My torrenting level is very casual and (sry) I only leech. Also my ISP is a small one in the UK. Our Government seems to only force the big ISP to tattle on its users and block pirating sites. At least that’s how it has been for the last 10 years.

I have qbittorrent and Plex on my server. It is tempting to setup a VPN just for qbittorrent just to be sure.

I think the desktop is evolving, and may one day become effectively irrelevant, But there is still a long way to go before local compute goes away, which means a local OS is still needed.

In the server world, yes. The desktop is the place that needs to be won over.

I dual boot windows and EndeavourOS. Every 6 to 12 months I make a concerted effort to make the switch 100% but it hasn’t worked out yet. So while Linux is great windows is unavoidable. In this use case I suspect managing Windows tools will be simpler, though I agree that effectiveness next to Linux options won’t be equal.

That was kinda my point. Securing a laptop that will have access to data you want to protect from loss is a near bottomless pit of issues. There comes a point you have to do a risk assessment and apply a level of security that meets your legal requirements and contractual obligations. I’m sure this is all doable on Linux as well but the low cost / easily available tools are mostly for Windows.

I suspect that taking the “secured remote session” approach is probably good enough for their needs. It just needs a client app you can trust to respect the security rules they want to enforce (no screen shots, no screen recording, no data transfers for any sort, etc).

OCRing what is on screen is not really stoppable unless you force them to keep their camera on so you can monitor them 24/7. But if you try hard enough there is usually a way around most security measures.

Either way, they need to decide what the risk impact vs likelihood profile is, and what the business can tolerate. They’ll need to discuss it with legal and data protection folks to assess that.

One tip is to embed records and values that look meaningful, but are unique, into the copy of the data given to the specific employee. This can be used to potentially prove that a data breach was a result of something that employee did. We like to put QUID’s as invisible watermarks in document headers. These trigger our DLP systems which is always funny cos its usually an employee who is leaving and wants to keep something. I love those conversions.

“Easy” from the point of view there a lots of off the shelf tools to help you do it that are easy to understand.

This is the only reliable solution. To expand:

1. Provide a Laptop with Windows on it, because that is easier to lockdown.
2. apply desirable OS lock downs like blocking usb ports prevent storage devices, don’t give the user admin rights, etc.
3. Setup a VPN server (openvpn should do) and configure the laptop with a VPN client. Configure the client so it blocks network connections that don’t go via the VPN. If you want to give them internet access you’ll need a proxy and firewall and DLP solution. At this point it all gets very complex and expensive.

The real answer is you are probably screwed without investing a bunch of time, effort, and cost.

You might get away with more basic security measures if the user has very limited IT knowledge.

I suggest getting legal advice before you give the user access to your data in the manner you intend.

Interesting. I never solved the issue so I’ll give this a go.

Not seen that option, it.might be useful. However, If I move from Plex it needs to be familiar to everyone else in the house. Retraining them is tricky.

Yeah tizen based TV. So no android apps.

Using FTP (I assume you mean SFTP) will buy you some performance, as would other protocols that are faster and requiring less compute than SMB.

I predict whatever solution you use will only buy you time. Usage is bound to increase so you’ll still hit the performance limits for the hardware platform at some point, unless you can constrain the simultaneous connections. File sizes will impact scalability a lot as well.

You can’t guess this one. You need to test.

tl;dr - I suspect you can’t win.

I liked Jellyfin when I tested it last year but it had 3 show stoppers for me.

1. Samsung app was flakey and had to be side loaded.
2. Each profile had to use a password and had a full keyboard to enter. Needs a no password option, and a pin pad option.
3. Not everything played successfully.

Have any of these things been fixed?

This was always what he intended. Get people to quit instead of paying redundancy when he has to reduce the work force. Classic stuff done by many big orgs over the years. Make the place shit to work at and people quit for you.

Damn it. Beat me to it. I’ll be first ext time.

Interesting. That’s not what happens on mine. I have to actually click into the password box on the primary screen if I want to use that one. Password entry works on both screens so doesn’t really matter which I use, it is just a cosmetic thing that bothers me.

The prompt screen is the same on both monitors. But the typing cursor is in the password box on the secondary monitor.

I had a go at setting the kwin primary using another method but I’ll have a look at copying the settings across like you said.

If you really need one take white list approach. Block everything you don’t need and only open what you need. Have fun finding out what you need.