EU OS: A Fedora-based distro 'for the public sector'
(eu-os.gitlab.io)
from SpiceDealer@lemmy.dbzer0.com to linux@lemmy.ml on 19 Mar 16:23
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/40338907
from SpiceDealer@lemmy.dbzer0.com to linux@lemmy.ml on 19 Mar 16:23
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/40338907
It’s only a proof of concept at the moment and I don’t know if it will see mass adoption but it’s a step in the right direction to ending reliance on US-based Big Tech.
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Is this made by European union I wonder
From the subheading on the ReadMe.
So it’s made by the EU in the sense that the maintainers are likely citizens of the EU, I guess.
Depending on who the group is … it is good to first do a thorough check on who the group is … it can just as likely be a group of scam artists that are riding on some nationalism band wagon happening around the world these days.
True
They could, and if I was an EU government entity, I would do my homework on what they were offering, even if they were acting 100% in good faith.
However, helping governments get away from the clutches of the likes of Apple and Microsoft seems like a noble goal, and if this idea spurs that change regardless of the adoption of this distro, I think it will have been a net positive.
Government is only in the clutches of MS because MS bribes officials to maintain their cancerous software as a staple everywhere in Europe… Hungary is one of a few quite famous cases of bribery.
There’s no depth to my loathing of MS and its illegal and anti-competitive practices.
It’s going to have to start at the local level. They’re usually the ones that have less budget and less influence to sell, anyway.
If they are honest about what they are suggesting … the first step would be to be explicitly clear about who THEY are and WHO they represent.
I really don’t care that much about the technical side of things because I’m not that technically knowledgeable. However, I am more apt to trust the judgment or recommendations of prominent people in the industry (that are not corporately attached or controlled) … I would also trust public institutions or journalists or academics with a track record of social advocacy and wanting to represent people instead of corporations or businesses. I would also trust politicians or political advocates that mostly represent people and public institutions.
I really don’t put my faith in any one person no matter who they claim to be to just say they want to build something meaningful and give me no information on their background, who they worked for, who they represent or what kind of people or organizations they associate with. There have been far too many ‘good natured’ technocrats and technology people from the past decade or two who claim to say that they want to change the world for the better and then end up wanting to burn it all down for a profit.
Sounds like you should run for office.
Alr thanks
Even after that, be reminded that this current mania in the EU has nothing to with being anti-american or wanting to dump American products or services themselves. The people who are most into this are anti-Trump, not anti-american or fundamentally against Europe being subordinate to the US. Most of them are probably secretly wanting the world to return to 2024 and EU being US junior partner of “the west” and happily eating MacDonalds and using microsoft services. It’s not an European sovereigist movement at it’s core and therefore it has not staying power after Trump or Maga.
It might be that these people are just Foss enthusiasts with pure intentions wanting to promote the cause by riding the wave. However if the wave is just a meme conjured because of Trump then this project or things like it have no staying power or future even if it really being an EU project or being adopted tomorrow.
There has been a will towards more independence for a long time. Trump was just an extra push (and I’m still not convinced even that will be enough… all these initiatives sound good, but past experience has made me skeptical they will really amount to anything substantial).
But I don’t see it necessarily as anti-american. It’s more like we do need to cultivate local products and services more. Europe has for a while been falling behind in a lot of areas, combined with an aging population and an energy crisis, we really need to try and develop internally if we want to keep ourselves afloat, otherwise I’m not sure we can maintain a stable situation.
Nah, just going along with Ukraine war and letting it get to and pushing to the point of war is a testament that Washington and Brussels are a foreign policy monolith. That finally sold it for me. EU is ready to sacrifice it’s interests to drive their perceived transatlantic interests that the two political classes mostly share. EU political elite and media mainly hate Trump because he showed that EU capitals and Brussels are bunch of losers with no real political agency, who got conned into supporting and prolonging this unwinnable war to the hilt and are now being left to hold the bag.
First concrete move towards EU independence would be to stop this war and normalize with Russia, but in this fucked up world Trump wants both and EU wants neither. That is the fucked up world we live in. EU wants further conflict on it’s continent and US doesn’t want a war in Europe.
I do personally want European independence, but I see that EU in it’s current state is not a force for it, nor is it good for Europeans.
I largely agree, that’s why I was saying that I’m skeptical that all this will amount to anything substantial.
