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Ubuntu Wants To Collect Data About Your System -- Starting With 18.04 LTS (fossbytes.com)
In an announcement on Ubuntu mailing list, Will Cooke, on behalf of the Ubuntu Desktop team, announced Canonical's plans to collect some data related to the users' system configuration and the packages installed on their machines. From a report: Before you read anything further, it's important to note that users will have the option to opt-out of this data collection. The company plans to add a checkbox to the installer, which would be checked by default. The option could be like: "Send diagnostics information to help improve Ubuntu." As per your convenience, you can opt-out during the installation. An option to do the same will also be made available in the Privacy panel of GNOME Settings. With this data collection, the team wishes to improve the daily experiences of the Ubuntu users. It's worth noting that the collected data will be sent over encrypted connections and no IP addresses will be tracked. To be precise, the collected data will include: flavour and version of Ubuntu, network connectivity or not, CPU family, RAM, disk(s) size, screen(s) resolution, GPU vendor and model, OEM manufacturer, location (based on the location selection made during install), no IP information, time taken for Installation, auto-login enabled or not, disk layout selected, third party software selected or not, download updates during install or not, livePatch enabled or not.
Looks like the Debian Popularity Contest mixed in with some hardware reports. Doesn't look that odd to me.
> Before you read anything further, it's important to note that users will have the option to opt-out of this data collection.
or maybe users should have the option to opt-in instead?
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
Anyone who really cares already left Ubuntu with the search fiasco.
"Fascinating! We haven't received a single report that indicated no network connectivity."
Reasonable question, but it should be opt-in (with the default being no, if it the question that asks is skipped).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Not available yet, but the project can already be supported: "A mobile OS in the public interest" https://eelo.io/ https://www.indiegogo.com/proj...
Pretty soon all of /etc will be stored in a binary database. Then you'll need a fancy GUI editor to make changes. Can't wait for this feature!
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
"to improve the daily experiences of the Ubuntu users" they will be collecting "flavour and version of Ubuntu, network connectivity or not, CPU family, RAM, disk(s) size, screen(s) resolution, GPU vendor and model, OEM manufacturer, location (based on the location selection made during install), no IP information, time taken for Installation, auto-login enabled or not, disk layout selected, third party software selected or not, download updates during install or not, livePatch enabled or not"?! How could that goal be accomplished with so poor means? I can only think of one type of actions: spamming, targetted advertisement or any other form of custom nagging. Without forgetting about the potential security implications of an eventual data breach! And you let it enabled by default (the disabled alternative would have looked much more user-concerned)! And within the Linux community, which is precisely well known for not being too understanding with this kind of things?! Why? Potentially losing so much to get almost nothing?! Workbook example of a bad decision.
Note that I am currently using Ubuntu and, in principle, will install this new LTS version. Curiously, I have recently moved my main machine from Windows to Linux precisely to escape from Windows 10 invasive, controlling, imposing, etc. actions. I will not stop using Linux but, if Canonical starts going in certain direction, I would certainly stop using Ubuntu and all their products.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
Before you read anything further, it's important to note that users will have the option to opt-out of this data collection.
Mark mark mark, this isnt how it works. Users should have options and they should opt into them. Its akin to going to an Applebees, sitting down, and being immediately presented with a plate of fried cheese sticks before I even order. Sure, I'll opt out of them because my weekend plans dont include crippling gas and constipation, but it would have been simpler for everyone if I were allowed to decide if i wanted the item or not. you see?
now, im not equating consentless data collection with a plate of dry salty and unhealthy cheese that enters the human body without an exit strategy and tastes like a hot fried mess. However, you can certainly see that if you continue to do things like enforce toxic contributor agreements, predatory marketing tie ins through the gnome search tool, and implied consent collection like this, then most users will find a new distro. I mean, do you seriously think privacy and security are going away in 2018 just because its Ubuntu?
Good people go to bed earlier.
... Canonical's plans appear quite obvious... first get the data collection infrastructure in place by collecting innocent data. Then slowly, automatically "opt-in" other data to be collected. Of course, there will be the ability to opt-out. But you'll have to verify that option after each OS update because Canonical's default seems to be opt-in. And since the default will be opt-in, the data collection will be easily overlooked. Canonical's plans towards its users look pretty obvious to me. Their selection of the default "opt-in" makes those plans even plainer.
I've been lazy and I've been using Ubuntu (or Kubuntu to be specific) since around 8.04 or so.
However, I also value privacy and I'm not fond of the data collecting business practices of major tech firms.
I value convenience (as I'm getting old) and I like the large apt package set, lots of stuff pre-packaged and ready to run by a a single command line.
I've have or had love affairs with C, Python, Zsh, Haskell, Mercurial, OpenFoam, Embedded, NetBSD (albeit 15 years ago), BeOS, and some other stuff...
