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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: 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.