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posted by mrpg on Tuesday February 20 2018, @12:38PM   Printer-friendly
from the fool-me-once... dept.

The Register spotted Ubuntu behaving badly again with respect to users' privacy. In their article "Ubuntu wants to slurp PCs' vital statistics – even location – with new desktop installs: Data harvest notice will be checked by default", they note that in addition to installing popcon and apport by default, Canonical seeks much deeper data mining (without using the word "telemetry"):

[...] "We want to be able to focus our engineering efforts on the things that matter most to our users, and in order to do that we need to get some more data about sort of setups our users have and which software they are running on it," explained Will Cooke, the director of Ubuntu Desktop at Canonical.

[...] Data Canonical seeks "would include" the following: Ubuntu Flavour, Ubuntu Version, Network connectivity or not, CPU family, RAM, Disk(s) size, Screen(s) resolution, GPU vendor and model, OEM Manufacturer, Location (based on the location selection made by the user at install). No IP information would be gathered, Installation duration (time taken), Auto login enabled or not, Disk layout selected, Third party software selected or not, Download updates during install or not, [and] LivePatch enabled or not.

The system plans to leverage the power of the default setting by making the choice opt-out, not opt-in as popcon has been in the past: Cooke explained to the ubuntu-devel audience that "Any user can simply opt out by unchecking the box, which triggers one simple POST stating, 'diagnostics=false'. There will be a corresponding checkbox in the Privacy panel of GNOME Settings to toggle the state of this."

El Reg also noted Ubuntu's plan to address user privacy concerns:

"The Ubuntu privacy policy would be updated to reflect this change."

This seems less egregious than Ubuntu's past invasions of privacy, but much more invasive and Windows 10-like.


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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by whatevs on Tuesday February 20 2018, @02:57PM (12 children)

    by whatevs (6011) on Tuesday February 20 2018, @02:57PM (#640655)

    I carefully read through the explanation before making my typical knee-jerk reaction, and I'm glad I did. I can understand why they would want to do this, and why they would want to make it the default action. And I fully support them in choosing to do this with their distribution. It's not the direction I would take it if it were mine, but I see what they're trying to accomplish, and their motives don't seem nefarious. I assume they understand the law of unintended consequences, and they still felt it was worth doing, and I support that.

    I'm also not going to use Ubuntu anymore. Combined with other decisions they have made over the years, they're just not the distribution for me anymore, and that's okay. I'm just not their target user, nor are the people whose computers I maintain.

    Back when I switched from Gentoo to Ubuntu (back when Ubuntu thought nudity was appropriate in the artwork for their distribution) I did it because of the wide range of available packages and being able to install them right away. It turns out, I don't actually need any more than what Debian is able to provide. I don't fully agree with the decisions Debian has made, so I'm not going to use their distribution, either. But Devuan has been working well since the beta, even for the few Steam games I play, so I'm going to keep using that and putting that on family members' machines. I've been using that since before 1.0 at home and work. I do spin up Ubuntu VMs for testing, which is unfortunate, as I have to make sure my stuff is still compatible, but I definitely don't use them for day to stuff anymore.

    Who knows what direction Ubuntu will take in the future, but unless the new distro makes similar choices, I don't imagine I'll be going back.

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  • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday February 20 2018, @03:33PM (8 children)

    by Gaaark (41) on Tuesday February 20 2018, @03:33PM (#640668) Journal

    I stopped using ubuntu mainly because it seemed to get slower and slower. The same with plain debian (though not as bad as ubuntu).
    I switched to Arch (Manjaro) because of speed, but then learned they switched to systemd.

    If i had the time and a faster/better machine i'd try distro hopping in a VM, but that's not really an option right now.

    I think i'm going to try void and gentoo (used gentoo for a while, but kind of opted out when the whole shit-stain happened with (Daniel??) the lead developer being tossed and the upheaval....).

    I dunno: void, gentoo, calculate, maybe some others. But damn, Manjaro is sooooooo nice: except systemd.

