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.

For those wondering, it also works with a Linux VM:

• Host: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X + Proxmox
• PCI passthrough for an Nvidia RTX 3060 12GB
• A Debian VM with 16GB and as many cores as the host have (if you set less cores, you will have to tune cpu affinity/pinning)
• An HDMI dummy
• I stream the VM to my office using Sunshine and Moonlight

It’s not easy to set up, but it works. I’m able to run some games like Borderlands 3 running at ~50FPS with a resolution of 1920x1080 with visual effects set to the max (important: disable vsync in the games !).

Only problem is disk access. It tends to add some latency. So with games coded with their ass (ex: Raft), the framerate drops a lot (Raft goes down to 20FPS sometimes).

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