12 ms·

Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do?

268 points by cs702 14y ago

antidoh 14y ago
What distro would you recommend take the place of Ubuntu, as a recommended for newbs distro? I mean a distro that you would feel comfortable recommending to a stranger that you will not be able to help install or support the distro, as well as the more traditional "lemme help you with that." As a subset of that, what apt based distro would you recommend for that niche? Is plain Debian really something that people feel comfortable recommending to non-supported strangers? Something that you would not be embarrassed about if they looked you up and told you what happened?
- willvarfar 14y ago
  I recommend Xubuntu. And if they run Windows, install it as WUBI.
  - antidoh 14y ago
    I mean something not derived from Ubuntu. Yes, Xubuntu (which I currently run underneath XMonad) does not (yet) have this and future related features, and that's good. But by using an Ubuntu derived distro, you lend credibility to Ubuntu and Canonical. I would prefer to recommend something higher up the derivation line between Debian and Ubuntu.
    - dagw 14y ago
      Linux Mint as a Debian based version of their distro, which comes with all the desktop polish of Mint, but in their own words: "it's not as stable. Things are likely to break more often but fixes can also come quicker. For this reason, LMDE requires a deeper knowledge and experience with Linux, dpkg and APT" Personally I'd take a look at OpenSuSE. It was a pretty good as a Just Works desktop last I looked, but that was a few years ago. Another option is actually PC-BSD. I've never quite gotten along with it, but that is mainly because I want to do all kinds of hacky strangeness, but for a newbie desktop it's solid with great documentation and easy to install software.
      - antidoh 14y ago
        "Linux Mint as a Debian based version of their distro," Didn't realize that, I'd always seen it as Ubuntu-derived. Thanks.
- Surio 14y ago
  I hope that my reading of your question as a rhetorical one than a literal one is correct? Because your entire comment is one big reason I have been rooting for Canonical from day one. I have been on Linux on and off since slackware 1.0, Redhat 5 (5.0 (Hurricane)/5.1 (Manhattan)) all the way to SuSE 7.0 and not one time was I able to get someone (anyone) to adopt it completely -- despite all my handholding and regular support! Finally resorted to recommending Cygwin as an alternative, and I was still called upon to help with "things" ;-) The first/only time I managed to get a successful switch and retain, was when I recommended Ubuntu.
  - antidoh 14y ago
    I meant it literally.
- ps258 14y ago
  Fedora is good enough although it's a bit more bleeding edge.
EwanToo 14y ago
It's always interesting to read RMS' posts, though I don't agree with a lot of them. In this case, he's got a very valid point (I disabled the adverts on my Ubuntu install), but he uses such over the top language that it makes much of his writing seem like a parody. Ubuntu sending all desktop searches to Amazon by default (even if it's via a proxy) isn't cool, and isn't what most users would expect, but I don't believe screeds like this aren't going to make Canonical think again.
- daniel-cussen 14y ago
  He's not good at getting his point across, only at having good points.
  - jeremiep 14y ago
    I believe its the other way around; the general public is not generally good at understanding the wisdom of his points.
    - rahoulb 14y ago
      As someone who nods my head in agreement to RMS most of the time (although I use proprietary software extensively), when I actually went to see him speak in person, I ended up feeling that he had weakened his case with the way he presented himself. However, this article is well-written and clear.
    - robinh 14y ago
      I don't really think that's how communication works.
  - eternalban 14y ago
    Right, and for his good point to 'get across', it needs a connector of some sort. One end point of that connector is in your control. RMS has been /clearly/ right-on regarding these matters from day 1. It is the proverbial 'you' that is refusing to 'listen' ...
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apawloski 14y ago
Ubuntu is also shipping with two new Firefox extensions that ask to "install" certain web apps when you visit them. Havent audited them yet, but my tinfoil suspicion is that these add-ons are leaking private information to Canonical by asking "is this a web app that can be downloaded?" (this is in addition to the current controversy that Unity searches are being leaked). By the way, Amazon is pre-installed. I noticed yesterday that Amazon web pages still open up in the Amazon icon on Unity -- even after I had removed the unity-shopping-lens.
