Thank you for your replies. I will check them out.

You are absolutely right and you took me in speed, because I had planed - starting from June - to donate every month about €50 to different opensource projects I’m using. So maybe 5x€10 or 10x€5, I’m not sure yet. It will not be a big financial effort for me, because I just cancelled a US based subscription for that same amount/month.

I’m still in the fase of exploration. When using Windows, you just have 1 choice. I just want to discover what suits me best. So nothing against Linux Mint. It’s great, but maybe OpenSuse is better for me? I don’t know.

THANK YOU ALL for your replies. I’ll do a clean install and made a backup of my files (was not difficult bc most stuff I have in the cloud). I’m moving indeed from Mint to OpenSuse Tumbleweed. I don’t know exactely why, but it seems to me an interesting thing to do. Still figuring out what distro fits me best.

If we want to achieve adoption by the “main stream” consumer market we have to make sure that the Linux distro is absolutely idiot-proof. In the mind of many people, Linux is for IT-nerds and it’s difficult to change a way of thinking. You’ll have to prove it with: 1. Reliability (f.e. support of the EU); 2. Influencers who say that Linux is OK; 3. A Linux distro that is effectively proving that it can work idiot proof. Otherwise Linux is dead on arrival to become mainstream.

OK. I’m out of this conversation. Nothing can be a positive outcome of this conversation. So I admit: The European Union is working on the behalf of China, with a hidden authoritarian agenda who wants to make all EU citizens helpless peasants. All actions the EU are taking are not real. They just want to screw us up. I’m moving to the US. Maybe I’ll be better off. (note: sarcasm)

OK, I get it. Maybe we can take a backpack and go living in a cave somewhere. Offgrid, away from everything and we reject any kind of civilization, service and trust, because yes… even your best friend can become your worst enemy. Then why take the risk of having friends? I use the proverb: “Care is the mother of the porcelain store.” But I refuse to question every detail in my life. Have a little faith.

Well collegues, I think we must see it as a positive evolution. We can have some doubts for sure, but there are things moving onto a more independent Europe and we cannot be against that idea. So let’s stay positive and we’ll see what direction things are going. Keep buying European !!!

That’s what big tech companies do, they buy small and promissing companies they think that once can become a competitor and then… destroy it. The young startups just take the money and can retire early.

We’ll see. I believe in the blockchain technology, but not in the way it is used as today. IMO it’s like the early days of the internet. Only for the nerds, until they started to build RWA. But again… we’ll see.

You’re right, but they are working on it. You cannot build an alternative for VISA/Mastercard just in one day. Step-by-step we’ll get there. Every country has his own system, every bank has his own system. The only thing they have in common is VISA/Mastercard. It will take a few years, but the US has started something that is not gonna stop very soon. April 2, 2025 is the day that Europe started to disconnect from US dominance.

Ooooh F*. I just bought stocks of Eutelsat a few weeks ago. Didn’t knew they were working for RUS too.

WERO is coming all over Europe. Germany, France and Belgium are already connected and this year also in the Netherlands. It’s happening but ofcourse… much too slow for many of us :-) www.wero-wallet.eu If they realy want to be innovative they should use blockchain technology to make it happen.

IMO it’s mind blowing to see how many Europeans are now discovering alternative EU or OpenSource solutions for IT services that were imbedded in our lives for so many years. Linux is booming, Proton.me is one of the biggest competitors for the Google eco-system, alternative browsers like Vivaldi are sky rocketing, Signal, BlueSky, Mastodon and Substack. I had never heard of that 1 year ago and now I have no more Facebook, Instagram or Whatsapp. Also many… many european businesses are moving their cloud drives to EU cloud services. This is only the beginning.