Self-hosted / open sourceDesktop OSHeadquarters: CN

openKylin: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

openKylin is a desktop Linux distribution developed as an open-source project. The project's website describes it as an open-source project, publishes downloads and information on the community structure, and points contributors to code repositories on Gitee. The licence is the Mulan Permissive Software License v2 (MulanPSL2), as stated on the website. Organisations should check the current release notes before evaluating it.

According to the website, the project is incubated and operated by the OpenAtom Foundation. The foundation is headquartered in Beijing, China, and the website carries a Beijing internet content provider filing. For a European organisation, this means that the governance of the project, and of any services hosted for it, falls under Chinese jurisdiction, which should be weighed in procurement decisions. Because the project publishes its code and the system can run locally, the software can be installed and examined independently of any hosted service.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with openKylin pre-selected

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Sovereignty score

77 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-250
Headquartered outside the EU (CN)
Data residency SOV-3100
No hosting in Europe (OTHER)
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-665
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 October 11, 2026

Headquarters	CN (OTHER)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision	No — no adequacy decisionVerified by hand
Sovereignty model	Open-source, distributedVerified by hand
Data hosting	OTHERVerified by hand
Open-source	YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	NoVendor-stated
Category	Desktop OS
Type	Product
Website	openkylin.top ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to openKylin

The European alternatives to openKylin 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 openKylin

openKylin is headquartered in CN, outside the EU. Contracts and data therefore also fall under non-European law. The GDPR applies through contractual terms, but in a conflict with local legislation you have less certainty than with a European vendor.

openKylin hosts data outside the EU (OTHER). Personal data therefore leaves the EU, which requires a transfer mechanism under the GDPR and pulls the data residency score down.

openKylin 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 openKylin 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 openKylin?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to openKylin 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 openKylin?

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

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

openKylin is headquartered in CN (OTHER) and hosts data in OTHER. Its GDPR compliance is limited or unclear. For full EU data residency the EU alternatives on this page usually offer more certainty.

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 October 11, 2026.

Sources

Public sources used in the latest check of this record.

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".

No public compliance evidence has been recorded for this vendor yet. Do you know its DPA or subprocessor list? Something wrong? Suggest a correction

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".

We found none of these signals on the vendor's own site when we checked.

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

Checked on October 11, 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.

Also in this category

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