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Follow general lemmy guidelines.
The European public sector could choose any stable Linux distro, with any DE. Now, somebody proposed a branded "EU OS" so you know what the non-techies in charge are going to go for.
Pardon my cynicism, but to me that branding seems opportunist and suspicious in itself. Let the suits at least ask their sysadmins what would be the better setup.
Their setup should be on some wiki repository if they work the way they're supposed to.
The article states that ChromiumOS doesn't qualify – and neither do ChromeOS Flex or FydeOS
I'm sure it does actually
what is an American distro?
I mean does the kernel or DE have a nationality if they're Free Software? Anyone is supposed to be able to reuse them, no? Exactly like China has already building its own OS based on GNU-Linux
That's why, as a mere user myself, I consider the GNU-GPL license so essential (so much more than the code being 'Open Source') as GPL makes it so that no one can limit what anyone else wants to do with the code. And even if the USA one day stopped being our best friends, they would have no legal claim to prevent us (or China, or anyone else) from building on top of their code or to fork it. Freedom, is great.
Red Hat?
Founded in America, now owned by Big Blue.
Makes everything harder for other distros by adopting an 'our way or the highway' approach that is a big part of the reason for the problems with GNOME too.
While I agree with the general sentiment of your post, I think a good faith argument can be made that basing such a distro on the SUSE ecosystem would make more sense.
On that I could not tell much: I'm really not a dev and I use my Linux like I used to use my Mac. But I have little doubt there are a few more interesting alternatives to Fedora.
But if the GPL is a thing this should not matter that much. That's also why I worry to see a big distro like Ubuntu considering replacing GPL core tools with non GPL ones. Maybe I'm just paranoid but I see that as a long-term way to get rid of the GPL and took control of Linux to make it their product, not ours anymore.
I personally don't really care for the SUSE ecosystem. K3s and Rancher are nice but I don't like SUSE as a base system. It is heavy weight and Yast feels more like a burden. I'm also not quite sure about how secure everything is although it is probably fine. SUSE also has the downside of being way less popular that Debian, Ubuntu and RHEL like systems. Fedora has the benefit of working with tools built for RHEL. Ansible is a first class citizen in that regard. It also should work with software for Rocky Linux and any other RHEL like system.
It's odd that they want to go with the American based Fedora instead of the German based openSUSE. Only thing I can figure is that this is yet another case of European Tech infighting?
The Register should get ahold of Robert Riemann and ask them.
Or just license SUSE Linux and you get all the professional support you need. I don't understand why they'd want to roll their own thing when a European solution that ticks all the boxes exists.
Licensing SUSE would cost money and this guy wouldn't end up in charge of it. If I was SUSE I'd run around offering EU Government entities, and I mean all of them right down to a town council, seriously steep discounts on licensing and simultaneously create an entire team tasked with supporting new government users.
Hell if there were any European Venture Capitalists they should be lining up around the block to invest in SUSE doing just that. Investing 10 Billion in SUSE to do that now could return 100 Billion or more in just a decade.
Yep, was thinking the same thing. Was a Fedora user that migrated to Tumbleweed. Very satisfied.
It could be due to them liking Fedora better. We don't need to kick off more distro wars over something that probably won't affect most people.
Sure but if the intent is to get away from American software companies, specifically Microsoft for Desktop OS, then why would you run Fedora when SUSE is literally right there?
Maybe they weighted the options and choose Fedora?
Fedora is a community project
Fedora is an American Community Project.
There are contributors from around the world, but only Nazi America gets to choose.
Basing this on Fedora doesn't make sense. It tells me the private individual behind this proposal hasn't done an extensive analysis on this.
Under what means? The target is public sector and the OS to replace (Windows 10, Windows 11) would be a relatively compatible release target. Fedora is a competent leading edge (Wayland, Pipewire, BTRFS) distro that runs as a 6 month point release. I wouldn't see many reasons to not go with Fedora Workstation as a base unless going for an immutable base or a different core distro (OpenSUSE or Debian mainly).
EDIT: Missed that this is going to be immutabe, so it is likely being based on Fedora Kinoite, meaning there really aren't many alternatives besides OpenSUSE's offerings.
Fedora Kinoite is the immutable KDE variant. It will definitely be ostree based and likely will be something that leverages rpm-ostree. The other option would be bootable containers.
Why wouldn't they use Fedora? Last time I checked they are paving the way from a security and quality perspective. The Fedora team does excellent work.
Because it's run by Americans.
We're way past 'Not all Americans' now.
It's a US based project.
Yes, however it is still a community lead project with a focus on foss.
It is a good organization for the most part.
If you want "everyone" on board I'd take Mint. It just works and, for what I know, has no specific bad side effects.
Mint is not even among the top 10 to choose as a base distro for a government agency or any company.
It's good for the general public
Honestly they could build there own version of Mint based on Fedora. The Cinnamon desktop is fairly portable.
Can someone tell whoever is leading this project to go with EurOS? Please? Such a missed opportunity.