The will for independence exists in the EU, the problem is that the politicians don’t have the balls for it and they would rather push to maintain the status Quo in all the things that matter. Instead they focus on small things that appear good on paper but don’t really amount to anything. See for example the DMA and all it’s promises of forcing big corporations to bend the knee and stopping monopolies… even when a policy like that is written, it is hardly ever properly enforced. Has any company gotten any serious trouble for not implementing GDPR properly since it was introduced?
If something is free, you’re the product.
Generally true when we’re talking about capitalism.
That’s not necessarily true for FOSS projects, however, since money making isn’t necessarily their goal. Linus Torvalds doesn’t force you to watch an ad or sell off contributors’ data to get the privilege of using the Linux kernel, for example. Bazzite doesn’t sell IP addresses of people who download their distro to data aggregators.
However, you should do your homework and check who is in charge of projects like these and note what changes they’re bringing.
No. It’s one dude.
Ah okay
.
EUbuntu?
Fedora based actually
EUdora, since I don’t think the mail client is still under development
Family Feudora
They should call it EUROS.
European Union Redstar Operating System?
<img alt="" src="https://i.imgur.com/WXMf2JT.png">
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.
I read the sovereign to mean something like an unified platform for EU institutions, that you can dev and train people on.
A very good point.
Shame that Brexit happened, otherwise they could go with Canonical’s Ubuntu
I’m not sure if this is satire, because if yes, well played, if not, Fuck That.
Why restrict it to EU and not Europe?
Or better still, somehow make it universal and not subject to the whims of one political nutbar.
But it’s a good starting point. Better than inventing everything from the scratch.
I didn’t know red hat was working for the US government. Can you tell me in what way?
web.archive.org/…/red-Hats-decade-of-collaboratio…
Thanks I’m gonna have a deeper look into this then😇
tldr: www.redhat.com/en/solutions/public-sector/dod
see also: web.archive.org/…/israeli-defense-forces-case-stu…
Various documents in (what wikipedia now calls) the “2010s global surveillance disclosures” showed that many components of NSA (and other Five Eyes partners) infrastructure is run on RedHat Enterprise Linux.
According to a 2008 study by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, private contractors make up 29% of the workforce in the United States Intelligence Community and cost the equivalent of 49% of their personnel budgets. RedHat is part of that industry.
It’s often illuminating to search a company’s job listings for words like “clearance”. There are currently only eight listings for that query at RedHat but sometimes they have many more. Here (archive) is a current one. Here is another one archived last year.
Here is the text, in case the archive site loses it
Consulting Architect, TS/SCI + Polygraph Clearance Required (Fort Meade) remote type Remote locations Remote US MD time type Full time posted on Posted 30+ Days Ago job requisition id R-038935 About The Job Red Hat’s Public Sector Consulting team is looking for a Consulting Architect with a solid background in Linux, container platforms, IT Automation, virtualization technologies and an active TS/SCI + Polygraph security clearance to join us remotely in Maryland. In this role, you will help Intelligence Community customers design and operate core infrastructure that can scale to the demands of the modern digital marketplace. You’ll work with customers in small teams to build, test, and iterate over innovative application prototypes attached to real business value. You’ll use a variety of modern application development practices, along with emerging technologies from open source communities to get it done. As a Consulting Architect, you will help us become the defining technology company of the 21st century built on open source principles. You’ll also help us to fulfill our vision by guiding the strategic success of our customers using Red Hat’s solutions by building the industry’s best team of open source developers and partnering with our customers to build the premium software systems of tomorrow. This position requires frequent on-site work at Fort Meade and an active TS/SCI + Polygraph security clearance. What You Will Do * Deliver successful discovery, analysis, and design workshops for teams of technical and non-technical backgrounds that shape the customer use cases and architecture design decisions * Scope delivery projects and guide customers through successful pilot and production deployments * Oversee the design, creation, and delivery of content that enables the broader Red Hat teams to sell (presales), service (consulting), and support our cloud solutions at scale * Work closely with product business, product engineering, consulting, technical support, and sales teams to ensure excellent customer experience with Red Hat’s offerings * Contribute to the development of repeatable methodologies and tools designed to scale Red Hat’s services capabilities, promote repeatable customer engagements, and lower delivery risk * Demonstrate expertise in cloud and DevOps communities by producing outstanding whitepapers and webinars, code contributions to relevant projects, and speeches at industry-leading conferences * Work with customers on the writing of business justifications if needed * Work with the open source community to engineer labs-based software solutions designed to further accelerate our customers’ success at Labs * Become a trusted adviser to our customers, helping them achieve business success in an ever-changing technology landscape What You Will Bring * Active Top Secret w/ SCI security clearance + Polygraph * Broad knowledge of Red Hat OpenShift, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux * Broad and deep technical experience with virtualization, container, and cloud technologies * Solid Linux system administration skills; Red Hat Certi