- quarterto 14y ago
  That's almost certainly implemented by looking for HTML offline cache manifests. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/HTML/Using_the_application_cache https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/HTML/Using_the_appl...
rlpb 14y ago
"When the user searches her own local files for a string using the Ubuntu desktop, Ubuntu sends that string to one of Canonical's servers." That's not how I see it. I'd correct this to "When the user performs a global search for a string using the Ubuntu desktop, Ubuntu sends that string to one of Canonical's servers to perform that search". If a user wants to search his own local files without searching the entire Internet, then perhaps he shouldn't perform a global search. The global search box (the Dash) didn't previously exist before Canonical invented it. I think it's fair that they get to define what it does. If you don't like it, then don't use it, or change its behaviour (it is open source, and you don't need a fork to change what is effectively a setting), or just use Xubuntu, Lubuntu or Kubuntu, all of which are acknowledged as official flavors by Canonical and none of which use Unity or the Dash by default. "People will certainly make a modified version of Ubuntu without this surveillance." And Canonical even support the existence of these modified versions! If you don't like it, just vote with your feet and install Xubuntu instead. Install popularity-contest to show people your vote. Job done. By all means go ahead and complain that the default doesn't do what you want it to do, but please stop with the hyperbole that is actually misleading to readers about what the real situation is.
- raverbashing 14y ago
  Yes, using find and grep won't trigger a network search (unless of course it's on an NFS server or something like that)
  - drcube 14y ago
    They're on it. :) https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-terminal/+bug/1055766 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-terminal/+bu...
    - chipaca 14y ago
      I hate to point out the obvious, but for people who don't click the link: that bug was filed in irony (and by somebody who didn't "get" the home lens as a global search tool, but that perceptual problem is ours more than it is anybody else's). The global search functionality could be queried from the commandline (by writing a tool that talked to the backends over dbus, as the dash does), and I half expect somebody to implement a kludgy version of "grep" that did exactly that, it is in no way something we're going to ever ship.
retube 14y ago
I have to say, having been a huge ubuntu fan for many years, I am seriously dismayed and dissapointed. This destroys my trust in Ubuntu completely. They have ruined a great thing. Was just about to put Ubuntu on a new machine, now I'll have to switch distos. Any recommendations? Edit: I think I have misunderstood. I assumed this referred to a commmand line (s)locate or find or grep or similar. Apparently it refers to a GUI search box on the desktop from which you can do global searches (local plus web). OK not so bad - in fact I have no problem in supporting Ubuntu in this way, providing local searches remain private.
- meaty 14y ago
  Local searches do not remain private as there is only one search box for global and local stuff. So when you type "goat porn" expecting it to open your folder of goat porn on your workstation, it will send it to amazon and show goat porn that you didn't want to see and tell amazon and canonical that you are interested in goat porn. In a few years time[1], on your lifetime leased IPV6 address you will pop up a legitimate web site and get adverts for goat porn. Look at the display on the fridge: goat porn. Walk into the bedroom to see your Android Clock showing you the latest "Russian Bride Goats". [1] This is apparently not possible at the moment as they "don't store or process your IP address", but we all know how Mark bends over when someone waves cash at him. After all he is a businessman.
  - shardling 14y ago
    It's pretty obvious from the post he meant explicitly local searches, like those he gives examples of.
  - takluyver 14y ago
    Not fully accurate. The main search box does local+global search unless you turn off the global part in settings. But you can easily do local searches only: Super+F for files, Super+A for applications.
    - meaty 14y ago
      Yes fully accurate. By DEFAULT it does local+global search. Motivation for user to turn this off - low. Education on what it's going to do - none. This is about as unethical as it can get. Even Windows 8 asks religiously before sending anything.
damian2000 14y ago
Do people using Ubuntu not also use web browsers? If so, then they are also being spied on by others such as google, amazon, facebook, twitter - every time they use one of their sites. I just find it overly dramatic to be focusing on this one point of Ubuntu's search being harvested for keywords when this sort of thing is commonplace on the web. At least with Ubuntu you have the option to turn it off.
