The petition is open to all EU resident. The goal is to replace all Windows in all public institution in Europe with a sovereign GNU/Linux.
If the petition is successful it would be a huge step forward for GNU/Linux adoption.
If they can keep the MS lobbyists out, it’s feasible, just ask Munich.
Maybe it’s too early in the morning, anyone got a link, I couldn’t find any?
The post does contain the link to the petition, anyway it’s this one: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/petitions/it/petition/content/0729%252F2024/html/Petition-No-0729%252F2024-by-N.-W.-%2528Austrian%2529-on-the-implementation-of-an-EU-Linux-operating-system-in-public-administrations-across-all-EU-countries
This was helpfull but Its in Italian so here is the English version LINK
My main worry with Linux becoming more popular is that it will be attacked with more malware and viruses. I wouldn’t mind though if Linux programmers could come up with better protection.
Linux is already what a decent chunk of servers run, so I don’t really see it increasing malware.
The insecure parts of Linux is mostly on the DE side opposed to the core OS part that servers use. We absolutely will see more vulnerabilities in the future as Linux grows.
Many developments over the last few years have been for improving those aspects, e.g. Wayland is far more secure than X11 could ever be. There will be more vulnerabilities found, but it won’t be as bad as one might fear.
It’s ridiculous that governments don’t use customized Unix/Linux builds.
well that’s what this law proposition is about… Better late than never but for it to be passed a maximum of EU resident should sign that petition
Funny enough, I’m working in IT in government exclusively with Linux for the past 20 years, which shows that indeed it’s possible.
There are a few reasons I don’t believe a petition like this will change a thing though
Didn’t even have to open the link to know it was red star. I’ve heard rumors of others as well.
Why? I’ve worked in two companies where IT allows Linux as an option and people are constantly having issues (including me). And these are highly technical people. Two people who are not stupid managed to break their laptops by uninstalling Python 2 which Gnome depended on.
Yes that’s technically a UX issue, but there are plenty of good old bugs too, e.g. if you remove a VPN connection that a WiFi network autoconnects to then that WiFi network will entirely stop working with no error messages to speak of. Took me a long time to figure that out. Or how about the fact that 4k only works at 30fps over HDMI, but it works fine over DisplayPort or Thunderbolt3. The hardware fully supports it and it works for other people with the same OS and laptop. I never figured that out.
That’s just a taster… I almost never have issues like that on Windows or Mac.
Windows may cost more than “free” but the additional support costs for Linux are very far from free too.
Maybe something like Chromebooks makes sense if everything is in the cloud.
That uninstalling python2 bit reminds me of stories of users deleting their system32 folder to free up disk space.
Or how about the fact that 4k only works at 30fps over HDMI, but it works fine over DisplayPort or Thunderbolt3
Blame HDMI forum for that. They objected to AMD releasing open source driver for HDMI 2.0+ that lets you do higher modes like 4k60 or 5k etc due to patent reasons. DisplayPort folks on the other hand, had no objections. DP is quite a superior technology too, so if you could, use it instead of HDMI please.
Why?
It makes no sense for a government/military to use a proprietary system made in another country when there’s a very strong movement inside of said government for an open system. They have incredibly smart people at SUSE, Manjaro and KDE right on the inside and you are telling me they can’t do better than hitting subscribe on Office365?
Assume the EU and US have a conflict, now the EU is stuck with an entire ecosystem made in the US. Assuming they don’t already have all your internal data, they can just get it with a single click.
Assuming they don’t already have all your internal data
A devotee of Our Lady of Assumption, i see.
Cope
You sound super nice.
Double edged sword. Forced adoption of a shitty distro, or a really locked down/limited system might not be a step forward at all.
From memory, Germany did this many years ago, and ended up rolling it back?
Nope, not Germany. The city of Munich, and it was rolled back because a politician took Microsoft bribes and drank the Microsoft snake oil.
Apparently they are back on the Linux train as of 2020, so thats good news.
Until the next corrupt politician… but yeah, let’s hope Linux stays, this time around.
Government systems should be locked down and limited.
Yup, exactly, which is kinda my point. The OS given to users is gonna be heavily restricted, so no one is going to use it and then run home to install it on a home PC. Government OSs are just not good ambassadors.
No one was discussing users transitioning on their home computers.
No, it isn’t a double edged sword. Even a mediocre distro would be better than Windows, any distro would be cheaper than Windows, and there’s no reason to choose a bad distro anyway.
