The Dash Is Now Anonymized In Ubuntu 13.10

Last year, Canonical drew heat for the troublesome privacy implications that people like Richard Stallman saw in its in-built search-and-shopping facilities. An anonymous reader now writes "Long story short — Canonical now makes the user's data anonymous."

Comments

It works!

[Anonymous Coward]

Posted from new Ubuntu.

Re:It works!

[Anonymous Coward]

So it works for you Cheltenham spooks. Yeah, unfortunately.

Here the REAL UPDATE: http://www.openbsd.org

Re:It works!

[turgid]

Too convenient. Must be a trap...

Re:It works!

[Anonymous Coward]

Here the REAL UPDATE: http://www.openbsd.org/

"Our improved and secured version of Apache 1.3"

Yeah, that's an update.

Re:It works!

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with "old", but correct code ? That you NSA&GCHQ guys cannot sneak in your latest and greatest exploits ?

I have been a strong antagonist of Windows and a supporter of Linux. But all the code "churn" of the Linux kernel is one BIG FAT OPPORTUNITY for improper understanding of the kernel and thereby for sneaking in bugs that can be used later on.

"Code stability and conservation" (so to speak) is very important from a correctness and thereby TRUST point of view. Changing code all the time means all the review work on the changed code sections has been effectively destroyed.

Re:It works!

[Lumpy]

It's not shiny and has a higher number. Remember most fake computer "professionals" like higher version numbers for no real reason other than it makes them feel good.

Re:It works!

[sumdumass]

Remember most fake computer "professionals" like higher version numbers for no real reason other than it makes them feel good.

And here I thought it was simply to attempt to create more business by claiming something new is a reason to allow them to upgrade your experience.

I guess that can be the same thing. More money does make me feel good so feeling good and more money might be the same thing. Sorry for being redundant.

Re:It works!

[undeadbill]

You missed the part with the patches and ssl/tls/dso already built in to the default install, which is for people who don't want to let go of Apache. They also have Apache 2 packages that don't come as part of the default install (kind of like people have to do with Linux). And the fact that they also ship patched Nginx as part of the default install.

Oh, and they are responsible for a number of security fixups, applications, and feature sets that a lot of people take for granted on a daily basis. Do they ship teh shiney desktop? No. That isn't their focus, and it isn't their focus to install spyware by default either.

Re:It works!

[TheRealDevTrash]

correct? I, sir, would like you to prove it.

Re:It works!

[Anonymous Coward]

Upvote this ^

I agree that from now on, everything should be made NSA-proofed by default. Encryption all the way, by default.

Re:It works!

[postbigbang]

In a way, it is. If they record your IP, anonymity goes away. "Anonymous data" from 204.37.19.23 is an oxymoron. Most every IP and CIDR is well-mapped.

Re:It works!

[Anonymous Coward]

My ISP - like most of them - NATs my IP address, so there are more than a million people using my IP address when I am at home. From work there's only a couple hundred. Still, good luck finding me.

Re:It works!

[postbigbang]

Your ISP might NAT your address, but I doubt you're changing your browser characteristics and your MAC address each session. So--> they have you. Don't think your truly anonymous. Go deeper instead and understand typification, how NAT, ARP, and routing really work, and how your browser will out-you every time.

Re:It works!

[Anonymous Coward]

MAC addresses don't get past the first router dumbass.

Re:It works!

[postbigbang]

Don't know much about scripting, do you?

I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

So anonymity != privacy? Would someone care to elaborate what's going on?

Re:I don't get it

[hedwards]

The difference is that anonymity means they can still collect all your information, just not your identity. So, you're just one breech away from having all of your information spilled to them. What's more, when it comes to online services and such, the name isn't usually that important, they don't really know that my name is Sir Dragon King of the 4th order of New Castle.

Just because one is anonymous, does not mean that one has privacy, when I go out in public, I'm anonymous, but people can see everything that I do.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

They still collect and sell your information. They just don't attach your name to it (at the current pricing level).

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

More over, you will probably use your name/address/whatever in those searches which can reveal your identity. If all your data is marked by one "anonymous" ID then it is just one little step, like filter interesting IDs and save their IP addresses next time they show up. Or save them always and don't tell, there is no way others can find it out, effectively no control. "Trust us" sounds very familiar. No Ubuntu for me, thanks.

Re:I don't get it

[Virtucon]

Anonymity != Privacy because we're in the age of big data where large data sets can be cross-correlated to profile an individual. From stores that track your cell phone while you're shopping to big chain stores figuring out you're pregnant, big data techniques are invading your privacy in more and more ways. If you think that anonymous data collection is safe, it's still data collection and despite people's best efforts, we are of course creatures of habit and your repetitive habits allow people to build fingerprints about you. If you have enough data points, even anonymous data points, you can build a profile of an individual, their habits, their likes, their dislikes and where they go on the Internet. If you can take that profile and match it against an individual using other correlating data you've been identified. This has been proven for example in the 2007 Netflix prize competition where anonymous movie reviewers were tracked down. There's lots of examples on this and over the past few years, techniques have become much better at picking individuals out of anonymous data sets.
  More chilling is a study released this year showed that using in analyzing anonymous cell phone tracking data, 95% of 1.5 million individuals could be identified.

What this means that as long as companies are able to collect data about you, whether tagged or anonymous, you're still being tracked somewhere and that is no guarantee that your privacy is protected. What has to happen to provide privacy is to stop all of the tracking and I don't see companies nor governments giving up that mechanism anytime soon.

Re:I don't get it

[wisnoskij]

But what do they define as "identity"?
Can they collect your address, or at least guess at it? What about your first or last name, your credit card, your SSN, your IP address. At what point do they have to stop, because one inch more is your "identity".

I imagine their stopping point is long after it would be easy to compute your identity from the information they have already gathered.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

There also is a problem with anonomity. With enough data mining, it might be possible (probably likely) that your name and other personally identifiable data will be combinded with that "anonymous" data. Voila, more of your privacy is lost.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

If there is tracking from one search query to another, you can easily out yourself by making some set of unique queries: the set of queries themselves is the (lossy) identifier.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

...right, and that's exactly how Bugzilla, abrt and many other bug reporting addons for Linux distro's work. Hell, many of them even send in a core dump, up until recently in Fedora's case not even warning that the information contained within could be "sensitive." Try as I might, I can't remember you complaining about that on Slashdot. Selective memory, perhaps?

If you actually knew as much about security as you purport, then you'd have shut your face right around speaking aloud the laugh-inducing, "one [BREACH] away from having all your information spilled to them." Oh, but I'm sure you'll say something along the lines of real security being like an "onion," with multiple layers that one has to "peel away" before they can get at what they really want. What you don't seem to understand is to the professional hacker, your onion skins are about as thin and as fragile as the real ones. EVERYONE is "one [BREACH] away" from a serious security problem because every system out there can, and will, eventually be compromised, through a so-called "zero-day exploit," through sabotage via backdoors, the list goes on.

By the way, you really ought not use the same nickname everywhere you go. For more insight into the psyche of this Slashdot troll, I suggest using a search engine and taking a look at the following:

http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=9612

Same gross spelling mistakes, same Linux bashing, no change whatsoever. Looks like when you're acting stupid you're neither anonymous nor private...and it gets preserved for future generations, no less. Leave a trail of stupidity all over the internet and it'll eventually lead back to your doorstep.

Re:I don't get it

[gl4ss]

well nsa sure as fuck can match you to it.

for some reason shuttleworth just likes pretending that he isn't after the data stats on what is popular and what is not.

I mean, if they just wanted to help people, they could easily just have an extra search result sitting there that was a link to "Search this term on the internet".

but yeah, then they wouldn't be getting on stats.

And this whole debacle makes me second guess the reasoning why they made the UI in such a fashion that you're likely to need to use the quicksearch/launch/whatever a lot.

Re:I don't get it

[nurb432]

when I go out in public, I'm anonymous

You keep on believing that. And be sure to smile to the automated facial recognition system attached to that camera on the ( every ) street corner. ( and building, ATM, cash counter, police car, 2/3 of the people around you posting pictures on facebook..... )

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes you think that's the GP? Plus, there wasn't anything wrong with the spelling in the post you referenced. That's an internet forum post, not a submission to a newspaper. Considering how bad the spelling is in general on the internet, I don't think that's something that draws attention.