- justinf 14y ago
  It's a question of context and expectations. I expect people to look at me funny when I walk around in boxer shorts in public, but not at home. Were someone to stand at my window while I'm on my couch and complain about my choice in clothing, I'd have a right to complain. Your angst over this new system depends largely on whether you consider behavior outside of your browser to take place in a public or private space.
  - Ntrails 14y ago
    That depends on how you view the global search function - which is more like being in your back garden and looking at the view. In that location people can and have successfully argued you should put some clothes on.
    - justinf 14y ago
      Have you been talking to my neighbors? I completely agree, but not everyone will, and that perception is key to the discussion.
- drcube 14y ago
  It is clear when you're on a browser that your search terms and text inputs go to a server somewhere. And RMS has plenty of warnings about such things as Google Instant, Facebook "likes" and other sneaky ways websites spy on you. But at least up until now you could stay away from that stuff by just not opening a browser, and you knew to be careful when you did. Now there is no line, just "be careful what you type on a computer, period. You don't know who's watching". And that's a lot worse. What if your private journal on your hard drive is mined for targeted advertising? No, keep the web and my desktop separate, that's the point.
justinf 14y ago
I'd guess that the only way to really dislodge the Amazon widget would be to make sure it remains unprofitable. If it remains a major talking point and doesn't pull in enough money to compensate for its negative effect on community evangelism, it won't last long. I have mixed feelings about the new system. On the one hand, I respect a lot of what Canonical is doing with linux regarding mainstreaming, streamlining, and even Unity. I also recognize that they are a company and need to make money, and think Amazon integration is preferable to dozens of preinstalled, hard-to-remove junkware applications. On the other hand, I really don't like the intrusive-by-default nature of the integration, and the fact that I'll have to go tell all the folks I've installed Ubuntu for that they need to essentially disable spyware the next time they do a distribution upgrade. On the third hand (what, you don't have one?) I'm not sure what other profitable solutions Canonical might implement in a community that values privacy and freedom.
- curiousdannii 14y ago
  Amazon postage is prohibitively expensive for those outside the US (except perhaps for those who live in another country where Amazon is based?) The only time I'd ever use Amazon is if I'm after an old rare book which is out of print and Amazon is the only place I can find a second hand copy. And in those times I'd actually be deliberately searching for it, checking many sites in my browser, not casually using Unity!
  - takluyver 14y ago
    According to Wikipedia, Amazon has national sites covering North America, most of Europe, Brazil, Japan & China. That's a pretty substantial slice of the world's population.
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shabble 14y ago
Whilst his point is clearly that Ubuntu should be punished (by users switching to alternative distros), it would have been nice to provide or link to some detail about how to disable this behaviour, for those who can't or won't reinstall. Also, 'virtual book burning', really? These snide little terms detract from his core (and important) message, and come across as just petty. I think there's probably an Internet Law that you can safely ignore anything by people who use a $ symbol in the word 'Microsoft'.
- antidoh 14y ago
  Book burning: Amazon turned off access to people's Kindle copies of 1984, that they had purchased from Amazon. When I buy a book at the store it stays bought, and the store is not going to break in to my apartment and take that book back. Giving me my money back would not make up for it in the slightest. If there's a dispute with the publisher or copyright inheritors, that's Amazon's problem post-sale. If they can do this in a quasi-legitimate situation ("We're going to get sued! Fuck the customers!"), then they could do it at the behest of a government or investor, or maniacal CEO. When I buy a DRM-free book from O'Reilly or Packt, it stays bought. Yes, book burning may be an inflammatory phrase, but I think it's apt.
drcube 14y ago
I came back to Ubuntu when I got a System 76 laptop earlier this year with it preinstalled. I was actually impressed. It was pretty good, with some tiling features I liked and lots of keyboard shortcuts. But the prospects of 12.10 spyware made me dump it for Slackware 14, which came out around the same time. And I never looked back, because man, Slackware is great. Install that instead.
