this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2025
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Buy European

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Overview:

The community to discuss buying European goods and services.

Rules:

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  • Do not use this community to promote Nationalism/Euronationalism. This community is for discussing European products/services and news related to that. For other topics the following might be of interest:

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Benefits of Buying Local:

local investment, job creation, innovation, increased competition, more redundancy.

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A note! the desktop field is completely optional! You can install any other desktop you like, but the listed are the "main" ones, usually recommended by the distro.

Linux Mint

  • Country: Ireland ๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡ช
  • Experience: Simple
  • Desktop: Cinnamon

Best distro for beginners. has two versions: One based off of ubuntu (default), and another one debian (recommended, LMDE)

https://www.linuxmint.com/

Ubuntu

  • Country: Britain ๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง
  • Experience: Simple
  • Desktop: GNOME

Good distro, but has some controversies. Though it's the most popular beginners distro by far.

https://ubuntu.com/

EndeavourOS

  • Country: Netherlands ๐Ÿ‡ณ๐Ÿ‡ฑ
  • Experience: Intermediate
  • Desktop: KDE/GNOME/XFCE

My second favorite :) Arch based, easy installer and updater, friendly community and beautiful themes. I recommend this distro if you are into arch based distros without wanting the painful part of it.

https://endeavouros.com/

OpenSUSE

  • Country: Germany ๐Ÿ‡ฉ๐Ÿ‡ช
  • Experience: Intermediate
  • Desktop: KDE

It's mainly built around using the GUI, with tools like yast. Uses KDE.

https://www.opensuse.org/

Manjaro

  • Country: Germany ๐Ÿ‡ฉ๐Ÿ‡ช / Austria ๐Ÿ‡ฆ๐Ÿ‡น / France๐Ÿ‡ซ๐Ÿ‡ท
  • Experience: Intermediate
  • Desktop: KDE/GNOME/XFCE

Added because of popular recommendation. I recommend EndeavourOS more, since manjaro has a... history.

https://manjaro.org/

NixOS

  • Country: Netherlands ๐Ÿ‡ณ๐Ÿ‡ฑ
  • Experience: Advanced
  • Desktop: KDE/GNOME

My personal favorite <3 Great for servers. It's not for the faint of heart, though hah. It's an immutable distro, where there is no package manager, or manually modifying config files; your entire system is created with .nix files, not commands. Reproducable.

https://nixos.org/

Arch

  • Country: Canada ๐Ÿ‡จ๐Ÿ‡ฆ (Yes yes, it's not european but how can you not mention arch???)
  • Experience: Advanced
  • Desktop: None

Most popular distro for dedicated users, and for good reason; bleeding edge, full power over your system. Though you have to manually set up everything, from internet to your deskop environment.

Void

  • Country: Spain ๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡ธ
  • Experience: Advanced
  • Desktop: XFCE

Great distro if you want something like arch, but without systemd or slightly more stable (Also, musl support). Obscure but amazing.

https://voidlinux.org/

Debian [Honorary mention]

  • Country: Global ๐ŸŒ
  • Experience: Intermediate
  • Desktop: KDE/GNOME/XFCE

An honorary mention. Isn't suited for everyone, but is the golden standard for servers, and the grandfather of a huge family tree of distros.

https://www.debian.org/

VanillaOS [Honorary mention]

  • Country: Global ๐ŸŒ๏ธ
  • Experience: Advanced
  • Desktop: GNOME

VanillaOS is a debian-based immutable operating system, which can install packages from any other distro and is very hard to brick.

https://vanillaos.org/

That should cover a lot. Please heed the desktop warning, and please correct me/comment suggestions. This is not perfect, so please do criticize where possible c:

top 50 comments
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[โ€“] FatsoJackson@lemmy.ml 4 points 8 hours ago

one word about SuSE - one of the oldest still active distros. Is one of the few "real" enterprise distros with features like SAP certification. 10+ years support for SLES releases (Suse Linux Enterprise Server). Has Tumbleweed as rolling release like Arch and Leap for non-rolling. Also Micro OS (which is IMHO the future), and desktop is of course not only KDE but also GNOME and every other major and minor DE available. Don't get discouraged by the Installer, it's very powerful but also not simplest point and click. Also zypper and YaST take getting used to if you come from apt or pacman lands. Disclaimer I use Tw ;)

[โ€“] klu9@lemmy.ca 4 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

Thanks for this post. Here's my contribution:

Search results for Lemmy communities for these distros:

Others mentioned in the comments (I can't vouch for their "Europeanness"):

Others (I can't vouch for their "Europeanness"):

At this point I remembered Distrowatch and realized you can search by country of origin. E.g. Distrowatch search for active distros from Austria. And Italy.

Too many European countries and too many distros for me to do them all. If anyone else wants to chip in, e.g. pick a country, feel free.

