This OS isn't made by the EU, but it's goal is to become sponsored by them:
Is EU OS a project of the European Union?
Right now, EU OS is not a project of the European Union. Instead, EU OS is a community-led Proof-of-Concept. This means it is lead by a community of volunteers and enthusisasts.
The project goal is to become a project of the European Commission in the future and use https://code.europa.eu/. For this EU OS is in touch with the public administration on member state and EU level. So far, EU OS relies on https://gitlab.com/eu-os.
Personally I don't see why EU wouldn't just go with Suse. It has the corporate support that I guess these government institutions crave, it's a good system as far as I know and it's home-grown. Ubuntu is another option, Canonical is a British company (not EU anymore but it is European).
Ubuntu isn't a good choice, since Canonical is essentially the Microsoft of the Linux world. Suse makes sense, though. NixOS would be good, too, since you could scale your deployments.
I think it makes great sense to use Nix (or better Guix). The users are not expected to do any configurations. They basically need a browser and maybe a text editor if it's the public sector.
Also, you can run Nix or Guix on basically any other dist. Which is very helpful for reproducible deployments.
Ubuntu doesn't make any sense. Better use Debian in that case. We don't need to give yet another eccentric South African billionaire more power.
If we want to achieve adoption by the "main stream" consumer market we have to make sure that the Linux distro is absolutely idiot-proof.
In the mind of many people, Linux is for IT-nerds and it's difficult to change a way of thinking. You'll have to prove it with: 1. Reliability (f.e. support of the EU); 2. Influencers who say that Linux is OK; 3. A Linux distro that is effectively proving that it can work idiot proof.
Otherwise Linux is dead on arrival to become mainstream.
any EU policy should support only FOSS platforms, protocols and storage formats so that anyone can immediately use without cost/license and any investment in further development is immediately available to all users and never privatised
companies can provide support services for these systems, there is going to be a lot of them
Malicious startups can't survive in the catalogue of the EU comission. In it there are certainly also commercial solutions, but mostly FOSS, OSS and FLOSS. The reason is to recover the sovereign from the US hegemony of the big companies in the web.
Respect EU OS, there are in the focus several distros:
But if you trust more the US soft and services, use these and the malicious soft from there, without the rights and privacy of the EU but those from Trump and Musk.
So far, EU OS is a Proof-of-Concept for the deployment of a Fedora-based Linux operating system with a KDE Plasma desktop environment and bootable container technology in a typical public sector organisation.
So far, EU OS is a Proof-of-Concept for the deployment of a Fedora-based Linux operating system with a KDE Plasma desktop environment and bootable container technology in a typical public sector organisation. Other organisations with similar requirements or less strict requirements may also learn from this Proof-of-Concept.
Why not use OpenSuse. We use it where I work in about 25 developer laptops, plus 1 Ubuntu (choice of the person themselves) and it has been rock stable. We should have about 50 by end of this year, out of 950 devices in total. Let’s go for something made in EU and of good quality.
I agree. Most Linux distributions have their base within the EU. Just dumb to bring a new Fedora based dist to the table. Debian is also very connected to the EU and France, even though the SPI is registered within the US.
One could push for The Linux Foundation to to move their HQ to the EU. If that changes anything. I guess it depends on if Linus resigns or wants to move back to Finland.
SUSE is owned by the Swedish venture capital firm EQT. For better or worse. All software has "ties" to the US. Remember there are lots of good people in the US as well. Everything isn't MAGA or tech feudalism.
It has less to do with people than with jurisdiction. The US administration can demand to do this or that on US soil and the maintainer, owner, programmer has little chance to do otherwise if he/she does not want to end in the prison. Hence, my opinion to choose distro with as least as possible influence by the US.
I wonder how much work is entailed in transforming Fedora in to a distro that meets some definition of the word “Sovereign” 🤔
Personally I wouldn’t want to make a project like this be dependent on the whims of a US defense contractor like RedHat/IBM, especially after what happened with CentOS.
and, re: "what do you mean 'redhat is a defense contractor'?!": here are some links.
No. SUSE has ties in the US. There are many in the list which are not totally off the US, because either several servers or maintainers or their main distro (Arch, Ubuntu, Slackware, Gentoo, RedHat) is located in the US or has strong ties in the US. The few in the list which may stand out a bit are VoidLinux (community based and mainly in Europe), Crux (community, mainly Europe, but this distro is a tough one), and Alpine (small group mostly in Europe). With Kali I am not sure. If you won’t stay outside the US, have safety, but sacrifice new hardware, look also at OpenBSD.
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IMO EU should choose an existing project to sponsor. Not make another bad fork.
This OS isn't made by the EU, but it's goal is to become sponsored by them:
Personally I don't see why EU wouldn't just go with Suse. It has the corporate support that I guess these government institutions crave, it's a good system as far as I know and it's home-grown. Ubuntu is another option, Canonical is a British company (not EU anymore but it is European).
That makes sense. A reskin of an existing Distro with new funding would be a huge play.
Ubuntu is the most popular but they have a big proprietary push.
