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I'm not a fan of that either, nor do I use Ubuntu (for other reasons). However, in what.. 10 mins? you've been able to discover exactly what causes the "spying

I'm not a fan of that either, nor do I use Ubuntu (for other reasons). However, in what.. 10 mins? you've been able to discover exactly what causes the "spying" and an idea on how to disable it. Perhaps in less than an hour you'll have a good idea on exactly what data is being sent. Compare that to say, Windows, there we have no idea on exactly what data is being sent out or how to completely disable it (beyond being a company with volume licences or using firewall rules).

inetknght 8y ago
> However, in what.. 10 mins? you've been able to discover exactly what causes the "spying" and an idea on how to disable it. True, but that's only because I've been using the OS for a while. A lot of this is accumulated knowledge. There were a lot of gotchyas over the past 4.5 years (approx time I've been using Ubuntu .. coincides with my current employment time) that have been... eye opening. Yes, it's still better than Windows as far as inspectability for the reasons you just identified. And it's still better than OS X as far as usability (my opinion). But it's still be very disappointing on many levels. I'm sure there are other things which could cause additional disappointments in Canonical that I have yet to discover. Honestly I use Fedora at home. Even that isn't ideal -- I very much dislike the default GNOME environment and have repeatedly encountered trouble upgrading to different releases. I've been seriously thinking of just building my own personal distro.
- deleted 8y ago
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michaelmrose 8y ago
It doesn't compromise the users privacy in any meaningful way. Back in version 12.04 there was a scandal wherein searches on the desktop could return remote results from Amazon. Canonical countered that all data was going through them and no personal info was leaked but nobody actually wanted to see ads in their desktop search or share data about their files with Canonical thus this was changed in 14.04 or 14.10 if I recall correctly. Essentially this hasn't been an issue in about 4 years.
- inetknght 8y ago
  > It doesn't compromise the users privacy in any meaningful way. I would have to disagree. The mere fact that it's there and visible by default means it can be accidentally clicked on. Doing that opens a native application which loads an Amazon-provided javascript file. Cards are off the table after that loads.

inetknght 8y ago

> However, in what.. 10 mins? you've been able to discover exactly what causes the "spying" and an idea on how to disable it. True, but that's only because I've been using the OS for a while. A lot of this is accumulated knowledge. There were a lot of gotchyas over the past 4.5 years (approx time I've been using Ubuntu .. coincides with my current employment time) that have been... eye opening. Yes, it's still better than Windows as far as inspectability for the reasons you just identified. And it's still better than OS X as far as usability (my opinion). But it's still be very disappointing on many levels. I'm sure there are other things which could cause additional disappointments in Canonical that I have yet to discover. Honestly I use Fedora at home. Even that isn't ideal -- I very much dislike the default GNOME environment and have repeatedly encountered trouble upgrading to different releases. I've been seriously thinking of just building my own personal distro.

deleted 8y ago
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michaelmrose 8y ago

It doesn't compromise the users privacy in any meaningful way. Back in version 12.04 there was a scandal wherein searches on the desktop could return remote results from Amazon. Canonical countered that all data was going through them and no personal info was leaked but nobody actually wanted to see ads in their desktop search or share data about their files with Canonical thus this was changed in 14.04 or 14.10 if I recall correctly. Essentially this hasn't been an issue in about 4 years.

inetknght 8y ago
> It doesn't compromise the users privacy in any meaningful way. I would have to disagree. The mere fact that it's there and visible by default means it can be accidentally clicked on. Doing that opens a native application which loads an Amazon-provided javascript file. Cards are off the table after that loads.