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.
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.
Hetzner storage box
Often thought of the same thing. So leaving this comment here in case someone got a good solution that don’t involve big tech.
When I get the time my plan is to read up on big techs solutions, fx Google and Apple, who as I understand can give your family access under certain conditions if your’ve passed.
EDIT: And replicate their solution using FOSS / self hosting.
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.
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
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.
+1 Kodi. Been running it for ages on an old laptop with a infared remote with USB dongle. Kodi is set to autostart. Pretty hands off and can stream to it from local sources using Kore for android.
EDIT: Can stream from local AND online sources using Kore ex Newpipe (Youtube).