Also considering that you're too stupid to understand what the post you replied to says, I can only imagine what you consider to be "insightful." People with an IQ over 70 realize just how precarious it is to make an OS that requires a 3rd party userland to function. Anybody who has used Red Hat in the past, knows how broken things get when the distro maintainer doesn't give a fuck about providing a proper package management system that can track dependencies.

Anybody who has used Ubuntu lately, knows how dangerous it can be when 3rd party apps get swapped in and out without thought.

Re:I don't get it

[hedwards]

Considering that your post is full of various logical fallacies and general shit, I'll take that advice with a grain of salt.

As far as that handle goes, do you really think that there aren't a ton of people that have the name H. Edwards out there? Edwards is a common name, as the AC pointed out, there were no typos of note in that particular post. There was a more conversational tone to the posting, but considering that grammar wasn't taught during the '90s, there are tons of folks out there that don't bother grammar checking their posts.

As far as trolling goes, just because you don't like what I have to say, does not mean that I'm a troll. I know the conservatives on here don't like the fact that I call bullshit and don't bother to be nice about it. But, the fact of the matter is that they rarely, if ever, have a decent response. Most of the time it's appeals to "common sense" which mysteriously involve regurgitating talking points out of place.

Re:I don't get it

[hedwards]

I don't let people take my picture. And I used to work security, so I know how to dodge cameras without having to act suspiciously. Hint, it's not that hard.

What's more, none of those cameras are hooked into anything. In most cases the tapes are deleted within a month as it's just too expensive to have somebody sitting there recording every time that somebody comes into frame. What's more, the cameras are low resolution and designed to be on 24/7, not for high fidelity HDTV.

Yes, it's something to be concerned about, but considering how few crimes are caught on tape or solved via tape in the UK, I think we can dial back the paranoia a bit. Remember the UK has more cameras than the US does. Mostly focus on preventing it from getting that bad.

Re:I don't get it

[nurb432]

That's funny, i also have worked in that field and ours was hooked up.

I also know that all the ones on the street corner are active and being record. Not long ago we used it to identify ( using drivers record images ) of some moron that was shooting people on the sidewalk during a rather large event one evening. ( wasn't even daylight )

But if you want to think you know something and can 'dodge cameras', feel free.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you user your name/address when searching for applications on your computer?

Re:I don't get it

[__aaltlg1547]

How to minimize your tracking footprint:

• Do not do any of the following:
• Use a cell phone
• Use a credit card
• Pay by check
• Connect to the internet through any device you own
• Have any online account of any kind (includes Slashdot)
• Have any children
• Hire anyone
• • And if you're extremely cautious don't do these either
  • Own a home
  • Rent a home (under your own name)
  • Have a job
  • Cash a check
  • Get married
  • Get divorced

What I'm illustrating here is in modern society people want to have it both ways. They want to be constantly connected to everyone they know and millions of people they don't through a device they carry on their person, be able to purchase anything anywhere without carrying cash, have every convenience of modern life and communications and not be tracked by anybody.

You can have it one way or the other. You can't have it every way you want it if all those ways aren't consistent.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

One breach away? A breach of what, your personal computer?

Re:I don't get it

[Alsee]

The difference is that anonymity means they can still collect all your information, just not your identity.

There's no change in what Canonical collects. It's still the exact same spyware as before. Canonical merely says now that they'll try not to hand out your IP address to other people when they hand out your local searches.

-

Re:I don't get it

[exomondo]

But it's free software and it's open source! That's the whole point, you can see what it's doing, verify that it's working as expected and if you don't like it, change it!

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

this article sums it up pretty well
http://nathanheafner.com/home/2013/09/22/ubuntu-dash-search-is-not-anonymous/

Re:I don't get it

[Bite The Pillow]

analyzing anonymous cell phone tracking data, 95% of 1.5 million individuals could be identified.

I'm not sure you conveyed this accurately. Given 4 measurements, you can match it up to a specific anonymized data set. You have to have the data set first. Given 4 tweets with geo-tagged images, your phone company could de-anonymize your twitter account. I don't see anywhere in the research that they were able to identify an individual by name. They were able to identify that the data belonged to an individual in their data set. Did I miss something?

The researchers randomly selected a representative sampling from the set of 1.5 million cellphone traces and, for each trace, began choosing points at random. For 95 percent of the traces, just four randomly selected points was enough to distinguish them from all other traces in the database.

The Netflix data was de-anonymized because people volunteered the same ratings data to IMDB, under accounts attached to their real name. That's just simple correlation math - and the biggest point is that the users themselves put the same data out un-anonymously. De-anonymizing non-anonymous data is pretty insignificant.

The pregnancy thing was no different from being in a small town where everyone knows everyone, and you suddenly start buying different things. The clerk will know something is up, pay attention, and eventually guess your secret. We just don't think it's the same because we see different people.

I write these words to highlight this: The threat to privacy is the people that *have* your data, because they can't correlate anonymized data to your identity without having both the identity and some data to be correlated.

Companies and government won't stop it, so you have to either not give away your information, or pollute it. Switch shopping lists with your friends, or pay your buddy cash while she pays with her card. The data will remain anonymous, and you will retain your privacy.

Re:I don't get it

[ae1294]

google maps....

Re: I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

You Need A Better trenchcoat.

Re:I don't get it

[Inconexo]

Please tell that to Google who don't stop asking for my real first and last name and for my phone number.

Re:I don't get it

[Virtucon]

I agree with most of your points but there's still the issue of public data sets that the governments either provide for a fee or are required to provide open access to by law. For example in most states when you buy a car, your state's department of motor vehicles will sell that information to anybody willing to pay for it. Oklahoma and Ohio ando other states for example sells residents personal data, along with your birth dates etc. to pretty much anyone to generate revenue. In most cases you can't opt out. Now if you take one of those anonymized data sets, like the census which includes economic and other demographic data it's pretty easy to tag somebody by name, what your home is worth, how much you make and so on. That's not conspiracy theory it's a fact and companies like Spokeo and Intelius make a lot of money mining public information that anybody can access for a nominal fee. Another area of big concern are license plate scanners which effectively catch every license plate they can, not just scofflaws with parking tickets or criminals and the data collected on your movements. Since it's local government agencies keeping that data, they know who you are. If you carry a cell phone along with that I could take that anonymous data and correlate your position from what the GPS tracked license plate scanner says and come up with a very, very close approximation of your location and what you do day in and day out. The problem is most of these enabling technologies are both a blessing and a curse and where your data privacy is concerned it' as you point out, like living in a small town where everybody knows your business. The problem is you don't know who's doing the talking behind your back or what they're talking about where you're concerned. Marketing is one thing but having my government track me just because I'm going about my daily, lawful routine is only 1 degree of separation from a totalitarian state. Cheap access to data and better and better mining techniques and algorithms are making this all possible, it's just that our legislators have either not kept up with it or have ignored our privacy in lieu of padding the coffers of the state or in the Federal governments case the "War on Terror" which also now means "The War on Drugs" ... and "The War on you."

The only way to stop it is to start enacting a privacy bill of rights and start to hold the assholes in the Federal and State Governments accountable for keeping your private data truly private. The NSA needs to be abolished, completely; there is no level of public trust that can be re-attained by an agency of guys thinking that they're James T. Kirk.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you're just one breech away from having all of your information spilled to them.

One asshole away?

breech /brCH/
noun
noun: breech;plural noun: breeches
1. the part of a cannon behind the bore.
the back part of a rifle or gun barrel.
2. archaic a person's buttocks.

I think you meant "breach".

No more privacy?

[codl]

“No more privacy”? I think this headline is missing a word.

Re:No more privacy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Missing word has "issues" :)

>>Submission: The Dash is now anonymized in Ubuntu 13.10, no more privacy issues

Re:No more privacy?

[a_n_d_e_r_s]

or maybe just one word to many - remove "No"

Re:No more privacy?

[Richy_T]

Or a comma?

Re:No more privacy?

[Nutria]

Or a missing letter. "Now more privacy"

Re:No more privacy?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's more accurate without "issues". Ubuntu is still sending your local searches to Amazon by default. And what is it with

Probably,

Probably,

They can't tell? I thought Ubuntu was open source?

And then I got my eyes tested.

[Joining Yet Again]

typing a word in the Dash, pushes the word against (along with the locally-installed scopes) the Canonical servers, the Canonical servers decide the best results, the results are then anonymized and finally landed in the Dash.

The fuck? If you can't see any privacy implications here, you're a dilettante.

And anonymisation of results - what? If I search for "loli president bomb" then that's what's going to get me in trouble, not the results I receive.

