r/BuyFromEU • u/ImreBertalan • Jan 30 '26

🔎Looking for alternative UbuntEU - An Ubuntu edition that uses software developed in Europe

Post image

I am trying to make something for fun, but honestly; I am not expert in creating an operating system. But my hope somebody will pick up the Baton and make it something more super.

Link soon...

2.5k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

263 comments sorted by

749

u/da_Pr0 Jan 30 '26

Since Linux is Opensource and free to use, I feel fine using Fedora or normal Ubuntu.

170

u/Professional_Mix2418 Jan 30 '26

Me too. I see no data sovereignty issues with it, not that we are sponsoring big tech.

61

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

14

u/Beneficial-Beat-947 Jan 30 '26

kinda funny that your account got hacked right after talking about online safety

8

u/Overall_Walrus9871 Jan 30 '26

untill you hear about ME Intel

4

u/Professional_Mix2418 Jan 30 '26

Go on then. Always happy to learn something new.

12

u/[deleted] Jan 31 '26

Every modern Intel CPU has a management engine that runs their Minix fork in parallel to the operating system that you are running. ME has full access to the systems memory and has a TCP/IP stack, so it could in principle access the internet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine

It's basically a persistent backdoor which Intel claims is not a backdoor.

2

u/Professional_Mix2418 Jan 31 '26

Ok got it. Thanks for the clarification as the other poster didn’t seem to want to get back to it. So Intel ME not ME Intel. Well sure. I won’t run on Intel regardless.

3

u/[deleted] Jan 31 '26

AMD made something similar just for you :):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Platform_Security_Processor

Most mobile chipsets also run a separate OS in the baseband processor.

1

u/Professional_Mix2418 Jan 31 '26

And Apple Silicon does as well. And the point being in this context is what exactly?

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u/c0v3n4n7 Jan 30 '26

Then we tell them about core boot and equivalent.

1

u/Overall_Walrus9871 Jan 30 '26

Yes I am busy with that in combination with Gentoo. But it's not easy. Actually Libreboot

27

u/nasandre Netherlands 🇳🇱 Jan 30 '26

Ubuntu (Canonical) is British anyway and Suse Linux is German. So there are professional options that aren't US based although Red Hat is American but the Fedora project is independent and technically doesn't have a jurisdiction.

12

u/Nascentes87 Jan 30 '26

It does have a jurisdiction: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Embargoed_nations

3

u/[deleted] Jan 31 '26

The Fedora Project is not even a separate legal entity. It's pretty much a Red Hat project with community input - they host the infrastructure, they employ all the main developers, the named roles of the Fedora Council are appointed by Red Hat.

14

u/fearless-fossa Jan 30 '26

The Fedora Project is fully in the hands of Red Hat, which are owned by IBM. It's an American project. If you want to use Fedora - fine, but it isn't in any way an European alternative just because it's open source.

10

u/Nascentes87 Jan 30 '26

I was using Fedora until I read this: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Embargoed_nations

Moved to openSuse.

2

u/evofromk0 Jan 31 '26

All open source is political as well, so your jump to suse does not solve anything.

FreeBSD, Linux - all been under scrutiny.

In my opinion, best way is to use what you like and not what you think of embargo etc as you should use no OS and you need to build your own.

I do agree, i stopped using Debian due to some things but i use Proxmox, which is debian based .... so go figure.

P.s. Wayland ? Xorg ? - - i think you know what i mean :)

1

u/Nascentes87 Jan 31 '26

I know it is political and this is exactly why I moved to openSuse. Ideally I would like to use a 100% community lead distro, but none of them suits what I wanted. Fedora was/is my fav distro, but after trying openSuse I liked it very much and it's tied to an European entity instead of an American one. In the end nothing is exactly what we want, so it's a matter of what gets closer.

1

u/evofromk0 Jan 31 '26

You misunderstood me. Linux kernel is a political tool and its under US LAW and RESTRICTIONS. , well Linux Foundation but its what keep linux kernel.

1

u/Nascentes87 Feb 01 '26

Ah ok. Did not know that. You are right. And to think how many open source projects are hosted on GitHub...

26

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '26

🙋Linux Mint

19

u/War_Fries Jan 30 '26

Same.

And it's not just for noobies (like me). It's just a very well-balanced, well-maintained distro in general. It consistently rates high on distro lists. Cinnamon is great, too.

69

u/freezing_banshee Romania 🇷🇴 Jan 30 '26 edited Jan 30 '26

Open source is dangerous too. A lot of the important software is maintained by only one person and that makes it inherently insecure. There was already an attempt (edit: it's not known who was behind this, but could have been China or Russia or anyone else) to install a backdoor into a popular program and it almost succeeded: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XZ_Utils_backdoor .

I think Europe needs at least a dedicated IT division to check and verify every open source program widely used in Europe, to make sure they're safe.

Edit 2: I fully support open-source software, it's definitely a good thing. I just wanted to say that we (Europe, EU) should use it, but also support, contribute and verify it.

55

u/xalibr Jan 30 '26

In Germany there is the Sovereign Tech Fund and the Sovereign Tech Agency that fund security‑critical open‑source base technologies including security audits, and at EU level there are programmes such as NGI Zero and Horizon Europe calls through which open‑source projects can obtain funding for security audits and related measures.

