Jérôme Flesch

My wife and I use a Nextcloud application called Cospend.

I for one use and self-host Meshcentral. The GUI is ugly, but it works well.

In term of software compatibility, on Linux, you have the option of making chroots. Since the kernel devs makes a lot of effort to preserve compatibility, old software can still work fine. If I remember correctly, some kernel devs tested a while ago some really really old versions of bash, gcc, etc, and they still work fine with modern kernels.

Red Hat. Probably Canonical too.

I know it for a fact since I worked for a bank that chose Red Hat and since I also know someone working for Red Hat.

Un peu quand même. Il parle de « remettre le travail et le mérite au fondement de la société », ce qui est juste une façon plus élégante de dire « bouhouh, plus personne veut travailler ».

Parce-que c’est bien connu que « Arbeit macht frei » et donc que le travail est une fin en soit … :-P

Baisser les cotisations sociales et l’impôt sur le revenu pour que le travail paie d’avantage, en compensant le manque à gagner pour les finances publiques par une hausse de la TVA.

Donc … travailler et gagner plus, pour finalement payer plus ? Chouette comme idée.

(…) en stabilisant le niveau des pensions de retraite en valeur absolue (…)

Alors qu’on a une inflation >5% ? Hébé, les p’tit vieux presque invalides qui peinent déjà à boucler leurs fins de mois vont adorer cette idée.

Bon après, le gars est président d’une boite de conseil. Je n’attend donc pas de lui d’avoir la moindre idée de la réalité du français moyen.

Based on my tests on my family and friends, the main problem is tech support. Most geeks seem to assume other people want the same things than themselves (privacy, freedom, etc). Well, they don’t. They want a computer that just works.

Overall when using Linux, people actually don’t need much tech support, but they need it. My father put it really well by saying: “the best OS is the one of your neighbor.”

I apply few rules:

1. The deal with my family and friends is simple: you want tech support from me ? ok, then I’m going to pick your computer (usually old Lenovo Thinkpads bought on Ebay at ~300€) and I’m going to install Linux on it.

2. I’m not shy. I ask them if they want me to have remote access to their computer. If they accept, I install a Meshcentral agent. Thing is, on other OS, they are already spied on by Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc. And most people think “they have nothing to hide”. Therefore why should they worry more about a family member or a friend than some unknown big company ? Fun fact, I’ve been really surprised by how easily people do accept that I keep a remote access on their computer: even people that are not family ! Pretty much everybody has gladly agreed up to now. (and God knows I’ve been really clear that I can access their computer whenever I want).

3. I install the system for them and I make the major updates for them. Therefore, if I have remote access to the system, I pick the distribution I’m the most at ease with (Debian). They just don’t care what actually runs on their computers.

4. When they have a problem, they call me after 8pm. With remote access, most problems are solved in a matter of minutes. Usually, they call me a few times the first days, and then I never hear from them anymore until the next major update.

So far, everybody seems really happy with this deal. And for those wondering, I can see in Meshcentral they really do use those computers :-P