Timeline

EU OS at Trefdag Digitaal Vlaanderen

The C-Smart Innovation Lab had a stand at Trefdag Digitaal Vlaanderen, the yearly event for Flemish local governments. Their message: freedom of choice for the digital workplace. Visitors could try EU OS themselves on two laptops at the stand and see how deployment is organised.

The stand led to many interesting conversations with local governments and education institutions, ranging from which software already runs on Linux to how central management works.

Next steps: following up with interested municipalities as possible pilots. C-Smart will share what they learn with the community.

EU OS at Open Source Conference Luxembourg 2026

On 7 October 2026, Patrick Jacobs of C-Smart and Robert Riemann presented "From European Vision to Local Reality: Making EU OS Work for Public Administrations" at the Open Source Conference Luxembourg 2026.

C-Smart supports Flemish municipalities with their digital transformation. Its Innovation Lab is testing an EU OS proof of concept in Belgian local administrations. The talk reported on the first steps for EU OS with a focus on architecture and proof-of-concept work to tests in real public sector environments:

• integration with existing identity and access management, government services, office applications, municipal software, device management and security policies
• hybrid environments during the migration instead of a direct replacement of Windows
• shared challenges across Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands: digital sovereignty, interoperability, legacy applications and dependence on a few technology providers
• practical experience from building a municipal workplace: identifying gaps, testing integrations and keeping existing applications and hardware usable

Resources:

• Slides (PDF)

Meeting with the MAX team in Madrid

On 9 February 2026, Robert Riemann met in Madrid with the team behind MAX (MAX, "MAdrid LinuX"), the Linux distribution of the Community of Madrid for its education sector.

• Robert presented the progress on EU OS, including the Proof of Concept for deploying and managing end-user Linux desktops in a public sector organisation.
• The MAX team shared their experience and the current challenges of operating a Linux desktop at scale, which feed back into the EU OS requirements.

EU OS at FOSDEM 2026

On 31 January 2026, Robert Riemann presented "EU OS: learnings from 1 year advocating for a common Desktop Linux for the public sector" at FOSDEM 2026 in Brussels. The talk was part of the track "Building Europe's Public Digital Infrastructure".

One year after EU OS put out an architecture for a common Desktop Linux for the public sector, the project has had many closed-room conversations with public servants from several member states and with various open source communities. The talk covers:

• the EU OS vision
• a DIY guide to the Proof of Concept
• feedback from stakeholders
• public sector expectations regarding the underlying Linux distribution

Resources:

• Slides (PDF)
• Video (MP4) (WebM/AV1)

EU OS Autumn Sprint 2025 (online)

After the hackathon in Paris, EU OS targets as a next milestone the hands-off provisioning and user enrollment of EU OS to an empty laptop via Forman. The timeline is a dedicated EU OS workshop end of November in The Hague with several authorities participating.

• comprehensive setup documentation of the Proof of Concept
• live demo in The Hague end of November
• support of several Fedora-related bootc images: universal blue, Fedora, Almalinux

EU OS at OSPOs for Europe 2025

Robert Riemann attended the event "OSPOs for Europe 2025" on behalf of EU OS in Brussels on 3 September 2025 (announcement on Mastodon).

He used the occasion to present the opportunities of a European approach to a common desktop Linux to Dirk Schrödter, Minister for Digitalisation of Schleswig-Holstein. Schleswig-Holstein is known for its ambitious open source strategy.

Hackdays 2025 in Paris

The French Interministerial Directorate for Digital Affairs (DINUM) organises an AI and Digital Workspace hackathon in Paris from 2-4 June 2025: Hackdays. EU OS assembles a team of policy and Linux experts from Greece, Germany, France and Hungary to meet in Paris and work on a proof of concept.

The submission form is still online at https://github.com/suitenumerique/hackdays2025/tree/main/submissions/euos. Unfortunately, the event was very competitive with many teams and EU OS failed to pass the preselection. Anyway, the event marks an important milestone:

• first hands-off deployment (via usb key) of a bootc-based Fedora with full-disk-encryption relying on fido key for decryption
• corporate partners support their experts travelling to Paris
• a lot of networking and discussion of the EU OS proposal with public servants from France, Germany and even some international organisations

EU OS Launch 🚀

Founder and project lead Robert Riemann launches the EU OS project with its public website at https://eu-os.gitlab.io.

Several elements motivated EU OS:

• frustration about the little 🇪🇺 synergies on digital sovereignty projects in the category of productivity suites, namely openDesk 🇩🇪 and LaSuite 🇫🇷;
• anticipation that both openDesk and LaSuite need to have an operating system offering at least a browser to realise their full potential on digital sovereignty;
• the EDPS decision of 8 March 2024 to ‘to order the Commission, under Article 58(2)(e) of the Regulation, to bring the processing operations resulting from its use of Microsoft 365 into compliance and to demonstrate such compliance, by 9 December 2024’;
• advice of a manager from the Commission’s internal IT service (DIGIT) that showing solutions is better than lamenting about the status quo.

In 1994, Robert spent the Christmas days playing with Lego (and later Lego Technic). 30 years later, Robert spent the Christmas days playing with Inkscape and Vitepress to get the idea of EU OS from his mind into the Internet.

The first event to discuss EU OS with likeminded people is the 38th Chaos Communication Congress (38C3) that takes place in Hamburg on 27–30 Dec 2024.