Ubuntu isn't a good choice, since Canonical is essentially the Microsoft of the Linux world. Suse makes sense, though. NixOS would be good, too, since you could scale your deployments.
NixOS is great, but has a steep learning curve which doesn't make it suitable for such a project imo
I think it makes great sense to use Nix (or better Guix). The users are not expected to do any configurations. They basically need a browser and maybe a text editor if it's the public sector.
Also, you can run Nix or Guix on basically any other dist. Which is very helpful for reproducible deployments.
Ubuntu doesn't make any sense. Better use Debian in that case. We don't need to give yet another eccentric South African billionaire more power.
Actually, what we probably want is something like openSUSE MicroOS with containers based on Nix or Guix.
Best would be if openSUSE simply adopted Nix/Guix for container configuration.
If we want to achieve adoption by the "main stream" consumer market we have to make sure that the Linux distro is absolutely idiot-proof. In the mind of many people, Linux is for IT-nerds and it's difficult to change a way of thinking. You'll have to prove it with: 1. Reliability (f.e. support of the EU); 2. Influencers who say that Linux is OK; 3. A Linux distro that is effectively proving that it can work idiot proof. Otherwise Linux is dead on arrival to become mainstream.
It does not fork anything. Right now, it uses already existing fedora / oci images.
yeah this larping is some strange nonsense
any EU policy should support only FOSS platforms, protocols and storage formats so that anyone can immediately use without cost/license and any investment in further development is immediately available to all users and never privatised
companies can provide support services for these systems, there is going to be a lot of them
Is there a filter to block all these EU OS posts, please?
As I see it, it's hardly an open source project but just some malicious start up attempting to get funded by EU then flee off.
Show me your production ready OS, not your POC boot screens.
And perhaps properly name your product. Naming it after 'EU' is self-righteous. What comes next? Earth OS?
Strange project indeed. I had a small discussion recently https://gitlab.com/eu-os/eu-os.gitlab.io/-/issues/13#note_2414881293
Malicious startups can't survive in the catalogue of the EU comission. In it there are certainly also commercial solutions, but mostly FOSS, OSS and FLOSS. The reason is to recover the sovereign from the US hegemony of the big companies in the web. Respect EU OS, there are in the focus several distros:
Arcolinux of Belgium
Slax of the Czech Republic
Exherbo of Denmark
Daphile of Finland
Manjaro, Lubuntu, Mageia France
Manjaro, OpenSUSE, Haiku, Knopix of Germany
AntiX and MXlinux of Greece
Linux mint, Zorin, Solus Ireland
Endeavour and NixOS of the Netherlands
Alpine Linux Norway
SparkyLinux of Poland
Void of Spain
CRUX of Sweden
Kali Linux Switzerland
FerenOS, UK
https://european-alternatives.eu/alternatives-to
https://european-alternatives.eu/categories
But if you trust more the US soft and services, use these and the malicious soft from there, without the rights and privacy of the EU but those from Trump and Musk.
Don't forget about Nix and Guix.
The best news from this is that the EU is willing to go these ways. Incredible for consumers in the long run and to combat monopolies.
Yes, they could sponsor something else, but what we also really want are choices and competition.
Great initiative!
Now move it to Codeberg ;-)
PS. What's it based on?
If you read the linked page:
Seems Fedora & KDE
From the FAQ, they want to eventually move to https://code.europa.eu/
Why not use OpenSuse. We use it where I work in about 25 developer laptops, plus 1 Ubuntu (choice of the person themselves) and it has been rock stable. We should have about 50 by end of this year, out of 950 devices in total. Let’s go for something made in EU and of good quality.
I agree. Most Linux distributions have their base within the EU. Just dumb to bring a new Fedora based dist to the table. Debian is also very connected to the EU and France, even though the SPI is registered within the US.
One could push for The Linux Foundation to to move their HQ to the EU. If that changes anything. I guess it depends on if Linus resigns or wants to move back to Finland.
AFAIK depends OpenSUSE on the company SUSE, which - though based in Germany - has partners and hence ties in the US.
SUSE is owned by the Swedish venture capital firm EQT. For better or worse. All software has "ties" to the US. Remember there are lots of good people in the US as well. Everything isn't MAGA or tech feudalism.
It has less to do with people than with jurisdiction. The US administration can demand to do this or that on US soil and the maintainer, owner, programmer has little chance to do otherwise if he/she does not want to end in the prison. Hence, my opinion to choose distro with as least as possible influence by the US.
Any OS specifically designed for the EU Will have so many back doors that security would not be a word that applied to it.
As I wrote in the thread about this last month on [email protected]:
and, re: "what do you mean 'redhat is a defense contractor'?!": here are some links.
(source)
No. SUSE has ties in the US. There are many in the list which are not totally off the US, because either several servers or maintainers or their main distro (Arch, Ubuntu, Slackware, Gentoo, RedHat) is located in the US or has strong ties in the US. The few in the list which may stand out a bit are VoidLinux (community based and mainly in Europe), Crux (community, mainly Europe, but this distro is a tough one), and Alpine (small group mostly in Europe). With Kali I am not sure. If you won’t stay outside the US, have safety, but sacrifice new hardware, look also at OpenBSD.