<img alt="screenshot of RedHat PDF saying: Compress the kill cycle with Red Hat Device Edge. Deploy on any aircraft, pod, sensor, or C2 node Ability to comply with cybersecurity requirements Executive summary The U.S. Air Force and its mission partners are fielding new mission capabilities on airframes and command-and-control (C2) nodes to compress the kill chain. The find, fix, track, target, engage, assess (F2T2EA) process requires ubiquitous access to data at the strategic, operational and tactical levels. Red Hat® Device Edge embeds captured, analyzed, and federated data sets in a manner that positions the warfighter to use artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) to increase the accuracy of airborne targeting and mission-guidance systems. Challenges of edge computing on aircraft and other tactical C2 edge nodes include delivering consistent capabilities on diverse hardware (new and old, connected and disconnected), meeting airworthiness security requirements, and efficiently sustaining software at scale. The Air Force can meet these requirements with Red Hat Device Edge, the edge-optimized software platform that is hardware agnostic. Opportunity: Use edge technology to defeat the adversary The Air Force and its partners are developing innovative capabilities on airborne and ground systems to gain battlespace advantage, including: Coalescing and stratifying data to feed AI/ML at the edge to increase the accuracy of targeting and mission-guidance systems and compresses the mean time to detect (MTTD), make sense and act across all warfighter domains. Delivering near real-time data from sensor pods directly to airmen, accelerating the sensor-to-shooter cycle. Supporting Agile Combat Employment (ACE) in the highly contested 21st-century battlespace. Sharing near real-time sensor fusion data with joint and multinational forces to increase awareness, survivability, and lethality. “With Red Hat Device Edge Lockheed Martin is leading the infusion of cutting-edge commercial technology into military capabilities that deliver advanced solutions to our customers. Unlocking these AI technologies can help national security decision makers stay ahead of adversaries, enabling a safer and more secure world.” Justin Taylor Vice President, F-22 technology, Lockheed Martin 1 1 Red Hat press release. “Lockheed Martin, Red Hat Collaborate to Advance Artificial Intelligence for Military Missions,” 25 Oct. 2022." src="https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/04d2e10f-e974-4073-98b7-7ea37f0315e3.png">
(source)
Thanks I’m gonna have a deeper look into this then😇
@SpiceDealer Sorry, what ? How can it be made in EU if it's a Fedora fork/derivative ?
Yeah, not a lot of distros they could’ve based it on, which are less rooted in the EU. 🫠
OpenSUSE is German
@Ephera OpenSUSE is first to come to mind, then probably Mageia + OpenMandriva (Mandrake derivatives).
All these EU opensource initiatives looks really good, but I fear that they may just be trying to pump taxpayer money and produce actually nothing usable.
As a Swede we claim all of linux to be finno-swedish :)
@lambipapp Legit 😆
Of all the distros to base it on, why would they choose fedora?
openSUSE is right there lol
@ScotinDub I would say because it helps corporate adhesion, but no, they have no clue it's just a POC for now eu-os.gitlab.io/goals
I mean Fedora is open source but if they really wanted a european base, they could have gone with opensuse. AFAIK opensuse is the only fully european linux distro plus they use many of the same tech that redhat/fedora does.
Ultimately I think it doesn’t matter too much since even the linux foundation is based in the US and large parts of what makes the linux desktop are maintained by non-EU companies (on top of all the major projects hosted by Github, Gitlab including most of Flathub). If its all open source, I think the risks are pretty low e.g. huawei was able to use Android despite all the restrictions.
@notanapple The more I read the docs, the more I think it doesn't matter, they are poking around an EU distro. Nothing more, for now it is a proof of concept, not entitled to produce anything production ready
And it’s based on fedora? Man, that’s great
Why Fedora? They’re basically Red Hat in a trench coat. I’d go with a EU based distro like Suse.
I was wondering the same when I came across it a few hours ago and decided to look into it, apparently it’s because it was decided to use an atomic distribution as a base and Suses is apparently not considered stable enough by them. (I can not argue the validity of these statements given either way, that’s just what I found in one of their gitlab issues . if someone wants to look at it for themselves, searching for Fedora on the issue tracker should bring it up)
Having seen SuSE destroy collaborators like OL, CNC and probably Turbo, I’m okay never even working with them as a customer. I intend to avoid them until death.
