Work with informationsecurity and GDPR. And know as a fact that many danish municipalities which administrate the libraries are using, and are happy with, Linux as public facing citizen PC's in libraries.

They use OS2borgerPC, which translates to OS2citizenPC which is maintained and supported by the danish company Magenta. But it's open source, so if you are in another country you could just use it - or better, give Magenta a call. They're great and very reseaonable.

Magenta: https://www.magenta.dk/en/ OS2borgerPC on github: https://github.com/OS2borgerPC

I don't where you live. But almost all of bigtech US cloud is problematic (Read: Illegal to use) for storing or processing of Personal information according to the GDPR if you're based in the EU. Don't know about HIPPA and other non-EU legislation. But almost all cloudservices use US bigtech as a subprocessor under the hood. Which means that the use of AI and cloud is most likely not GDPR-complaint. Which you could mention to the right people and hope they listen.

Edit: It's illegal to use for the processing of the patients PII, because of transfer to insecure third countries and because bigtech uses the data for their own purposes without any legal basis.

Edit 2: The same is the case with your, and your colleagues PII.

In my opinion privacy and GDPR is the same in this case. I think most public authorities is required to have a DPO, fx hospitals or the relevant health authority. The DPO can help answer your and your bosses questions on the mentioned questions.

Hope you figure it out.

Someone mentioned that M365 is properly not legal. Guess what, it isn't.

The EDPS (European Data Protection Supervisor) investgated the EU-Commissions' use of M365 and found it to be illegal in march 2024. EPDS gave the Commission until December 2024 to, among other things, stop transfers of Personal Information to third countries in M365 outside the EU. Which of course made the Commission sue the EDPS. And MS to do the same..

So M365 is NOT legal to use for any Public Institution in the EU. Unless the Controller make Microsoft change their DPA, contract etc. Kinda like MS did for the Dutch government after the dutch firm Privacy Company made an in depth analysis of M365 and found numerous illegal processing etc.

Fun how Microsoft was made aware of how they acted illegal, and changed it - only for the Dutch Government...!! The rest of their Customers still have the illegal DPA, terms etc... Also fun how it is Common knowledge and IT-departments still choose to use M365, and move as much as possible there from more privacy and security oriented services.

EDPS investigation into the Commissions use of M365: https://www.edps.europa.eu/press-publications/press-news/press-releases/2024/european-commissions-use-microsoft-365-infringes-data-protection-law-eu-institutions-and-bodies_en

My point? EU-Linux is a fantastic idea! 🙂

It's Meta's nonsense reply to being forced by the European data protection authorities (EDPB) to get consent before processing users data, which they should have from the beginning: https://edpb.europa.eu/news/news/2023/edpb-urgent-binding-decision-processing-personal-data-behavioural-advertising-meta_en

He made the world a better place.

Monopolies

The problem with trains is they are public (under)founded. The rich and powerfull with political influence don't want working public transportation because less carsales, oil, gasoline etc.

Which explains why Musk prevented a high speed train in the US with his hyperloop. We all need to buy EV"s which have most of the downsides of traditional cars.

When we could have clean, fast and comfortable public transportation.

EDIT: Spelling.

As far as possible I try to avoid:

• All things from big tech because privacy, see Schrems II and their terms on use of personal information for own purposes

• Non Open Source tech because privacy or other malicious functions

• Tech that are prone to planned obsolescence because of special batteries etc. and can't be fixed with for example a custom ROM on Android

I like Aegis being FOSS and for it's backup.

A Library. Or if digital, Wikipedia and Archive.org.

Great news with the report on fair use. Fingers crossed that it haves an effect on lawsuits.

Sad about the firing. But good to see that the head of US Copyright Office didn't gave in to preasure, and doing the right thing.

I use posteo.de, and are very happy with it.

Something that would do that neoliberism in the 80's with Reagan and Thatcher would not become the dominating political and economic theory it has been since that time.

An interesting take. Read somewhere that the reason Trump want's Greenland and Canada is so the US is bigger geographical than Russia. Was said as a semi-joke. But at this point I'm not ruling anything out.

Conversations or blabber.I'm (fork of the former) are solid. Both on f-droid.

Nice. Upgraded a Thinkpad, installed Linux Mint and gave it to my dad. I have not heard anything from him about it for a couple of months. Was reminded of it with your post.

So wrote him right now and asked how it was going, and he replied that he loved it and uses it every day.

And that he had not had any problems he could not solve on his own. He's 70 and a windows only heavy user - until now 🙂

As you said. Compelety painless.

Don't know if it's a good deal.

As others here I will recommend also looking at other brands. I think that you get the best deal by buying used business laptops. They are cheap, good quality, built to last and often repairable.

Brand-wise I think Dell is OK, while Lenovo Thinkpads series T, X, W and carbon are even better choices, IMO.

EDIT: Spelling.

Maybe not quite on the spot, but a Storage Share (hosted nextcloud) from Hetzner might be an option.

Bonus features and info: You can also share other files, location, calendars, contacts etc. They have a compliant data protection agreement, and are fully GDPR compliant.

Hetzner Storage Share: https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share

I know I am way out there. But is it possible that actual human interaction could have a positive effect on loneliness?

It won't, so none