Re:And then I got my eyes tested.

[Anonymous Coward]

The fuck? If you can't see any privacy implications here, you're a dilettante.

This statement might carry a bit more weight if your standard garden-variety Slashdot reader didn't see privacy implications in bowls of alphabet soup.

Re:And then I got my eyes tested.

[Joining Yet Again]

Can you give an example of where a standard garden-variety Slashdot reader has incorrectly read privacy implications into something?

Ignore anyone who uses either the term "New World Order" or "reptilian".

Re:And then I got my eyes tested.

[Gothmolly]

Loli President Bomb is my new band name.

Re:And then I got my eyes tested.

[Anonymous Coward]

If I search for "loli president bomb" then that's what's going to get me in trouble, not the results I receive

I wonder if any of the stores ubuntu's hooked up to carries My Girlfriend is the President.

Re:And then I got my eyes tested.

[kermidge]

I think that I'll hold off on a verdict until I read something written by someone who understands the steps involved and has the English to describe them.

Whatever the case I would expect that sending a search out from one's machine can be turned off, just as can be done now. If one is truly exercised or doesn't trust his favorite network monitoring tool, that bit of scope can be blocked or removed.

Re:And then I got my eyes tested.

[girlintraining]

If I search for "loli president bomb" then that's what's going to get me in trouble, not the results I receive.

As if the user-agent string wouldn't land you on the watchlist. That wasn't a joke by the way. And as far as the results you receive, you probably shouldn't trust those either. But let's set aside your awesome new indy band name Loli: President Bomb and focus on the real issue here: The gullibility of free software consumers. They are exactly as gullible as Windows and Macintosh users, it would seem: They're trusting an abstract organization that is continuing to collect personally-identifiable information, simply because said organization upon being caught doing so, has said "oops! Our bad. We'll anonymize the data now." And these people should know better than to believe such claims.

Perhaps it is a sign of how far Linux has come into the mainstream then: It's become the microbrew of the IT world. All these new distributions, the promise of being trendy, geeky, and cool... and yet, suspiciously lacking in all of the things that made "Free as in freedom, not free as in beer" so appealing to the much smaller community of non-hipsters that was here before. Linux has finally made it to the big time: It's become "hip". And no surprise...Ubuntu, like many other major distributions, sees the chance at monetization and is taking it. Oh, I know... I'll get modbombed again for suggesting that the pure and noble Linux isn't like all the other operating systems out there... but then, wasn't that the goal all along? To create an alternative to closed source? Mission: Accomplished. Too bad success isn't what they thought it would look like.

Re:And then I got my eyes tested.

[xatr0z]

Context: This only happens if you type in a word in the textbox "SEARCH YOUR COMPUTER AND ONLINE SOURCES". So yes, then it is going to search online sources. If you don't want this at all then you can disable it, or just remove amazon etc.
I think that this possibility to configure your own online and local sources is an huge improvement compared to what people otherwise would do (search google if you want a recipe, something on wikipedia, name of an artist or do an calculation).

Re:And then I got my eyes tested.

[Joining Yet Again]

As long as it's disabled by default, brings no revenue to the developer (so there's no conflict of interest), and can only be enabled by explicit installation of client software and acknowledgement of an enumeration of clearly worded warnings, it might be ok.

Re: And then I got my eyes tested.

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, that is in fact a joke. It's a satirical, not a factual article. Dumbass

Re:And then I got my eyes tested.

[Arker]

Yeah, this is nonsense, they're still pushing local searches out across the internet without so much as a by-your-leave. No one with a clue will be mollified by it. But I guess no one with a clue would be caught dead using Ubuntu either, so maybe they dont care.

Re:And then I got my eyes tested.

[Anonymous Coward]

If I search for "loli president bomb" then that's what's going to get me in trouble, not the results I receive.

As if the user-agent string wouldn't land you on the watchlist. That wasn't a joke by the way.

No, it wasn't a "joke" as such. Emphasis added for your convenience:

wvoutlaw2002:
http://darthchaosofrspw.wordpress.com/2009/06/28/satire-aftermath-of-false-flag-cyberattack-gives-rise-to-new-dhs-memo-which-adds-linux-users-free-software-advocates-to-expanding-list-of-extremists/

Now satire's not quite the same as a joke, to be sure, but your use of the "not a joke" idiom to suggest it's factual shows you're either really stupid (and believe it to be a factual account) or really disingenuous (and are trying to induce others to believe it is a factual account); either way, GTFO my /., ok?

Re:And then I got my eyes tested.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignore anyone who uses either the term "New World Order" or "reptilian"

So, that would leave you in the clear then ? *ducks*

Re:And then I got my eyes tested.

[girlintraining]

Now satire's not quite the same as a joke, to be sure, but your use of the "not a joke" idiom to suggest it's factual shows you're either really stupid (and believe it to be a factual account) or really disingenuous (and are trying to induce others to believe it is a factual account); either way, GTFO my /., ok?

Well, it's not your slashdot. You're an AC. And no, I'm not trying to induce others to believe anything... they probably believe things far weirder than anything I could come up with, so what's the point? :)

But that said, it is well-known that Linux developers tend to be more marxist in their thinking and entertain peculiar or idiosyncratic political beliefs. Those genuinely are things that the FBI puts people on watch lists for. And there is a visible minority of programmers that collect guns, go hiking, and engage in other recreational activities viewed with suspicion by the government. It's not a stretch to say that running Linux could score you points on some whack government algorithm; They've done more to people for less.

The problem with dealing with political or religious extremism is that it is very hard to tell the difference between satire and factual accounts because extremist thinking is so very often irrational and aggressive. And people who claim to fight extremists very often fall into the same trap: "If they're willing to do anything for their cause, we have to too!"

So... feel like logging in and finding out what people here really think of your opinions, or is it that you already know and that's why you post as AC?

Re:And then I got my eyes tested.

[__aaltlg1547]

Can you give an example of where a standard garden-variety Slashdot reader has incorrectly read privacy implications into something?

Ignore anyone who uses either the term "New World Order" or "reptilian".

So all the responders to this story http://science.slashdot.org/story/08/09/12/1456248/when-dinosaurs-battled-crurotarsans are to be ignored?

Re:And then I got my eyes tested.

[Anonymous Coward]

So we'll ignore you then!

Re:And then I got my eyes tested.

[Anonymous Coward]

What privacy implications are there in the dinosaur age or within the modern science community with regards to that article?

Re:And then I got my eyes tested.

[mvdwege]

No, you'll get mod-bombed for being a trolling twat.

Here you are, after plenty of disparaging comments, after almost two years of unrelenting Ubuntu criticism, suggesting that the Linux world still idolizes Ubuntu (the assumption it ever did is a further troll mark)

Mart

Re:And then I got my eyes tested.

[girlintraining]

Here you are, after plenty of disparaging comments, after almost two years of unrelenting Ubuntu criticism, suggesting that the Linux world still idolizes Ubuntu (the assumption it ever did is a further troll mark)

Straw man anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Please, point out where I said "the linux world still idolizes ubuntu", or those "two years of unrelenting Ubuntu criticism", since I haven't even had this account on slashdot for two years.

Re:And then I got my eyes tested.

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps it is a sign of how far Linux has come into the mainstream then: It's become the microbrew of the IT world.

Microbrew?? Linux rules everywhere but the desktop. The top ten fastest computers in the world run Linux, the majority of the fastest 100 do, servers are mostly Linux, 2/3ds of smartphones are Linux (Android), your living room router is most likely running Linux. Linux isn't the microbrew of the IT world, it RULES the IT world.

Everything but the desktop.

Re:And then I got my eyes tested.

[mvdwege]

Reading and English comprehension are hard, I see.

No more privacy = anonymous??

[Gothmolly]

Care to rephrase that, smitty?

Piss Poor Submission

[Anonymous Coward]

There may, or may not, be a story here. But, the submission is from someone who seems to not have mastered the English language, in which it is written, and therefore it makes little or no sense at all. The submisison is completely worthless.

Whether or not Ubuntu has restored any semblance of privacy to the desktop search remains an exercise for the reader. But, I can't be bothered. Ubuntu has broken my trust and I won't be arsed enough to see if they have chosen to change, a little bit, for now. There are still several Linux distributions that still lack the phone home and spyware trojans that Ubuntu has chosen to use.

Re:Piss Poor Submission

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree-what a load of rubbish. This "article" and Ubuntu as well.

