Linux room seems to go unnoticed by most geeks.

 

The fact that it was Linux Mint that developed the Nemo file browser, thereby fixing the glaring hole that has made Linux all but unusable for non geeks for decades, was another thing that convinced me Mint is the best distro.

 

 

I have over a 1/4 million files and the Nemo file browser is the main program that enabled me to switch to using Linux. Without a decent file browser I would have been completely lost on Linux.