16s 14y ago
I've used Debian GNU/Linux as my primary desktop OS and as a server OS since 1995. Many ditros (such as Ubuntu) are derived from it. People who have grown accustomed to deb packages and synaptic, etc may like to try it.
nicholassmith 14y ago
Ubuntu install a custom application that does something involving sending data out -> We're doomed! They're spying and tracking you! Grab the pitchforks! Of course, that's RMS' viewpoint and he's entitled to it, and it often provokes some very interesting discussions around it, but he's terrible at being anything other than over the top. For what it's worth I don't think what Ubuntu did was that a bad a thing, it's a nice revenue stream for those that use it and that's a good thing for the future of the project, but I can also understand the view point of people who are uncomfortable with search results peppered with ad's.
- keithpeter 14y ago
  "...it's a nice revenue stream for those that use it..." I'm not entirely convinced that this is going to make a lot of money for Canonical. It will be interesting to see figures in a couple of releases if Canonical (which is a private company) decide to tell us. What do we think the value to Amazon is of my random desktop searches for files & stuff on my desktop? The 'slow typing' problem is real: search is dynamic and can, as a result of network latency and fat fingering show results of unfortunately shortened search terms. There is no content filtering on the results. That is actually why I switched it off.
  - nicholassmith 14y ago
    I'd imagine they'll get some money out of it, even if it's not a huge amount, there's plenty of people who like it and think it's useful. The value to Amazon isn't what you're searching, but that you might go "Hey, that's the album I was thinking of buy", and then you're in their content ecosystem. I don't use Unity as a daily driver but I switched it off due to the network latency and general slowness inside a VM. Aside from that I thought it was pretty decent, it'd be nice if there was more content sources but you can't win them all.
  - chipaca 14y ago
    Could you re-enable it for a little bit and test that slow-typing thing? We did a bit of work to make it a little bit better at that.
itry 14y ago
I find this spyware by default as wrong as Stallman. I dont want my machine to send anything anywhere without me explicitly telling it to do so. What I find even more frightening is Mark Shuttelworths view of this: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1182 http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1182 "Don’t trust us? Erm, we have root." Looks like he gets the issues of privacy and trust completely wrong. Imagine catching your cleaning lady reading your diary. And she says, without a sign of guilt, "Don't trust me? Erm, I got keys to your apartment.". Time for a new cleaning lady. Time for a new distro. I happily switched to Mint.
- antidoh 14y ago
  "Time for a new distro. I happily switched to Mint." Does my irony meter need calibration?
jasonkostempski 14y ago
Are there other distros with Wubi (or something like it) and automatic updates? If it weren't for Wubi I don't think I would have ever fully switched to Linux. VMs are OK for a bit and repartitioning is right out if all you want to do is try something out for a while. I don't use Ubuntu anymore but Wubi really was the gateway drug for me. I personally don't care about automatic updates but I think it's a big one for some others. When I switched away from Ubuntu I thought I'd be missing out on the community behind it but it's really the Linux community in general that's awesome, a lot of the stuff just ends up on Ubuntu forums and much of the advice is universal. I think people need to know that.
- deleted 14y ago
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- icebraining 14y ago
  Wubi-like: http://goodbye-microsoft.com/ http://goodbye-microsoft.com/
- willvarfar 14y ago
  Xubuntu is a WUBI option now. Works a charm.
meaty 14y ago
I'm a little surprised at how accepting people are here relating to the Amazon feature in Ubuntu. I would assume that there are a lot of critical thinkers here as comp sci people tend to have that mentality. Possibly not! The usual excuses are "we can turn it off etc" or just shrug it off and carry on. Have you thought long term? If you don't make a stand with this feature, one will eventually be added which can't be turned off or is far more invasive.
