News EU Needs Its Own Operating System, Finnish Minister Says

[Admin]

The EU needs its own operating system for independence and cybersecurity, Finnish minister Katri Kulmuni said.

EU Needs Its Own Operating System, Finnish Minister Says : Read more

 

[prtskg]

Why not use linux then?

 

[AlistairAB]

this is so silly, is it even worth thinking about? Microsoft is a security threat to Europe lol...

 

[Deleted member 14196]

I guess they had better get busy then..... maybe they can run chinese oses. lol

 

[hannibal]

Heh... most likely even one more Linux distribution among the millions we allready have. But she has a point. If you want to be sure, you have to do it by yourself. Nobody else is interested in keeping european secrect than european themselves. That is why USA has it own, China has its own and russian is developing its own operations systems.
But Cyberpower security is much more than operation systems and browsers. It is the intra behind those frontend user interfaces.
those Also should be made locally and everything this cost a money. A lot. And then there is that huge amounth of people who should learn to use that new operation system. Who Are in big trouble when MS makes minor change in operation system or Office programs...
that alone is a reason why I Expect this idea to fail. Linux has tryed to replase Windows ower 29 year and has not managet to do that even if it is better in Many ways. This europe operation system aka Linux EU will face the same fate. Good idea. Normal people are not ready to give up Linux, Facebook and google search... They don`t care if google or Microsoft steal their cake resept, or family pictures.

 

[ubercake]

I encourage any competition, but when politicians make grand statements such as these, they're likely just asking for a payday (on the down-low) from the "few companies" already with operating systems in their countries.

 

[digitalgriffin]

Bill sponsored by all the former employees of Nokia who lost their jobs with their canceled phone os. It was based on Linux.

 

[AlistairAB]

What's really funny is how nonsensical this is. If Europe goes to war with the U.S., they can just pirate the software or hire their programmers to make altered copies of it. This isn't like losing your manufacturing base. China isn't worried about security concerns, they want the money, that's why they're making their own OS. The Finnish person could have just said "we want a piece of that pie" or something and made sense.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Maybe they should gather their own EU based Software Devs and make EUnix =D.

 

[knobbywalsh]

The EU needs its own operating system for independence and cybersecurity, Finnish minister Katri Kulmuni said.

EU Needs Its Own Operating System, Finnish Minister Says : Read more

Europe's problem is jealousy - the combined strength of 28 (now 27) member nations and one American company after another developed what they couldn't. And, they can't stand it, so they will take this ridiculous path. How will that help them compete better in an economy conducted in English, using software developed in the USA. Time for Europe to focus on innovation.

 

[JoBalz]

The EU needs its own operating system for independence and cybersecurity, Finnish minister Katri Kulmuni said.

Why not use linux then?

That was also my first thought. Linux. Easy enough to use one of the distros as the basis of a European system. It would be a lot faster to develop a product that starting from scratch. Or consider BSD.

 

[bit_user]

Bill sponsored by all the former employees of Nokia who lost their jobs with their canceled phone os. It was based on Linux.

This would've been a valid point like 10 years ago. By now, those guys have all found other jobs or retired.

Before Snowden and Trump's ban of companies supplying Huawei, I'd have said this was paranoia. Now, I think it's fairly prudent to have a set of all-EU options for their hardware & software stack, even if the majority keep using stuff mainly from the US and China.

 

[USAFRet]

There's always Linux. Ask Munich.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux

Open source | TechRepublic

www.techrepublic.com

 

[JeanMouloudDeLaVega]

Lucky us! There's a Finnish bloke who knows a thing or two about OSes. Torvalds something...

 

[bit_user]

What's really funny is how nonsensical this is. If Europe goes to war with the U.S., they can just pirate the software or hire their programmers to make altered copies of it.

It's probably not about literally not being able to obtain new copies of MS Windows or Office. I think they're worried about:

• Backdoors & vulnerabilities
• Support contracts
• Cloud services
• Data privacy
• Open & fair competition

This isn't like losing your manufacturing base.

It kind of is, though. If your companies can't compete with Google's products, because it unfairly favors its own by doing things like ranking them higher in its search results or pricing them below cost, then you fail to develop the industry which can produce those alternative products.

China isn't worried about security concerns, they want the money,

Like hell they're not! They're totally paranoid and after economic world domination.

 

[bit_user]

There's always Linux. Ask Munich.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux

Open source | TechRepublic

www.techrepublic.com

Identifying precisely what led to the demise of the LiMux project is difficult.

That's such a load of corporate-funded BS.

It was an open-and-shut case of bribery. The mayor was in bed with MS from the very start.

What happened in Munich

On 15 February 2017, the city council of Munich, Germany convened to discuss the future of their LiMux project. In its public session, the plenary voted to...

fsfe.org

 

[bit_user]

Why not use linux then?

The practical reality is that if you want good hardware support anytime soon, there aren't any better options. Even China's main operating systems are Linux-based.

That said, some BSD forks are still alive & kicking, and could definitely be viable on a more limited set of hardware.

