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.
It’s ridiculous that governments don’t use customized Unix/Linux builds.
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.
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.
you are telling me they can’t do better than hitting subscribe on Office365?
Yes I am absolutely telling you that.
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.
I don’t think that’s the reason. It works for other people.
It’s literally the reason
So why does it work for other people with the same laptop and OS?
They’re using a proprietary driver, not the open source one
BUT HOW COME THIS THING I DONT UNDERSTAND IS HAPPENING?
We exclusively use Windows on our user’s devices (over 10k devices!) and don’t have to support anything else. We end up with problems like those all the time.
- occasionally all installations become blocked no matter what means or which user, requiring reimaging to resolve.
- DisplayPort connections mysteriously failing and requiring reboots of the device and sometimes also the dock or monitor. Sometimes we even have to swap the cable out, even though the cable will continue to work in another setup just fine.
- using a different brand of dock than the ones we have at our hotelling stations and disconnecting for any length of time causes wifi to fail until reboot
- wifi at the office mysteriously stops working as you move around the building, requiring restart
None of our Linux test devices experience any of this.
Do you have 10k Linux laptops though? The places where I worked saw issues like this for a significant fraction of the dozens of Linux laptops (most people used Macs). There’s no way you could scale that issue rate to 10k machines.
That uninstalling python2 bit reminds me of stories of users deleting their system32 folder to free up disk space.
Yeah except that uninstalling Python 2 is a perfectly reasonable thing to want to do.
Since Gnome depended on it, they would have had to intentionally push past warnings to force the uninstall, assuming they’re using a distro with a dependency mapping package manager… So, no, that’s not a perfectly reasonable thing to do
they would have had to intentionally push past warnings to force the uninstall
Go and learn some basics about UX. Two different very smart people made this mistake.
IIRC there are no warnings. It will just list gnome in the list of packages to uninstall that you often get when uninstalling things, and can easily ignore.
Again to reinforce the point because many people do not understand it. Just because it was possible to avoid the issue if you were careful does not mean that it is not an issue. People make mistakes. Seatbelts exist.
In an enterprise imaged Windows laptop they and you probably wouldn’t have superuser privileges in order to keep yourselves from doing stuff like deleting core Windows dependencies. Maybe they give you full administrative access at your company but if you deleted the Program Files folder to save time you’d be blamed by pretty much everyone.
You guys obviously have root privileges or else you wouldn’t have been able to delete the system’s core Python2 installation. And frankly you must have literally manually deleted it because the package manager would have told you what havoc you were about to enact and made you tell it to do it anyway.
But what’s even weird to me is that most python devs I know, including myself use python virtual environments (venv) to use different versions and package bloat control from something like pip but keep it all nice and neat.
If you wanted python3 to be the default you have to change the PATH in Windows or if you don’t know what you are doing I guess reinstall whichever python with a .MSI an hope it does it for you.
Meanwhile, in Linux you can just use the alternatives utility to literally pick your preferred versions and it takes care of the paths for you.
And with the HDMI issue? You must not be using the same graphics drivers and someone is using proprietary graphics drivers (won’t have the issues you’ve described) and the other is using open source versions (you’ll have the issues you’ve described) because companies are shitty about their proprietary closed standards.
Which brings up another point. You say you all use the same laptop model and OS but you don’t all use the same drivers? There’s no baseline? There’s no control?
This sounds like a Hell of your own making. This is why users in general should never have full administrative privileges and they should be tailored down to just what you need. Epecially if they haven’t yet learned the basics of the OS they are using because they are at best a danger to themselves and at worst a vulnerable laptop inside the network.
If they can keep the MS lobbyists out, it’s feasible, just ask Munich.
Except they couldn’t keep the Micro$oft
criminalslobbyists out
I mean I’d be fine with BSD too. the point should be to force public institutions to use FOSS
FreeBSD is fine for servers I guess, but due that most server administrators know Linux better than any BSD, it’s probably not going to be used much. BSD’s also seem to be severely underfunded and the future of them seem vague.
