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.
Why Fedora? Sorry, but there are so many European options, it makes no sense to build a European house on an American basement.
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?
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.
It’s still open source
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?
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.
If it was a community addition why would it matter? And why would they remove the codecs.
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.
France is a safe haven for foss media codecs because its law does not consider software patentable
TIL there is a country that sees reason about software patents
Now if Eelco Doolstra wasn’t fucking around, we could have had a super LTS NixOS - but NOOOO.
My exact thoughts lol
In conclusion Fedora is the best libre Linux distributions out there.
Aha.
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.
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.
SUSE Linux Enterprise exists since 2000.
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.
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.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 :)
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.
“Made with ❤️ in Brussels by Robert Riemann”
Clicked his URL…
“physicist and computer scientist…passionate about open source and free software, cryptography…”
Whew, almost read crypto"currency"…
"…and peer-to-peer technology such as BitTorrent or Blockchain/Bitcoin.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I’m sure Fedora is full of binary blobs and not-so-free software
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
rather than sticking a white label on Fedora and call it something else
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
just Fedora with different theme
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
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 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.
but for what benefit? […] fedora is going to have off the shelf solutions
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?).
well, the actual software and configuration i’d argue aren’t the important part - owning the infrastructure is the important part…
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?
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.
Love this! We definitely should try to spread Linux to become more accessible and popular.
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}}
Meanwhile https://www.europarl.europa.eu/petitions/en/petition/content/0729%252F2024/html/Linux%2Bstatt%2BWindows just closed with 2474 Supporters
Well, first I hear of it.
rofl, Fedora for EU what a joke…
Yeah, no.
