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KDE's Telemetry: The Tip Of The Iceberg?:
Recently, there was a debate on the PCLinuxOS forum about KDE Plasma's implementation of telemetry through KUserFeedback. While in PCLinuxOS, we can remove it without any collateral effects to the system, while other users reported that doing the same in other distros (like Debian 11) results in the complete removal of KDE Plasma! Why force such an implementation, if, as KDE's developers say, it is just an innocuous, privacy-respecting measure?
Coincidence or not, in the past years many popular Linux distributions started rolling out optional telemetry. Then it was the time of computer programs: news broke out in May regarding Audacity, a popular audio editing app, which announced it was starting the use of telemetry. The move was finally pushed back after users revolted against it.
While many point out that the data collection is by opt-in and entirely anonymous, others have found that, even if you don't activate telemetry, data is still collected, using computer resources, registering "apps and boot, number of times used and duration in /home/user/telemetry folder." As such, they argue that, because of the way Linux permissions work, other programs could have access to these log files. KUserFeedback's FAQs page confirms this:
"KUserFeedback is designed to be compliant with KDE Telemetry Policy, which forbids the usage of unique identification. If you are using KUserFeedback outside of the scope of that policy, it's of course possible to add a custom data source generating and transmitting a unique id."
Do any Soylentils have opinions about this, or experiences with it?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by acid andy on Thursday September 30 2021, @10:21PM (10 children)
I liked KDE, although Plasma wasn't to my taste. If they carry on down this path that's another set of software to strike off my list.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 01 2021, @12:31AM
I agree with you. The old KDE was nice, but resource hungry. Plasma improved a lot, but there are holes in there you can drive an 18-wheeler through without slowing down. One simple example: set your clock to 12 hour or 24 hour. Good luck. I have completely discounted KDE Plasma as a desktop. Their KPatience though is the best, significantlybetter than the Gnome one and Pysol. Apart from that ONE game, the rest is a pile of used tubing looking for a dumpster. [my 2c]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Reziac on Friday October 01 2021, @03:02AM (6 children)
[whispers] ... Trinity ... the updated KDE.... in one of PCLOS's core community editions.....
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Informative) by PinkyGigglebrain on Friday October 01 2021, @07:42AM (3 children)
[nodes silently in agreement. Slips you a shred of paper with the web address [trinitydesktop.org] to go to for more info]
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday October 01 2021, @02:35PM (2 children)
I liked Mandrake with old KDE and I love Trinity on PCLOS, but when last I used it, it wasn't sufficiently stable. (Meanwhile my KDE setup, also PCLOS, has never crashed or misbehaved in any way.) But as proactive as they are about bug-squashing, I need to give it another shot.
q4OS is very polished and runs slick, but didn't attract me (mighta been the Debian underneath, not my preference).
Alas, the various other incarnations I've tried have all been pretty rough, but I can't think of another where TDE is a flagship desktop and gets primo attention.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 01 2021, @09:05PM (1 child)
Another TDE user here. TDE requires to be carefully configured, as default settings may suck.
For example, the Debian version had a clipboard manager installed by default, and it was quite useful - it could for example fix URLs copied to clipboard. However, when the file on the disk was copypasted, the manager mangled its path like URL fix and pasting crashed Konqueror.
So, configure, configure, configure. Start with the general settings and predefined "packs", then customize it going deeper and deeper in settings until you find that it's effective. That's my method and it works well.
Ah, yes, effective. Most people should think about esthetics too. For me, it may look like CDE.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday October 03 2021, @01:08AM
I see that Konq paste bug has been fixed. I never ran into that but did have it freeze up on me a few times (which has never happened with our KDE incarnation). Just haven't got around to fetching a fresh copy to play with.
Yeah, I appreciate the retro look... mine ends up looking like WinXP, except for some bizarre reason I seem to think TDE is supposed to be lavender and Ford puke green... this was four years ago...
http://doomgold.com/images/linux/trinity-snapshot3.jpg [doomgold.com]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday October 02 2021, @03:16AM (1 child)
That's awesome, thanks! I love that they even kept the look of the old logo. It's almost like the SoylentNews of Linux distros, isn't it?
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday October 02 2021, @03:55AM
Welcome. LOL, yeah, it's fully in the spirit. And it really hasn't changed much since 3.5, other than bugfixes and visual cleanup; it's still wholly traditional.
Try it, you'll like it!
https://wiki.trinitydesktop.org/LiveCDs [trinitydesktop.org]
[I prefer PCLinuxOS; seems every distro I like is some Mandrake descendant. And install takes 5 minutes.]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Marand on Friday October 01 2021, @09:17AM (1 child)
"this path", as defined by this bullshit pretending to be an article, doesn't even exist. I don't want to duplicate the entire wall of text again, but refer to my reply to an AC farther down [soylentnews.org] for an explanation of what it's doing and how. TL;DR: any telemetry is off by default, has multiple levels of data reporting, adheres to KDE's (sane and user-friendly) policies on data collection, and makes it very clear what you send if you choose to send something. You can see the JSON data before it ever gets sent and it even keeps a log of what it's sent and when.
The sensationalist attitude of the article should have been a red flag to everybody reading it, along with ludicrous claims like saying that KDE's dumping data right into $HOME/telemetry (who the fuck does that? Most everyone in FOSS follows XDG spec and uses .local and .config since like the past ten years, or at worst still uses ~/.foo).
But apparently people prefer to get mad first and ask questions never.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 01 2021, @05:50PM
lots of glorified Windows users use Linox now.