That would be incredibly dumb. There are entire fields where the FOSS is just hilariously behind proprietary software (or sometimes the only option). Do you want to cripple public institutions by cutting them off entirely from proprietary software?
Right now public institutions are paying for proprietary software. If they would invest the same money into FOSS, the FOSS option would not be behind proprietary software for long.
Switzerland already did it. Its brilliant. Instead of the gov pouring money into proprietary solutions to meet their needs, they can fund FOSS and benefit from the same software being funded by other governments and companies too.
Proprietary is crippling. Its only chosen due to corruption
“There are entire fields where the FOSS is just hilariously behind proprietary software”
- “hilariously”?
- Examples?
CAD, CAM, EDA, audio/video production (NLVEs, DAWs, synthesisers etc.).
There are open source options sometimes, but they are all faaar behind the commercial options. No fiscally sane business or government department would use them (unless they only need a small job, or are quite masochistic).
CAD is a good example. Open Source CAD solutions are very basic even for “normal” users and it does make a difference. Proprietary still makes sense for CAD today even with the FreeCAD 1.0 release. My son and I did just design a keyboard though using all free tools ( including PCB ). So not impossible.
I feel like the multimedia production stuff is less compelling specifically as we are talking about government.
The number of government employees that need a DAW ( as a percentage ) has to be vanishingly small and could be handled as exceptions.
Video production feels like a great example of where proprietary software is probably holding things back.
The vast majority of govt employees that need to edit video have very basic needs and could be served by FOSS solutions. Today, a few need top professional apps and I agree they should have them. My guess though is that the real problem in govt today is that lots of people that could benefit from video editing capability have been denied the budget for those pro apps and so have no capability at all. A FOSS solution may dramatically improve govt ability to create modern media simply by virtue of being available to a wider array of users.
For governments, I think the priority should be exchange and archive formats. Regardless of what apps and platforms they use, I as a citizen should be able to read that data via free software. Govt should be able to read what I provide to them. Govt in the future should be able to access archives if they have moved to free software.
Next is the platform ( the OS and the web browser ). You can run your proprietary video editing on Linux. If demand on the scale of ALL European gov moved to Linux, I assure you that Linux versions of the software they need would exist ( even if still proprietary ). I use Outlook on Linux every day. I also use Teams ( usually on Edge ). RMS would hate me. But I only archive to AV1 and Opus, never HEVC and AAC. Most of what I use is FOSS.
Least important really is the apps. I have no problem with companies solving problems better than FOSS and getting paid for it. Even by gov. As above though, those that do not need the “better” version should be free to use something else. And the “default” ( for things like basic docs ) should be FOSS too. This is just not as important as the file formats and platforms.
and could be handled as exceptions.
Indeed. The original comment was
the point should be to force public institutions to use FOSS
So it sounds like you agree with me that that is dumb. Use of FOSS should be strongly encouraged, but to force it is masochistic.
I’ve always said governments and public institutions funded by taxpayers should use FLOSS and not be beholden to private companies. Any shortcomings or unfulfilled needs in Linux and FLOSS software would quickly be dealt with once large organizations like these started using it as the default, since they could easily fund whatever features or fixes are needed for significantly less money than they pay for proprietary software (especially now that these days they’re forking over annual subscriptions), and thus they’d also have much more control over the making sure the software meets their needs.
It seems like a no-brainer to me. Maybe it wasn’t in the earlier days of Linux but not for the last decade or so.
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.
Flatpak too, they could force more filesystem restrictions tho, line Android apps
Wayland takes a lot of abuse but it is a great example of what is great about FOSS. Completely proprietary software could never abide that level of disruption.
If being driven by a minor player, it is just too hard and too risky. A commercial player with the economic dominance to pull it off would never see enough financial benefit to bother.
Take Windows. Even though modern Windows is from the “New Technology” branch of the Windows family, the security model was flawed with all users commonly running as Admin. Instead of really changing that, they have introduced a couple layers of duct tape ( eg. UAC ) but not fundamentally fixed it.