- ramayac 14y ago
  > The usual excuses are "we can turn it off etc" or just shrug it off and carry on. Yes, that's what everybody says sadly, it's a very weak stance in a (very) long term problem.
- antidoh 14y ago
  Indeed. If spyware is a continuum from onerous to innocuous, then at the moment Canonical's string sending/sharing is somewhere near the innocuous end of the line. But it's still within the continuum. By excusing it as innocuous and (for now) flippable, we shorten the line. And then shorten the line again for the next thing that finds itself happily closer to the innocuous end of the line. And again.
decasteve 14y ago
I am running 12.10 and disabled this right away in the privacy settings. Why not have it opt in instead of the ninja mode opt out? Explicitly prompt the user to enable this when first using Dash but disable by default.
- bitcartel 14y ago
  Did you also remove the Unity - Amazon webapp integration?
belorn 14y ago
A lot of people are pointing out that if you do not like something, don't use it. It's simple enough, and have a "sounds right" tone to it. As an implied statement with this, anyone complaining should just shut up then. This is a rather crazy line of thought once one actually starts to think about it. If I see a poisonous (say rotten) food being sold, I find it almost my duty to inform people. Somehow it's now being argued, that I should stay quiet and vote with my feet/wallet instead? If a company does something clearly distasteful and harmful to others, staying quiet and voting with your feet is not a good idea. This should be obvious to everyone. At best, you are ignoring the problem, and at worst, you are implicitly allowing the situation to continue. If something is harming others, staying quiet or saying that "users should know better and not act like they do" is not the way to go. If the search box was labeled "ask amazon about this", then this would have been a no-brainer and no one would object to this. Its the same as labeling some food-like objects as non-edible. Canonical search however does not do this, and tricks users to send data that they believe is private. Imagine a worker at a company, using this function to search for internal document including a string with company secrets. Whooops, now that data is at Amazon. Imagine a police worker, seaching for email with witness details. whooops, now that data is also sent to Amazon. Imagine a normal person searching for emails that includes their credit card. Whoops, gone gone. And let's not discuss things that private people honestly, truly, do not wish other people know, or for that matter, journalists. This is not fair to the users, and RMS points this out. It might even be illegal in some if not all european countries. At the least it's something to write about and inform users about the risk involved.
- louhike 14y ago
  Even if I get your point, it sounds like you're trying to imply that the results of the search (documents, email, etc.) are sent, not the search alone, which is completely false.
  - belorn 14y ago
    >"function to search for internal document including a string with company secrets" Ie, that string is now gone. Some people select rather large parts of a document to find other documents with the exact same data in them. If one were to ask Google, I think they would say that they get everyday multiple page documents sent in a single search request.
jdangu 14y ago
Was pleased to see a reference to Fravia in RMS's article. For the sake of comparison, here's a 1998 essay about what Microsoft was specifically doing in Win95: http://71.6.196.237/fravia/mmstory.htm http://71.6.196.237/fravia/mmstory.htm
- idm 14y ago
  Good old Fravia. Like Stallman, Fravia seems to have been "hard to swallow" by the community at large. However, just like Stallman, when you dug into Fravia's stuff it turned out to be pretty great.
harel 14y ago
You can always turn it off. You can always use Gnome Shell over Unity (should anyway as its nicer). You can always buy another operating system. You know, vote with your wallet. Ah, wait... There has to be a price for free. In RMS world everybody is a hacker, everything is free (as in love) and open and nobody needs to eat, kids grow up not costing a penny. But in my world, I understand that sometimes I'm getting something for free that is actually superior to the paid stuff, and sometimes those giving it to me need to feed a kid or two, or buy their Mrs that new outfit on the high street. And since they don't charge me outright they try different things, one of which is trying to sell affiliate links to Amazon. They don't even force me to do it because I can turn it off. But they do it by default hoping that I won't. Its a revenue channel, albeit probably a small one at the end of the day. And you know what, had I used Unity I'd probably keep it on and do my Amazon shopping via the OS to give something back. I also understand RMS-style extreme is vital to balance out the Corporate extreme of the software world. But come on man, choose your battles better and you'll have my support. This one is a waste of time.