Don't be a goddamn victim, you can decide to stop the abuse. Vote with your feet. There are plenty of distros. Ubuntu is dead.

Looking forward

[Anonymous Coward]

...to the day Ubuntu withers away and dies.

No respect for the user base. I don't like playing cattle to a dictator for some reason, I know I should see someone about that... I hate apple for the same reason.

It's funny MS is the least invasive in this but not by their choice of course.

Anyone know a polished linux distribution that could hold the candle after Ubuntu croaks in a weird accident involving barbed sex toys (fingers crossed)?

Yes, I am bitter.

Re:Looking forward

[Zero__Kelvin]

"Anyone know a polished linux distribution that could hold the candle after Ubuntu croaks "

I don't know a comparable one, but I do know at least two that are far, far better.

Re:Looking forward

[0123456]

Anyone know a polished linux distribution that could hold the candle after Ubuntu croaks in a weird accident involving barbed sex toys (fingers crossed)?

Mint seems the best option at the moment, but since it's basically Ubuntu with the suck removed, it will probably go away if Ubuntu does.

Re:Looking forward

[Anonymous Coward]

Debian is Ubuntu before the suck is added in. Mint should base itself on the original instead.

Re:Looking forward

[0123456]

Debian is Ubuntu before the suck is added in. Mint should base itself on the original instead.

Yeah, that's probably a good option if they have the manpower to switch Mint over.

Re:Looking forward

[shellster_dude]

Um...Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE)???

Re:Looking forward

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like Linux Mint Debian Edition? http://www.linuxmint.com/download_lmde.php

Re:Looking forward

[Anonymous Coward]

By "the suck" you mean upgradability?

Re:Looking forward

[0123456]

I'd completely forgotten about that, but it's good to know they can survive Ubuntu going away.

However, according to the web site it has no GPT or EFI support, so it looks like a non-starter on modern machines.

Re:Looking forward

[0123456]

By "the suck" you mean upgradability?

Ubuntu may be upgradable in theory, but it's not really upgradable in practise. When I was using it, I'd have to reinstall every couple of years to fix all the crud that accumulated from multiple version upgrades.

In fact, replacing Ubuntu with Mint on my laptop was faster than a typical Ubuntu version upgrade that I have to leave running all night and hope nothing crashes part-way through and leaves me trying to fix it from the command line. Wipe the old system partitions, install the OS, leave /home as it was and update a few system configuration options.

Re:Looking forward

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny MS is the least invasive in this but not by their choice of course.

Anyone know a polished linux distribution that could hold the candle after Ubuntu croaks in a weird accident involving barbed sex toys (fingers crossed)?

Yes, I am bitter.

MS is the least invasive only if you restrict "Linux" to mean "Ubuntu" and not the rest of the great (imho better) distros. :-p

I recommend downloading liveCDs/DVDs getting to know what's out there -- that's what I did after ditching Ubuntu in very early 2010. I personally favor Mepis for its stability, polish, speed and use of Synaptic/apt for a package manager, but Fedora and OpenSUSE are also highly stable & polished (though they weren't as easy to find/install programs with last time I tried). Mageia and PCLinuxOS are also really nice, just not quite as stable in my experience.

BTW I understand the urge to be bitter, since I felt that way when people kept worshiping the Ubuntu team & leader despite obvious FUD-spreading to make other distros seem as hard as they were a decade ago (as if Ubuntu is the only "easy" distro) and their blunt statements that they don't care what users want or need.... But seriously, they're not worth feeling bitter/angry about -- don't waste your energy on that, use it to educate as many people as possible about other distros instead.

Re:Chose Something ELSE

[gl4ss]

Why did he move to America ? To get into a golden cage ?

Look man. You know whats Helsinki like in the winter? http://www.nieppi.com/n/wp-content/gallery/viikonkuvat-2006/orig_2006_04.jpg

and taxes, of course.

have fun trying to find products that have nothing made in america or designed in america..

Ubuntu is a has-been.

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to run 40+ Ubuntu clients. Unfortunately, Cannonical has added so many new features: Zeitgeist, Mono, Amazon monitoring, Unity, UEFI, MIR, etc. that most of the community left. Their Distrowatch ratings have been plummeting since the glory days of 10.4.

Although the desktop flavor of the month is Mint (an Ubuntu fork) right now, a lot of the crapware is removed, and much of the progress is going back to Debian. I am grateful for the investment by the Benevolent Dictator for Life (Mark Shuttleworth), and the progress that Linux has made because of Cannonical's work. That being said, there is an adage in the Linux user space:

"How do you become a millionaire selling open source software? Start out as a billionaire."

The profit model is broken for Cannonical. It is sad to see it wither.

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you exactly know ? Maybe he sold us to the intel service of Buttfuckistan, Israel and NSA.

Maybe he is now worth 5 billions instead of 1 billion.

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm...yeah...if you base your opinions on Distrowatch you'll notice that Mint is currently the community "favourite" and it's so heavily reliant upon Ubuntu that if were Canonical were to disappear tomorrow, I would be willing to bet the couple of Irish has-beens behind it would disappear just as quickly. As for Debian, well, when Debian decides to join the 21st century I'll be more than happy to give them a look.

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Glory Days were 6.06 Dapper Drake it was the only one that actually had a reasonable amount of quality control. (Of course they proceeded to totally trash it with updates / security fixes and didn't backport necessary hardware support / fixes / improvements).

They only value marketing not engineering.

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[Bengie]

As for Debian, well, when Debian decides to join the 21st century I'll be more than happy to give them a look.

Debian Stable isn't the only version of Debian.

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[gmuslera]

The profit model is still adapting to the new realities. They are playing as a redhat competitor (support, server versions), in the smartphone/tablet arena (Android? Sailfish? Samsung? Those cover different areas), a market for commercial linux programs, and other services (music, cloud storage, the company is not US based so could distance itself from the NSA monitored crowd, at least not aware that GCHQ is forcing companies to put backdoors... yet) . Redhat took years to be profitable,

Several areas changed a lot this year, and they are in the right spot to take advantage of the Windows 8x debacle, countries wanting to run from anything that that have strong US influence, and the mobile explosion. Just need to have a strong position in all those arenas.

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[ssam]

its the only version that get security updates.

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[Anonymous Coward]

Has been?, In some circles, it was always a never been.

Cards up front, on the Linux front I'm a Slackware man, have been for a long time, however as I've previously looked after the occasional Debian system or two, and I'm currently supporting a number of Debian servers, I've been running Debian on a couple of my own machines for several years, I never could quite see the point of Ubuntu (organ grinder, monkey?)

As part of a 'what-the-fuck-do-we-do-with-these-old-pcs-we-have-for-disposal' exercise, the boss suggested installing Ubuntu on them (they were all volume licensed XP boxes, so we had to scrub the OS) and giving them away to people free as basic internet access machines, as Ubuntu was the hyped Linux-de-jour at the time, I duly grabbed one of the machines from the pile, wiped the disk, installed whatever the current stable Ubuntu was, marvelled at all that didn't work..(borked sound, network, flaky graphics, kernel oops) ended up having that machine dual boot Debian and Ubuntu, and lo, everything worked fine under Debian.

Long story cut short, Ubuntu was dropped from consideration. The several times I've had the misfortune to use it since, in various incarnations, I've been still rather unimpressed with it (alas, unfortunately, for convenience in the short term I'll have to brave its vagaries again as I'm about to set up a LinuxCNC system..joy joy)

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[jones_supa]

I agree with this. From quality assurance perspective, Ubuntu has a long way to go to even touch Windows or Mac.

This means:
1) high performance
2) applications which do not crash
3) features which are fully functional
4) consistent and stable APIs

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[dos1]

No, it's not. http://secure-testing-master.debian.net/

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[Mike Frett]

Exactly, it's totally laughable all the fanboys telling Ubuntu users to switch to Mint. And when they get there, they have no Software Center (to Buy apps) and a truck load of Bugs added from hacking Ubuntu code. AC: Ubuntu is #3 on Distrowatch, that shows how much Minty FUD you spew. With Debian at #2 and rising. But DW isn't a real Survey, it's a click counter.

There is nothing wrong with Ubuntu, they have done more to put Linux on radar as a real alternative to Windows than any other distro. For me personally, I don't like or dislike Unity since I never tried it; I use Xubuntu. Instead of going to Mint, try the other official distros 1st, people seem to conveniently forget they can have the full Ubuntu experience without Unity. Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Kubuntu etc. Canonical isn't Microsoft, they don't force you to use one GUI.