Most of the Windows malware gets deployed by some user downloading and executing random files they downloaded on the web. Since installing applications on Linux is usually done through some centralized package manager or app store (Flathub), it almost entirely eliminates this attack vector. Running random scripts from the internet by downloading them using
curland piping them intosudo bashis a whole nother issue though. Noob-friendly distros like Ubuntu should IMO have some safeguards in place to block these actions.Since installing applications on Linux is usually done through some centralized package manager or app store (Flathub), it almost entirely eliminates this attack vector.
xz moment.
Yes, I see that weasel word “almost” in that sentence. I expect it’s going to be doing increasingly heavy lifting as Linux becomes a more lucrative target to attack over time.
Your point generally stands, though. Even if they’re fallible, at least someone is vetting it at all somewhere in this pipeline.
Linux is a lot easier to secure
Linux-based OSes are less uniform than Windows. They could and probably will be targeted, but exploits won’t spread because of how many verities they are and how different and incompatible they can be. Some, for example, don’t even use the GNU utils and userland.
This petition is for developing something dubbed “EU-Linux”, so if implemented as is will be pretty uniform
That is mostly false. Most of the code that faces the network is the same. As is most of the background running code. Linux is still more secure.
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?
I like and support the idea in general, but the petition’s scope is just too broad and lacks focus. Migrating to Linux? Sure, but let’s not force a single distribution across the EU. New EU mobile OS? Nice idea, but there is no solid alternative unless a lot of time and money is spent on developing it.
For governments, I think the priority should be exchange and archive formats. Regardless of what apps and platforms they use, I as a citizen should be able to read that data via free software. Govt should be able to read what I provide to them. Govt in the future should be able to access archives if they have moved to free software.
Next is the platform ( the OS and the web browser ). You can run your proprietary video editing on Linux. If demand on the scale of ALL European gov moved to Linux, I assure you that Linux versions of the software they need would exist ( even if still proprietary ). I use Outlook on Linux every day. I also use Teams ( usually on Edge ). RMS would hate me. But I only archive to AV1 and Opus, never HEVC and AAC. Most of what I use is FOSS.
Least important really is the apps. I have no problem with companies solving problems better than FOSS and getting paid for it. Even by gov. As above though, those that do not need the “better” version should be free to use something else. And the “default” ( for things like basic docs ) should be FOSS too. This is just not as important as the file formats and platforms.
Adopting Linux is the best way to help ensure European sovereignty from maga meddling.
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.
If it’s done EU wide, it’ll take a lot more than a corrupt politician to reverse it
yes. about three fiddy…
National governments should be harder to bribe than local ones, at least. Also harder to get them to adopt it in the first place though.
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.
Then they went back to Linux a few years pater
Yeah, that’s the one. Gnome 2 in 2017 would have felt pretty dated. And the political reasons can’t have helped either.
So, it didn’t fail from a technical fault but a political one? I feel like you’re arguing against it but I’m not following how that has anything to do with the viability of it (especially if it worked for 13 years)
From memory, Germany did this many years ago, and ended up rolling it back?
The city of Munich deployed their own custom Linux systems many years ago. But since it wasn’t really maintained and updated, the user experience was pretty bad and the city’s employees were unhappy. Then Micro$oft lobbyists also came in and made them switch - by threatening to move their German headquarters out of Munich, which would cost the city lots of tax revenue.
You think that Microsoft lobbyist would have had any traction if the user experience was any decent?
Of course not. They wouldn’t have had any reason to switch.
That is the biggest issue with Linux at the moment. It takes more maintenance than Windows. And there are a lot less people with the knowledge to setup and maintain those environments.
At the end of the day, the point of those environments is to allow the user to work in them. But if the user is unable to work properly because of the environment, then that environment must be changed. It is as simple as that.
Of course not. They wouldn’t have had any reason to switch.
Of course they would? Millions of euros of tax revenue sounds like a pretty compelling reason to me. This is why Micro$oft’s “lobby efforts” should be labeled as what they are: Nothing more and nothing less than corruption.
It takes more maintenance than Windows.
