A Danish consulting company is building an open-source Linux distribution based on NixOS for the Danish Road Traffic Authority. It includes full-disk encryption, VPN, and two-factor login. Functionally it presumably works like most other office Linux distributions that have been tried in governments over time, and it is a reaction to the digital sovereignty wave that has hit European governmental institutions.
What makes this interesting is, of course, that it’s based on NixOS. Historically one might have picked RHEL, or SUSE, because they have service agreements and presumably tools that help administrate fleets of machines.
Here’s the LinkedIn post that revealed this:
Here’s the statement (in Danish) by the consulting firm:
LinkedIn post seems to be login-walled, and from the Danish-language post I failed to find an answer.
Is it going to be a «world-facing open-source» distribution as a whole thing, or will public open-source interaction be upstream-by-upstream whenever they have patches to offer and not only configuration? (And the entire system being in the latter case a configuration that one gets together with support, as the configuration being supported)
Don’t worry, it contains no useful information if you already know what NixOS is.
Denmark isn’t just “switching to Linux.” They are playing 4D Chess.
You’ve probably heard the news: The Danish Road Traffic Authority is ditching Microsoft (Windows & Office) for Open Source.
But the most interesting part isn’t that they are switching. It’s what they are switching to.
Instead of picking a “standard” user-friendly distro like Ubuntu or Mint, the pilot project (SIA Open) is built on NixOS.
For the uninitiated, this is a massive flex. NixOS is the “Navy SEAL” of Linux distributions. It’s advanced, robust, and solves the biggest IT headaches in ways Windows never could.
Here are 3 facts about NixOS that make this a genius move for a government agency: The “Undo” Button for the entire OS NixOS updates are “atomic.” If a system update breaks something (a driver, a setting, an app), the user can simply reboot and select the previous version from the menu. The system rolls back instantly to the exact state it was in before the update. No Blue Screens of Death. No formatting. It just works. The OS is Code (Infrastructure as Code) In NixOS, the entire operating system configuration is defined in a single text file. Want to deploy 500 identical laptops for new employees? You don’t need “disk imaging” software. You just copy the config file. The system builds itself exactly as defined, bit-for-bit. “Dependency Hell” is Extinct NixOS stores every package in isolation. Need an old version of Python for one app and a new version for another? They coexist happily without crashing each other. This is crucial for government agencies running legacy software alongside modern tools.
Looks like Denmark isn’t just saving money on licenses. They are building a Self-Healing, Reproducible, and Sovereign digital infrastructure.
I never thought I’d read a LinkedIn-post about NixOS, but I’m happy to see it. It generated quite a reach as well.
I’d love to answer this, but I don’t know. Since it’s a consulting company that doesn’t have a large git presence and there isn’t a link to the source code of the distro, I think they don’t fully grasp the idea of open source. They also haven’t made any public statements in English, so their communication clearly targets potential customers in the Danish public sector. Which is to say, I don’t think they will distribute it very efficiently.
So a less optimistic interpretation of this is: “One Danish public-sector institution switched to NixOS, and they might inspire neighbouring institutions.”
Denmark isn’t just “switching to Linux.” They are playing 4D Chess. 
The “Undo” Button for the entire OS 
NixOS updates are “atomic.” If a system update breaks something (a driver, a setting, an app), the user can simply reboot and select the previous version from the menu. The system rolls back instantly to the exact state it was in before the update. No Blue Screens of Death. No formatting. It just works.
The OS is Code (Infrastructure as Code) 
In NixOS, the entire operating system configuration is defined in a single text file. Want to deploy 500 identical laptops for new employees? You don’t need “disk imaging” software. You just copy the config file. The system builds itself exactly as defined, bit-for-bit.
“Dependency Hell” is Extinct 
NixOS stores every package in isolation. Need an old version of Python for one app and a new version for another? They coexist happily without crashing each other. This is crucial for government agencies running legacy software alongside modern tools.