I actually have some telemetry enabled on my system, cause I want the maintainers of my distro to have more data to base their decisions on. I always disable everything for proprietary software though, and I dislike opt-out systems.
I only enable telemetry for software provided by nonprofit organizations that are legally obligated to publish detailed financial records. Never give anyone that reserves the right to sell you out any of the benefit of your data for free.
Is Canonical actually doing that, though? Collecting data for product improvement purposes and collecting it to potentially sell to third parties are two wildly different things, and doing the former, even with the user's consent, does not mean you automatically reserve the right to do the latter (or anything else, really) with the collected data, unless you explicitly already include that as an option and get consent for it as well.
I haven't looked into it myself, so I might be wrong here, but I'm guessing Canonical would be getting way more shit for this if they were actually reserving the right to outright sell the telemetry they're collecting, rather than just use it for product planning and development.
It's been really sad watching them shoot themselves in the foot like this. They seem bent on destroying their distro. Which was the first distro I really used on an old laptop after trying a few.
It's also amazing they even try because a good percentage of Ubuntu users are likely knowledgeable tech users who like to stay aware of their software. Many of them are probably former or current Microsoft or Apple users who want to avoid big corporate OS systems because of creeping advertising.
Canonical has pulled similar shit for years now. Remember the Amazon search integration? They do it again and again, yet most users stay.
And I know, someone will comment "but I totally ditched Ubuntu and my one friend did too!!!!", but how is Ubuntu still the most popular distribution? Finding snaps is easier than finding flatpacks or debs or rpms. Finding support is easier, etc. This might be just momentum, but until that is running out, it's working.
He said Ubuntu 16, I believe the Amazon search fiasco was in 2012. He simply hasn't been using Linux long enough to know that Ubuntu used to be good. His baseline user experience is probably gnome 3.
So he's comparing extra-shitty Ubuntu to shitty Ubuntu and saying it didn't used to be shitty.
This is the "ad". Personally, I don't think a little plug like this is worth any kind of fuss. If it were a real ad or something, then yea I would get it.
I see a lot of people comment that this isn’t that bad and that it might even be acceptable, and that’s exactly the problem here: it’s a gateway drug and if we normalise this, Canonical will keep pushing the limits of what they can pull off before it’s not acceptable anymore, and that sounds when it’s too late.
Kind of, they have announcements in the terminal sometimes and telemetry wont go out unless you confirm you want it to. I personally have it disabled, but its not invasive.
I don’t hate Ubuntu, it used to be my favorite distro and I haven’t found anything that really replaces it. I hate Canonical for destroying my favorite distro
Debian 12 is the best destination after Ubuntu if you're switching because you hate stupid Canonical things. I switched a few months ago and it was really easy and has been awesome.
Telemetry is significantly less invasive than on windows or Mac, and is completely optional during installation, after which you will never be asked to turn it on again
Which version of Ubuntu you’re installing (including which flavour),
Whether you have network connectivity,
Hardware stats, including CPU, RAM, GPU, etc,
Your device vendor (e.g., Dell, Lenovo, etc),
Your country (based on the time zone you pick, not IP),
How long your install took to complete,
Whether you have auto login enabled,
Your disk layout (how many hard drives and partitions you have),
Whether you chose to install third party codecs,
Whether you chose to download updates during install
(According to OMG!Ubuntu)
Most distros offer optional telemetry, but Ubuntu’s is opt out not opt in (for GNOME you have to separately install the telemetry)
I haven't installed ubuntu in a while, but in EU you need to have prior consent from the user to gather any kind of data and if I remember correctly I haven't seen such thing. And it's not enough to bury that into documentation and say 'if you use our software you allow us to blah blah', you must get consent via an action from the user which spesifically allows that, so if telemetry comes silently with 'apt dist-upgrade' it's not enough.
Telling people about in-house programs in this manner is fine imo. If it was third party stuff I'd leave Ubuntu, but as it stands it's still a great distro.
First the deliberate there/their BS on the other post, and now literally ? Yeah you’re definitely a real user with no other motivations whatsoever. Fuck off shill