I like KDE's features and configurability, but don't like the bloat. I've tried XFCE (&Co) on my lo-end machines, like the speed but they lack some features.
I don't really care if I run a BSD or Linux kernel and user space. I can download and build by source, but that should be restricted to the odd stuff. I expect to find most common stuff pre-compiled and pre-packaged. I value stability, but for some packages, I don't want them to be three years old. (Case in point: eclipse).
I've done enough X configuration for a couple of life times. Basic networking should also work out of the box.
Is it time for me to turn to Debian? Or Manjaro? Or... go hard core Arch? Am I too lazy for those?
Operating systems would boot your computer and allow you to run applications?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Didn't Ubuntu already have something like this, but as an opt-in option?
I remember having to check some privacy or something in configuration to see if it wasn't spying on me.
Anyways, good place as any, regarding hardware compatibility and ease of use, what's a good distro to go for instead of Ubuntu? Preferrably some distro that won't be pulling some shit like this in at least the near future.
I'm - admitedly slowly - moving away from Windows because of crap opt-out stuff, and anti-privacy changes in updates, which innevitably turns into hidden crap, so Ubuntu has just become another no-go for me.
But I'm often installing Linux in machines with weird hardware configurations, so maximum compatibility is needed, and I need the basic package to already be there to simplify installs... the usual browser plus image editor plus media viewing and whatnot...
Should I go Fedora?
Thanks in advance!
It's reasonable to make "on" the default. First, anyone who installs Linux for the first time will not know what to choose and will probably rather go with the default than change something that might break something. And these are the people that, if I was the developer, I want to know the most about. Because first impressions and all that. If I notice that people install my system for the first time and I never hear from them again while there are others that continue using it, I want to know what caused the latter to stay and decide that the system is good. I want to know what modules they use and thus improve my default for those that do not know what modules will likely be interesting or useful to them.
Anyone who knows enough about Linux can easily identify that option and disable it if they so please, or they can even rewrite the installer for an automated installation without this being checked.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
as I see it: (and I speak as an Ubuntu user doing RNN research)
For a great many years, *nix seems to slavishly copy Windows (and to a lesser extend, MacOS) features and looks, all while screaming "look at me! I'm different!"
I'm trying to dump Windows for good, but being a clone of Windows, especially in functions like this (cough, telemetry) does not engender good will from me.
Here's a thought for Ubuntu and all the other distros out there prepping their photocopiers, stop adding "features" and go back to fixing the glaring issues your OS has. Get the basics right, then worry about the gloss. Oh, and stop aping Microsoft, you claim you're different, prove it.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
How long before posting on slashdot costs $400 and requires you to fuck a goat??
This may (or may not) be well intentioned but too many people have now poisoned the well.
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
How long? You mean I've been fucking this goat the whole time for no reason?!
Every outfit on the planet integrating malware into their systems say the same thing. X, Y and Z is needed to improve our products. Nobody EVER says the reason is to make the bean counters happy, gain unfair advantage or to sell out users to the highest bidder.
If they are so passionate about feedback in order to improve their product where is the feedback button in Ubuntu? Why can't it *ASK* for feedback or provide UI elements for users encouraging them to complete a survey?
I'm not that much of a Linux desktop user. Have an old version of 16.04 running in a VM and I never once remember seeing an option in the software to send any kind of feedback. No prompts, no nothing. Now I am actively looking in the software. I do a search in settings for feedback or survey ... 0 results. I do the same search in help 0 results.. the desktop search... 0 results. If there is a way to send feedback I don't see it. I actively looked and I can't find it.
If they really care why is there no way to ask end users? Why does there appear to not be software to facilitate any kind of feedback? If it is so important why does it appear to not exist?
Devuan GNU Linux 1.0 overview : software freedom, your way
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nt2_hz3beqw
Well I never would allow this, you really have no idea what will be sent.
IIRC, one of the BSDs request the following:
1. run this command (forgot)
2. review the output
3. email the output to address ??? if you do not mind
And anyone who installed Slackware will notice 2 emails in root's mbox, one has instructions on how to add "Register with the Linux counter project". Why can't Ubuntu do something like that ? This way you avoid the 'tin foil hat' feelings.
Users don't want to check the box? Tough shit. No one owes a vendor anything other than the list price of the product.
Nor does the vendor owe you in return any maintenance for a niche package on which you depend.
They can learn a lot from other companies' experiences with this.
You have to be completely transparent about what you are collecting including giving the customer tools to view the telemetry data, samples of what it looks like, and explanations of every field including binary blobs. Couple that with a strong privacy policy and require the user to explicitly accept the privacy settings during the install wizard. Never make advertising or sales recommendations based on telemetry. Most importantly, be able to show how you are using telemetry to make the product better.
