More than just opt-out. There is a class action lawsuit presented to U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, San Francisco Division on the 23 jan this year saying that [The privacy of] “WhatsApp users’ communications is false. As the whistleblowers here have explained, WhatsApp and Meta store and have unlimited access to WhatsApp encrypted communications, and the process for Meta workers to obtain that access is quite simple” That’s the content of the messages not just the metadata Meta, unsurprisingly, deny the allegations

Thanks I’ll try that.

Thanks. The big driver was the EU’s European Interoperability Framework (first version 2004), which promoted: Open standards, Vendor neutrality, Long-term accessibility of public data. It was envisioned for public administration, businesses and citizens: And notably the framework was updated 2015-2017 - the period the Munich administration steered away from it. Though I see they are now saying they should reconsider their move to MS, or maybe that’s just a negotiation tactic.

There was the Munich public administration before that ran everything on Linux 2003-2017 until MS paid for a big new HQ in Munich - I don’t know if the then mayor, Dieter Rieter, had any direct incentives. The French Gendarmerie have been using their version of Linux too (Gendbuntu) since 2005. Regions of the PA in Spain use it too. It’s also fairly common in European militaries.

Thanks for the update fix! - I didn’t sign in to MS - as I only use it very occasionally - a program on an old usb drive only reliably works on Windows 10 (and not 11)

I put Linux Mint on a laptop last year that was running Windows 10 (dual boot) as MS said they were no longer supporting or providing security updates for Windows 10. Mint has worked well (although it does seem to want updates every day). I opened up Windows last week and MS said that they would actually continue to provide security updates for Windows 10 if I logged on with a MS account - so I guess they are actually noticing the migration away from their OS.

I don’t use the phone that often as a debit /credit bank card but I use it for payments (bills invoices etc.), paying on line, transferring money to people and accounts, and just managing accounts. The phone app is very useful for those functions - especially if the alternative is going into a bank and queuing.

A phone OS that will not work with banking apps is not really a contemporary solution. iOS or Android are the only reliable options at the moment in the US/Europe - Iiuc Open Source Android has to sandbox Google Play for banking apps to work so that’s not viable long-term solution, as Google will only make that more difficult in the future.

Given the issues with the judges at ICC and US payment systems, building an alternative to Google and Apple is a high priority