alt Hacker NewsIt seems like what Europe really needs to do this is a viable mobile OS. It's been true for a while that Linux + LibreOffice is plenty to handle most government workers' needs on the desktop, but that's only good for when they are at their desks. Are there any viable alternatives to iOS and Android that are totally free of "dépendances extra-européennes"? What's the plan?
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Linux on Mobile has been progressing steadily in recent years, and is in a state suitable for very early adopters and tech enthusiasts. Definitely not for the general population IMHO.
See: https://postmarketos.org/
FWIW, it's not just the EU that needs this urgently: most of humanity sorely needs a trustworthy mobile OS that's not designed against their interests.
Might be more google dependent than you're looking for, but I've been using Murena's /e/os (based in France) and it's working great for me.
A big hurdle to this is hardware vendors locking bootloaders and making it impossible (or impractical) to write or use existing drivers.
Manufacturers maintain long running forks of Android (often very old Linux kernels) with their drivers hidden in their fork's source.
I'm a firm believer in the right to repair software - and the fact that it's illegal to reverse engineer binary blob drivers (or proprietary software at all) is a shame (not that you could even untangle a driver from a binary blob of a Linux fork). I'd go as far as feeling strongly that drivers should be open source, and if they aren't, documentation sufficient for the community to write drivers should be made available by manufacturers.
Linux on M5? Should be easy
Linux on an X Elite Surface Book? Should be easy
Ubuntu Touch on my Pixel 9? Should be easy
Android TV on my TV? Should be easy
Proxmox on my 5g mobile router? Should be easy
No drivers / locked bootloaders = not possible
remind me of firefox os https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products/firefox-os
Android Open Source is good enough. The tough part are device-specific drivers that never make it upstream and are eventually abandoned by the vendor, making upgrade past specific kernel versions very troublesome.
The Finns, as always, continue to develop mobile phones, Jolla is back from the dead and supposedly starts shipping sometime in 2026 with a new iteration on the hardware and the OS, time will tell if it'll have any impact.
Might not be 100% Europe-made from the get go, but good ideas and executions often start with small steps and iterate rather than having something groundbreaking out of the gate.