I’m very new with this and have no idea what OL, CNC and Turbo are. Could you please elaborate?
Well, companies like Valve, they are a bit more worried if the distro are community or organization driven. So, for government, perhaps that same philosophy should be considered which is not the case of Fedora or Suse. They check distros such as Arch or Debian and derivatives.
Well, I don’t know about Valve being worried about community distro.
Did something change?
I found that a weird statement too. It's literally based on a rapidly moving community distribution.
Sorry, it is very poorly worded. English isn’t my primarily language. What I intend to say is that government would benefit for picking a community distro, like Valve did, instead of a company driven one.
Based on a US distro whose versions are supported for 1 year, and “built to the requirements for the EU public sector” (because the EU public sector has one coherent set of requirements and the dev knows them, even if he doesn’t list them out).
This is most probably good-intentioned and it is admirable how the dev sprung into action, but it’s naive at best.
I thought it was naive as well, but because they based it on a mayfly distro that has really great validation and reliability but it’s gone in a fortnight.
Wither Almalinix or Cloudlinux or PCLinuxOS or Mandriva? Three of them have really solid support structures and at least one of them has amazing compatibility options with libraries for services.
There are options. A few of them could be better than fedora while fedora is still owned by redhat as redhat dies from suffocation – hell, its all just fucking ancillary bull (Ansible) they sell now, as its metastatic cancer (Systemd) eats it alive.
Scammers never let a good global crisis get in their way.
If the EU were concerned about the US jurisdiction of Linux projects it could pick:
However if they didn’t care, then they could just use Fedora or other US based distros.
I think it would be a good idea for the EU to adopt linux officially, and maybe even have it’s own distro, but I’m not sure this Fedora base makes sense. Ironically this may also be breaching EU trademarks as it’s masquerading as an official project by calling itself EU OS.
I would like the EU to make an official universal Linux distro, intended for the ordinary person to use on their PC. Bonus points if they can collaborate with Steam to make it compatible with gaming stuff. The big reason I stuck to Windows 11 is for the sake of games, but if compatibility and ease of use to customize was improved, I would be happy to switch away.
The big thing that the EU can bring to the project is contributing lots of money for making Linux suitable as a daily driver, along with mandating its usage on government machines.
i’d say if it happens it should start with focusing on:
though there is the argument that workstation and user desktop are close enough to each other that user desktop should be above server, but i’d imagine it’d be more of a “home user” than gamer situation. i could imagine some regulations around refurbishing old tech with this kind of OS too, and this would be more about low spec machines (that’d help workstations too)
If the sanctions we are talking about actually took place, Steam in EU would be fucked. Better bet in GOG. Also, Bazzite is easier to setup and use than Windows. I made the switch a year ago, I still don’t know crap about Linux. Just try it.
It already is suitable as a daily driver, I use it for work and gaming.
I already tried it about a month and a half ago. Linux is really user-unfriendly if you got games that aren’t Steam exclusive or like modding. I got lots of older games or ones meant for a Japanese locale system, and I had issues with installing DLC via Heroic Games Launcher / Lutris / or just getting Mini Galaxy to work properly.
In any case, I want Steam to work with the EU on a EU Linux, since they got lots of money, data, and influence to help develop the distro. Plus, Gabe doesn’t want his platform locked onto Windows, so you got a personal motivation for Steam to seriously cooperate with the EU. The EU can put lighter sanctions on Steam if people buy games while using EU Linux. This would help drive adoption and normalize Linux usage among normal people after a decade or so.
Yeah, I agree… modding, trainers and games outside Steam aren’t easy enough yet. On Windows I didn’t use to mod games (except for Minecraft which is easy on Linux), so that didn’t hurt. What I did lose was WeMod. My take is that using Steam is way less bad than having to use Windows.
It used to be true that Windows is better for gaming. That’s no longer the case.
Since steam deck runs on Linux, they made a compatibility layer allowing you to play windows games on Linux.
I switched to Linux a few months ago and have been able to play all my games just fine.
(also dual boot is an option)
I’d add:
Last option but better for an easy migration: linuxfx.org
Mint and Ubuntu have Debian as an upstream, don’t they?
Debian is a US legal entity, so if it was required to sanction countries, it feels that software built with it would likely be restricted.
Debian is open source though. So unless they make it closed source we can keep using it.
Making it closed source would probably kill it and a fork would take its place.
