Still Teching

Tariffs, eh? It all seems to be going terribly well.

As I draft (with only Asia open for the new week so far), indices continue to plummet in response to the US administration's bevy of levies on the world's economies. The Donald has wiped $5 trillion off market capitalisation, a number which grows faster than I can type. The stories around the policy are delicious. Tariffs on uninhabited islands. Tariffs on an island whose only inhabitants are on a US Air Force base. Brilliant work, Donald. Brilliant. I won't babble on too long about it - there's a lot more informed reporting out there. I've just re-read 1984. Never has it been more relevant.

It must be April, because my Cypriot bank requires me to fill in a form stating that I am not a "specified U.S. person." Why it's worried that I may suddenly have become one, I'm not sure.

Tech Stack

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about migrating my data away from the tech giants and testing whether I could diversify my risk.

The Proton suite works fine. E-mail, Calendar, VPN, password manager and cloud drive all do pretty much what I'd hope them to. I've added a subscription to Ente to manage my photos. So, I use the built-in camera on my Pixel, which is configured NOT to use Google Photos. Instead, my photos upload to Ente's servers, which are private and encrypted. The app is not as powerful as Google Photos, but then, I don't edit much anyway. Brave is my browser, and so far, I have no complaints.

I'm still using Windows, on a Windows laptop. My phone is by Google and on Google's own implementation of Android.

I was considering Linux, which is open-source and not tied to the tech giants. To be honest, I'm intimidated by the slightly geeky reputation. Will I be able to make it work? Will it function on a flagship computer from Windows, built on an Arm chip? Then someone pointed me to Tuxedo Computers. This German company makes machines in Germany specifically for Linux, and even has an in-house flavour of the operating system, designed to be accessible to people who think that the command line is some sort of military term. A Tuxedo computer arrives in much the same state that you would expect to receive a Windows machine or Mac. Ready to go.

I ordered last week, and was advised to expect it to be ready to ship in one to three weeks. Of course, Tuxedo is German, and a courier firm tells me I should have my new laptop by the end of today. On the other hand, I live in the Med, so I'm hoping for it sometime this week.

I will use the new machine as my daily driver. All the apps (with the exception of Proton Drive) will work fine on a Linux distribution. Tuxedo provides me with 10GB of cloud storage, which I'll use for my day-to-day files, using the Proton Drive web application for archive purposes. Will there be pain points? I'm sure. I'll need to review, revise and edit Word and Excel documents either via web apps or Libre Office. My preference would be Libre Office, but access to the Microsoft Suite is reassuring. Ultimately, my Windows laptop isn't going anywhere.

I'll let you know how I get on.

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