If you want to get into more fringe territory, there are all kinds of options - from the Windows-clone ReactOS (note: mainly Russian-backed) to the BeOS-inspired Haiku, and the Rust-based Redox. And hundreds more, besides.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_operating_systems

 

[USAFRet]

​

That's such a load of corporate-funded BS.

It was an open-and-shut case of bribery. The mayor was in bed with MS from the very start.

While I might agree with you on that one...why hasn't any other city/state/country migrated?

 

[bit_user]

While I might agree with you on that one...why hasn't any other city/state/country migrated?

I don't know that. It's not something I keep tabs on - do you?

I am aware that China has several Linux distros. I'm not exactly sure how widely used they are, but the most "real" operating systems I've heard about in China are all basically Linux-distros (as opposed to things like Android, that have much heavier customization and wrapping).

Anyway, I'm not trying to say that everyone should switch to Linux, tomorrow. I'm not that guy. I just pointing out that the story behind Munich's switch has some troubling details.

BTW, as you probably know, the cloud runs on Linux. Even MS has gotten on the bandwagon. Linux doesn't need my help, even if it never won the war for the desktop OS of choice.

 

[USAFRet]

I don't either.
Apparently, my local city runs mainly on Linux. Has for years.

And oh yes, Linux is the back end for lots (most) web services.

Whenever someone says to me "I've never used Linux", I just point and laugh.

 

[bit_user]

I don't either.
Apparently, my local city runs mainly on Linux. Has for years.

I wouldn't be surprised if, in the wake of all the recent ransom-ware attacks, a lot of cities and towns were switching to something like ChromeOS*, and using cloud services for their apps and data.

...which is great, until there's a major internet outage or maybe they're hit with a DDoS attack.

* ChromeOS is Linux-based, of course, but I consider that a detail.

 

[USAFRet]

I wouldn't be surprised if, in the wake of all the recent ransom-ware attacks, a lot of cities and towns were switching to something like ChromeOS*, and using cloud services for their apps and data.

...which is great, until there's a major internet outage or maybe they're hit with a DDoS attack.

* ChromeOS is Linux-based, of course, but I consider that a detail.

The problem with that kind of switch is twofold.

1. It means giving up your data to google. They already know google owns it, but hat just finalizes the deal.

2. Rebuilding the thousands of individual office applications that have been chopped on over the years.
Every single office out there lives and dies on some little Excel or Access doodad that does some function that only impacts that office. It currently "works".
And would have to be rewritten to use what exists in Chrome or LibreOffice. Those office apps are mostly compatible, but not 100%.

I see that every single day at work. And my main function is to analyze and rewrite those into something better and more functional.
What used to take 30 man hours/week, reduced to 0.5 man hours /week. Literally.


And as you say...if some Gomer digs up the fiber into the building...poof, you're all offline.

 

[bit_user]

The problem with that kind of switch is twofold.

1. It means giving up your data to google. They already know google owns it, but hat just finalizes the deal.

I didn't say Google Docs. I just said cloud. You can even host Windows apps in the cloud which, depending how it's done, could be safer than running them locally.

I see that every single day at work. And my main function is to analyze and rewrite those into something better and more functional.
What used to take 30 man hours/week, reduced to 0.5 man hours /week. Literally.

You mean the conversion task is 60x improved, or that the new automation improves worker efficiency by that much? Whichever case, why is that?

if some Gomer digs up the fiber into the building...poof, you're all offline.

I guess there's cellular, in a pinch. Of course, that quickly gets expensive.

As an aside, when I hear how much is being invested in building out 5G infrastructure, I wonder if people realize that we're all eventually going to foot the bill for it...

 

[USAFRet]

You mean the conversion task is 60x improved, or that the new automation improves worker efficiency by that much? Whichever case, why is that?

Because the "application" and function they were using was created by some dude in the office, 5 years ago. And done badly. But it was "better" than the hand jamming and paper they were doing before that.
But, they've used that and relied on this thing for a long time.

Enter someone with actual dev experience.

What used to take 2 people all day Thursday and Friday to compile...now takes one person, 15 minutes on Thursday morning.

As simple as:
Multiple offices all over the country email a spreadsheet to this office.
These two guys take 2 full days to compile all of those 30 individual sets of data into one, and produce graphs for the Monday morning brief.

Instead, have all those remote offices enter that same data into a single combined location.
The guy in the main office can then see it all at once, and push out to a Boss's report with a single click.


Analyze their business process, and fix it. This is my thing. I've done this dozens and dozens of times.
They did not realize the art of the possible.

 

[digitalgriffin]

I don't either.
Apparently, my local city runs mainly on Linux. Has for years.

And oh yes, Linux is the back end for lots (most) web services.

Whenever someone says to me "I've never used Linux", I just point and laugh.

Apache is the stronghold of Linux and a number of web services run off Apache. But it's the last bastion.
Cloud services are moving away from that model and Amazon and Microsoft's services are based on .NET. (Yes I realize .NET is a language, but services that run on .NET don't run on Linux/Apache ...except a few experimental servers)

Don't shoot the messenger. I just see the trend.