Don't take it the wrong way, but I feel Debian is for those who don't care to ride the current Desktop/Gaming Linux wave we are in. It's for the old hats who like living in the Stone Age of yesterday. But, if you know what you're doing you can add repos to bring it up to Ubuntu standards with all that proprietary goodness. Now OpenSuse is something Ubuntu fans should keep their eye on. Great community and one-click App installs, with a possible future involving a real App store where one could actually buy things like the Ubuntu Software Center.

Now, it's just my opinion, but I think Xubuntu is the best thing since Sliced Bread. As far as something a newbie or former Windows user (like myself) can feel right at home with, Xubuntu is very popular and probably second to regular Ubuntu. If something actually happened to Xubuntu, I'd probably roll a Debian/XFCE for my usage.

Not to mention, if you want to use Steam or any new game for that matter, Developers have pretty much chosen Ubuntu as the officially supported platform. So good luck trying to convince people of your opinion that Ubuntu sucks. But people of Slashdot, please don't forget about Desura. Desura not only has more games than Steam for Linux, but the ability to download them Stand-alone and they have a few AAA titles like Freespace 2 (with FS2 Open) and Fallout along with a few others. Desura also has a good lot of free games for download, something Steam is lacking and IMO, needs to add. Again, just my opinion, but who's to say that Valve doesn't have some sinister plan to go all Android on us with Steambox; and simply using Desktop Linux (and our faces) as a stepping stone?.

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[hedwards]

Nothing wrong with Ubuntu, except that the people running it don't understand the concept of production code. They may have fixed a lot of the problems that they introduced with Unity, but I won't be installing another copy any time soon. I just don't trust them to refrain from shipping known broken code. I have a pair of large monitors and that unity shit just does not take large monitors into consideration. Hopefully they've fixed that in the mean time.

As far as Mint goes, it just works. I rarely have any problems with it and the distro has taken some effort to insulate itself from the stupidity that has been coming out recently. Cinammon and Mate didn't happen without cause or reason.

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[n1ywb]

Wow, swap the words "ubuntu" and "debian" from that post and it would reflect the reality that _I_ live in. I'm a software engineer with a pretty extensive sys admin background. I have the technical skills to dive into the code at any level to fix any problem. What I don't have is the TIME to fsck around with rinky dink BS that doesn't pay my bills or feed my kids. I work on advancing MY part of society (scientific applications) and let the desktop developers advance theirs. Which is exactly the reason I switched to Ubuntu and later Mint. It WORKS. Out of the box. Usually mostly. I can't say I've NEVER had to dink around with it. But a LOT less than any other distro I've ever used, including but not limited to Debian, RH/Centos, Fedora, Gentoo, or any of the various BSDs, or for that matter OpenSolaris. Granted I'm talking about DESKTOP use here. For servers I still usually deploy centos.

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet, millions apparently can use it daily without any breakage, strange... We use Ubuntu on all our corporate desktops and servers, and I personally use it at home and on my kids laptops and have no breakage so if that is "not understanding the conecpt of production code" then I dont know what is.

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[Anonymous Coward]

switch to Mint. And when they get there, they have no Software Center (to Buy apps)

Who wants to buy an app for a Linux desktop? You're drunk, shuttleworth. Go home.

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[elashish14]

You're right on 3, but

1) Many applications run faster on Ubuntu (and Linux in general), Steam for example. I've noticed Linux on my personal machine to be much faster than the Windows machines I've had to fix.
2) I've consistently seen Windows gag on many routine operations. I/O responsiveness on Linux is far more robust than on Windows. Flash causes the entire system to grind to a halt on Windows whereas Linux is still responsive enough to execute a killall plugin-container. Libreoffice on Linux just loads, whereas on Windows it causes the system to hang for several seconds while the libraries are loaded.
4) You may be right on this one as well, but Linux has several APIs and toolkits for all sorts of things - window toolkits, networking, and so on.... The only area where you're probably right on this one is stability in the graphics space.

Don't get me wrong, I doubt that desktop GNU/Linux will ever dominate the marketplace, but it's definitely not because of the technical merits of either platform - Linux is lightyears ahead of Windows, and always will be. Linux developers focus on making a good product; Microsoft is more of a marketing/legal company in the tech industry (a la Apple, Oracle), and they focus more of their efforts on licensing, lock-in/out, and general marketing than developing their core product. People don't have to choose Windows (from a technical standpoint) generally don't but Microsoft rarely gives them a choice.

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[Anonymous Coward]

Slipping alpha code into a release is not understanding production code. Or are you too fucking stupid to understand that. Every time I upgraded Ubuntu there would be something that they broke, and usually it wouldn't show up in the release notes because nobody cared enough to do any QA.

So yes, they don't understand the concept of production code. Production code means that by the time you release a stable version, that it's actually stable. Or at least clear of obvious showstopper bugs like that mess that was Unity.

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[water-and-sewer]

As far as I'm concerned, Ubuntu's only purpose is to create the (very fine) basis for Bodhi, which is the Ubuntu platform with E17 Enlightenment instead of Gnome3 and none of that other, special, Canonical weirdness. Damn it's a great distro.

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as Mint goes, it just works

until you want to upgrade to the next version (which in case of Mint means: backup all your data, re-install from scratch & restore your data).

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[RCL]

I, for one, bought a few games via SC (I'm using Kubuntu) a year ago or so. Not that I play them that often though :)

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[RCL]

Kind of disagree. Granted, that is an anecdotal evidence, but I had brought my Linux desktop down by just allocating - and actually "touching" - too much memory (like 2x more than physical RAM) in a program of mine. While Windows may also suffer if you decide to memset() a 32GB array, I haven't yet seen the same unresponsiveness of the system - not even Ctrl-Alt-F1 worked.

Also, Linux the kernel is one thing, and Linux the OS is another. Linux graphics stack is certainly not "lightyears ahead" of Windows, where you can reset/reinstall graphics drivers as if they were userland programs - vice versa, we still have X server that probes PCI bus (try grep -i pci /var/log/Xorg.0.log).

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[Anonymous Coward]

While we're on the subject of the Debian website (all emphasis added):

Q: How is security handled for testing?

A: If you want to have a secure (and stable) server you are strongly encouraged to stay with stable. However, there is security support for testing: The Debian testing security team handles issues for testing. They will make sure that the fixed packages enter testing in the usual way by migration from unstable (with reduced quarantine time), or, if that still takes too long, make them available via the normal http://security.debian.org/ infrastructure. To use it, make sure the following line is in /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://security.debian.org/ /updates main

and run apt-get update && apt-get upgrade as usual.

Note that this doesn't guarantee that all known security bugs are fixed in testing! Some updated packages might be waiting for transition to testing. More information about the security infrastructure for testing can be found at http://secure-testing-master.debian.net/.

Well I don't know about you but I'm convinced? What Debian realistically needs to do is take what they call "testing" and call it "stable" if they ever want to catch up. Most people who are trying Debian now are trying it because of the constant stream of bad news from Canonical (Mir, Dash Lens and it's reassurance that your searches won't ever be linked to you, thus making them worthless...and of course Unity). Shortly after they realize that the latest NVidia driver available from official repositories is 304.88 and the best of an interface they get is either GNOME 3 four point releases behind mainstream, or KDE 4 at least 2 point releases behind mainstream...and then they start wondering why they installed fucking Debian.

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[sharklasers]

Zeitgeist, Mono, Amazon monitoring, Unity, UEFI, MIR

Some of those features are genuinely useful though, particularly for a desktop-orientated distro:

Zeitgeist - it's the basis for being able to launch any program from a prompt just by typing in a few letters of its name, in addition to any files you have, including indexing said files to allow you to find those which have certain key words you're interested in. Although it's mostly used for Unity, I use an alternative launcher called Synapse which also requires Zeitguest and find it invaluable. It could be considered a security issue, but the problem is that all the useful features that are considered standard of any user-focused system (traditional computer AND mobile) kinda require full indexing support. It's what people are used to now, because it's very useful.

Mono - Microsoft might be bastards, but if they really were going to clamp down on the .NET framework for non Windows system, they would have done so by now. I have yet to be convinced there's any threat to Mono - there are enough useful programs out there now which use Mono, that it's better to have it than not.

UEFI - we're moving away from the traditional BIOS. It's inevitable as UEFI becomes the standard. Why berate Canonical for supporting it? Do you want Linux to be unable to run on UEFI-only systems? Or are you confusing it for SecureBoot, which is a different concept altogether? Wouldn't be the first Linux user to not know the difference.

