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’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.
If the Linux project and all its developers and maintainers disappeared tomorrow, the kernel would still exist, be useful, and be forkable.
They could call it Eunux!
Oh…
Eubuntu.
Or Keubuntu, the KDEU spin.
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.
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.
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.
Yes MS intentionally implements it inconsistently and yes that’s why i meant whichever format is open.
While I like the idea, it’ll be incredibly tough to overcome Microsofts lobbying, one just needs to look on the history of the LiMux project.
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.
One reason could be possible US restrictions and sanctions.
Fucking over microsoft is always good
It’s not fucking over Microsoft, it’s prevent Microsoft from fucking us over. Microsoft is not the victim in this.
Well, what better way to embrace FOSS than dismissing the efforts of all the existing distro maintainers? Welcome to the community, guys. Good luck building your cathedral next to the bazaar!
How about they instead work together with the distros and create a way of certifying a distro as gov-ready?
They say nothing about their distro having no upstream. If they make a distro based of Debian/Arch/Fedora I don’t see that as dismissing their efforts anymore than Nobara/SteamOS/Ubuntu/Mint does.
I rather they enforce their requirements on their own spin then try to force existing distros to implement said reqs. They should obviously donate to the foss community when using the technology the community maintain though!
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How much of Ubuntu’s funding goes to supporting debian? I actually don’t know.
I don’t, for example, see Ubuntu listed here: https://www.debian.org/partners/
So an EU-backed distro could be the same. Yes, they would fund maintainers, but their own maintainers, not maintainers of upstream distros.
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
Especially in light of Microsoft CoPilot. You do not want obvious spyware on any computer.
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.
Exists already; OpenDesk
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.
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No, it means that your name may be read out loud
PSA: You can sign the petition even if you’re not a European national. I registered and signed as a Canadian myself and it accepted it
I’d really like to see this. However I don’t have high hopes when looking at the current state in Slovenia, where Microsoft is deeply rooted in all public and non public sectors, starting from schools. Most know only Windows and Word while they don’t distinguish between the two and schools system doesn’t give a shit about teaching anything about computers let alone non Microsoft. One of the reasons is, of course, teachers being computer illiterate or … know only Microsoft. And so on and so forth.
This is education everywhere