Well, all the distros being discussed are open source - it’s kind of a requirement when making a linux distro because the licences require it and you wouldn’t be able to make it closed source. (Unless there’s a huge shift in the law)
And being open source doesn’t necessarily prevent it falling under sanctions legislation. I have seen a linux distro being legally required to “take reasonable steps” to geo-block Russian access to its repos, and I’ve personally read disclaimers when installing linux that “This software is not allowed to be used in Russia”. (That distro is ‘owned’ by an organisation that was controlled by a single person, so it’s probably not comparable to Debian) We’re all technical people so we can all probably think of half a dozen ways around that, but it was still ordered by the US Government (even before the current government)
And you may be right in that it would be excempt. Debian isn’t owned by anyone, but its trademark is(Software in the Public Interest), and it feels possible that those who help distribute foss (by mirroring repos for example) may be restricted if they fall under US jurisdiction. I don’t know for certain - and unless someone here is a qualified lawyer specialising in software licences as well as how software rooted in the US relates to sanctions - we’re all probably guessing.
Three months ago any of this would have felt ridiculous - who would want to stop free software? But now? In this era of the ridiculous? I certainly feel unsure about predicting anything.
I still don’t see how the US can stop anyone from forking Debian etc.
Worst case scenario I can see is “The US implements martial law, no more trade what so ever allowed with anyone outside of the US and they put up a fire-wall to block all internet”
In that scenario we literally just pull Debian from the European mirrors, fork it and create NewDebian.
Problem solved.
Currently we heavily rely on Microsoft, Apple etc. If the US does the same thing, we’re fucked because we can’t just fork MS or Apple software.
We’re an ingenious and motivated bunch (See all the Redhat attempts to stop clones, and lots of other examples), so yes, I think we’d absolutely work around the problem if it was to happen.
And fedora is controlled by IBM. What’s your point.
Point? I was replying about Mint and Ubuntu - what has Fedora got to do with them?
How about systemd ? Aren’t all distros kinda fucked?
Fair point about systemd, or any of the other core components - I don’t know.
But I don’t think we’d be fucked - we’re ingenious and motivated and have a proven record of adapting and innovating to solve problems that stop us playing with our toys.
I’d rather they used SUSE
But is it Enterprise Grade and Web Scale? RedHat has a lot of marketing legacy behind it.
Edit: I realize I probably should have specified the /s I’m making fun of RedHat marketing.
I would think that SUSE’s supported distro is enterprise ready. I don’t have personal experience on it though. I’ve only ever used Tumbleweed once. I hope a SUSE admin can respond.
I mean, SUSE Linux Enterprise, the distro on which OpenSUSE Leap is based, has been developed by SUSE since 2000. It’s newest version, 15, is used in IBM’s Watson and HP’s Frontier supercomputers. I’d say it’s enterprise ready.
SUSE Linux Enterprise exists since 2000.
I just looked into how easy it would be to install nvidia drivers on openSUSE and it’s not as great as Fedora for comparison, that’s one of the only 2 down sides I’ve found so far. The other downside is a personal preference one, for many it’s an upside, and it would be an upside for anyone basing an entire distro on it, and that’s how there’s nothing fancy installed alongside openSUSE, it’s not bloated. No starship prompt in the terminal, no proprietary codecs etc. I like how openSUSE defaults to a lot of BTRFS subvolumes for almost each important root directory and comes preinstalled with snapper, that’s very neat. And it’s so nice to use YaST, what a treat. While Fedora does also have patterns, getting to use a graphical installer with YaST is so nice.
I’m glazing a lot for someone that doesn’t daily run it, so maybe I should just switch one of these days, haha. Maybe when my Nobara installation dies.
Yeah I have used opensuse for the past couple years (still do!) but while there is plenty to like, if I were to do a reinstall I would likely move back to Fedora.
Then again, I basically never use YaST, which I suppose is one of the main song points.
My daily driver is an nvidia laptop with opensuse, takes like one afternoon to get everything ready with barely any former Linux experience.
Just use zypper (or yast) to add the proprietary nvidia repository (or nouveau) and install your drivers. Install everything else you need through zypper (or yast or flatpak). Familiarise yourself with keybinds, set new keybinds (not needed of course but its nice to know keybinds - if you’re using KDE already they’ll probably be the same anyway). Select KDE’s dark “breeze for OpenSUSE” theme (or some other theme, but breeze for opensuse just is so polished). Configure other preferences (night light from sundown to sunrise, set up Firefox sync (if you use that), connect to onedrive or whichever cloud you’re using, … . Done. No need to wait :)
Fedora Origin: USA
No, thanks. 🙅
alternative POV: it’s entirely FOSS so there’s little control that can be exerted from its use. it’s also entirely free, so use is extracting value without providing anything in return. by its use, you’re taking resources to maintain, host, etc and providing nothing in return
similar reason to why i don’t use ecosia with an ad blocker: by blocking ads you’re using their resources without giving back and thus you’re taking resources away from the charity
This is true, but then why not base it off Guix (the GNU distro)? …I’m sure Fedora is full of binary blobs and not-so-free software.
