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! 🙂

Monopolies

+1 Bron/Broen. I am a big fan of Scandinavian series, and can also recommend:

• Follow the Money (Bedrag/Deception)
• The Killing (Forbrydelsen)
• Trapped
• Exit

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.

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

As I said, I cannot see the big difference. Please spell it out for me 🙂

The ‘definitely not true’ part was a reply to ‘ain’t gonna fly, Liberians and people can’t use Linux’. Which is a statement from one person without any evidence to back it up. The evidence shows it’s a false statement, because it is in fact working on a large scale in Denmark, without issues and people are happy with it.

So yeah, it is ‘definitely not true’.

That would be my guess, yes. Why would the danish librians and users in libraries differ from other places? We’re talking ordinary people with an average in computer knowledge in cities and libraries of all sizes.

Being a dane you have to explain the Missouri reference. If you mean something like small cities, see above.

Sorry, but definitely not true.

Source: See my comment regarding the majority of danish municipalities using Linux. No problem for the users or the people doing the sysadmin work.

Good question, but no 🙂

OS2 is a organization which coordinate software development for the participating municipalities and companies which sign up for delivering FOSS. I think OS2 stand for Open Source Software, but not sure.

More about OS2 here: https://www.os2.eu/in-english

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

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

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

KISS from f-droid.

I have used Linux for a while and transitioned the wife and kids to Linux Mint a couple years ago.

They know it is different than Windows but never miss anything as the alternatives are as good or better. The kids are used to mobile and tablets so know of app store and so on. The only downside is getting some games their friends play working, like Roblox. But for the most part alternatives like Minetest are fine (better).

The upside is IMHO massive in terms of privacy, security, user friendless and sysadm stuff.

It just works and we’re happy with it!

XMPP / Jabber with OMEMO encryption. Lots of free servers and clients.

Same here! Rolling old Thinkpads because of the Linux compatibility, price and reparability is hard to beat. Would like to support the good companies more, but like the tinkering.

Our talk made me think about the ethics of tech companies in general. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a ‘Tech Companies Ethics Index’ kinda like Phoronix/Toms Hardware Guide is for hardware, but which documents and compare tech on fx the following consumer relevant parameters:

• Privacy
• Security
• Openness / FOSS / EEE
• User friendliness
• Reparability
• Other?

Sources could be: privacyguides, EFF, FSF, iFixit usere own experience and so on.

It could be run by users who also contribute to a git something and site something.

I know Lenovo is no angel but still a single piece of sand compared to the vast desert of Microsoft in terms of bad bahaviour.

We deserve System76, Tuxedo, Framework, PineBook etc. And if that doesn’t suit the use case a used Thinkpad, Macbook (a sandbox in the analogy) or Dell is OK options. There’s IMHO plenty of options that’s better than the desert of Microsoft 🙂

By all means use it if it suits your needs 🙂 My point is that there are alternatives, like fx Lenovo Yoga or similar, where you dont support Microsoft and their history of bad behavior.

We all got different priorities and if it isn’t something on your radar, that’s fine. For me I would rather be without than buy a Surface for the mentioned reasons.

Agree on privacy. And why bother when Intel/AMD have their Management Engine (ME) and AMD their equivalent.

But why support a company like Microsoft when they have a long history of prioritizing profit over user freedom (FOSS/EEE), security and privacy?

I applaud Linux on as many laptops as possible. But given Microsoft’s history of EEE, bad security practices and multiple and on going privacy violations I would really not recommend using anything Microsoft. If you must use fx Surface I would recommend buying a used one. Or better yet a used Thinkpad or similar enterprise laptop used.