Looked, didn’t find this on the forums lately, but here’s what they’re looking for, and they show you right out of the box.
Here’s a video
Here’s the actual article.
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It’s all fairly basic stuff, no PII as far as i’m aware. Most of it is to identify what systems to target, where to put resources. It should also give them a better idea of actual installs unlike distros like Fedora that rely only on download stats. They still get an accurate install count because the opt-in will report (anonymously) the opt-out with a “opt-in: no” type response (at least from what we’ve been told)
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Either way, I think it’s time people stop claiming Ubuntu is spyware. Especially on the order of magnitude as Windows. I’ve seen ALOT of videos that claim that. And it’s disheartening.
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The Ubuntu podcast goes over everything they collect. The applications installed, the system hardware, geographic location from timezone. And that’s it… Nothing scary
Why is it that when a major Linux distribution parts ways with the established order, the Linux community - for however brief of a time it is - becomes toxic and hostile toward that distro, and anyone who seems to support it?
In the last three weeks, I’ve seen people who were once friends tear each other apart over this whole Ubuntu data collection thing. I’ve seen communities split apart, and the YouTube people who talk about it openly bash the people who are just working on the project.
I’ve seen this alot in the last few years. I’m only on my second year now running Linux full time, but I’ve always stayed privy to the news about it. And I’ll tell ya, it’s kinda disheartening.
Ubuntu will always get crap over what they do, mostly over what came after Karmic Koala…
To me it seems many of the people making the biggest stink about the Ubuntu data collection are non-Ubuntu users who have nothing better to do with their lives than be angry at people for doing things that don’t directly affect them. Most of the Ubuntu users I have read posts from don’t care and are glad to do it if it helps.
There are also some people who normally would be cool with it if it was opt-in, and totally lost their shit when they heard it would be opt-out. Many people fled Windows for distro’s like Ubuntu specifically because of the opt-out or no choice methods used by either MS or third party Windows software. Whether they are being reasonable or not, it isn’t too hard to see that some people would have a knee-jerk reaction to anything opt-out, however easy it may be to opt-out of, or how cool they were with what was going to be collected. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
The notion that zero people at Canonical saw this from a mile away disturbs me.
Opt-in telemetry does not work, period. Nobody opts-in. If you want to get telemetry, and it does have completely valid uses to improve software, it must be opt-out. That’s key #1.
Key #2 is being completely forthright when you inform your users about telemetry. Put it front and center, and give them a clear easy supported method to switch it off and opt-out.
Key #3 is being transparent about the data you’re collecting and transmitting. Fully document everything, and allow the user to inspect the actual payloads if they wish.
Canonical did all the above correctly, thus I have no problems with it. Not to imply I left it on, of course I opted-out immediately.
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I kinda agree that manny people are over reacting on this.
Like @Eden allready pointed out, its pretty basicly stuff they collect,
if you agree to send it to them.
And Cannonical atleast is honnest about what they are doing.
It can also be very helpfull for them in a certain way to improve Ubuntu.
I think that people also should not forget what Ubuntu actually means in the world of Linux in general.
They still play a big role wenn it comes to the envolvement of Linux in general.
Improvements they make will also endup in manny manny other distributions.
The only thing i personally dont like is the popcon feuture,
that detects the mostly used apps.
But that can eventually being purged from the system.
Very true I opt out when asked. It’s a habit I have formed.
If Ubuntu is being honest and its to help fix wifi drivers and other quirks etc. I have to say it’s a good thing. Fedora is more for me because AMD video card and stable bleeding edge kernels.
On fedora I do upload crash reports and notes on reproduction etc.
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Thanks for the links. It seems like telemetry comes up weekly, and the same responses by the same people are echoed.
As evidenced above, even with clear cut transparency, great intentions, and easily reviewed data, people outright refuse to contribute because of paranoia and irrational emotions.
It’s a topic that has been beaten to death, just has people screeching, and clearly the results DON’T FUCKING MATTER. If Microsoft, Ubuntu, Apple, or Google assigned an engineer to everyone that used their services and personally walked through the data that was being sent with proof of no ill intent, the smug, entitled, elitist community would still sneer down their noses and click “deny”.
If empirical evidence was provided that submitting the information was not only private, but would expedite progress on the distribution or project by years, the smug, entitled, elitist community would disavow and opt out because it gets them off to be the cool kids that have a computer that’s that much more different than everyone else.
Ubuntu is not spying on you, but RMS said it years ago so it’s true. Same thing with “Fuck you, NVidia!!!1!” – NVidia has made insane progress on their drivers for Linux. But because Linus said something that one time, NVidia must suck always and forever.
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I’m pretty sure the vocal minority would be more than happy to bring all forms of progress to a complete halt in the name of perceived ‘security’. The silent majority be damned. It’s just humans being humans.
Haven’t they all but abandoned Linux ?
Now I am only a data set of one and I picked in 2016 to get an AMD RX480. No complaints from me. Every tech tuber I listen too whines about nvidia drivers or turtles in on LTS ubuntu 14.04 or 16.04. How is Nvidia on 18.04 ? Im actually curious as Ubuntu 18.04 and Fedora 28 run great on my RX480.
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Nvidia on Linux is all fine and dandy.
All the latest Nvidia hardware with proprietary drivers still kicks the snot out of open source driver AMD Hardware same as it does on Windows.
Nothing’s really any different except that AMD hardware is catching up really really fast on Linux.
The one stand out is the Rx580’s beating the 1060 6G in several tests.
Also no I’m by no means siding with anyone/thing here (no fanboiing), I’m just being realistic and honest.
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Tomb-Raider-GTX-1060-RX-580
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=tomb-raider-20&num=1
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=radeon-win10-feb18&num=1
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=2018-start-mesanv&num=1
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Volta-GV100-DRM-Linux-4.18
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NVIDIA-390.59-Released
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I run a NVIDIA 1070 Strix on Ubuntu 18.04 with absolutely no problems. It was a single click to install the NVIDIA proprietary drivers.
I had the following cards over the years: 8800 GTX, 550 TI, 650, 960, 970, 980 Ti, 1070. Never had a problem with them. I run games in both wine and opengl. The opensource drivers are poor, I always install the NVIDIA drivers first thing after an installation.
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Hay I dont own nvidia cards to know…So thanks.
Honestly, with the way things are going, I might just get a 2700 2400G and not a dGPU because all I really care about these days are indie games that can run on a potato.
Since a 2700 doesn’t have any GPU integrated, you will have to buy something.
Polaris is pretty cheap on the low end, RX550 should serve you fine.
Ahh, I meant to say the 2400G.
I heartily agree on that one. Windows is above and beyond more invasive.
However, that’s not even to say that Ubuntu is like Windows, just less invasive, it’s actually nothing like Windows and is not invasive.
I think people talk about it being like Windows data collection because it’s going to get them views/clicks.
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