Petition Summary: The petitioner calls for the European Union to actively develop and implement a Linux-based operating system, termed ‘EU-Linux’, across public administrations in all EU Member States. This initiative aims to reduce dependency on Microsoft products, ensuring compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and promoting transparency, sustainability, and digital sovereignty within the EU. The petitioner emphasizes the importance of using open-source alternatives to Microsoft 365, such as LibreOffice and Nextcloud, and suggests the adoption of the E/OS mobile operating system for government devices. The petitioner also highlights the potential for job creation in the IT sector through this initiative.
I imagine this would work out to be something similar to redhat enterprise linux, but with the EU funding it’s development instead of the US
I’ve said this a million times, but it’s definitely about time we stop spending taxes on a rogue entity across the ocean who definitely does not have our best interests in mind. I’m not convinced it’s even legal and I don’t understand why the legal prospects have never been brought up about this fucking situation. R&D money should not go to a foreign corporation. In addition, I (and pretty much everyone else on the planet) already paid for microsofts products and services so my government can use it (against my will), so why the fuck do they get away with setting a public price at all? It should legally be free or the governments shouldn’t need to pay for it in the first place, and it should legally be open source because it’s publicly funded. There are just so many problems with the entire idea of our government using Windows, Office, and their services.
Linux is still mostly US-dependent as a project.
Fucking up microsoft is always good
Especially in light of Microsoft CoPilot. You do not want obvious spyware on any computer.
Focus instead on enforcing standards’ compliance so i can open a
.docxwith any program and be usable anywhere.Then focus on enforcing FOSS software in public services but don’t bother with a “european linux distro”, that’s just a waste of resources. There are already a great deal of distros around. Considering geopolitics i’d go with SuSe or some other EU-based distro.
OOXML is Microsoft’s proprietary format it itself doesn’t implement consistently.
Either you meant OpenDocument or you meant that you want a magic wand.
Focus instead on enforcing standards’ compliance so i can open a
.docxwith any program and be usable anywhere.That’s an impossible task. Not even Microsoft manages that. Do not want to count how often i used libreOffice to repair or convert an older MSOffice file so it can be opend with modern Versions of MSOffice.
Once there was a 500MB Excel Sheet with lime 500-1000 used Cells, opened and saved it to.a xlsx file using libreOffice and reduced it to a few MB while still being fully functional.
@ShortN0te @0x0 I mean the real problem here is that MS office is a mess but somehow still standardized, so “enforcing standards” would be as easy as showing MS the middle finger and using libre office. They’d save a lot of money and time, it’s a clear win-win scenario imho
Open standards are the first step of a functional transition to an open government. From there Open Source Software can compete against commercial software, once the ppl see that the FOSS offers the same features then the proprietary paid software they can easily switch to it. With open standards they only need to train the users, no data to migrate etc.
Focus instead on enforcing standards’ compliance
For sure, but ¿por qué no los dos?
Completely agree with your other prioritisations.
Just use Debian, it has old root, stable, still being developed, it’s the base of various others distro that “enhance” it (sometimes badly).
Debian.
I’m using MX Linus AHS, based on Debian, BTW.
They could call it Eunux!
Oh…
As long as the EU doesn’t reinvent the wheel, why not? I mean if they are going to fork Linux and rewrite a EU-based linux OS, this would further divide the community and make issues and security a lot more wacky… Not sure this is a good idea.
Pretty sure they’re talking about making a distro, not forking the Linux kernel. I don’t see any reason why they would need to fork it anyway.
Exists already; OpenDesk
This is dumb. Hand over development to bureaucrats? create a set of guidelines and requirements, and allow distros to be certified, and fund development of distros that are being used.
I don’t know how it works with a frequently updating OS. In my mind beaurocrats can become asses about certifying one exact version they inspected and then making users afraid that open source community can inject the next version with viruses and they can’t be sure it’s okay too. Ah, and making each certification a paid service and somehow fucking it up.
In Russia there are like two projects of local Linux with custom wine that you can buy just like other software, certified by FSB for sensitive business (I believe them being the first pieces of software to get it except specific cryptographic stuff), but I feel the reason it’s getting adopted and certified is because there are some nepotism and illegal connections with money not really changing pockets.
It would make so much more sense to fund existing Linux development than making a new distro, tbh.
If the EU changed to Linux systems and donated the same amount back to open source development as they currently pay for Microsoft licenses, that would make a hell of a difference.
just an idea, it could be based on #NixOS , if I remember well the project was partially funded by European Research or Opensource funds.
Please correct me if I am wrong on the fundings, I say this from distant memory.
EDIT: it was just an idea, as it is not the most user-friendly distro out there…
Or they could use a distro that’s already been created by a European vendor, maybe even create a competitive tender. There’s no point in creating a new distro, add a new repository if you must.
the eu is a pet the US keeps close. this will never happen.
If only the GAFAMS could stop getting money from taxpayers! It would be a big start and then it would just be the individuals who would decide to support by buying their products or not.
If they really expect the average white collar worker to learn Linux they probably should touch some grass
There is no learning curve. Where have you been over the past 7 or 8 years?
I will reiterate and ask you to touch grass
I work in a public administration. And 90% of our work is done on webapps anyway. There will be no difference if the os is windows or linux.
Honestly, in a managed environment, there’s not really much learning to do. All the hard part of learning Linux is dealing with system issues, or when shit breaks. In corporate land, you’ve got IT staff for that.
The biggest hurdle would be learning libre office, but considering the average white collar level of mastery of MS office is pretty poor, the basics really aren’t that different in LO.
Exactly, for the pencil pushers it’s going to be a transition from one desktop and office suite to another. Hardly “learning Linux”.
I see more of a challenge on sys admins and department IT support who may have gotten comfy giving mostly Microsoft product support.
I see it generating less work for the helpdesk than Windows currently does. Linux can hardly brick itself without root while Windows can and has a lot of bloat and problems occuring on random on identical PCs. It also works fine on HDD and with less than 8GB of DDR3 RAM, so older hardware won’t become garbage that quick. And since users aren’t yet familiar with any Linux, there is a 5 year lag between deployment and when average users would start to dig in settings and customization parameters fixing\breaking things themselves like they do on their home machines.
It’s investing in your own working future.