If you create your own distro, yes. But there are countless noob-friendly distros like Mint, Ubuntu and Fedora that they could use with practically 0 maintenance required. Also, compare the 2004 desktop Linux experience to now. Having used Gentoo Linux compiled from a stage 1 tarball back in 2002, I can tell you: the differences are tremendous. Many of the issues they had can be directly attributed to OpenOffice and it’s bad compatibility with Microsoft Office file formats, which has long been replaced by LibreOffice. It still worked out pretty well for them, over a period of 13 years. And it saved the tax payer millions of euros of Microsoft’s stupid licensing fee for their proprietary garbage.
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.
afaik Bayern rolled back to Windows after some Microsoft “lobbying”
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.
a really locked down/limited system might not be a step forward at all
Depends what you mean. Locked down as in hidden from the public (I don’t think that’s legal anyways because of the GPL) would be bad. But locked down/limited from employees so that they can’t bork the system is good, imo.
The latter, and it is good from an organisational perspective, but its never a nice experience, and for many, this will be their first real experience with a Linux.
Right now Linux is “That nerd OS”, if this goes badly, for millions it could change to “That OS they forced on us at work, where I can’t XYZ”
Edit: on the GPL front, GPL doesn’t require that you publish your code to everyone, just to the recipients of your binaries. And you only have to give it upon request. So they definitely could keep it somewhat under wraps if they wanted to. If they are smart, they’ll follow the Munich model and stick to upstreaming any changes they make.
Edit: on the GPL front, GPL doesn’t require that you publish your code to everyone, just to the recipients of your binaries. And you only have to give it upon request. So they definitely could keep it somewhat under wraps if they wanted to.
When I said “hidden from the public”, I was meaning refusing to disclose the source code even when asked. I do wonder how the laws would apply to government organizations violating copyright 🤔. Like what if it was the OS for some defense system? I’m not sure a government would be too keen on disclosing that — even if it was requested though some sort of freedom of information request (if the respective country has that) — and would rather classify it and refuse to disclose regardless of the license. I’m not aware of any precedent of this.
Only the end-users would have rights to the source under GPL, and its unlikely that someone is going to risk their job by releasing the code.
I’m not sure how FOI would work, but I dont think they just automatically get approved.
I still expect it to be done in the open, one of the things Munich got right was upstreaming all their changes, which meant that even when it was cancelled, nothing was lost. Maintaining out of tree changes is just way to much work
Only the end-users would have rights to the source under GPL, and its unlikely that someone is going to risk their job by releasing the code.
Fair point. So I suppose that would be the employees using the distribution rather than the entire populace.
I still expect it to be done in the open, one of the things Munich got right was upstreaming all their changes, which meant that even when it was cancelled, nothing was lost. Maintaining out of tree changes is just way to much work
Would you be able to cite a source for this Munich program? I’d like to read more about it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux
Not a lot of sources, I did find a blog post from a 3rd party contractor who did some work to get stuff upstreamed, but I cant find it right now
[…] but its never a nice experience […]
Why’s that?
Properly locking down a machine just heavily restricts what you can do with it, to the point that normal things that you or I do day-to-day on our own PCs become impossible. Every time you hit a restriction its very frustrating.
I am drawing from my experience as a developer, so it might be worse for me, but I’ve also heard accountants in the office complaining of similar gripes with their locked down windows systems.
Hm, but I’m not sure people would attribute that to the design of the underlying OS itself rather than just the employer. Like do those people with restrictions on Windows blame Microsoft? It’d be the same as someone blaming the Linux maintainers for employer placed restrictions on an OS running Linux. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure someone would still do that, but I’m not convinced that the majority would think that way — I think most people would be able to make the distinction.
Yeah, I could be wrong, maybe the blame will be attributed correctly, maybe not.
At least with Windows, most people know what its normally like at home, but thats less true for Linux.
At least with Windows, most people know what its normally like at home, but thats less true for Linux.
Yeah, that’s a fair point that they wouldn’t have a comparison, so they wouldn’t know if it’s always like that. One could perhaps make an educated guess, depending on circumstance, but, without any first-hand experience or exposure, it would be just that: a guess.
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?