If they needed it, they could still add extra software and blobs to Guix, sourced by the EU… and I think doing that would allow it to carve itself a niche (a version of Guix with more compatibility would be interesting for many) rather than sticking a white label on Fedora and call it something else. I don’t see a lot of value on this over just using Fedora directly, I’m not sure if it’s true that Fedora & Red Hat do not benefit from this… wouldn’t their support agents be able to just start providing support also to EU OS customers if they (both customers and support agents) want? Wouldn’t it make it more interesting for private companies working closely with the government to choose Red Hat as a partner when it comes to enterprise Linux?
I guess we’ll have to see how much they customize it, but in my experience with previous attempts, I’m expecting just a re-skin, just Fedora with different theme. At most, with some extra software preinstalled. I don’t think that’s a threat to Fedora or Red Hat, but rather an opportunity for expansion.
fedora is staunchly opposed to non-free software in their default distro … that spat a few weeks ago with OBS was related to that AFAIK
unsure about like signed blobs for “security” services but i imagine they’d be very limited, and optional
but for what benefit? no matter what’s trying to be achieved, starting with a very full-featured, robust OS that’s widely used is going to serve you very well… not just technically (less work for the same outcome), but for human reasons
there are loads of guides out there for how to fix fedora issues, few for guix… loads of RPMs that are compatible with fedora, and i can only imagine fewer packages for guix
and then if you’re talking about server OSes - and actually workstations too - managing them with tools like ansible etc… fedora is going to have off the shelf solutions
well, the actual software and configuration i’d argue aren’t the important part - owning the infrastructure is the important part… package mirrors, distribution methods (eg a website), being able to veto or replace certain packages, and the branding (or regulation) that draws people to it… being able to roll out a security patch to every installation without a 3rd party okaying it, for example
I don’t think there are many distributions that are truly free, at least not in the eyes of the FSF. Fedora is not one of them.
Yes, but that’s my point: fedora is already fully featured… the work needed is trivial, to the point that directly using an installation of fedora by itself (along with tools like ansible) wouldn’t be very different from doing he same with EU OS… at that point you don’t need a whole new distro, just Fedora and maybe some trivial scripts (which you are gonna need anyway in any large scale installation, even if you went with EU OS).
Imho, there would be more value if something actually novel was used, and new guides and howtos were created to simplify/clarify things that used to be hard. What would be a pity is to spend a lot of euros for something that is trivial to do, and that only helps filling the pockets of some corrupt politician’s friend. I mean, I’m not against a simple thing, but then I’d hope they at least showed how they will be spending the budget on some other way (marketing? …will there be actual custom software? …are they gonna maintain the entire repo themselves?).
But I was not arguing against that. And if they did promise to do that, then that would be different. The problem is precisely that I’m expecting them to NOT own most of the infrastructure and instead rely on Fedora repositories, because from experience that’s how these things usually go.
I repeat the full context of the section you quoted: “I guess we’ll have to see how much they customize it, but in my experience with previous attempts, I’m expecting just a re-skin, just Fedora with different theme”
Maybe you have a different experience with government-managed distros, but there have been some attempts at that in my (european) country that were definitely not much more than a reskinned Ubuntu (and before that, Debian) from back in the day. They used Ubuntu repositories (ie. Ubuntu infrastructure), and the only extra repo they added was not a mirror, but just hosted a few packages that were actually produced by them and were responsible for the theming, reskining and defaults. They used metapackages that depend on upstream packages to control what was part of the default desktop environment, there might have been a few more extra packages (mainly backports), but very few and always lagging behind alternative backport repos. Uninstall the metapackage (which you might do if you wanna remove some of the preinstalled things) and it literally was Ubuntu straight from Ubuntu official repos. There was no filtering, no veto, no replacing, no mirroring.
Also, just to keep things grounded in the initial point: do you really think that Fedora / Red Hat would not benefit at all from it?
The spat with the OBS devs was due to a fedora package maintainer refusing to package OBS with an older library for their own Fedora Flatpak repo, despite the newer library causing severe breakage with OBS (which is why the OBS devs held it back in the flathub release).