No one wants to choose a bad OS environment, it will become one due to security or other non-negotiable requirements.
They aren’t going to just toss Ubuntu on a box and call it done. Itll be locked down, limited, and horrible to use. And users who dont know any better will blame “Linux”.
A government SOE Linux just isnt going to be a good ambassador for general desktop usage.
You mean just like Windows?
Just like windows, except that the misdirected hate when the SOE environment gets in the way will be aimed at “Linux” instead of “Microsoft”.
if you read the petition, it’s not for a security reason that it has been created but RGPD one… So with privacy in mind, it can be a not great but good distro
afaik Bayern rolled back to Windows after some Microsoft “lobbying”
Precisely the city of Munich had its LiMux system.
The 30,000 employees of Schleswig-Holstein’s local government will be moving to Linux and LibreOffice as the state pushes for what it calls “digital sovereignty,” a reference to non-EU companies not gathering troves of user data so European firms can compete with these foreign rivals.
Munich, the capital of German state Bavaria, switched from Windows to Linux-based LiMux in 2004, though it switched back in 2017 as part of an IT overhaul. Wanting Microsoft to move its headquarters to Munich likely played a part in returning to Windows, too.
Yeah, that’s the one. Gnome 2 in 2017 would have felt pretty dated. And the political reasons can’t have helped either.
Solution: don’t ship a shitty distro. This is the sort of issue that actual IT professionals need final say in. Not the MBAs. Not the politicals. The people who actually know what they’re doing. Additionally, years ago Linux was in a much different place. It’s really matured into something more suitable for both the average end user as well as professional adoption.
Thats the problem though, there are near infinite ways for someone along the way to completely fuck it up, and very few ways to get it right. And security concerns are almost always going to make the distro worse for the users.
And even if it was left to IT professionals, they are just as capable of making it a mess on their own.
We could say that about every single general decision that anyone in the world has ever made. It’s a truism which tells us almost nothing about this situation.
IT professionals only get a say when the C-suite accepts that IT is a necessity, not a burden. This is extremely uncommon.
Working in enterprise IT sucks. I’ve had jobs where we had to have CFO approval to buy a bag of zipties (the request was denied, BTW)
Linux isn’t a platform but rather a general ecosystem. The hard part is making a base system that means the requirements and is rock solid.
dunno how many online petitions actually worked, but “kay guys… now… linux!” ain’t gonna work.
That’s a parliament petition. If it succeed it is forced by EU constitution to be turned into an EU law.
That tool is offered to EU representant to create a kind of referendum and accelerate the adoption of a law through direct democracy.
I think you’re a bit mistaken. Per https://www.edf-feph.org/enforcement-toolkit-european-parliament-peti-committee/
“The Petitions Committee does not have investigatory nor enforcement powers and it can only adopt non-binding recommendations. Nevertheless, it can be a good tool to draw political attention to specific matters.”
At most, it makes the parliament have to look at the proposal and decide if its worth looking into or not. It doesn’t force anything.
Unless I’m looking at the wrong kind of petition to the EU Parliament?
Why creating a new distro instead of using a big one and contribute to it?
They aren’t building something from scratch. They probably are just going to make a base image with everything configured in a standard way.
Governments tend to have security standards that differ from most solutions readily available. Not saying this is the case, but it’s a possibility.
Supported!
I feel like they don’t know the magnitude of that what means.
Very cool but unlikely to work
Could easily fork a distro and pay a government agency or independent entity the same amount as Microsoft is currently being paid to maintain the distro. Or they could put financial backing on any of the current commercial Linux solutions out there. It’s far from farfetched.
The problem is dealing with the application side.
Just one feature that’s massive - how many systems have automatic import/export using Excel file formats. Converting those processes will be a huge undertaking themselves, let alone how many other things that will require re-engineering. The scope and scale of this is staggering.
A better effort would be to convert a single, small organization in government, then the scope is limited, but you get to build the fundamentals, and gain the experience of interfacing with extant systems.
You realize the office alternatives have been able to save into native excel formats, even in various year varieties, for a long time, right?
Aren’t most government organizations interlinked?
Depends where you are. I can’t speculate on the EU or its member-states. But here in Canada, your information is basically stuck at an organization unless you give consent to have it sent somewhere else. And it gets even more complicated when it involves a provincial-federal relationship.