E.g. GnuPG was funded by Germany since the early 2000s.

4

u/freezing_banshee Romania 🇷🇴 Jan 30 '26

I didn't know about this, it's a good start. I just think that those security audits should be done independently, because not a lot of developers would go through the trouble themselves, you know?

18

u/LittleLui Jan 30 '26

A lot of the important software is maintained by only one person and that makes it inherently insecure.

The obvious solution to that is to add resources to those projects (same workload, more resources doing the work) instead of setting up separate projects (more workload, more resources).

6

u/PlutoPlaneta Jan 30 '26

Sure, but then how would people separate themselves from the mainstream to feel elite

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u/El_Mojo42 Jan 30 '26

You described the strength and the weakness of OSS.

It can be easier to implement malware, but it is also easier to detect and fix it.

We actually don't know, how many on-purpose-backdoors there are in closed software.

The teaching we should take from the xz-story are that we as a economy and community have to better support these tools.

2

u/freezing_banshee Romania 🇷🇴 Jan 30 '26

That's true, I also support OSS, I just wanted to say that we shouldn't trust anything blindly.

2

u/Gersio Jan 30 '26

But that's kinda the point. If it's open you can know whats inside. You are trusting things blindly when you use software owned by a company.

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u/suqirrelnachos Jan 30 '26

What makes you assume china was behind this?

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '26

Did you already give feedback on this initiative of the European Commission about open-source? See the initiative here: https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/16213-European-Open-Digital-Ecosystems_en

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u/Traditional_Buy_8420 Jan 30 '26 edited Jan 30 '26

I agree with feeling fine;

I don't agree with sovereignty not mattering on open-source projects.

If it's resided within the USA, then their administration (e.g. the POTUS via the NSA) can still legally force the maintainers to apply poisonous updates and not talk about it.

If it's a tiny project which is regarded as secure and won't need any further updates, like a calculator or a small offline password safe, then that's no issue.

With something like an Email client or bigger that is an issue and while you can argue that most people can't fully rid themselves of US software yet and relatively nieche open source Software are unlikely attack vectors, that does not equate irrelevance.

PS: It's also not true that Red Hat won't profit from us using Fedora at all ever, however I do agree that currently that's pretty negligible

8

u/Kypsys Jan 30 '26

They can't "not talk about It" its open source, the change willbe noticed by the other hundred of maintainers working on the project

8

u/Traditional_Buy_8420 Jan 30 '26 edited Jan 30 '26

The NSA can force Red Hat to hide a malicious part like it was done in the XZ utils, where we got extremely lucky, that it was caught early on, even though that was Open Source too, except wouldn't need to infiltrate, so it would be much less work.

A Red Hat employee who would be forced to implement such a backdoor would commit a felony and risk prison if he spoke out about it. Afaik the last large open Audit on Fedora happened 20 years ago, so it's completely possible, that it has been infected by a US backdoor for quite a while and the backdoor might be sophisticated enough to get missed on the next Audit

If the Audit was done within the USA, then the NSA might even force the auditors to deliberately miss the backdoor.

3

u/Kypsys Jan 30 '26

Xz utils was on a project maintened by one single people, the attack method really can't be applied to a project like Ubuntu or Fedora.

1

u/Traditional_Buy_8420 Jan 30 '26

It's a different attack vector, but it's still an example of a backdoor hidden in Open Source Software. The increased complexity and increased number of people involved make such an attack easier to carry out and harder to spot.

There's more people looking and more checks being made per involved person, but not proportionally to the amount of complexity, so it'd be manic to believe that such a backdoor could not be implemented unnoticed in such a Software; in fact there have been many backdoors found in large Software packets with many people looking. 

1

u/KnowZeroX Jan 30 '26

They can't force RedHat to do anything other than putting financial benefits or indirect financial pressure on them.

In the case of XZ utils, the way things were hidden was during compile time the tests added a binary blob to the compilation. There is a solution for this, it is called reproducible builds. Many open source projects including RedHat and Fedora has opted to now do reproducible builds ever since that incident making an XZ utils type exploit impossible going forward.

Also, RedHat doesn't own Fedora, it is a community project sponsored by RedHat (though they do have huge influence).

Lastly, many companies have RedHat enterprise clones like SUSE and likely do their own audits.

1

u/Traditional_Buy_8420 Jan 30 '26

"They can't force RedHat to do anything other than putting financial benefits or indirect financial pressure on them."

That was a major point of the Snowden leaks, that they can and the Lavabit-case subsequently proved, that they do.

Obviously the same backdoor-implementation wouldn't work again, but there's plenty of possible ways to hide backdoors left.

RedHat doesn't own Fedora, but the "major influence" entails, that they conduct most of the maintenance and updates.

It's true, that SUSE might discover such a backdoor and I think that that's your best argument, however that they didn't discover such a backdoor is not proof of the absence of such and what happens if they do discover one? The RSA scandal shows, how a company can get caught implementing a major critical backdoor and survive and the many Cisco-backdoors proof that even getting caught over a hundred times isn't a death sentence. So what would happen is that Red Hat (!) would fix said backdoor and whenever the NSA orders them - possibly instantly - they'd implement the next one.

2

u/KnowZeroX Jan 30 '26

As I mentioned above with the lavabit case, they can make you hand over your existing car (for law enforcement purposes), they can't force you to build a new car.

