Funny enough i allready talked about this in the lounge yesterday @PhaseLockedLoop
But in my opinion non of the data they claim to collect is really that shocking.
And honnestlly most of it is pretty normal and they would most likelly allready know it.
Since you download packages from their repo´s.
The only thing i´m not too sure about is,
what is the actual benefit for them to know when a user has autologin enabled or not.
But other then that no shocking data collecting as far as i see.
Location, system specs, flavor, codecs, network connectivity, updates during install,
are all standard things they would probablly allready know anyway right?
Popcorn has been in Debian for a while now.
It detects favorite used apps.
Apport is annoying, but can easally been purged from the system.
This tool is ment for sending crash reports.
sudo apt purge apport.
And of course they provide a opt out option for the data collecting.
Allthough i´m not too sure if that would stop them from sending the data they collect during installation.
Still pretty much any distro will collect some sort of information from you regardless.
Like crash reports and what not.
But atleast Cannonical is honnest about it.
It does look like a bid to understand the lowest common denominator user- the base level of who uses the platform, as advanced/ privacy focused sub-set might untick.
The data they collect regarding location,
are based on the language selection and location you thick during install.
As far as i have understand it correctlly.
HAHAH you called it lass… so in the spirit of what I would say I would do…
This is a snippet out of our conversation @SlipperyVagoo
Honestly they are upfront what they collect and the opt out really does work. Its not a violation of privacy if they notify you. Plus there are more cameras and microphones and digital assistants all around you then in the entire history of humanity before. You can definitely bet they are collecting data without your permission and certainly not telling you what data they collected…
Getting our asses stuck in the air (Not directed at any singular person) because they told us they are collecting data and what the data was just hardly seems fair to canonical especially since they are being good about it.
This whole privacy thing is a joke of a bandwagon that everyone jumps on… if you want real privacy you have to give up the modern standard of living to be completely honest. Not only do you have to pretty much compile your operating system from scratch and support your own software. You have to use TOR 24/7 through a VPN… and a myriad of other software… You would need to rotate machines… scrammble the hardware address on every disconnect… use older standards of wifi (modern ones that use beamforming can easily approximate your location passively without even letting the user know)…
I could go on but does everyone see my point that getting peeved at canonical because they collect useful statistics and notify you of what they use is just not good form LOL…
This is why SteamOS exists. They don’t bow down to Canonical by modifying their own flavor of Debian, where they don’t really need to modify the vanilla to auto opt-out.
I think Kubuntu will be opting out. May be time to switch my primary live image to KDE.
You can uninstall the apps from your Start menu, and they shouldn’t come back on your user account the same hardware. However, the apps will also come back whenever you sign into a new PC with the same Microsoft account, forcing you to remove them on each device you use. And, if someone signs into your same PC with their own Microsoft account, Microsoft will “helpfully” download those apps for their account as well. There’s no way to tell Microsoft “stop downloading these apps on my PC” or “I never want these apps on this Microsoft account”.
Actually, I just have a local account for my windows partition and it still does this shit.
Windows 8.1 even has this problem for it’s stock apps if you change hardware configurations. The initial setup re-runs and REINSTALLS all the bloatware stock apps.
Pretty sure that’s done with Dropbox or the equivalent programs. Contacts? Are you talking about email contacts? In that case install desired email client and log in with your email account. Your contacts are already there. I genuinely don’t see the point of having MS account apart from needing to activate Office 2016.
As an Ubuntu user, this is great! I’m glad this is a consideration. It benefits devs and end users in many ways.
First and foremost, what am I doing with that data? Literally nothing. Nor is it all that useful to most anyone else… BUT, it helps Ubuntu/Canonical better understand their user base and adapt their provisions accordingly. Frequently occurring problems can be better understood and tended to. This is great all around.
Well this data collecting on installation will be implementated in all flavors of Ubuntu i guess.
Because they stated that they collect data about which flavor of Ubuntu you install.
And i´m pretty sure that pretty much any distro has some sort of data collection in it.
The only thing i mainlly dont like is the popcorn service they want to enable.
People shouldnt confuse this with the amazon data collecting implementation in Ubuntu Unity.
This is something different.
There’s another thing to consider here other than just if opt-in or opt-out is a problem. The stats they will be able to gather will allow them to more tightly focus on whats important for end users. Considering this is on their desktop end (is it on the server end as well), this will allow them to make better use of their small desktop team.
Other distros have a similar problem to varying extents. Fedora for example can gain insight into some things like install base, etc. from number of downloads, but the information available is limiting which sometimes means you have to make decisions to place resources based mainly on your contributor data than end user data.
Another interesting thing is the data being open. It puts a little less concern on the end user, but it also means other distributions can make use of that data. As much as people like their distros, there will be more similarities between the user bases than differences. This data will end up being useful for the Linux community as a whole if used right.
Feedback is important during a projects iterative development. Without it, the project will likely not hit all the marks.
Data collection really is the way to go, because no one is going to want to do surveys all the time; that said I think it would also help to have them, but to use them in conjunction with the data collection to see if what the users what lines up with what people are actually using.
This solves the problem of the loud vocal minority, when most users wouldn’t want a specific breaking feature.
I like this. Transparency is awesome.
Exactly! Just like how those divots in sidewalks help more than just the disabled/injured people.
