Then it changed. And it changed fast.

So much this (thx for sharing).

Like the author, save it happened here in France, school taught me handwriting using a pencil and after the basics were good enough, rather quickly, ‘upgraded’ me to a fountain pen. Sure, I may not be that young of a person anymore, nearing my 60s, but I’m not yet ‘a long gone and forgotten past’. In that time frame we went from a school in which seeing a tv on a cart was an exciting event to a class in which the kids could be remote and in which the teacher is on the verge of being replaced by AI… A class whose very purpose (educating kids) is already being questioned: people starting to wonder if it’s not a waste to teach kids now that AI can do everything.

In the very early 80s, my dad brought home our first computer (a pre-Mac model, from Apple). If I knew what computers were already, up to that very day the most high-tech was… my grandfather’s typewriter and a game console from Atari (which I barely played with). Less than 50 years later the computer has invaded all our living spaces, personal and professional alike. It has spread like a virus and has even started to claim that it’s not just making things simpler for us, then that it was smart, it now starts saying it’s an intelligence that could soon do much better and way faster than us all the things we do. And most of us are like ‘Mmm, 'k, fine. What’s on the telly tonight?’

That’s too fast a change and a change that’s controlled by too few of us… without any of them being made accountable for the consequences.

Depends what you mean by data sharing and what exactly you expect to get out of it (E2EE?) but in most case I would also suggest Infomaniak Ksuite. It’s really good and not expensive.

Good question. For a similar reason people keep using corporate-owned social media, I suppose?

but it is my mess and it makes me smile when I see it :)

So much this! Mistakes, like stains, and crossed words/sentences are a legit part of my journal :)

Worry not. Yesterday, I had to cross the same three letters word three times… before I decided maybe it would be wiser to use a completely different and longer word… for which I had not enough space left on the line. As we say in French Quand ça veut pas, ça veut pas ;)

as for ink stains, I keep a sheet of blotter paper (if that’s the name?) nearby. I seldom use it but i’m happy I have it when I realize the pen was wetter than usual and the ink is slow to dry.

Is arch Linux now the “new” free/federated version?

Not sure to understand the question. There are many non-corporate owned distributions, starting with Debian, not just Arch.

And on what non-US laptop can I run it?

Any non-US laptop is supposed to run just fine. One needs to set the correct locale (generally it will be the first question asked by the install assistant: what country are you in and what keyboard layout do you want to use)?

I run Mint and prior to it I was running Debian (and prior to that it was Arch) on my French Azerty layout laptop without any issue (the same with the desktop and it’s azerty keyboard)

The only potential issue will be disk encryption at boot but I can say it works flawlessly with Mint (and did so with Debian too, as far as I can remember)