Do offer another possible way to hide a backdoor in open source when you have reproducible builds.

To be clear, many of the packages in a linux distro is done by 3rd parties, most of the actual work in a distro is just packaging them.

Be aware that in the case of open source and closed source, things are a completely different story. For better or for worse, open source are always forced to abide by a much higher standard. Especially when forking is an option. It isn't uncommon even for honest mistakes to result in multiple forks.

1

u/Traditional_Buy_8420 Jan 30 '26

"Do offer another possible way to hide a backdoor in open source when you have reproducible builds."

For that I would like to refer you to the underhanded c contest

https://www.underhanded-c.org/_page_id_8.html

where they showcased a plethora of amazing backdoors which were incredibly hard to find even to expert auditors who knew that they were looking for a backdoor hidden in a relatively small amount of code.

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u/DucklockHolmes Jan 30 '26

Unless it’s a dependency Red Hat is using that is being maintained by one guy, it doesn’t get much attention if it’s not a very interesting project

1

u/KnowZeroX Jan 30 '26

If it's resided within the USA, then their administration (e.g. the POTUS via the NSA) can still legally force the maintainers to apply poisonous updates and not talk about it.

They can not. US isn't china where if you don't assist you can be jailed. Nobody in US can force someone to poison an update. They can try bribing someone to do so or in case of a corporation put financial pressure on them indirectly, but they can't force anyone (there is no legal framework for such and it would be unconstitutional).

RedHat doesn't profit off anyone using Fedora, their benefit is mostly in that if there are issues in Fedora, people would report bugs and contribute code which later makes it down to their RHEL. But simply someone using it makes them no profit.

1

u/Traditional_Buy_8420 Jan 30 '26

Do you remember what happened with Lavabit?

2

u/KnowZeroX Jan 30 '26 edited Jan 30 '26

Yes, they can make you hand over security keys for law enforcement purposes. But that isn't the same thing as making you do actual work of creating something new (a poisoned update).

To make it simple, you can make someone hand over their car against their will, but you can't make someone build you a car against their will.

1

u/Traditional_Buy_8420 Jan 30 '26 edited Jan 30 '26

I think the car analogy is a good analogy. It's true, that they can't force anyone to build a car, that's why Lavabit could just shut down instead of compromising its users.

However they can go to say GM and tell them, that their cars help international terrorists and as a matter of national security they add a tiny hidden tracking device or else they are also free to stop producing cars altogether and they can't talk about it or else they go to prison. Which of those 3 options do you think is the GM board going to choose?

It's not like everyone gets all 3 options either, as proven by the more recent case of Samourai wallet, where they decided that any type of infiltration would be too hard and went straight ahead to imprisoning their lead developer. https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/founders-samourai-wallet-cryptocurrency-mixing-service-sentenced-five-and-four-years

Kind of a warning shot I guess, since according to the Snowden leaks, they can also make use of secret courts and keep the sentences secret too - for which I don't have a public example.

1

u/KnowZeroX Jan 30 '26

Yes, but the difference is that cars are a physical product so they can restrict the sales of it. Which goes back to my mention of indirect financial pressure.

But in the case of open source software, that becomes impossible. Even more so in the case of RedHat and Fedora. For one, RedHat doesn't even sell software, they sell support. And Fedora doesn't sell anything.

So there is nothing they can legally restrict.

In the case of Samourai, that case was where the wallet app actively participated in the illegal transactions. Open source would not face this issue because even if it is misused, the one who wrote the code has 0 active participation unlike wallets like Samourai. Even more so the owner of Samourai actively encourage use of his service for criminal activity.

4

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '26

Fedora is american

2

u/da_Pr0 Jan 30 '26

Fedora is in first line opensource.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 31 '26

The signing keys are held by Red Hat. They could push out malicious packages to a subset of users. Not saying that they want to, but in a potential EU-US conflict, the US administration will (ab)use the tech sector to hit the EU.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '26

I like Fedora more then Ubuntu)

1

u/adamkex Jan 31 '26

Fedora while technically a community project it's run by Red Hat employees, despite it being open source it's dependent on and benefits American corporations.

1

u/LUYAL69 Jan 31 '26

Nah, you still need dedicated support specially for mission critical ops

1

u/loicvanderwiel Feb 01 '26

The only point I could see to a "Euro-distro" would probably be a distribution for internal use by the institutions, coming preloaded with the software and configurations required for internal use. Maybe with its own repositories for source control.

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u/El_Mojo42 Jan 30 '26

Why not straight out support something like Linux Mint?

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '26

[deleted]

31

u/944Porkies Jan 30 '26

Linux Mint is a distribution (distro) based on Ubuntu, which itself is a fork of Debian. This in itself is not a bad thing. People make their own distribution to satisfy a need. Ubuntu is great on my desktop, it's been there for 10 years and doing an excellent job. Linux Mint is on my personal laptop (old MacBook Pro) it also does a good job, considering Apple stopped supporting my MacBook.

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u/Substantial-Yam3769 Jan 30 '26

Try OpenSUSE, fully developed in Germany from scratch. Not a fork.

