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EU OS for the Public Sector
- net01 1y agopublic sector needs to be using self hosted FOSS services and infrastructure. a good exaple is the french gendamerie (police) they are using there own OS GendBuntu > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu a flavor of ubuntu made for taking depositions etc. all while saving 50 million euros since the start of the prgram and switching 100.000 desktops to it case study: https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/sites/default/files/document/2012-02/IDABC.OSOR.casestudy.Gendarmerie.10.pdf https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/sites/default/file...
- SwiftyBug 1y agoIt really pisses me off when some kind of public service demands documents in the format docx or expects one such document to be filled and uploaded. They can't truly assume that every single citizen must have a license of Microsoft Office.
- philipwhiuk 1y agodocx is supported by OpenOffice/StarOffice/FreeOffice/whatever it's called this month.
- messe 1y agoCome on, it's just LibreOffice. OpenOffice/StarOffice have been more or less discontinued for the last decade. FreeOffice, I've never even heard of. There's no need to be so damn obtuse.
- SwiftyBug 1y agoTechnically, yes. But there's always something that doesn't render well.
- pelagicAustral 1y agoThere are a quite a few issues in the implementation to be honest. Almost at no point I was working with DOCX on LibreOffice and I could tell the document was being served the way it was originally intended to be served.
- hagbard_c 1y agoIt has been called LibreOffice [1] since the fork from OpenOffice [2] which in turn was developed from StarOffice [3]. The fork and name change from OpenOffice to LibreOffice was due to the former coming under the control of Oracle, a company known for its militancy with regard to licence enforcement. The experience with the way Oracle stewards the Java brand and technology shows they do know how to handle free software so it may have been unnecessary to fork the project but that aside, two name changes since the inception of StarOffice in 1985, one of which on the boundary of the closed-source office suite going open source, the other on a takeover by a known licence warrior is not bad and not too hard to follow. LibreOffice, remember? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarOffice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarOffice
- eastbound 1y agoSymmetrically, every administration needs a form system and it annoys me that the French tax office didn’t open-source theirs, because it is decently good (Cerfa).
- MockingHawk 1y agoThere actually is an open-source form system already: Démarches Simplifiées https://github.com/demarches-simplifiees/demarches-simplifiees.fr https://github.com/demarches-simplifiees/demarches-simplifie.... It's maintained by the French government and used by hundreds of administrations. Totally agree that Cerfa would benefit from being open too
- net01 1y ago.ODF is supposed to be the default
- graemep 1y agoNot in the EU as a whole. Its down to states. It has various levels of adoption in individual European countries and regions (in the EU and beyond) with a number (such as the UK) making it the standard for document exchange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument_adoption#Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument_adoption#Europe
- carlosjobim 1y ago[flagged]
- kamma4434 1y ago“Welcome to Microsoft XYZ. This is not a Microsoft product but it should be”
- owenthejumper 1y agoThe name is misleading since it's not a EU led project, they mention it 'should be'. I expect many more projects like this popping up, due to the current geopolitical environment
- singularity2001 1y agoIs EU copyrighted?
- AStonesThrow 1y ago"EU" is below the threshold of originality; it is not possible to "copyright" two letters, especially without any font or design associated with them. Perhaps you are instead thinking of trademark protection? Trademark protection, of course, protects trademarks for particular specified industries and is scoped to nations where the holder does business/exists/has jurisdiction. It's unlikely this will help, but it's 100% certain that copyright ain't gonna apply.
- fermigier 1y ago1) You are confusing copyright and trade marks. 2) Is "American" (or "Chinese", etc.) trademarked?
- niam 1y agoIt's a project whose intended audience is the EU, with (hopeful) eventual EU adoption. It seems not worse than e.g an American activist labeling their initiative "The American ________ Project". It's perhaps misleading here because HN's (otherwise good) rules to prevent sensationalism in titles disallows the poster to contextualize a post, except in a comment.
- fermigier 1y agoThe project is led by EU citizens. Do you want a stamp from the European Commission to call it "trully European"? (If so, I would object).
- sarreph 1y agoWhy didn’t they name it os.eu?
- net01 1y agothe price of that domain would be in the $50-100k alone
- singularity2001 1y agoeu-os.eu ≈ US.eu
- nathias 1y agoafter 30 years of MS corruption in all public sectors, I hope this changes things
- suddenlybananas 1y agoWhy base it on Fedora if Red Hat is American?
- anthk 1y agoOpenBSD it's Canadian and it suits everyone else.
- evanjrowley 1y agoRight? I'd expect it to be from SUSE.
- Tepix 1y agoIt‘s a PoC demonstrating bootc (bootable containers). Fedora is furthest along at the moment.