People will still assume you are using the telemetry for evil, but this gives you a decent leg to stand on in the argument.
You want to know something about my machine you ask me.
Then I assume you'd consider it appropriate for the operating system to ask you. It might take the form of a pop-up shown weekly to members of the wheel group upon logging in or unlocking:
The difference between GNU/Linux and Windows is that unlike on Windows, the administrator of a GNU/Linux PC has the right to uncheck the telemetry without having to purchase an expensive site license of an "Enterprise" edition. The hard part is communicating to users who opt out that they have no room to complain when Canonical drops their favorite package from the next version of Ubuntu, citing lack of install base.
They have better insight and they solve the software problems that have the highest impact.
Or you know, they could actually give a damn about the thousands of bug reports already in their bug tracker?
How do you prioritise those bug reports? I'd find knowing that 10,000 people have a system configuration that's likely to trigger bug 41231, but only 14 people have a configuration that's likely to trigger bug 724535 helpful. But maybe you've got a better way of triaging bugs (no, number of people who report the bug is not useful, because the number of people that report any bugs is a small and highly biased sample).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Power users tend to turn off this kind of telemetries. So what they end up collecting are always habit of less knowledgeable computer users. Features that advanced users need are often looked "rarely used / unnecessary" from such stats. The end result is a wrongly done dumb down of interface.
Now another company fails to realize that and going to mess up their design again.
they don't have enough non-technical users to get away with this nonsense. Are they just pushing this out so they can back off and try again later (sorta like Microsoft did with all the nasty stuff they announced with the XBox One launch and Trump did by announcing he was turning food stamps into a blue apron style delivery program)? They do know we can all just jump ship to Mint, right?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
"Power users" can generally take a hike. The two categories of user are programmers, and normal users. Calling oneself a "power user" is just a symptom of unfounded self-importance.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
You opted-in when downloading the distro, I don't see opt-out as unreasonable here seriously, drop the tinfoil hat
Surely NOT wearing the foil hat would COMPEL opting in?
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
> Canonical needs your data to keep the Ubuntu maintainers
> from dropping a package from its archive on grounds that
> fewer than a dozen people use it.
I call bullshit. Canonical has access to package download counts from its repository servers, and can probably arrange to have mirrors supply their download counts.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
What they want to do (allegedly, and until the audit I'll give them the benefit of doubt) is to determine what modules the users actually install and what hardware they use. If that's all they collect, the explanation that they wish to focus their resources on developing tools and packages that most of their users benefit from seems legit.
Yes, I am willing to actually give a company that much credit. If, and only if, it is upfront with its plans instead of resorting to clandestine patches to sneak in spying into their system, reactivating those spying bits with every single patch they deliver, reactivate and reinstall software that took some deep magic to get rid of because the normal uninstall routines cannot get rid of those packets (and nobody on this planet can tell me that a cloud service or a calendar are "system critical" OS parts that you must not uninstall for ... reasons) and reset a bunch of other settings to whatever they deem the "default value" (like, say, changing the standard browser back to the clusterfuck they came up with for displaying webpages).
Honesty should pay off. Canonical was, at least as far as we can tell so far, honest by simply telling you what they plan to do instead of sneaking it into the product. I am actually willing to trust them. Because I can verify whether they are telling me the truth.
And that is also the difference between them collecting information and MS or Apple doing it. First, they can explain why they want it and the explanation is actually something that benefits the users. And second, I can find out if they're bullshitting me.
And trust is something that can easily be lost and is very, very hard to gain back.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
But honestly I don't see a problem with collecting the data they're asking for here. It's the same stuff collected by Steam. It doesn't hurt me to pass that info on to them.
Twinstiq, game news
Canonical has access to package download counts from its repository servers
Mirrors not operated by Canonical do not report download counts to Canonical. Thus in situations that rely on such mirrors, such as internal use within an organization or use in a less-developed country with a poor connection to the Internet, the package mix excluding mirrors may not be representative of the package mix including them. Statistics from Canonical's servers may, for example, underrepresent a package most popular in large corporate or government installations with thousand machines behind an internal mirror. Or they may underrepresent translations of applications into the languages spoken in sub-Saharan Africa, as Ubuntu users in Internet-poor countries neighboring Mark Shuttleworth's homeland use an ISP's mirror or pass around copies of updated packages on optical discs, flash drives, or whatever other sneakernet medium becomes popular.
The correct way to collect telemetry data would be the following:
1st question: "Hi, we would like to gather some information blah blah ... with your permission"
Then as a follow-up to the 2nd answer option: A sufficient detailed list of what is collected (possibly in a tree view/hierarchy) where you can opt in and out ala carte, e.g.
with two important additional overall options:
When you are sure of something, you probably are wrong (search for "Unskilled and Unaware of It").