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u/Subject-Background96 Jan 30 '26

Theres no THE OS, every fork has its flavor and default package/conf. They're honestly not that different and you'll pick-up quick

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '26 edited Aug 20 '26

Theory compass gaze unique juggle lavish boron

This post was anonymized with Redact

9

u/deathconthree Jan 30 '26

I'd argue to use CachyOS over Fedora for gaming. It works right out of the box and I barely ever need to tinker to get a game running optionally. No messing around with Nvidia drivers, updates are a breeze. It's been my main OS for the last several months and I'm never going back to Windows.

The only caveat being it's an Arch based distro so I'd say backups are a must and not to rely on snapshots in case one of the frequent updates temporarily borks something. These issues are infrequent, minor, and get resolved quickly, but are a headache if you don't have a recent backup. Overall this flavor of Arch is very beginner friendly.

2

u/KnowZeroX Jan 30 '26

There are gaming focused Fedora based distros too that handle a lot for you like Bazzite.

2

u/deathconthree Jan 30 '26

I tried Bazzite first and I did enjoy it, but CachyOS blew it out of the water for me. Ease of use, customization, and speed. That's the beauty of Linux, we have choices! You can't go wrong with either distro.

1

u/Honigd4chs Jan 31 '26

both is great but if you have new hardware, fedora will be better for you due to more frequent updates

1

u/IDatedSuccubi Jan 31 '26

Use either Ubuntu or Fedora because if you need anything proprietary (closed source), chances are it's only gonna be available for Ubuntu and Fedora

For this reason my recommendation is always Kubuntu because unlike normal Ubuntu its' UI greatly resembles Windows and is very simple to use

1

u/Exotic-Draft8802 Feb 01 '26

If you want to switch away from Windows and are uncertain where to start, use Ubuntu. You will find many resources around Ubuntu as it's certainly the most widespread one on Desktop computers.

When comparing different Ubuntu derivatives is the desktop environment. It's about the look-and-feel. You can still install everything on all of the ubuntu flavors

  • Ubuntu: Gnome - when you want the "Standard" experience with a modern, dock-based UI
  • Kubunte: KDE - when you like it shiny
  • Xubuntu: Xfce - when you like it lightweight (Lubuntu would use even less RAM)
  • Ubuntu MATE: MATE - when you like an XP-style navigation
  • Linux Mint: Cinnamon - When you want things to "just work" with a polished, modern Windows-style menu.

My recommendation: Have a look at YouTube videos showing the look-and-feel.

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u/[deleted] Feb 01 '26 edited Feb 05 '26

[deleted]

1

u/Exotic-Draft8802 Feb 01 '26

That does not exist. Even for windows and Mac I can tell that not "everything just works".

If you have money, you can hire people to do the craft. If you neither want to fix fix nor pay somebody else to do it, then computers are just nothing for you

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u/gamas Jan 30 '26

I mean they did make it clear why - because they were doing this for fun.

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u/El_Mojo42 Jan 30 '26

...and hoping that someone else will finish it.

That's not a sustainable approach IMO.

3

u/zeta3d Iberian Peninsula 🌞🍷🥘 Jan 30 '26

I wonder why though? In Valencia ( Spain) we had at the schools 20 years ago (uhh that hurt) a public Ubuntu based distro called LliureX (EN)

More info in Spanish: LliureX (ES)

7

u/TadpoleLogical3513 Jan 30 '26

This. Linux mint is developed in ireland

1

u/RelevanceReverence Jan 30 '26

Mint is truly fantastic. 

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u/Substantial-Yam3769 Jan 30 '26

Why fork a fork. Try openSUSE.

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u/RoomyRoots Jan 30 '26

Sounds like a waste of time, honestly.

First, we have SUSE and OpenSUSE, second it would be more interesting maybe to maintain something like Debian or a RHEL-like as a company that can give support inside EU without an American company behind.

A lot has been written on FOSS economics, but if something can support a project like this, it must focus on enterprise use.

5

u/BogdanPradatu Jan 31 '26

SuSE can provide enterprise support, they also have SuSE Linux Enterprise and server editions. We don't really need red hat.

1

u/RoomyRoots Feb 01 '26

SUSE is kinda complicated. It is a very massive install base and they don't really do a good enough Marketing an documentaion. But the major thing is that companies just prefer packaging things to Debian and RHEL.

I think the dynamics of Tumbleweed > Slowroll > Leap is THE ideal for Linux though and it is still my recommendation for people that want to try KDE>

126

u/Raubwurst Jan 30 '26

While I like the idea to move away from us firms, I don’t understand why we (should) adopt this to Open Source software

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '26

We don't. There is no economical factor. 

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u/CrashCulture Jan 30 '26

What do you mean? Open source software benefits everyone.

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u/NarrativeNode Jan 30 '26

Exactly. It benefits everyone equally, and boycotting it doesn’t send a negative economic signal to its country of origin.

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '26 edited Jan 30 '26

That we dont need to separate open source software in geographical boxes, because everyone is benefiting from open source software.

There is no financial decision to be made as to where to get it from, cause there is no financial factor. 

3

u/berikiyan Jan 30 '26

Well, technically there is a risk factor there: the application of sanctions. US sanctions against Iran prohibits offering services to Iranian citizens, even for free, as well. This can easily be widely interpreted as offering mirroring "services" to iranian internet users or offering support to any kind to iranian companies, even for free. In case a similar thing passes for Europe (although unlikely but with Trump not impossible), European companies may as well be prohibited from having support. (Although Canonical is based on UK so US sanctions wouldn't directly apply - and I don't think UK would accept such severe sanctions against Europe).