- yreg 1y agoThey say the distro doesn't matter to them that much: > The choice of Fedora-based Linux distributions or the desktop environment KDE is not a core concern as it does not impact much how admins manage users and their data, software and devices. > Nevertheless, EU OS cannot avoid to pick one base Linux distribution to start with.
- drexlspivey 1y agoThe server hosting the image will make for a juicy target for foreign adversaries
- tempodox 1y agoAs is always the case.
- akoboldfrying 1y agoProbably about as juicy as the servers MS uses to build Windows.
- M95D 1y agoI'm opposed to any common solution. It invites automated zero-day exploits that would DoS everything, everywhere, at the same time.
- lousken 1y agoShould be Debian, not Fedora
- rwmj 1y agoSUSE would make more sense, being that the company that develops it is based in Germany.
- theK 1y agoI don't disagree. The EU needs to commit to running FOSS Desktop OSes. But I am concerned a "OS for the EU" Initiative will end up like all EU IT projects, that being smothered by red tape and (political) comitee stewardship. I think the EU Public sector has too much variance in it to be safely serviced by just one distro. Just thinking on the hifdes of legacy infrastructure that needs to be kept integrated (storage, auth, etc). I think a better approach would be to have a programme in the EU to allow local administration and PS agencies to establish their own FOSS desktop solutions and base information exchange on truly open standards would go a long way. Couple that with an incentive to utilize small shops for the execution instead of corporations and we might have a chance to emerge from the bug pile of mud that is current Public Sector IT before anybody else in the world.
- amarcheschi 1y agoHaving an os that could run to substitute much of the "regular" desktops used by public sectors in eu would be quite nice, without going as far as substituting old servers with windows 2012
- theK 1y agoFrom what I can remember from the "Munich Linux" days, the biggest two hurdles where that 1. all processes had proprietary data formats (Office, exchange and some Adobe stuff) as a de facto standard and it was hard fo move suppliers to open ones and 2. That even mundane Public Sector PCs needed to interface with weird/old/arcane storage or authentication protocols. So while on the surface that Desktop is something that should work with oob Linux parts it ends up being much more involved once you try it.
- gizmo 1y agoThis is all sizzle no steak. Marketing without substance, frankly. A proof-of-concept doesn't provide any value. For Linux to gain further adoption a gargantuan effort is needed to get things from 90% done (or 90% working) to fully working. Any Linux distribution is already suitable for government use. Manjaro, Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian. They're all fine distros. The only remaining problem is quality. Things don't work or suddenly stop working for no apparent reason. For government use that's a deal-breaker. It's also a deal-breaker for gamers. Which is why SteamOS has been relentlessly fixing reliability issues. So if I had to bet on a linux distro going mainstream, it would be that one.
- ta1243 1y agoDo you work in modern enterprise fleet management? Linux is fine for an individual - I've used it for over 25 years no problem. I have no idea if modern desktop configuration management and centralised identity like mdm/intune/sccm/ad even exist, let alone how well they work in the real world Your mention of SteamOS suggests that you don't understand the considerations governments and enterprises have in fleet management, but maybe I'm misunderstanding your statement.
- fsflover 1y ago> Things don't work or suddenly stop working for no apparent reason. What are you talking about exactly? It's not my experience.
- popcorncowboy 1y agoYou are clearly not a front-end developer
- fsflover 1y agoThis is just a shallow dismissal, which is against the HN guidelines.
- popcorncowboy 1y ago
- cedws 1y agoFinally, a competitor to Red Star OS.
- Pooge 1y agoWhy not openSUSE? ffs
- radicalbyte 1y agoWhat we need at EU is a full build chain, infra and resourcing for one of the top-tier Linux distributions. Given the nature of Linux that's no easy thing but we're well placed to deliver on it. And I'd argue that it'll be cheaper to fund all of that as part of a generational (20 year) transition away from Microsoft for all key and 90% of non-key governmental systems.
- yreg 1y agoFAQ: > Is EU OS another Linux distribution that I can try out? > EU OS is not another Linux distribution. EU OS is a community-led Proof-of-Concept, which employs existing Linux distributions. The challenge of the proof is not that an individual can use Linux on their own computer. Instead, the challenge is to proof [prove] that an admin team can manage users and their data, software and devices with or without Active Directory and without Microsoft Windows within a migration period of rather 2 years than 20 years.
- Frieren 1y ago> Instead, the challenge is to proof [prove] that an admin team can manage users and their data, software and devices with or without Active Directory and without Microsoft Windows within a migration period of rather 2 years than 20 years. Get rid of consultancy companies and do the change in house. In my experience, consultancy companies solution for everything is to integrate complex solutions (Microsoft, Oracle, ...) an charge as much as possible per hour. They have all the big-tech certifications possible, and that is what they want to implement. It is a the fox guarding the hen situtation.
