Link: https://eu-os.eu/

EU OS for the public sector

Community-led Proof-of-Concept for a common free Operating System for the EU public sector 🇪🇺

inb4 "Linux already exists": I thought that too... and this IS Linux:
"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."

If the people behind euos would actually care, they wouldn't use Fedora as the base as its by Red Hat, an American Company. Instead they should built on top of Suse or other European Linux Distributions.

One size fits all is a closed source trap. Competition is good. Flexibility is good.

And ignoring the existing Linux deployments is only going to lead to a worse version of https://xkcd.com/927/

While, yes, this is based on Linux, the point is to provide all public sector offices, from schools to hospitals to police, courts, and military, a standardized, EU maintained digital public good. This leverages economies of scale. Instead of a school, hospital, mayor's office, municipal sanitation office, etc. each fielding their own over-worked IT support team that is probably one or two people holding together a temperamental distro, one team of 6 people can handle each site, all on the same budget, and all working on the same distro.

Oh yeah, good point.

As a POC isn't that bad. I don't think any government agency will really use it as is.

But OpenSuse is a thing, and European as fuck. Start there.

What is there actually to proof?

They need something they can control. You don't order the IT department to switch to "some Linux". You send them documentation of EU OS 1.1, send migration instructions, training materials for users and support documentation. When user has issues the IT department needs to be familiar with the OS. Any centralized services need to be compatible. This can be as simple as rebranding with some default configuration but they need a well defined system, not a general recommendations. This way EU can easily support it, people can move between departments and different institutions can collaborate. They are switching from Windows so they don't need flexibility. This is only for standard office work. You want to keep it as uniform as possible to make job easier for desktop support.

a common free Operating System for the EU public sector

From the title

Love the logo

I don’t really know about this one. There are 3 things that kind of bother me:

1. Skimming through the main page and goal page, there isn’t any mention of how they plan to propose this to the EU. (Or maybe I missed it, someone correct me if I’m wrong please) So… What’s the plan exactly? Stay put and hope someone at EU parliament notices you?
2. I like Fedora, in fact it’s one of my two distros of choice. That said - considering the point of this is to make EU independent when it comes to OS - why Fedora? It’s from Red Hat, which belongs to IBM - a big tech american company. In theory we could fork Fedora and make our own developments on this new fork, but why when readily available options already exist? Like Opensuse, Ubuntu* or even Debian.
3. The name… Look, I know it’s superficial but it matters more than we think, because optics are important. Think of every major app or OS in the world. How many of them are named after their country or union? Imagine if Windows was called “United States of America OS”. It’s cringe. Why not use names closely related to EU instead? Like Elysium OS, from Ode to Joy anthem, would sound a lot better and would make the project look more serious

*I know Ubuntu is from UK, but it would be better than an american based distro

Edit: just checked their FAQ page, they touch on my point 1 (although not as much I would like) and 2.
https://eu-os.eu/faq#eu-project

Ok, but why Fedora (main maintainer is Red Hat which is American and has ties to IBM) and not OpenSUSE (German). Unless most of their devs are Fedora users ..

OpenSuse exists. Boom, PoC done.

It makes no sense though? The most important piece workers in the public sector barely use the OS, and uses Microsoft Office, some form of Knowledge base and some databases. Attacking Windows first leads to nowhere and to me reeks of a opportunistic rug pull to happen.

I was about to say just that. Why fedora?

Yeah but OpenMandriva also exists and it's French.

And that's solved with standards and public sourcing procedures, not with replacing a monopoly with another.

And it would be good if he would heed that feedback and rely on OpenMandriva or OpenSuse as a base and not Fedora (even though I really love their atomic desktops.)

Forgive me, I wasn't aware that Mandrake/Mandriva still exist.

He elaborates on this topic in this talk. Slides of the presentation can be found here

Does he though? He states that having a governing body behind a chosen distro would be key. NEITHER FEDORA or OpenSuse have it and have a foundation behind it; YET he chose Fedora just because Fedora can utilise OSTree? Isn't the US backing a way more crucial point than having that tech?

based on bootable container technology

As a former OS security guy and before that an os-build guy, absolutely fuck that.

Containers are allegedly neat. But they're definitely adding a LOT of risk that few are even talking about let alone mitigating.

Fuck no. Good luck, guys, but if I need fedora I know where and how to get it.

This project is a failure just by looking at the concept.

From a design point of view, this is pure garbage.

This is still just one dude that has his own distro and there is exactly nothing more to it.

It's not, actually.

Yes, it’s activism in the right direction though.

Yes, people use applications, not operating systems.