- Surio 14y ago
  >>> I'm getting something for free that is actually superior to the paid stuff, and sometimes those giving it to me need to feed a kid or two, or buy their Mrs that new outfit on the high street. Classy. You get my vote for that and subsequently pointing out that "They don't even force me to do it because I can turn it off". This. I also liked the way you ended it. We definitely need RMS, but he definitely needs to choose his battles wisely.
  - dradtke 14y ago
    But why not present it as an option to the user on first launch, or first search? Considering how relatively few people actually want shopping suggestions on their desktop, I expect the majority of users who don't turn it off to be people who simply can't be bothered to find the setting and change it. Exploiting user apathy is not my idea of software that respects its users, which is what the FSF is all about.
    - 14y ago
iamtherockstar 14y ago
My sister home schools two kids, cooks three squares a day, and doesn't care if someone knows she googled for "bread pudding recipe." They have an old, aging computer, and when I gave an Ubuntu CD to her husband, they were so incredibly grateful. I see this feature being excellent for her, because she has a bunch of documents on her computer that contain her recipes, and then maybe she'll see a cookbook she might want to buy. Maybe she'll be looking for the days curriculum, and see a book that might help her youngest figure out her multiplication tables. These are all relatively impractical use cases for the nerds of Hacker News. Ubuntu will still serve their needs, but Canonical wants to "cross the chasm" and have ordinary muggles using Ubuntu. Those people will find all of these features "valuable" and don't actually want to turn them off.
- Surio 14y ago
  +1. I liked the framing of this entire thing. Wow. Thank you for writing this. I wish more people upvote this so it can move somewhere close to the top to provide a much needed perspective on things.
- bad_user 14y ago
  This is such bullshit. There is a big difference between googling and searching your own files, while the anecdote you give probably accounts for only 1% of that computer's usage or even less. Reading this opinion I even pictured a stock-photo with family members gathered around a laptop, stupidly laughing at a photo of "bread pudding". Your sister could be searching within her own files for strings like "last year debt", "ass ventura crack detective", "bondage", "dvdrip" and "office keygen". I'm sure your sister doesn't do that, but other people do. And searches can express and hint to your deepest desires/taboos and things that might lead one to think of illegal activities. My non-technical wife asked me one day, during a funny conversation about sex gadgets, if people at Google can see what she's typing and I taught her how to use incognito mode. At some point I also made her aware that Facebook sends and publishes her lat/lon coordinates when typing a message from her phone. She understood the dangers of online activity and took steps to protect herself, without me even trying too hard to explain, but this required some amount of education which is out of reach for most normal people who either don't have a technical friend that understands such issues, or that technical friend thinks it isn't a problem, such as yourself.
takluyver 14y ago
Relevant: Canonical have just said there will be more retailers integrated in 13.04 (which was always expected). And: "We are also testing a few additional user controls like filters for local and global searching – more to come on this front as we learn from those sessions." http://blog.canonical.com/2012/12/07/searching-in-the-dash-in-ubuntu-13-04/ http://blog.canonical.com/2012/12/07/searching-in-the-dash-i...
- rlpb 14y ago
  "...we have made it dead easy to switch the online search tools off with a simple toggle in settings."
  - takluyver 14y ago
    That bit's not new, though - the toggle is already in place, and I have used it.