I'm still not happy with the direct Canonical's gone, but they've still done some good and it's wrong to berate them for all of their choices.

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[Anonymous Coward]

> all the fanboys telling Ubuntu users to switch to Mint. And when they get there, they have no Software Center (to Buy apps) and a truck load of Bugs added from hacking Ubuntu code.

I've been using Mint for over a year. Easily installed, snappy on an older laptop, low on crapware (after purging Libre and Java). Where are all these added bugs of which you speak? Haven't found any of them.

Re: Ubuntu is a has-been.

[Luthair]

Unfortunately mint has some similar tricks, for example they automatically set Open DNS as a DNS provider which means any mistyped addresses or queries intended fit the browser to handle are instead sent to advertising pages.

I'd also argue that removing the search providers Mozilla ships in exchange for one that pays mint (as opposed to the people who actually pay the browser developers) is also ethically questionable.

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[ae1294]

ISA 8-bit support! I kiiidd.... I love me some debian console....

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[ae1294]

Xubuntu is the best thing since Sliced Bread.

I use that or Kubuntu and i've installed it on 4 differnt systems and the damn sound never works... what happened? Pulse Audio was fixed wasn't it???

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[Anonymous Coward]

steam is in the Debian non-free repository, it's not exactly troublesome to install

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[Simon Brooke]

To be honest, I still have Ubuntu on one computer but on the whole I've moved back to Debian stable. I did try Mint, but found it sufficiently broken in minor ways to be just irritating. Yes, Debian is broken too, in as much as installing codecs and playing media is a complete pain, but it's broken in ways which don't greatly influence things I actually want to do. For my everyday use - writing software, browsing the web, reading email - Debian stable is rock solid and unannoying.

Yes, just occasionally I curse because something I need to use is in testing, but for all my Clojure stuff I simply bypass the Debian package system and use Leiningen.

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think my crass way of speaking of Debian probably resulted in my being down-modded, and I can't say I disagree with that...you simply found a more polite way of saying what I was trying to say -- that Debian is for one purpose, not another. In particular it's EXCELLENT as a server, probably my own first choice next to FreeBSD (once it gets better EFI/UEFI support again).

Promoting Mint as an Ubuntu alternative still strikes me as ridiculous though. They're still pulling packages from Canonical's servers for fuck's sake, even Slackware has mirrors. It's particularly ironic that the people behind Linux Mint promote their distribution as being somehow "without spyware" akin to the Dash Lens, yet they fail to explain what the Firefox extension "Linux Mint Search Enhancer" actually does; or why it's included in a meta-package for the entire desktop, making it difficult to remove and easily replaced on each update. Hell, Canonical are more straightforward in comparison, they tell you exactly what they do and they give you a switch to turn it off. All Mint really has going for it is the fact that it includes media codecs/other "touchy" packages of questionable patent status, and a quick DMCA takedown could ruin their day on that one.

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[sandertje]

I'm sorry to awaken you from your dream that the NSA cannot monitor Ubuntu One clouds. It most definitely can. Have you ever looked at where your machine is connecting to when Ubuntu One is active? Right, it's Amazon. Canonical buys some cloud storage space from Amazon and basically just resells it. Amazon is, as we all know, an American company, and thus falls under PRISM.

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[ifiwereasculptor]

I'll chip in. I've never managed to break a Linux session by hogging all available memory, but Premiere on Windows would frequently force me to reboot when I went overboard with HD video editing. On the other hand, my experience on 3) is completely differente than GP's. Flash on Linux is an unmitigated disaster. It's funny hpw these things go.

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[jgagnon]

I second this... I've never had a successful "upgrade" of Mint from one version to the next. I have always resorted to a reinstall because of numerous nasty bugs every time.

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[Anonymous Coward]

Flash on Windows is a disaster as well.

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[mcgrew]

From quality assurance perspective, Ubuntu has a long way to go to even touch Windows or Mac.

This means:
1) high performance
2) applications which do not crash
3) features which are fully functional
4) consistent and stable APIs

I have a kubuntu tower, an XP tower, a Win 7 notebook and an android phone.
1. The notebook is a lot newer than the kubuntu tower and has more memory and a faster processor, but the tower is faster. High performance? You realize that the ten fastest computers in the world run Linux?

2. Crashy apps have nothing to do with the OS they're running on, shitty progremmers write crashy apps. The only thing I've seen crash on any of the computers in years is Adobe Flash, and it crashes regularly no matter what OS it's running on. Adobe just writes shitty programs.

3. Are you kidding? Windows doesn't have a single feature that KDE lacks, but lacks many features KDE sports.

4. Again, are you kidding? A modern Linux distro will run an old Linux program just fine, try running Microsoft FoxPro 6 on anything newer than Win 98 (It wouldn't even open in XP).

Did Stallman scare you as a child?

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[jones_supa]

1. The notebook is a lot newer than the kubuntu tower and has more memory and a faster processor, but the tower is faster. High performance? You realize that the ten fastest computers in the world run Linux?

I was talking mostly about vanilla Ubuntu. KDE runs much smoother than the Unity desktop. So I can somewhat agree with you regarding that point.

2. Crashy apps have nothing to do with the OS they're running on, shitty progremmers write crashy apps. The only thing I've seen crash on any of the computers in years is Adobe Flash, and it crashes regularly no matter what OS it's running on. Adobe just writes shitty programs.

Linux is just the kernel. You need to pile up a good amount of pieces to make a full OS, and generally a lot of that stuff crashes much more under Linux. On the other hand, the Linux kernel never crashes. Again, it's the userspace OS components which are the problem. What comes to Flash, my experience is not similar: these days I don't see it crash almost ever, and this applies to both Windows and Linux.

3. Are you kidding? Windows doesn't have a single feature that KDE lacks, but lacks many features KDE sports.

It's the small things, like multi-monitor support which break often. Graphical touchpad configuration does not have all the many options that it has on Windows. Mounting network shares is often much harder and non-straightforward than in Windows.

4. Again, are you kidding? A modern Linux distro will run an old Linux program just fine, try running Microsoft FoxPro 6 on anything newer than Win 98 (It wouldn't even open in XP).

Consistent APIs cover much more than just a guarantee that some old program will work. And even that is often not the case, as old programs will often fail to start due to library incompatibilities in Linux. But what comes to solely old app compatibility, it's not always that rosy under Windows either.

Did Stallman scare you as a child?

You know, I have the feeling that you are a bit butthurt and rigorously want to defend Linux for some reason(s). Hey, no one is going to pry it from your hands. If it really just is your cup of tea, use it and I'm fine with that. I like and use Linux too. But I see good reasons to use Windows too.

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[Anonymous Coward]

Got to say "me too" on the "over-allocation of memory leads to instant death" statement. I do wish they'd fix that one.

However, contrary to what you say, Ctrl-Alt-F1 does work for me, though it does take several minutes to take effect. Then I get to type in "root" and wait while nothing appears to happen, since if the password is typed before the prompt appears, it isn't accepted. Eventually a few minutes later, the prompt appears, as does the error message indicating I took too long to type the password, at which point I get to wait a few more seconds before I'm allowed to type "root" again, then type the password, then type "killall -9 whatthefuckever" and wait a few more minutes while it finds and displays some clever motherfucking "fortune" for my amusement before it finally kills the offending program and the system becomes usable again.

Windows may have Linux beat when it comes to the total volume of bullshit one has to deal with when using the OS, but when it comes to the severity of any particular piece of bullshit, Linux has Windows beat in quite a few categories.
 

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[elashish14]

Sure, it's always anecdotal. Honestly, I always hesitate wading into argments such as these as the evidence is pretty much always anecdotal or crappy science at best and ultimately prove largely useless.

I don't think I've ever tried max out on memory, but sure the system will grind to a halt once you start swapping. That's true of any system, but at least on Linux (contrary to Windows AFAIK) you have to at least consume all the memory first. Probaby the last time i ever came close to doing that was when I was trying to run too many VMs with a solitary 1GB RAM (merely a year ago, I have upgraded since and haven't looked back at all). But with disk IO in general, Windows always gags even when there's plenty of memory to spare while Linux breezes by. Case in point, I was just reverting from backups 30 minutes ago while updating my system at the same time. I wasn't able to watch videos on my external drive, and VLC, firefox, etc. took a while to load, so the limits are there. But I was at least able to still move windows around, which is far more than I would expect of Windows, which grinds to a halt just when I try to start Firefox from a fresh boot. Again, it's all anecdotal of course, but I'm sure there's some kind of scientific reason why Windows just completely gags when performing a bit of disk IO.

