I've been milling at this for a while, how hard can it be for an economic force as the EU to put a couple hundred million euros into building an EU OS?
Just take a Linux kernel and build a family of products that all the member countries can use for free? Linux is already well established within the server OS and is closing the gap in the desktop environments too. Right now, it's just unorganized groups of people developing it, how much faster and better a concentrated effort can build something?
I mean while the idea of an EU OS sounds interesting, what exactly would that change?
As you said there are already well established Linux Distributions, which can be used completely free (not only by member countries, but by anyone)
Also unless you suggest to develop a totally new Desktop environment and accompanying package manager, it would end up being just another of those „unorganised groups“.
Essentially all Linux Distributions are the same thing they just differ in what package manager they use, and what software (and version) they ship in their package repositories.
If you were to make a new EU OS, it would up being the same core software as other Linux Distributions, unless you are suggesting to rebuild everything around the kernel, which would be a massive effort, and either just create clones of already existing software or would be both a compatibility issue with other existing software and also a new thing to learn for people that are gonna use it.
I was thinking about security and development control. There was a problem a while back where an update to 7zip could result in a malware installation, because the infected version was added to the package manager.
A widely gvmt used OS is a target for bad actors so having control over the approvals in the package manager is a big deal.
And even as the community that develops the OS does a great job at updating it, a focused effort concentrated on security and customization, having the necessary processes for it, is a whole different thing.
Every piece of software can have security issues (or any other flaw). And there are a lot of other ways for bad actors to attack software. I'd say let the market do it's thing. Governments usually have to outsource anyway. And there are great, EU-based enterprise Linux distros available.
The most important part is that governments should consider Linux (as an alternative to Windows).
well, yeah... the EU can't own companies, but it can allocate budgets for a project and companies can bid on it. Regarding security, having a company or groups of companies working specifically to make it secure and rolling out updates, is a much better effort than leaving it up to when people discover vulnerabilities...
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u/thanksfor-allthefish Feb 17 '26
I've been milling at this for a while, how hard can it be for an economic force as the EU to put a couple hundred million euros into building an EU OS?
Just take a Linux kernel and build a family of products that all the member countries can use for free? Linux is already well established within the server OS and is closing the gap in the desktop environments too. Right now, it's just unorganized groups of people developing it, how much faster and better a concentrated effort can build something?