    --
    --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20 2018, @03:49PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20 2018, @03:49PM (#640683)

      You could look at nosh, http://jdebp.eu/Softwares/nosh/, [jdebp.eu] it's able to convert systemd unit files to it's own style and provides shims to allow usage of sysv, bsd or systemd syntax to manage services. It also seems to have a superset of functionality while not making the most egregious errors in design found in systemd and without the mission creap.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Bot on Tuesday February 20 2018, @03:50PM

      by Bot (3902) on Tuesday February 20 2018, @03:50PM (#640686) Journal

      antix mxlinux, you still get .debs and systemd optional

      --
      Account abandoned.
    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20 2018, @04:23PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20 2018, @04:23PM (#640704)

      For desktops, I use PCLinuxOS, no systemd, and, on the whole, it just works™..
      For servers, *BSDs I'm afraid (migrated from the last systemd-free Debian distro).
      Firewall, I'm conflicted, I've a seriously 'fucked with' PCLinuxOS box doing the job at present (only the base packages, development and kernel are from the distro, the rest are compiled from source and local hackery) which is either going to be replaced with a Devuan box (the easy option) or another *BSD one.

    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday February 20 2018, @08:48PM (1 child)

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday February 20 2018, @08:48PM (#640834) Journal

      Definitely try Void. It's like the lovechild of FreeBSD and Arch in all the good ways. I've been using it for a while and recently wrote a journal entry on it even.

      --
      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
      • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday February 20 2018, @09:36PM

        by Gaaark (41) on Tuesday February 20 2018, @09:36PM (#640863) Journal

        That's where i got it from :)

        Yeah, looks really interesting: looks like what i like about arch but no systemd....

        Is it flawless?
              That's one reason i'm still with Manjaro (plus no time to hop around): it. is. flawless for me.
        I am finding it hard to look elsewhere, at least until i have time.

        Might have to try to see if i can get it into a vm, even if it runs sloooowly, just to see how it is.

        --
        --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
    • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday February 21 2018, @10:53AM

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Wednesday February 21 2018, @10:53AM (#641115) Homepage
      If you were happy with debian, you'll be happy with devuan. I have about a dozen boxes, and I can't tell you which are which, the still-ubder-way transition was so smooth. (And yes, the debian ones are almost all old enough to be pre-systemd.)
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
  • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Tuesday February 20 2018, @04:37PM (2 children)

    by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 20 2018, @04:37PM (#640715) Journal

    I assume they understand the law of unintended consequences

    I assumed this for a long time, but their nutty responses to the Amazon-search-lens issue absolved me of that notion in a heartbeat.

    They have utterly no concept of said law.

    • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday February 20 2018, @07:20PM (1 child)

      by tangomargarine (667) on Tuesday February 20 2018, @07:20PM (#640784)

      but their nutty responses to the Amazon-search-lens issue absolved me of that notion in a heartbeat.

      I think the word you're looking for is "disabused." "Absolved" would seem to say that the search lens thing was *your* fault somehow.

      ab·solve
      əbˈzälv,əbˈsälv/Submit
      verb
      set or declare (someone) free from blame, guilt, or responsibility.

      dis·a·buse
      ˌdisəˈbyo͞oz/Submit
      verb
      persuade (someone) that an idea or belief is mistaken.

      --
      "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
      • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Tuesday February 20 2018, @10:28PM

        by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 20 2018, @10:28PM (#640899) Journal

        I think the word you're looking for is "disabused." "Absolved" would seem to say that the search lens thing was *your* fault somehow.

        That's a more apt word choice, but it's a little more nuanced: The absolution would be not of blame for the lens thing, but of my guilt at naively believing that Ubuntu had a general do-the-right-thing mentality with a backup plan of make-it-right-without-being-forced-to-do-so, and thus recommending that folks try Ubuntu when I now would not do that. No, the fiasco didn't absolve me of that, and I hereby pledge to choose better words in the future as a general mentality. Thank you.