But on the graphics front, I completely agree, and think some fundamental changes are going to have to occur somewhere to bring Linux into the modern age. I'm not an expert on the graphics stack or Xorg, but I don't think things are going to improve in their current state. Of course, vendors protecting their precious proprietary ideas (NSFW) doesn't help the situation at all either.

Re:Ubuntu is a has-been.

[mcgrew]

What comes to Flash, my experience is not similar: these days I don't see it crash almost ever, and this applies to both Windows and Linux.

It's probably what one uses it for. Most radio stations stream with Flash, and after several hours I'll get Adobe's sad Lego face. It doesn't matter what computer is running it. However, the TuneIn app on my phone crashes some too, although not as badly as on the computers.

You know, I have the feeling that you are a bit butthurt and rigorously want to defend Linux for some reason(s).

Folks keep talking about Windows being easy to use and feature-rich when it just isn't so.

Secure?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its good to know their system now protects the origin of request via Tor, and protects you from identifying your self based on the search content by searching and encrypted copy of their data with your encrypted query using Homomorphic encryption. Its too bad that its still vulnerable though, due to traffic pattern analysis, and measurement of result volumes. Its would just wreck the user experience if they employed proper packet ageing like I2P is planning.

Who thought it was a good idea to pipe all your local searches out to a third party? Informing Google about all my web searches can be easily avoided when I care (than you Tor and other search engines). This is like letting Google know what you are searching for in your email or something. Its horrible (oh shit....). Actually, what Ubuntu is doing here is almost a Chrome OS level of bad privacy. As long as people are aware of this, and use it accordingly, thats fine, I guess.

Next time I update my linux install, I'm going from Ubuntu 12.4 -> something thats not spyware (Aka, not Ubuntu 12.10+). I wish Genode was ready for general users. For now, I have my Tails install for when I care.

Re:Canonical Probably a GCHQ Front

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi, Theo!

Click-biting

[dugancent]

This is good news on it's own without adding the troll Richard Stallman to summary, but clicks=money I suppose.

Re:Click-biting

[dugancent]

Correction: baiting, not biting

Re:Click-biting

[Tranzistors]

Since when is RMS considered a troll?

Re:Click-biting

[Threni]

Since when Slashdot got overrun with non-developers with extremely limited intelligence, poor understanding of history and politics, and who value convenience over security and freedom.

Re:Chose Something ELSE

[bill_mcgonigle]

I am from Nigeria and I will use anything not made in America.

Except for Slashdot?

It's anonymising for third-party images only

[KNicolson]

It's a bit of a non-story in my opinion, as I think most people worry about Ubuntu and their direct partners slurping all their search info, whereas this "news" is that they now insert an anonymiser into image URLs so that random web site Z doesn't pick up your IP address when your computer tries to render an image.

Re:It's anonymising for third-party images only

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a bit of a non-story in my opinion, as I think most people worry about Ubuntu and their direct partners slurping all their search info, whereas this "news" is that they now insert an anonymiser into image URLs so that random web site Z doesn't pick up your IP address when your computer tries to render an image.

Well, if that's what it is, I'd say it's actually a good thing, because people with their brains on are already concerned about "Ubuntu [or rather, Canonical] and their direct partners slurping all their search info", because that's obviously possible; people get to make a semi-informed decision on that. But people who've made the decision to trust Ubuntu, including trusting them to vet their partners on the user's behalf (hah!), might not realize that any images in the results, even results they don't click on, are sending their IP address to the server hosting the image, so blocking that information leak (with an image proxy provided by the people who you're already implicitly trusting) is preventing people from unknowing privacy exposure, and that's always a good thing.

LMDE and prism-break.

[Anonymous Coward]

I switched to Linux Mint Debian Edition. I had to learn how to partition my hard drive, so it takes a bit more effort, but it's great. I recommend looking at eff.org's prism-break site; it has some great suggestions on secure alternatives. Duckduckgo is now my default search engine.

Re:LMDE and prism-break.

[jones_supa]

I switched to Linux Mint Debian Edition.

It's like the vegetarian joke...

Q: How do you know if there is a Linux Mint user at a dinner table?
A: Don't worry, he will tell you about it

Re:LMDE and prism-break.

[SteveFoerster]

Huh. I'm a Linux Mint user, and I don't get it.

(And sad as it is that I need to include this, yes, I am going for funny here.)

Re:LMDE and prism-break.

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha, that's funny. And true, I switched to LM XFCE, and it's fantastic.

Hey, you can turn this off

[Anonymous Coward]

Hit the super (Windows) key. Type "privacy". Choose the component from settings. Turn off the online results.

HTH.

Can it be eliminated?

[PopeRatzo]

I'm not familiar with this "Dash" thing. Can't it just be taken out when you install the new Ubuntu?

If it's something that you have to install when you install Ubuntu, then Canonical has made a big mistake.

Re:Can it be eliminated?

[geminidomino]

Yeah.

That's part of the reason I stopped using Ubuntu. Now every install has me spending more time removing bullshit than it took me to do the install itself. resolvconf (especially on servers? WTF), dash, social networking shit, some kind of file indexer that wants net access for some reason...

Re:Can it be eliminated?

[iggymanz]

Yes, use Linux Mint, it's Ubuntu without the suck

Re:Can it be eliminated?

[Urkki]

I'm not familiar with this "Dash" thing. Can't it just be taken out when you install the new Ubuntu?

Easiest is to install Kubuntu, Xubuntu or Lubuntu instead of the "main" distro.

Re:Can it be eliminated?

[PopeRatzo]

Thank you. Linux Mint it is. I use a Linux box as part of my digital audio workstation, for offloading processing chores, file-serving, streaming and rendering. I haven't had to do anything to the current one in about three years, and I think it's due for an upgrade.

I certainly don't need any social networking or shopping stuff on it.

Re:Can it be eliminated?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dash is part of the Unity desktop. If you use some other desktop environment instead of Unity you don't have to worry about it. If you do want to use Unity you can (I think, at least you could on previous versions) uninstall the bits that send your searches off to their servers to "enhance" the results.

Adding this crap by default last year was why I switched to Mint despite actually liking Unity, because having to uninstall crapware after an install reminds me too much of Windows.

Re:Chose Something ELSE

[Anonymous Coward]

I am from Nigeria and I will use anything not made in America.

Do you spend all week-end in a frenetic pentecostal church, whipped up into a deluded frenzy of adrenaline and endorphins by a charismatic and manipulative pastor, giving away all your money?

You probably think the earth is 6000 years old and that Adam and Eve were made of spare ribs. You're every bit as bad as the Islamo-facists. Hey, why don't you go and pick a fight with them? Then you'll all kill each other and the rest of us can have our world back.

Cretin.

is it that fucking hard...

[Anonymous Coward]

to TURN OFF THE FEATURES by default? and not harass people at install time to turn 'em on, either.... better yet, just get rid of the whole fucking thing. who the fuck wanted that shit in the first place? certainly not us *users*.

sticking with the real debian.. highly recommend everyone else do the same.

Re:is it that fucking hard...

[Megane]

Second best is to turn them off manually as part of a post-install checklist. I'm pretty sure most of this stuff is with "lens" or "scope" plug-ins for the desktop, so to find out what might be "spying" on you (or at least trying to monetize you): dpkg -l | egrep "lens|scope"

The nuke-and-pave variant of that would be: dpkg -l | egrep "lens|scope" | awk '{print $2}' | xargs sudo apt-get remove

Other things I manually change post-install are to remove the stupid pop-out scroll bars (liboverlay-scrollbar or somesuch) and the stupid start-up splash screen (/etc/default/grub GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""), and to install a decent vi (sudo apt-get install vim, export EDITOR=vi), C++, and an SSH server.

Re:is it that fucking hard...

[X0563511]

I ask: why don't you just use slackware? You'd probably be happier, there.

Re:is it that fucking hard...

[Megane]

I have used Slackware since the '90s, but for text mode stuff only. For GUI stuff it's OS X all the way. And I like Debian's apt-get system. If it weren't for apt-get, I wouldn't use Ubuntu at all. And I recently set up a MythTV, for which OS X isn't the best choice due to the limited choice of hardware. So I made a list of things to make Ubuntu sane after install, and that was some of it.

Eh...