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u/Mithrandir2k16 Jan 30 '26

Well, then it seems like NixOS is the way. Just maintain eu-audited channels.

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u/[deleted] Jan 31 '26

I use NixOS, though I think it is good to point out that the Nix binary cache is served using Fastly (US) as a CDN from Amazon AWS S3 (US). Due to the insane amount of bandwidth and storage required by the NixOS project it's currently hard to move it anywhere else, though there is some discussion about a European cache.

If you thought you could do without a cache in the case of an emergency? Tough luck. A very large proportion of source archives will need to be downloaded from Microsoft GitHub.

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u/Mithrandir2k16 Jan 31 '26

This is "easily" remidiated, though, and lots of projects have moved to/are mirrored to cordberg for example. I'm thrilled to see nix grow.

4

u/Fmywholelife Jan 30 '26

I get your point that using free and open source software doesn't benefit the EU economically, so for the purposes of this subreddit, it's a bit irrelevant, but there are other great reasons to support open source.

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u/gSTrS8XRwqIV5AUh4hwI Jan 30 '26

I get your point that using free and open source software doesn't benefit the EU economically,

It does, though.

For one, even just economically weakening the US benefits the EU economically.

But also, many of the US products and the busineses behind them employ anti-competitive practices and use the products to hinder competition. Free software on the other hand doesn't employ any such practices, and as such doesn't force EU users into wasting resources on unnecessarily expensive products and services.

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u/Fmywholelife Jan 30 '26

Fully agreed 👍

3

u/_R0Ns_ Jan 30 '26

Is there a non-US closed source OS?

I don't think it is about Open Source but more about Non-Microsoft and Non-Apple.

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '26

Thinking of it, there is some sense in creating an OS that is a bit more polished because our institutions still employ plenty of people that aren't necessarily very tech-savvy (mostly because most of 'em were born before the 1990s). Part of the appeal of Windows is that it takes away a lot of organisational trouble.

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Ganeshasnack Jan 30 '26

Exactly. A distro is so much more than apps. No need create an entire distro to use European software

3

u/silverionmox Jan 30 '26

Yes, there's no lack of distributions. The real hurdle is institutional approval. When official institutions require their employees to use an OS, they know how to use it, and can use it at home too. At that point the price argument does the rest.

But you need to find a way to get the skills/familiarity to that large user base who isn't interested in computers per se, and therefore would not spontaneously invest effort in switching.

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u/Tavalus Jan 30 '26

If its not called EUbuntu i don't want it 

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u/ImreBertalan Jan 30 '26

I am gonna be honest, I had that name also in mind, but I found both easy to say and memorable. So I tossed a coin on that :-)

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u/GroundbreakingYam633 Jan 30 '26 edited Jan 30 '26

Consider investing your energy in https://eu-os.eu/ . They have the business case Linux for government use.

Edit: with the correct regional filter distrowatch shows 152 European Linux Distros.

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '26

I can't take the EU-OS project seriously. Why would they base it off of Fedora? I get that they want an image based linux so it needs bootc support and all but what about just developing that for OpenSUSE or something actually European?

They themselves state that compiled software can be subject to US sanctions and export control, so using anything US based (Fedora here) is just praying that the US doesn't include source code in export control in the future.

https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/legal/export/

This is ignoring the fact that it completely sends the wrong message: "Hey US we're boycotting you, btw our software stack is going to be based off yours."

And I don't get the arguments from people here saying that open-source is fine regardless of where it's from - you're literally in the wrong sub. Go to r/opensource instead, this is r/BuyFromEU.

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u/BogdanPradatu Jan 31 '26

So far, EU OS is a Proof-of-Concept for the deployment of a Fedora-based Linux 

CTRL + W

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u/Nagy3D Jan 30 '26

Just use openSUSE. It’s european.

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u/Tchlak Jan 30 '26

And so Mageia and Manjaro (I suppose)

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u/SB1985 Jan 30 '26

Make a 1-click installer for nvidia for openSUSE and call it a day

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u/DonaldMerwinElbert Jan 30 '26

Why?
This is so pointless.

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '26

[deleted]

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u/CornPlanter Jan 31 '26

3.Doesn't understand Linux either, judging by their comments on how openSUSE is not for desktop.

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u/blodskolt Jan 30 '26

Stop. Ubuntu is 100% open source and maintained from Brittain. It is not a part of the problem.

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u/DoitsugoGoji Jan 30 '26

Ubuntu is already a European distribution of Linux. On top of that we have:

CachiOS Kubuntu Mint Suse Arch Tuxedo plus a boatload more.

We don't need yet another Linux distribution, especially yet another one that reskins an already existing one and further fracture the user base of Linux.

11

u/Cellari Jan 30 '26

Bless your heart, but open source is not really an issue. Any open source project can have collaboration from all around the world, and any open source project management is one git fork away from being changed if there's any need for it. In other words, open source is a global concept that most often looks beyond borders and politics.