- AndyMcConachie 1y agoThe Dutch government literally put out an RFP for 'Microsoft Outlook licenses'. Not mail clients, not email services, but a specific company's product. In an RFP.
- dfrth 1y agoThey shouldn’t have any specific Linux distro mentioned on their frontpage. It’s confusing and might imply they they prefer one over the other. I’m also confused why they don’t allow non-Linux viable OS alternatives. Some may be better for some uses.
- pbronez 1y agoI guess it makes sense to leave the door open, but what OS do you think they should consider? the mainline options basically: Windows: status quo, dominant on desktop Linux: investing, dominant on servers MacOS: American, hates enterprises ChromeOS: American, limited, uses Linux kernel. The long tail alternative options include: FreeBSD/OpenBSD: ditches the Linux kernel but supports much of the Linux software ecosystem ReactOS: open source windows clone Haiku: beta, not targeting enterprises Redox: micro kernel OS written in rust, not ready for production Seems like the *BSD family is the most viable of these, at least in the short term. Redox could provide a second-mover advantage with fundamental security upgrades.
- notorandit 1y agoThe idea is indeed interesting (minus the email client and a few more bits imho). But the risk is known: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/ s/standard/distro/g
- fsflover 1y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44223208 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44223208
- pjmlp 1y agoWhile I applaud the effort, this always fails on the human factor, and hardware support. I used to tell about some library efforts in Germany regarding the use of a SuSE based distro for their infrastructure, to be used by folks at the library. Turns out that one of the things that got recently replaced, when new computers got in, was exactly that. Now they run selected Windows apps in kiosk mode, because that was what their users used to complain about not being able to access at the library.
- exceptione 1y agoI think you are too pessimistic. Imho, it failed on the organizational factor. The lobbying from MS was intense, and abandoning MS was oddly forward looking then. I suspect things have changed and there is more impetus plus buy-in in the organizational and social context. ---------- The only upside of Windows is Office, which has better ergonomics than Libre Office. This is a solvable problem. - In the short term, you can launch windows apps as RemoteApp in a hidden vm, and the application feels like a native Linux application in your window manager. - In the longer term, you can pay 50 engineers to fix LibreOffice, and you still save money.
- pjmlp 1y agoI am not speaking about Munich, rather some northern states.
- exceptione 1y agoAh, my bad. You are talking about a particular library?
- pjmlp 1y agoAt least two, but since this is Internet I will leave the location as northern states.
- hello_computer 1y ago[flagged]
- anonzzzies 1y agothis is not an EU driven initiative, but further I agree.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- pelagicAustral 1y agoThe problem, historically, has been the dependency on Microsoft Office, which is a must for a lot of public sector offices and services. Maybe this way around can work, being that Microsoft have make a push to turn most of Office into web apps, they even nag you to switch to "New Outlook" which is a web browser with Outlook running inside.
- nonelog 1y agoFor it to be truly compatible with the EU, it would need to come with backdoors hardcoded.
- dryjtdrtj 1y agoWhy not CBL Mariner? I bet ms can sell support for this to corrupt politicians as usual. Done deal.
- aplanas 1y agoWhat I do not understand is why not to work with the openSUSE community, or fork from them. But instead use a USA based distro like Fedora. openSUSE has all their tooling based in EU ground. For example, OBS that is the build service, has the machines around Germany or Prague. A big bulk of the community is EU based, (with very relevant contributors from many other places), and SUSE, the company that is helping (via infra and some packages) is from Germany. I do not known if sovereignty makes sense in the open source world, as at the end is a joint effort of multiple developers from many (and some times confronted) places, but if it does make sense then I would value more those other criteria.
- kombine 1y agoI agree. I use both and have a slight preference towards Fedora these days, but nevertheless I believe that the foundation for the EU OS should be a European distro. Practically there is very little difference between OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and Fedora.
- ffsm8 1y agonowadays, it's board is 3/5 American too As of February 2025, the Board has the following members: Dr. Gerald Pfeifer (Austria), Chair Ish Sookun (Mauritius) Jeff Mahoney (United States) Rachel Schrader (United States) Shawn W Dunn (United States) Simon Lees (Australia
- cess11 1y agoEspecially weird since the dude behind it is professionally situated in data protection policy work. Going with effing IBM is a really weird thing to do for his "Proof-of-Concept". Debian for its robustness or openSUSE for being distinctly european would have been much more inspiring. https://blog.riemann.cc/resume/ https://blog.riemann.cc/resume/
- philistine 1y agoAnd there's no clear value-add here. I am particularly adamant that Linux needs to move towards reproducibility yesterday, since the ability to inject spyware in Linux is first and foremost a process risk.