And if one neighbouring country (Canada) being threatened by that f$#king guy can get an honorary mention here, let's include another, too: Mexico.

Mexicans also started the GNOME desktop environment, but I don't think the upcoming GNOME OS is based in Mexico.

[โ€“] fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 hour ago

Thank you! Sorry for ignoring my inbox for some time, i've been slow these couple of days. I tried to avoid more obscure distros/forks since they're harder for users. I've gotten multiple manjaro recommendations, and i wanted to add vanillaOS but it's small (though why not lol) I'll add them, thank you :^)

[โ€“] XM34@feddit.org 2 points 8 hours ago

Manjaro is German, French and Austrian.

[โ€“] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 21 hours ago
[โ€“] resetbypeer@lemmy.world 0 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Add cachyOS too. Arch based from Germany and one of the hottest risers.

[โ€“] vga@sopuli.xyz 0 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Arch is not based from Germany.

[โ€“] Saleh@feddit.org 2 points 11 hours ago

But cachyOS is. It is an Arch based distro.

[โ€“] RambaZamba@feddit.org 46 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

I'm currently wondering whether this is going in the right direction. I understand that we are boycotting commercial products from the US, which makes perfect sense to me. But as someone who works on FOSS software myself, I wonder if we are hurting the right people by not using FOSS software that comes from the US. I think these are largely people who don't support Trump.

[โ€“] Saleh@feddit.org 4 points 11 hours ago

Also i find "Europeaness" a bit sketchy, if things are developed globally. We should embrace global cooperation rather than mimicking US nationalism with a new "European" nationalism.

[โ€“] fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 day ago

I completely agree. I think FOSS software is way harder to control by a corporation (especially licensed copyleft) Personally i don't think it's harmful to use OSS software from any country at all. Whether by chinese, belgian or american as long as it is open source, it's fair game i think.

I shared this post since i thought this community might enjoy it, but all distros are fine.

[โ€“] mannycalavera@feddit.uk 6 points 1 day ago

If you look at a lot of the other posts they're more along the lines of "these companies are based in the EU".... and that's it. Not why they're better than the US based equivalents or why the US based ones are worth boycotting.

And to a certain extent I understand that. But the signal to noise ratio has lowered considerably in the past few weeks.

[โ€“] turtl@lemm.ee 30 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (14 children)

Linux Mint is honestly amazing. I always read about it being labeled as "for beginners" or being "boring" almost as if that's a bad thing. I just wanted something that works out of the box and not take on a new hobby.. And I got just that with Linux Mint. Highly recommended

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[โ€“] lazycog@feddit.uk 13 points 1 day ago

Whaaat linux mint my beloved is Irish! Awesome!

[โ€“] zymagoras777@lemm.ee 11 points 1 day ago

I've been using Mint for ages and never realized it's Irish

[โ€“] Sunshine@lemmy.ca 19 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Iโ€™m pleasantly surprised by the country origins of Arch and Mint.

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[โ€“] banghida@lemm.ee 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Isn't Canonical (Ubuntu) a UK-based company?

[โ€“] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (1 children)

I don't really know anything about them, but I've always thought "Canonical" was a cool name for a company.-

[โ€“] kilgore_trout@feddit.it 1 points 15 hours ago

As with Oracle.

[โ€“] Feathercrown@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Desktop: None

lmao

Also I never knew NixOS was European! Good post

[โ€“] fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 23 hours ago
[โ€“] Patch@feddit.uk 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Seems remiss not to mention Ubuntu, which is British.

[โ€“] fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 23 hours ago

I've added it, thanks

[โ€“] recursive_recursion@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 day ago (4 children)
[โ€“] fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 23 hours ago

I use arch, eh.

[โ€“] Sunshine@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Hey that's pretty neatโœจ

Thabks for the link!๐Ÿค—

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[โ€“] kronarbob@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

There's Mageia and openMandriva from France !

PikaOS is from UK I guess.

It's hard to enumerate all of arch based distro but CachyOS is German (not sure ), and archolinux is from belgium.

Europe work on open source in general is strong, I love it !

[โ€“] vga@sopuli.xyz 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

You should probably classify a lot of these as global. Like Arch: sure it was founded by a canadian, but nobody in the current dev team is from Canada.

[โ€“] flamingos@feddit.uk 9 points 1 day ago (2 children)

What about Ubuntu? Canonical is based in London (registered in the Isle of Man iirc).

[โ€“] SleafordMod@feddit.uk 4 points 1 day ago

True. I know a lot of Linux people hate Ubuntu but I think it's a decent distro especially for beginners, and like you say, Canonical is based in London.

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[โ€“] Raugulas@lemm.ee 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Arch based Manjaro - German: https://manjaro.org/

[โ€“] LimpRimble@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Manjaro was originally German/French. It is more international now, but still:

The Manjaro project is backed by Manjaro GmbH & Co. KG, an open source driven company.

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