[Lumpy]

Smart users rip it out ASAP. Smarter users dont use ubuntu and use Mint or another version where they actually care about the user.

Re:Eh...

[doubletalk]

First, I would choose Ubuntu over any other desktop "out-of-the-box" distributions because Canonical with Ubuntu is the only one that is trying a new design. I just don't understand how come Microsoft came out with Metro but all Linux distributions are sticking with the old desktop metaphor, pathetic.

Second, Canonical is a small company compared to Microsoft and Google. Still, it is playing their game on the same field. They need to find ways to add value to their "product" so other companies notice them and want to partner with them. Good things about partnership is that more and more hardware will come with Ubuntu pre-installed and we as users, could get a free amazon gift card if we use Ubuntu, things like that (these are examples).

Re:Eh...

[msobkow]

You mean all the people who use a desktop other than Unity.

Which, from what I've seen, is 99% of the population.

Re:Eh...

[0123456]

You mean all the people who use a desktop other than Unity.
Which, from what I've seen, is 99% of the population.

Problem is, they dropped Gnome 2, and XFCE is a pretty clunky replacement.

Re:Eh...

[Anonymous Coward]

thus LinuxMint + the Cinnamon desktop

a/c in the spirit of TFA

Re:Eh...

[Lumpy]

I suggest you investigate Cinnamon... It's Gnome 2 but from skilled developers that are not chasing ooooh Shiny.

Re:Eh...

[Windwraith]

I use Ubuntu, but I don't use Unity. After customizing both distros are practically the same thing after all.

Re:Eh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Metro is crap, there was nothing wrong with the original desktop metaphor. It works fine on a desktop. Microsoft wants to cram a tablet interface on a desktop or server (2012).

You are stupid. Really stupid and should probably just sit down and shut up.

Re:Eh...

[rbprbp]

Problem is, they dropped Gnome 2, and XFCE is a pretty clunky replacement.

This is what you use MATE for. It's pretty much GNOME 2.

Re:Eh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Smart users use Arch

Re:Eh...

[Threni]

> I just don't understand how come Microsoft came out with Metro but all Linux
> distributions are sticking with the old desktop metaphor, pathetic.

Presumably because they could see it for the turd that it is; the thing which killed Microsoft's chances of selling Windows 8 on the desktop, tablet and smartphone? And that people don't want to have to learn how to do the same things a different way?

Re:Eh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Cinnamon is GNOME 3 made to look like GNOME 2, Mate is an actual fork of GNOME 2 that is being developed. Last time I tried Cinnamon, at the beginning of this year, I didn't like it and switched to Mate instead, but YMMV.

Re:Eh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Even smarter users don't use Linux. Instead they install (Free/Net/Open/Dragonfly/PC...etc.)BSD.

Re:Eh...

[X0563511]

First, I would choose Ubuntu over any other desktop "out-of-the-box" distributions because Canonical with Ubuntu is the only one that is trying a new design.

I don't use Ubuntu. I don't use Windows 8. Why? Because they are doing that, and I want no part of it.

Do not want.

Re:Eh...

[X0563511]

In which case why don't you start with the one closer to what you want?

I'd rather install Mint and rip out the, well, three things or so I don't want, then try to do the same thing with Ubuntu and find out that "ubuntu-desktop" DEPENDS on $RANDOM_BULLSHIT_I_DONT_WANT and has no reason for being an absolute dependency instead of a suggestion or recommendation.

That I have to use equivs or remove the metapackage and stay on top of updates manually is... dumb. Incredibly, ridiculously dumb.

Re:Eh...

[doubletalk]

Linux always claimed for freedom and choices and yet, all the distributions are the SAME. Same desktop/folder metaphor, same design overall, just different Desktop Environment names.

Metro and Unity are the only REAL choices and they're not *that* crappy at all. You will read here on Slashdot plenty of people that really like the new Metro interface and it works very well on touchscreen all-in-one computers.

Why all the hate? If you don't like Metro or Unity, stick with Seven or any Linux distribution that is not Ubuntu.

So now, you should sit down and apologize, Anonymous Coward.

Re:And this is why we don't use Ubuntu

[lister king of smeg]

and have no hardware support, no codex's, and only fsf approved code I think debian or mint would be a better choice if your going to jump ditros. I personally just rip out all of the unity crap out of ubuntu (all of the privacy leacking bloats that goes with it.) and install either a mate or cinnamon DE.

its not anonymous

[Anonymous Coward]

simply put, its not anonymous. http://nathanheafner.com/home/2013/09/22/ubuntu-dash-search-is-not-anonymous/

Re:Chose Something ELSE

[SteveFoerster]

This sort of ignorance is bad, but at least it means there's less competition for those of us who realize that places like Nigeria are fast becoming some of the best markets for goods and services in the world.

Re:And this is why we don't use Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

and have no hardware support, no codex's,

Did you mean codices (plural of codex)? or codecs (plural of codec)? Or did you really mean "no belonging or pertaining to a codex"? Look, if you'd said "codexes", we'd have known you got the wrong word (minor embarassment, happens to all of us) and didn't know the proper plural formation for the foreign word you'd accidentally substituted. No big deal. But when you get the wrong word and fail to formulate a correct plural in any language at all, well, that's when the whole internet starts laughing at you.

People who are too dumb to use basic English grammar might indeed conclude that going through a slow Ubuntu install, just so you can waste even more time ripping stuff back out, is a sane and economical use of their time. For the rest of us, there's Arch.

Re:Chose Something ELSE

[Anonymous Coward]

I am from America, and I agree with you. It's contagious.

More Dash controversy?!

[bjoswald]

Well, it's not the ideal solution to the privacy problem, but it's a (small) step in the right direction. I'm going to stick with 12.04 until the next LTS and see where Canonical will go from there. If it doesn't pan out, well, there's always good ol' Debian.

Need more REAL choice

[MarchIdes]

Switching to Debian or Arch or Fedora or Gentoo is one solution, but it wouldnt be practial for the 'not so advanced' users (the ones that like Ubuntu/Unity). I think more and more we need GNOME OS or KDE OS to become a thing. Hopefully they would be as simplistic as the ubuntus, free of spyware and the like, and kept up to date (maybe even rolling releases). This way we would have a choice thats not built on Ubuntu, like Mint, but would still be popular (hopefully lol). Or am I just making stuff up ?

Too little, too late

[Anonymous Coward]

burn me once, never again.

Re:Chose Something ELSE

[Anonymous Coward]

You just had to find a picture of good weather during winter? Wish it was like that all the time.

Re:Chose Something ELSE

[BlackPignouf]

I'm still a bit sleepy, but I think that :
"I will use anything not made in America" isn't equivalent to "I will not use anything made in America".
Slashdot is a no go for the latter, but it's okay for the former.
Am I not unright, yes?

terrible article. This is what is happening . . .

[dominux]

so the problem was that you type stuff in the dash, that goes to various results providers (scopes) including one that sent it to products.ubuntu.com, which in turn queried the Amazon API for your search term (and the youtube API and some other places) (the new smart scopes thing is a server-side variable bias that it applies to the sources of results). So, products.ubuntu.com gives you some results, in these were some image thumbnail URLs, pointing directly at Amazons image CDN. This means Amazon would see an API query from products.ubuntu.com, followed shortly by some image retrievals from somewhere else on the internet. This could in theory (if Amazon track CDN gets) be used to correlate the images with you and what you search for. What they do now is reverse proxy the images. So you search in the dash and Canonical get your IP address and query, then they ask Amazon for the results and images, then Canonical serve it all up to you. Thus Amazon don't get that tiny fragment of information about what images popped up on your screen in response to a query, and the concept of the images coming from a local CDN node is broken - they come from the node closest to Canonicals server then get served to you from there. So, in short, this is a somewhat inefficient fix to a non-problem identified against one search source of many.

Re:Chose Something ELSE

[bill_mcgonigle]

You're right - I noticed that. But while your point is grammatically correct (and correct from a set theory perspective), if it's semantically correct then it doesn't have a meaning in this context.

What's new?

[allo]

AFAIR, dash sends the requests to canonical, and canonical relays them to amazon. Maybe not from day one on, but a long time before this "news". Sending them (when no explicit online search is requested) is a bad thing anyway, but this kind of "anonymity" were already provided.

Mono

[Anonymous Coward]

Last I checked, Mint still was infected with Mono. That has to be cleaned out if you are crossing all your t's and dotting all your i's. Otherwise you might as well stay with Ubuntu and its Dash monitoring.