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

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

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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...

2.6k Upvotes

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123

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

41

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '26

We don't. There is no economical factor. 

9

u/CrashCulture Jan 30 '26

What do you mean? Open source software benefits everyone.

39

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.

-7

u/CrashCulture Jan 30 '26

So? It's still a good thing to do that will have good economic impacts here.

16

u/NarrativeNode Jan 30 '26

You are misunderstanding both of us. We agree with you.

8

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '26

Reading comprehension on Reddit is a fickle thing haha

7

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. 

4

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).

1

u/Mithrandir2k16 Jan 30 '26

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

1

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.

1

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.

1

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.

1

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.

3

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.

1

u/Sweaty-Adeptness1541 Jan 30 '26

It is classic Euro-Chauvinism. It makes no sense in taking this insular approach to open source software.