I think the point is, you just don’t support products from countries led by dictators. I wouldn’t use an OS from North Korea, no matter how free it was. LOL
In my case, the US is worse than North Korea, because they threaten the existence of my country (Canada) on a daily basis.
And for the EU, they have as much reason to distance themselves from Americans than I do.
There are far too many alternatives from other countries to even entertain an American distro. My opinion, anyway.
Why not use the existing Distros?
Most distros, not all, are based in, or run by, American legal entities.
Redhat, Rocky, Alma, Debian, etc - all legally American. This is a problem if the US requires sanctions against another country. All of those cannot legally supply products to Russia now, but in the future who’s to say what other countries the US will sanction? People are only now starting to realise that sanctions can be applied to software too, and many countries are entirely reliant upon US Software. (Seriously, do a quick audit - 90% of our tech company’s stack is US originated)
Alternatives: Suse (German) Ubuntu (UK, but based on Debian, so likely subject to supply chain restrictions).
Can’t we just keep going with Ubuntu and fork it the moment the US wants to do anything funny
No, because forking a distro and updating some hundred thousands of PCs is not done in a week.
Edit: and why would we go with Ubuntu…
They’ll stop receiving updates, but we don’t have to switch over in a week right?
Ubuntu is just an example {{insert any Debian based distro here}}
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As much as I love what they’re doing, tieing an OS to a specific region via name seems like the opposite of Open Source values… Then again, I suppose it could just be forked into a more generalized version
This is specifically for the public sector. The fact that it is open source make it adaptable to different scenarios.
Europe isn’t a region, it’s a brand.
Europe isn’t a brand, it’s a life/style.
See? That’s great branding.
Meanwhile www.europarl.europa.eu/…/Linux%2Bstatt%2BWindows just closed with 2474 Supporters
Well, first I hear of it.
Great sentiment I guess but I don’t see any reason to believe this will amount to anything.
I read EUDORA for a split second and got all excited that the best email client ever was getting reborn!
But this is cool too… i guess.
The idea of a “distro for EU public sector” is neat, but even the PoC has some flaws when considering technical sovereignty.
First of all, using Gitlab & Gitlab CI. Gitlab is an American company with most of its developers based in the US. Sure, you could host it by yourself but why would you do it considering Forgejo is lighter and mostly developed by developers based in the EU area?
The idea of basing it on Fedora is also somewhat confusing. Sure, it’s a good distro for derivatives, but it’s mostly developed by IBM developers. The tech sovereignty argument doesn’t hold well against Murphy’s law.
For me, it’s a perfectly fitting compromise, because Fedora is a community that is detached from RedHat and IBM, but it is also the best distribution out there.
They are pushing the envelope and have been for some time. If it weren’t for Fedora devs we wouldn’t have seen Wayland, PipeWire, Nouveau, etc be pushed to the general public. Also Fedora a libre distribution built by community. If that were ever to change they’d hemorrhage devs.
Compare that with Ubuntu. They want a vendor lock-in via Snaps (and in one point in time Mir), they’re currently replacing coreutils (copyleft) with uutils (copyright) and have what I would say is a pretty bad and convoluted GPU stack.
OpenSuSE could probably be a better alternative, if they took the Linux desktop seriously. But they play second fiddle to Fedora and have not even been close enough to push the envelope like Fedora has.
In conclusion Fedora is the best libre Linux distributions out there.
Now if Eelco Doolstra wasn’t fucking around, we could have had a super LTS NixOS - but NOOOO.
Fedora is not that detached from IBM.They dictate it’s development hence the removal of codecs. If it was a community addition why would it matter? And why would they remove the codecs. After that it was obvious fedora was not a community dustro but driven by Redhat.
You don’t have to be a corporation to be held liable for legal issues with hosting codecs. Just need to be big enough for lawyers to see you as an attractive target and in a country where codec patent issues apply. There’s a very good reason why the servers for deb-multimedia (Debian’s multimedia repo), RPM Fusion (Fedora’s multimedia repo), VLC’s site, and others are all hosted in France and do not offer US-based mirrors. France is a safe haven for foss media codecs because its law does not consider software patentable, unlike the US and even most other EU nations.
Fedora’s main repos are hosted in the US. Even if they weren’t, the ability for any normal user around the world to host and use mirrors is a very important part of an open community-friendly distro, and the existence of patented codecs in that repo would open any mirrors up to liability. Debian has the same exact issue, and both distros settled on the same solution: point users to a separate repo that is hosted in France which contains extra packages for patent-encumbered codecs.