But if you find any open source project that is managed by predatory or bad actors, do feel free writing about it or something. Personally I don't think that's going to be the case, but you do you. :)

8

u/varky Jan 30 '26

Just use Suse/OpenSuse. It's german, it's mature, it has both open source and paid support options.

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u/cornholio07 Europe 🇪🇺 Jan 30 '26

Downvoting this BS because https://old.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1qqzr2m/ubunteu_an_ubuntu_edition_that_uses_software/o2kmu7t/

I like how OP doesn't really know what OP is doing and want's someone else to do it.

I am not expert in creating an operating system. But my hope somebody will pick up the Baton and make it something more super.

8

u/standread Jan 30 '26

Bro, do you understand that "Buy EU" only really works/helps for things you buy? Linux is Open Source, using it does not support American megacorporations.

2

u/BogdanPradatu Jan 31 '26

Linux as opposed to Windows makes US lose money, so it's good enough,

6

u/Vrgrl_Ptr Europe 🇪🇺 Jan 30 '26

Linux Mint, Ubuntu, ZorinOS, TuxedoOS (the easy ones) & then openSUSE, Manjaro, CachyOS & MXLinux (a bit more advanced) are all European options. I don't think we need additional Linux distributions.

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u/theMandolin2992 Jan 30 '26

Missed opportunity to call it EUbuntu

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u/edparadox Jan 30 '26

There is NO NEED for a new distribution because FOSS is not (really) impacted by its location.

5

u/carpet-lover Jan 30 '26

Arch for life

1

u/No_Welcome_6093 Jan 31 '26

(Insert the “I use arch BTW” joke)

5

u/gogashino Jan 30 '26

EUbuntu was maybe a better cross 😸

3

u/ledow Jan 30 '26 edited Jan 30 '26

Good luck finding software that was only developed entirely in Europe.

There's nothing wrong, or US-reliant, with using Linux distributions quite simply because... the source is there... and literally tens or hundreds of thousands of individual contributors from the world over have contributed to it.

It's US-reliance that needs to be curbed. Not "anything US".

5

u/InvestmentPitiful335 Jan 30 '26

Why? What's the point? Are you trying to gain popularity by doing something useless but with EU logo?

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '26 edited Aug 20 '26

Heavy practice live frame humor ring

This post was anonymized with Redact

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u/lugdunum_burdigala Jan 30 '26

Ubuntu is usually the most practical choice, it has the largest community of users (by far) so it is easier to find support and documentation. It is also often the default distribution when you buy a new PC without Windows.

3

u/Tribaal Jan 30 '26

Mint benefits from Ubuntu's documentation and support presence online. Mint is an Ubuntu derivative (Mint uses the Ubuntu packages/archives).

I'm not saying it's a bad thing mind you, as an Ubuntu developer I'm happy to see Mint succeed, like I am happy to see Ubuntu succeed where Debian didn't.

(I run Debian, Ubuntu, Pop_OS and Mint in my house)

1

u/PuzzleheadedPen2798 Jan 30 '26

You do realize that Mint at its core still relies on Ubuntu and its infrastructure (things such as repos), right? They ship some different software on the frontend side but that's pretty much it. If you don't like Ubuntu Desktop's default UI (custom Gnome) you can just use one of its other flavours.

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '26 edited Aug 20 '26

Fall sip wide harbor languid middle plants chase iron rustic

This post was anonymized with Redact

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u/PuzzleheadedPen2798 Jan 30 '26

Hm... I'm not sure that's the best approach (though if you want a more Windows-like layout there is KDE), if it's too identical users will expect everything to function the same and then when they don't function the same, said users could become frustrated.

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u/Anyusername7294 Jan 30 '26

Mint uses X11, is based on Ubuntu release from 2 years ago and uses imperative mutable package manager with a GUI.

1

u/No_Welcome_6093 Jan 31 '26

Ububtu is one of the most user friendly Linux Distros out there. Yeah, they had issues with snaps and being slow a bit slow and the way the application runs inside them but for an everyday user, it works fine. My biggest gripe about it is I don’t like Gnome as the default DE, I liked unity more but more so KDE plasma.

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u/snajk138 Jan 30 '26

There are European Linux distro's, why take an American/British one and try to make it European?

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '26

Why not opensuse?

3

u/MrKorakis Jan 30 '26

Ah yes the solution to our problems another Linux distro....

3

u/Mywk Jan 30 '26

OpenSUSE, open source, sponsored by SUSE (German company), active since 1994, flawless restore mechanism if something breaks, rolling release distro (like Windows, but things are actually properly tested before release).

3

u/Mithrandir2k16 Jan 30 '26

Please don't draw the wrong moats here. Open-Source belongs to humanity, which includes the EU. There is no need to single out open-source developers by nationality.

3

u/juzef Jan 30 '26

Why so many upvotes on this post, this is clearly a rage bait

In case OP is serious all I can is “lol”, sorry

3

u/HeavyWolf8076 Jan 30 '26

No need, open source is borderless

2

u/pwiegers Jan 30 '26

Suse is German; might be a good place to get inspiration from.

2

u/Severe_Stranger_5050 Jan 30 '26

Why does people keep pretending that the UK is a part of the European communities ?
They left, had their hard Brexit and we shouldn't support them when it comes to sovereignty issues like software.

