Ubuntu 13.04 Will Allow Instant Purchasing, Right From the Dash

sfcrazy writes "Ubuntu is becoming a shopping center. Instead of addressing the queries raised by Stallman and the EFF, Canonical is now pushing for making Ubuntu a shopping cart. With Ubuntu 13.04 Canonical is going one step forward, and soon you will be able to purchase software and music right from the Dash without opening the software center or web browser.This is intended to make the whole experience even more interactive and useful for the end user."

Comments

Unity

[Nerdfest]

As the Canonical developer's Unity DE shows, Canonical is not really that interested in the opinions of its current users.

Re:Unity

[TheGratefulNet]

MINT is going to get a lot of traffic.

ubuntu annoyed me enough over the last year or two that I've moved.

Re:Unity

[cheesybagel]

Dash -> Privacy

Record Activity: OFF
Include Online Search Results: OFF

Re:Unity

[Nerdfest]

Those should be the defaults, in my opinion.

Re:Unity

[Volanin]

Current Ubuntu user here as well.
I'm all for this too... but in a ***separate*** shopping lens.

Even Stallman said so:
"[To protect users' privacy] is easy: all it takes is to have separate buttons for network searches and local searches, as earlier versions of Ubuntu did."

Goddamn, having shopping result when I am searching for local files is not only a privacy issue... it is damnright annoying.

Re:Unity

[Kjella]

By making one questionable move after another we begin to believe Ubuntu's business model has failed.

No wonder, when they're trying to make money off a user base that froths like a rabid dog whenever they feel they're being monetized. That tend to get furious any time a website uses a workaround to get past their ad blocker without the slightest bit of irony in that they use an ad blocker as a workaround to get content without ads. Or get their panties in a bunch over product placement after advertisers switched to those because everyone was skipping ads on their DVR/PVR. Ubuntu may be free as in beer and in speech, but it's also free as in "There's no such thing as a free lunch". You're not required to say yes to anything of course, but if the "free" lunch never results in any business you're not going to get invited to any more lunches.

Red Hat figured this out long ago when they killed Red Hat Linux, spun off Fedora and bet everything on RHEL that had paying customers, they could offer a damn good desktop distro but they couldn't make any money off it. Now Ubuntu is starting to feel in the same bind, they're spending lots of money building Ubuntu for the desktop but they're not making any money off it so they're aiming for smart TVs and tablets and trying to cash in on their users without them disappearing in a puff of smoke. I wouldn't be surprised if they disappear out, a new company comes in thinking they can become another Facebook or Youtube if only they get enough users but in the end "We lose money on every sale, but we make up for it on volume" is not a good business model, not even for Linux distros.

Re:Unity

[ifiwereasculptor]

I'm sorry to be overly blunt, but that is asnine. Ubuntu is integrating an app store to its DE, that's all. It's a convenience every other major OS already has (Windows, Android, OSX, iOS etc), only made a bit more convenient by not requiring you to open the store app. It's not the end of the world. As long as they stay firmly based on Debian, strenghtening Ubuntu strenghtens Linux and open source as a whole. The more market/mind share it gets, the better driver support we get, more attention from developers and so on.

So I wish Ubuntu lots of success. If I dislike a particular feature, I can either deactivate it in Ubuntu, use a different DE, jump ship to their source, Debian, directly, or a derivative that doesn't implement those functions, like Mint. I can even roll my own flavor of Ubuntu, since the source is public. Such plethora of alternatives is exactly what free/open software is all about and people bitching that Ubuntu is "turning their backs on open software" don't seem to understand it at all.

Re:Unity

[agiacalone]

Current Ubuntu user also.

I completely agree with Stallman on this issue: Canonical needs to seperate this out for users who don't want this stuff showing up in their dash searches.

But in the mean time, there's always this:

'sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping'

Solves the problem for me rather easily.

Stallman has 1 point that's important... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

"When the user searches her own local files for a string using the Ubuntu desktop, Ubuntu sends that string to one of Canonical's servers. (Canonical is the company that develops Ubuntu.)" from -> http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/12/07/1527225/rms-speaks-out-against-ubuntu

* Says all I needed to see... & though Mr. Stallman MAY be a wee bit "odd" in some things he does or has done or said? He's not "off" here... no way.

APK

P.S.=> Thus, I suppose the next time I try Linux, it will be MINT vs. KUbuntu (my former favorite)...

... apk

Re:Stallman has 1 point that's important... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, his best point is this:
"free software won't spy on you, unless it's Ubuntu,"

Ubuntu's actions make all free software look bad.

Re:Stallman has 1 point that's important... apk

[thereitis]

This is an absolutely unacceptable spyware 'feature' from Canonical. I'm sad to say they've obviously lost the plot. Thankfully there are other Linux distros that behave much better.

Good for Ubuntu and Some Users

[ninetyninebottles]

From the Canonical Blog Post on the new feature:

Privacy is extremely important to Canonical. The data we collect is not user-identifiable (we automatically anonymize user logs and that information is never available to the teams delivering services to end users), we make users aware of what data will be collected and which third party services will be queried through a notice right in the Dash, and we only collect data that allows us to deliver a great search experience to Ubuntu users. We also recognize that there is always a minority of users who prefer complete data protection, often choosing to avoid services like Google, Facebook or Twitter for those reasons – and for those users, we have made it dead easy to switch the online search tools off with a simple toggle in settings.

So while I think the privacy concerns with sending data to Canonical when you'e doing searches is significant, so long as the user is aware and has the option, more power to them. I don't think I want to integrate my desktop and network search, but I certainly see a mass market that may want this. Depending upon how easy it is to create and configure these "scopes" to plug into this system it might be a great way to build customized searching without the need for Google to know everything about me.

I think people are too reactionary when it comes to both privacy and commercialism. From the previous posts you'd think this was a mandatory feature and Canonical was selling user data or something. They seem to be responsible players here creating cool tech that some of us may not want. I see nothing for me to get upset about.

This is a good thing

[GPLHost-Thomas]

For each of such change we're seeing in Ubuntu, people are coming back to Debian. Welcome back!

Re:This is a good thing

[DoofusOfDeath]

Actually, my discontent with recent Ubuntu releases has driven me not to Debian, but to Mint.

When I was recently frustrated with Ubuntu, I did attempt OSS purity by installing Debian. But the relative complexity of the installation process, including lack of closed-source drivers, reminded me of the rough edges that Ubuntu smooths over.

Fortunately, Mint smooths over what I consider to be the rough edges that Ubuntu introduces.

How the Dash already works

[David Gerard]

"I wanted to update/install my nvidia drivers, so I opened the dash and typed "drivers". IT DISPLAYED GOLF CLUBS on sale at Amazon!"

Presumably the new version will buy them for you as well.

Re:Canonical current users?

[Nerdfest]

They actually do have a 'send us money' option when downloading now, and many of us have paid for it. I like this approach a lot better than having a privacy invading default setup. I think it would get them a lot more money from their users in the end as well.

Re:Why is this a problem?

[Superdarion]

I read through the whole thing and I can tell you that he said nothing at all. No reason for the decision, no address of the privacy concerns, no nothing. He wrote a huge page of politician dribble.

Re:Next up, grep and find

[cabraverde]

Can't wait until Ubuntu starts altering grep and find to start using libcurl to report search terms to amazon. Maybe even return ads to a new IO stream: stdadvert.

Then keep your eye on Bug #1055766

Re:Canonical current users?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Ubuntu is created by Debian, mostly.