TIL there is a country that sees reason about software patents
Aha.
My exact thoughts lol
Love this! We definitely should try to spread Linux to become more accessible and popular.
Why Fedora? Sorry, but there are so many European options, it makes no sense to build a European house on an American basement.
It’s still open source
Probably since it’s the main redhat upstream and they want the advantage of already widespread usage.
Although at that point why not OpenSUSE for the same reason you mentioned.
Suse is the first thing that came to mind
Security is a big focus for gov usage, why not base off of Debian?
Rolling release/bleeding edge means security updates roll out fast.
Regular release distros do security updates, backported if needed. Rolling release means introducing unknown security bugs until they are found and fixed. To me, the whole dilemma between regular and rolling is do I want old bugs or new bugs? But the security bugs get fixed on both.
if you’re not paying it doesn’t really matter. open source belongs to everyone; it’s a disservice to put it in the same bag as, say, a Microsoft or Apple OS.
plus how far removed is enough? are we going to scrutinize what programming languages were used and where they originated as well?
Open source is free for everyone, I think the objection is more about an american company being able to directly influence the decisions, operating under US jurisdiction, etc.
Much like when IBM bought RH and then axed CentOS?
As far as I’m concerned, open-source has no nationality, even for a public-sector project. Yes, Red Hat is American. They also don’t own Fedora.
From the very start, we’ve been built on the contributions of people from every corner of the globe, why should we care about petty geographical squabbles like this?
Yes, Red Hat is American, and whether you like it or not, this comes with legal and political dependencies. Fedora is subject to U.S. laws (e.g., Cloud Act, export controls), which poses a risk to EU digital sovereignty.
Yes, Red Hat does not own Fedora. And IBM, which owns Red Hat, also does not own Fedora. But it has significant influence and could prioritize business or political interests over EU needs.
And another question is: Why shouldn’t we use a European OS when we already have viable alternatives?
Yeah, no.
In my opinion, If sovereignty is the goal i think GTK based DE will be safer than QT based DE.
I am aware of The Free QT foundation And its relation to KDE but in a long term there is possibility of things might get complicated if there is change in policy . And even the QT trademark is not totally free. I’m not trying to start DE war, i love both KDE and GNOME.
The Qt foundation tried to get fucky once already, and KDE and some other major companies that rely on it were about ready to fork it if they persisted. Qt seemed to calm down after that.
Not a great relationship to be in though, constantly suspecting that your toolkit might do a rugpull at some point if the shareholders demand it. But I think they could pull off a fork if they ever did.
But Fedora is based on an IBM product… so that’s a swing and a miss. SuSE would be a better direction, IMO
Only after IBM purchased Redhat recently
Which was my point, yes.
Clicked his URL…
Whew, almost read crypto"currency"…
Goddammit.
–
✍︎ arscyni.cc: modernity ∝ nature.
To be fair, he said he’s passionate about peer-to-peer technology and listed Bitcoin as an example. I don’t think that makes him a crypto bro. He probably just appreciates the theory behind it.
hopefully a case of “if i don’t include this keyword i will miss out on tons of shit from stupid people who want into the trend”
Fedora is too much into RedHat, and that’s an American company, it depends on it. You’ll have to go at least Arch, or Debian (which are more community-driven), or Ubuntu or Mint (that are European). But I wouldn’t use anything Redhat-produced for an EU OS.
SUSE/OpenSUSE seems like a much more European option
Τοο bad I don’t like it as a distro… I find it ugly, e.g. the ancient yast gui it has. I’d prefer Debian myself, or a fork of it (if politically necessary).
So you find Gnome & KDE ugly? I’ve never needed to use Yast for any system configuration. Having BTFRS with snapshots as default makes it a great distro.
Yast is a must to configure it without headaches. It’s an eyesore. I also don’t like rpm in general. I tried OpenSuse last year, and I didn’t like the experience of it. Then again, I don’t like Fedora either. And I find Arch unstable. For me, Debian is where it’s at.
Someone who doesn’t use the distro is saying a tool ‘is a must’ when I do use the distro and have never needed it. You do you, but the point of my original comment was that it’s a valid distro for Europeans wanting a non-US option. Doesn’t mean you need to like it or use, but others might.
As I said, I used it last year. I didn’t like it. I WANT gui tools, like yast, but not ones that were designed in the '90s. Linux Mint has the best user experience.
rofl, Fedora for EU what a joke…