ansel VS portmaster

Just try Ansel. I saw this topic a while ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38390914

I am only familiar with his YouTube, and then this topic. https://github.com/aurelienpierreeng/ansel Here are his examples.

It seems 1:1 compatible when I switched.

FWIW, here is the recent merged pull requests from darktable:

https://github.com/darktable-org/darktable/pulls?q=is%3Apr+i...

At the moment, this is about a week's work by eight authors. Others cycle/in out, of course -- this is a spot sample. They range from bugfixes to performance improvements to documentation to translation work. All what one would hope for in a software project headed to its bi-annual release next month.

There are many ways to develop, and it may be a bit cruel to compare a one-man show to a long-term international collaboration. But here are the recently merged pull requests from the software which is posted about in the blog post:

https://github.com/aurelienpierreeng/ansel/pulls?q=is%3Apr+i...

On the first page, I see about five authors offering PR's over the course of all of 2023 -- a much slower pace of community development.

It appears that Ansel is being developed more by direct commits from its main author. So let's compare the recent commits:

https://github.com/aurelienpierreeng/ansel/commits/master

Page 1 of Ansel commits is by its mono-author from the last week. Page 2 takes us back to August. Page 3 back to June. I totally understand that good developers need to work carefully and sit on things, then release them in due time.

Here goes for darktable commits:

https://github.com/darktable-org/darktable/commits/master

If we take a moment to page back to page 3, one can note that we're back to two weeks ago (rather than June). Steady work by a committed community matters. The log of work done is may be quite worth looking at, rather than incendiary blog posts.

I tried for about 15 minutes and didn't get it to build. And even if it did, it would probably not be stable enough to use for anything productively.

[0] https://github.com/aurelienpierreeng/ansel#os-support

After writing this post, I realized there has been a little bit of drama regarding the new release, with a forked version on 4.0 by one of the main developers. This is sad but to the best of my judgement, this guy may have some valid points. I don't want to open a can of worms, but I guess I had to comment. I do wonder if it's worth trying the alternative.

and ansel version: https://github.com/aurelienpierreeng/ansel/commits/color-EQ

I didn't know that, thank you for the info. The fork is now called Ansel ( https://github.com/aurelienpierreeng/ansel )

Respect is a two way street. If you're ok with the tone in his video where he insults all the other darktable developers, but you're not ok with him being called an asshole, ask yourself why. If you need more reading, you can see https://github.com/darktable-org/darktable/issues/13159#issuecomment-1356478876 or many of the other insulting comments. Or you can have a look at the history of https://github.com/aurelienpierreeng/ansel/ which contains even more insluting comments. He's an asshole, this is a statement of fact. He can change, sure, but he won't, sadly.

Yes. Sometimes I think I should have learned programming a bit more, but it's just not my kind of thing. Although, because of recent changes in darktable a developer made a fork. Had some valid points. https://github.com/Aurelien-Pierre/R-Darktable

Also see the wiki of the fork on Githb

There's a very good relatively new open-source GUI firewall app like this called Portmaster:

https://safing.io/

It's available for Windows and Linux

You can get your own firewall app. Portmaster by safing.io lets you open and close what ever ports you want on your windows system

amazing work OP! what's the difference between zen and portmaster? :) i would like to compare options to see which one fits my needs the best way

For Context: Technical Introduction from https://github.com/safing/portmaster#technical-introduction

Portmaster is a privacy suite for your Windows and Linux desktop.

Base Technology

- Portmaster integrates into network stack using nfqueue on Linux and a kernel driver (WFP) on Windows.

- Packets are intercepted at the raw packet level - every packet is seen and can be stopped.

- Ownership of connections is found using eBPF and `/proc` on Linux and a kernel driver and the IP Helper API (`iphlpapi.dll`) on Windows.

- Most settings can be defined per app, which can be matched in different ways.

- Support for special processes with weird or concealed paths/actors:

--- Snap, AppImage and Script support on Linux

--- Windows Store apps and svchost.exe system services support on Windows

- Everything is 100% local on your device. (except the SPN, naturally)

--- Updates are fully signed and downloaded automatically.

--- Intelligence data (block lists, geoip) is downloaded and applied automatically.

- The Portmaster Core Service runs as a system service, the UI elements (App, Notifier) run in user context.

- The main UI still uses electron as a wrapper :/ - but this will change in the future. You can also open the UI in the browser

Feature: Secure DNS

- Portmaster intercepts "astray" DNS queries and reroutes them to itself for seamless integration.

- DNS queries are resolved by the default or configured DoT/DoH resolvers.

- Full support for split horizon and horizon validation to defend against rebinding attacks.

Feature: Privacy Filter

- Define allowed network scopes: Localhost, LAN, Internet, P2P, Inbound.

- Easy rules based on Internet entities: Domain, IP, Country and more.

- Filter Lists block common malware, ad, tracker domains etc.

Feature: Network History ($)

- Record connections and their details in a local database and search all of it later

- Auto-delete old history or delete on demand

Feature: Bandwidth Visibility ($)

- Monitor bandwidth usage per connection and app

Feature: SPN - Safing Privacy Network ($)

- A Privacy Network aimed at use cases "between" VPN and Tor.

- Uses onion encryption over multiple hops just like Tor.

- Routes are chosen to cover most distance within the network to increase privacy.

- Exits are chosen near the destination server. This automatically geo-unblocks in many cases.

- Exclude apps and domains/entities from using SPN.

- Change routing algorithm and focus per app.

- Nodes are hosted by Safing (company behind Portmaster) and the community.

- Speeds are pretty decent (>100MBit/s).

Portmaster itself is open source (https://github.com/safing/portmaster)

Then install https://safing.io/ (Portmaster); it's free.