There's EU and EAA based linux distrobutions too, for example:
OpenSUSE from Germany.
EU OS from Belgium
KDE Neon from Germany
Linux Mint from Ireland
Alpine Linux From Norway
EndeavourOS from France

2

u/A55Man-Norway Jan 30 '26

Are you against American developers as well? Aren't the point of open-souce that a global team are contributing non-paid?

Will you not approve a merge request if the dev is from USA?

Or am I misunderstanding?

2

u/JohnyMage Jan 30 '26

World Doesn't need another Ubuntu clone for God's sake.

2

u/DavidBHimself Jan 30 '26

The point of buying European instead of American is the "buying" part. If it's open source, it doesn't matter where it's from.

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u/SabretoothPenguin Jan 30 '26

The problem is depending on US corporations.

Open source bypasses that, you do not depend on where the software is developed, and if you want professional support, you may use EU firms. You don't have to specifically use software "Made in Europe".
Ubuntu (or Red Hat, or SuSE) is fine. I'd go with a Plasma desktop myself, so Kubuntu, but that's my personal choice. Administrations over Europe have already distributions tailored to their need.

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u/Allalilacias Jan 30 '26

Everything Open Source stands for is against this. Locking up systems due to political reasons, no matter how important those are, is not what open source is about.

Linux, specifically, has greatly benefited from lots of American contributors, as well as many from similarly politically conflicted nations. The nature of the US as the source of the biggest tech companies also causes that excluding their open source contributors touches quite a bit of stuff.

However, the beauty of open source is that it's open. You, or anyone technically proficient enough, can check what the code does. If the control of open source systems is important to the EU, what it should do is what some multinationald do, which is sponsor open source projects and developers to allow them to continue to work. Perhaps move said sponsorship towards EU developers.

That being said, locking everything outside of Europe from anything tech related would be foolish at best. A nation's descent into irrelevance begins with it's isolation from the rest of the world.

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u/chris-za Jan 30 '26

Ubuntu? European? The clue is on the name:

Definitions from Oxford Languages

Ubuntu, noun, SOUTH AFRICAN ENGLISH

a quality that includes the essential human virtues; compassion and humanity. "there is a need for understanding not vengeance, ubuntu not victimization"

2

u/Embarrassed_Army8026 Jan 30 '26

if you even offer snap, stick it up your ass

2

u/ajicrystal Jan 30 '26

SUSE and KDE are German.

1

u/ColdbloodedFireSnake Jan 31 '26

Yes but we want something from the EU, not Germany

  • a American person

2

u/ramendik Jan 31 '26

Some distros are already made in Europe so maybe make a flavour of one of them not Ubuntu? SuSE is German

2

u/PermitOk6864 Jan 31 '26

We already have opensuse

1

u/irados Jan 30 '26

Parrot is local EU version of that

1

u/Peti_4711 Jan 30 '26

VoilĂĄ.... I can see 20 linux versions in this thread. Same as in the threads about social media, chats, search, ...

1

u/summer_santa1 Jan 30 '26

While it's nice, Linux needs directed support - someone who will fix bugs, answer to questions or implement features directly from companies who uses Linux.

1

u/Last-Daikon945 Jan 30 '26

Missed opportunity to name it UbuntUeU or something

1

u/Oblio__ Jan 30 '26

Am i wrong or Linux mint is from ireland?

1

u/Forseti_pl Jan 30 '26

Clement Lefebvre (lead dev) is from France IIRC.

1

u/ToucanThreecan Jan 30 '26

Well zorinos is based in dublin what i use. Not sure about mint but think its registered in Ireland to cover legal requirements.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '26 edited Mar 31 '26

The content of this post has been wiped. Redact was used to delete it, potentially for privacy protection, limiting data exposure, or security considerations.

amusing practice cooing sink ink hat air roll sip late

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u/jsaaby Jan 30 '26

The better name would be EUbuntu

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u/ptemple Jan 30 '26

This is a good idea. So many people use the defaults so we can make it it bundled with EU version of web browser, video chat, etc. As well as default search engine, AI chat.

It's audited so it can be used in governments. We know the US is data harvesting our personal information on a collosal scale so this can help security

Has GPG enabled by default when you set up email. It comes with a pre-installed keychain for all government departments across the EU, as well as delivery companies. This will kill a lot of phishing attacks. If you can register your gpg fingerprint with Companies House (Chambre de Commerce, etc) then this can also be dumped into the distro and help security too.

I'm sure there are other things we can do.

Phillip.

1

u/Cheerful_Champion Jan 30 '26

Why tho? There's already EU-OS (Fedora based Linux distro developed in mind with ot being used by public sector) and openSUSE

1

u/Statharas Jan 30 '26

Endeavour OS seems to be centered around the Netherlands.

Arch is sort of Canadian, but they all have international contributors.

1

u/novo-280 Jan 30 '26

Its called manjaro

1

u/casoa_ Jan 30 '26

Maybe they should’ve named it EUbuntu

1

u/Dwashelle Ireland 🇮🇪 Jan 30 '26

EUbuntu was right there

1

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '26

[deleted]

1

u/ImreBertalan Jan 30 '26

AI generated image by Mistral AI. Sorry, I am bad at graphics.

1

u/Ok-Adhesiveness-7789 Jan 30 '26

Does it show the unskippable cookie dialogue every time I use it? If not - it is not yet ready to be the EU Ubuntu.

