stupid_asshole69 [none/use name]

That’s probably a bad idea.

Not only are you going from committing a crime in private to committing a crime in public, you’re putting yourself in one of the most vulnerable positions possible when it comes to computer security (every few months there are new attacks developed specifically to target users of free public wifi).

Even if that wasnt a problem to you, businesses often have content blockers and traffic shaping to prevent you from torrenting and when they don’t you’ll be competing with everyone else actively streaming video and audio to their phones as well.

It’s also trivial to figure out who’s torrenting on public wifi and has been for years.

If you’re truly concerned about this new law then public wifi isn’t the solution.

E: and if all that doesn’t convince you and you go through with it, you’ll be causing a problem that will actively make people look for you so the wifi isn’t completely jammed up.

I tried a lot of the alternatives before switching to a vpn for torrenting.

For a long time I only used private trackers with encryption required and dht and whatnot off. It worked pretty good, especially with traffic shaping on the router.

If you really want to avoid paying money that’s where I’d start. The problem you’re gonna run into comes from how the law is used against piracy, who does it and how.

If I were gonna go that route today I’d set up doh or dot first. Both are free if you want to use mullvads servers.

Good luck.

Free vpns sell your data. It’s why they’re free. Processor cycles and bandwidth cost money so if you want someone to use their processor cycles and their bandwidth to encrypt and route your traffic through their servers without clandestinely peeking, and using lawyers and advanced security techniques to ward off the police, you gotta pay them.

In order to seed torrents you need to have a port on your vpn endpoint that is accessible to the internet and gets passed to the computer running your BitTorrent client. This is called port forwarding. There are only so many ports, so a vpn provider that offers port forwarding will probably charge more and you might not be able to get certified hood classics like :42069 because someone is already using it.

I use airvpn for torrents but depending on your European country you might not be able to. There are other port forwarding vpns. The cost is cheap, most come out to less than $5 a month.

Most let you run multiple devices at the same time so you might have your computer at home torrenting through the vpn while you’re away at work browsing porno on the toilet connected to the vpn which lets you get past the work content blockers.

So… just pay for a port forwarding vpn.

Look into the t-series thinkpads. T480 is the meme one, but many newer models are very inexpensive and modular. I don’t have dells, but people who do recommend the Inspiron or Vostro ones. They’re similarly cheap and repairable. There are business class hp laptops for cheap too.

For my needs these computers have been very useful and fast.

Often a whole parts unit (bad screen, no ram, no hd for example) of one of these laptops can be had for the price of a single replacement part from one of the smaller manufacturers.

Because they’re so common, new production third party replacement batteries are available and new old stock as well.

If you value environmentally friendly actions, using these machines is literally taking plastic out of the waste stream.

If you haven’t already bought something:

What do you have now?

I would generally recommend against chromebooks. They’re often aimed at the lowest end of the market and have esoteric processors and boot processes that will make you frustrated.

I would generally recommend against small laptop manufacturers like framework etc. because of parts availability. People will say that you can get parts from the manufacturer but for how long? People will say you can make the parts themselves because the design is open source but I have a board etching setup, hot air station and injection molding machine and I don’t do that.

Obviously if you just want to “vote with your dollars” the above doesn’t matter.

If you want to get a laptop that’s gonna run linux well and last a long time get a used business class machine. There will always be a huge market for parts and they have almost always had someone put the effort in to document getting their distro to work right on their work assigned computer.

The black sheep option is to get a mac. Parts are everywhere for cheap and every microsoldering and computer repair shop will work on them because so many people have them and want to get them fixed. Obviously do your research first, but asahi is coming along and you’ve always got a Unix system to fall back on if it isn’t working out.