- benrutter 1y agoFirst line of "What is EU OS": > EU OS is not a project of the European Union, but it should be. Just flagging this because a lot of comment here and anywhere else EU OS gets discussed, end up assuming this is affiliated with the EU in some way. It's not affiliated in any way, so whatever you feel about this project, and the EU as a political institution, you probably shouldn't infer anything about one based on the other.
- lofaszvanitt 1y agoit's a trojan horse
- fermigier 1y agoThe "EU" is not a political institution. It is a "a supranational political and economic union of 27 member states that are located primarily in Europe.". The (main) political institutions of the EU are: - the European Parliament, - the European Council (of heads of state or government), - the Council of the European Union (of member state ministers, a council for each area of responsibility), - the European Commission, - the Court of Justice of the European Union, - the European Central Bank and - the European Court of Auditors.
- benrutter 1y agoThanks for clarifying, I guess I'd meant it, as in, "political thingy" rather than trying to designate some specific classification.
- amelius 1y agoI don't think the EU needs an OS. What it needs from a strategic standpoint are a webbrowser and clones of the various US based services (search, AI, office/productivity). This is important because of EU's strong stance on privacy. And to protect against takedowns like what happened to the chief prosecutor of the ICC (Trump told Microsoft to block their account).
- exceptione 1y agoThe EU needs a desktop OS, without being vulnerable to adversaries. The server side of Linux is pretty well taken care for by a wide range of commercial and personal contributors, but the desktop part rests on a much smaller foundation imho. They don't build from nothing. KDE is a fantastic Desktop Environment, that would be an upgrade in itself over Windows. But if you have like millions of public servants (police, courts, governments, etc), you want to be sure that what they use meet your requirements. I think this should have been done earlier, but late is better than never.
- bilekas 1y agoI'm sorry but I don't know why there is such a big push for this.. Listed on the https://eu-os.eu/goals#motivation https://eu-os.eu/goals#motivation > synergy effects lead to tax savings, because there is no per-seat license cost How much are we talking ? Also there are good reasons that large organisations use enterprise software such as (I think) redHat in this case.. It's dedicated support mainly and security. Maybe I'm being too cynical, I love open source and absolutely a proponent of its benefits, however I do know when sometimes it's not the right fit. > independence in scheduling software migrations and potential hardware upgrades Independence and much higher overhead to ensure everything goes smoothly. > Edit : It's seems its Windows and not RedHat [0] [0] https://gitlab.com/eu-os/eu-os.gitlab.io/-/issues/10#note_2411438061 https://gitlab.com/eu-os/eu-os.gitlab.io/-/issues/10#note_24...
- AdamN 1y agoBig +1. Company margins are real but they're not orders of magnitude. If you're spending $100MM/year on a corporate product, trying to spend less than let's say $80MM/year simply means that you're not serious about the migration. I wish they would say, "we will take all this money and invest it into making the new OSS product better for our internal customers (government office workers). There will be no savings for now, we will just get more sovereignty and control for about the same spend.
- incomingpain 1y agohttps://www.distrowiz.com/debianedu/ https://www.distrowiz.com/debianedu/ from norway? or opensuse from germany. They are still beholden to redhat in the usa? Makes sense to me.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- rpgbr 1y agoLet's replace a country-based OS with a region-named OS. Sounds dumb, tbh.
- philonoist 1y agoFrom The FAQS - https://eu-os.eu/faq https://eu-os.eu/faq Why does EU OS propose to rely on Fedora-based Linux distributions? First of all, EU OS is not a product (yet), but only a Proof-of-Concept. The choice of Fedora-based Linux distributions or the desktop environment KDE is not a core concern as it does not impact much how admins manage users and their data, software and devices. Nevertheless, EU OS cannot avoid to pick one base Linux distribution to start with. The founding project member Robert has previously used: opensuse at home from about 2007 to 2024 (in 2007 distributed on 8 DVDs or so) debian at the university department from 2007 to 2013 scientific linux at some research department from 2009 to 2011 opensuse Kalpa (in alpha) at home in 2024 Fedora Kinoite (stable) at home since 2024 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 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 https://gitlab.com/eu-os.
- scdnc 1y agoLike several others have said, this is probably gonna turn out like all the past EU IT projects.
- pabs3 1y agoIt would be better to use and contribute to an existing distro than fork a new one. Debian is mostly European these days.
- rcarmo 1y agoThey had to choose KDE, I guess, because it is the most high-complexity desktop environment…
- notorandit 1y agoBeware: the US has a grip on the FSF and Linux Foundation.