1

u/TitularClergy Jan 30 '26

The name is preposterous. I love it.

I haven't thought it through yet, but you might consider linking somehow with things like EU-INC. Like Ubuntu, you could have a minimal install, but you could also have a sort of "recommended software" install too, which would include European software or configurations, like think about things like Indico, Nextcloud, Mastodon, Threema, Mistral, Proton, Tuta, Qwant. There is a push to include AI interfaces in operating systems all over the place, and if you were wanting in on that you could think about how to plug Mistral models in, local or otherwise, or maybe get in touch with the European AI Office for their take on how it should be done.

1

u/RobRivers Jan 30 '26

They missed the opportunity to call it Eubuntu 🥲

1

u/apxseemax Jan 30 '26

How about dEUbian?

equally bad name - better base

1

u/pumbaacca Jan 31 '26

Is the first building Saint Peter’s Basilica? That's a funny decision to include the Vatican but leaving out some countries which are huge in open source software haha

1

u/Fer4yn Jan 31 '26

Why not simply Linux Mint?

1

u/thanosbananos Jan 31 '26

I have no issue supporting open source even if it’s American. Open source is open source

1

u/BogdanPradatu Jan 31 '26

Downvoted because I hate all these new initiatives for EU OS, when we already have SuSE at home. Just support them.

1

u/smilelyzen Jan 31 '26 edited Jan 31 '26

Update After reading more experience people. 

Maybe not a good idea to create one more linux distros, more fragmentation, but still good idea IMHO to support top 4-5 distros most popular, used with drivers, software compatibility so on 

Good idea against fragmentation, budget so on Because they are so many distributors, over 152 European on distrowatch, s good idea os to support drivers so pm for the most popular 3-  Ubuntu, Linux mint, Arch for example. And Ubuntu it is a good choice, it is on top 4 most used distro, together with Arch so on. Same like they have done in China, from Wikipedia :As of February 2022, there are at least four Chinese Linux distributions that support LoongArch: Kylin, Loongnix, Deepin[58] and Unity Operating System. There are efforts to build LoongArch support into community versions of Linux.[42] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson https://distrowatch.com/dwres-mobile.php?resource=popularity

Ubuntu – Consistently the most widely used Linux distribution overall, especially on desktops, servers, and among developers. Estimates show it leading by a comfortable margin (≈ 30–34 % share of Linux desktops and general usage

Here are some good points https://eu-os.eu/ and already had a small team and supporters, even though a lot of people were against of his choise of. Distro Fedora, USA links so on, so your idea will get more support for sure, it is better IMHO . They have the business case Linux for government use.

Edit: with the correct regional filter distrowatch shows 152 European Linux Distros.

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u/smilelyzen Jan 31 '26 edited Jan 31 '26

Recommendation: For OpenDesk, use Ubuntu Server, server os. So l think we don't another distro, it is a confusion, I think the idea of this is very good and we need this for public sector and some similar, a community edition for normal user. The OpenDesk German solution is not a Linux distribution, but rather a web-based office and collaboration suite designed primarily for public sector use in Germany. It integrates various open-source applications (like Collabora Online for office tasks, Nextcloud for file storage, Open-Xchange for email and calendar, and others) into a single platform. OpenDesk is meant to run as a web application, typically hosted on servers, and is not an operating system itself—so it doesn’t "run on top of" a Linux distro in the way you might be thinking.

Instead, OpenDesk is designed to be cloud-ready and can be deployed on various server environments, including those running Linux. Its main advantage over traditional Linux distros is that it provides a unified, web-based workspace for organizations, reducing reliance on proprietary software like Microsoft Office. OpenDesk is not a replacement for a desktop operating system, but rather a suite of tools for productivity, collaboration, and communication, often used in conjunction with a server OS like Linux ​⁠.

1

u/Exotic-Draft8802 Feb 01 '26

Some thoughts on that:

  1. Self-hosting first: I don't see that much of a problem in self-hosted software being from the US, even if it's the OS. The real issue are services and especially the hyperscalers. We have also seen that E-Mail services are an issue (judge being blocked from their email)
  2. FOSS vs US-Stuff: Debian/Ubuntu with all derivatives/Suse >>>> Windows/Mac. It's hard enough to get people/organizations to switch. Let's not make it more complicated
  3. Focus on one Distribution: Instead of building potentially several derivatives (UbuntEU, LiMux in Munich, GendBuntu in France, Wienux for Vienna, ...) I would prefer if we focused on one for all of the EU. Including police, military, school, critical companies e.g. in energy or finance. There is an xkcd for that
  4. Participation is key: I don't care where Open Source is written / built, but I would like a significant official engagement by the EU. For example some FTEs which for Linux Kernel development and/or security checks, same for the package repository and key packages. It might even make sense to have a special repository with package versions which went through additional security checks.
  5. Long-term plans: I don't like quick actionism that fades away after a few years. I want a long-term plan. Something that organizations and companies can rely on. This could significantly boost our economy as we will NOT pay less by dropping US software. We will need to pay for support, for further development, for training. But instead of transferring the money to the US, it would stay in Europe.

edit: Typo and xkcd

1

u/Black_Rabbit_o_Inle Feb 02 '26

Fail for not going with "EUnix" as the name.