Self-hosted / open sourceDesktop OSHeadquarters: FR

Mageia: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Mageia is a free, community-based Linux distribution for desktop and server use. It was created in 2010 as a fork of Mandriva Linux by former Mandriva employees and community members, and the first release appeared in June 2011. KDE Plasma is the main desktop environment, GNOME and Xfce are available as live editions, and LXQt, Cinnamon and MATE are also supported. For package management, DNF is the alternative and urpmi the legacy tool. You install Mageia yourself on your own systems.

Mageia.Org is the French, Paris-based non-profit legal structure that supports the project; it is run by elected contributors and publishes financial reports and a list of donors. The software is free software, mainly under the GPL. In its privacy policy the organisation declares its data collection to the French regulator CNIL. No commercial owner is named. Because you run Mageia on your own infrastructure, you decide where your data is stored.

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Sovereignty score

94 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-2100
Headquartered in the EU: European law applies
Data residency SOV-3100
EU-only hosting
Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-390
Self-hostable: encryption keys under your own control
Freedom from lock-in SOV-680
Open source: low switching costs
Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-6100
Source code auditable, forkable and self-hostable

SOV codes: the matching objective in the European Commission's Cloud Sovereignty Framework. Official source

How the score is calculated

Facts and evidence

Last checked July 2, 2026

Headquarters	FR (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty model	Open-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hosting	EUVerified by hand
Open-source	YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Compliance documents	1 published, see belowVendor-stated
Hosting signal	IELO - IELO-LIAZO SERVICES SAS, FR (FR)Technically measured
Category	Desktop OS
Type	Product
Website	mageia.org ↗

The hosting signal shows the network that serves the vendor's website, often a CDN, and not necessarily where the service or your data is hosted. How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Mageia

The European alternatives to Mageia come from our knowledge base of over 6,800 vendors. We only list vendors headquartered in the EU or the EEA; fully European-owned vendors rank before vendors with a foreign owner. For each alternative you see the country, the open-source status and a short description.

Score per alternative: 0 = high exposure, 100 = sovereign

22 European Desktop OS vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

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Why digital sovereignty matters with Mageia

Mageia is headquartered in FR and therefore falls under European law: the GDPR, NIS2 and the Data Act. No foreign legislation can compel access to your data.

Data is hosted exclusively in the EU, so Mageia scores best on data residency.

Mageia is open source. You can audit the source code, self-host the software and keep the encryption keys under your own control. Switching is easier because data and software are not tied to a single party.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs Mageia together with your other vendors and gives a total score, a heatmap and the main risk drivers.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best European alternative to Mageia?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Mageia include Alpine Linux, Devuan and /e/OS. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Mageia?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Mageia include Alpine Linux, Devuan, /e/OS, EndeavourOS, KDE neon, Linux Mint, Manjaro and NixOS. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is Mageia GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Mageia is headquartered in FR (EU) and hosts data in EU. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes Mageia an EU-sovereign choice in its own right; the EU alternatives on this page are comparable European tools.

Details and sources

Verified by handHeadquarters, owner, hosting locations and licence have been checked by us against public sources. Free of charge and for every vendor, not a paid label. Nothing in this knowledge base is taken over automatically. Last checked on July 2, 2026.

Sources

This record was checked via the vendor's website and legal notice during the full audit of June and July 2026. Source links have been recorded per record since 20 September 2026.

Compliance evidence

The links below point to the vendor's own public documents. We only record what we found: a missing link means "not found publicly", not "not compliant".

Security page / trust center: mageia.org/en/about/policies/privacy/

Provenance of the links above:Vendor-stated

Links checked on September 21, 2026.

Cyber Resilience Act

Public signals that relate to the EU Cyber Resilience Act. They do not count towards the score. A missing line means "not found publicly".

Supported versions: mageia.org/en/support/
Organisation behind the open-source project: Mageia.Org

For products in scope of the CRA, CE marking is required from 11 December 2027; this cannot be checked yet.

Checked on October 9, 2026. What is the Cyber Resilience Act?

Digital sovereignty in Desktop OS

Desktop OS: Desktop operating system — daily work platform. In this category the choice of vendor determines who has legal access to your data, where that data lives and how easily you can switch later.

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