jfreak53 14y ago
I agree, the Linux community as a whole has never stood for these malfeasons ever!! I say we stand up, I use Ubuntu on ALL my PC's home and work, so we're talking 15 to 20 PC's that I might have to move over to another Distro here soon. This is not the first time Ubuntu has tried these "Windowz" practices on it's users, but this needs to be the last! The first was taking away our choice in the first release of Unity, it was sooooo much a pain in the but to get back to default Gnome that most people didn't try. Mint allowed it's user's to do so from the get go, so that means it was possible but Ubuntu made the choice for us instead of allowing configuration choices, that's what Linux is all about, choices! Ubuntu has been trying to take our choices away for a long, long time. We as a Linux community first and foremost need to stand up and let the Linux community as a whole know we will not stand for this. Ubuntu is the first doing this, but if we let them get away with it then companies like Amazon might go to other Distro's and try the same thing. If a small distro see's an easy way to make money and people don't care, or don't show they care, they might do it. With no place to run Linux becomes "Windowz"! We need to let them know we are not standing for this before it gets out of hand and happens all over the place. I personally haven't used Unity since day one on any of my 20 PC's, I hate it. So I have never been in the position to be used by Canonical to pad their pockets in this search thing. I don't ever even suggest people to use Unity since it's such a pain in the butt! But other people will be affected by this more than likely. My simple solution is don't use Unity ha ha but that's not a solution, that's a band aid. If we let Canonical get away with it without screaming they will just continue as long as Amazon funnels cash into their caufers! If they loose user base then we win and Linux as a whole wins since they are the big distro on the block.
- rlpb 14y ago
  > Ubuntu has been trying to take our choices away for a long, long time. How has it taken any of your choices away? All of Debian is available in Ubuntu, and Debian is all about choice. You can manipulate your systems as you please. You can even roll your own installation CD exactly how you want it. Canonical even supports Xubuntu, Kubuntu, Lubuntu etc., all of which have taken a different set of choices and all of which are released at the same time as Ubuntu itself. How is any of this about taking choices away?
btilly 14y ago
Canonical is not the first to do this. And nobody minded. In Chrome, every time you start to type a URL, it tries to autocomplete. One source of autocompletions is that it contacts Google, which sends back suggestions. Therefore by default Google knows every search you do in Chrome, even if you didn't want to go to Google. (They turn this off for incognito mode.) I don't know how long this has been the case for Chrome, but I use this feature a lot more than I'd use Canonical's search.
- TallGuyShort 14y ago
  I recall complaining vocally about that and seeing others do so. It's still the only reason I don't use Chrome.
  - k3n 14y ago
    Well, you _can_ disable it, so no need to cut off your nose to spite your face. Unless you're boycotting Chrome on the principle of this feature.
    - TallGuyShort 14y ago
      I'm kind of boycotting on pricinple. I recognize that Google has an on-going interest in that kind of practice, and I don't want to deal with it in the future. If a key benefit of open-source is more-eyes-on-the-code, there's another browser that has more-eyes-with-the-same-priorities-as-me on the code.
- yungchin 14y ago
  Yes, but it's somewhat less of a privacy violation, because you usually expect to send out the URL you type over the internet. That's different from trying a local search on your machine and finding it ended up on the internet.
  - drcube 14y ago
    No, you only expect it to send the URL when you hit "enter". For instant results, however, it must send each character typed to Google. Also, when I type a non-google URL into my address bar, I don't expect Google to be notified. As it is, they can track all your internet travels from Chrome, and I don't like it. Hence why I use Firefox and Duck Duck Go.
mistercow 14y ago
It's a pretty big stretch to call this "spyware". It's an ill-advised feature, sure, but "spying" indicates secrecy and subterfuge. If I came up behind you while you were typing, and started reading aloud your words as you typed them, would you call me a "spy"? I think real spies would be offended.
kokey 14y ago
I find it ironic reading this article on a site that collects my visitor data using piwik stats without explicitly asking me first.
acabal 14y ago
I'm pretty surprised that Shuttleworth didn't see this kind of reaction coming, considering his long-time involvement in free software. Or maybe he did see it coming, and just doesn't care? In either case, you're in a bad position when you're distributing a Linux distro that RMS starts to call out. Shuttleworth would do well to observe what happened to GNOME: they ignored their core user base, and they've been in such hot water for it that now they're backpedaling (GNOME Legacy). If Linux can't even please its core user base--aka the evangelists--it doesn't stand a chance in the wild.
- fixermark 14y ago
  Seeing this reaction coming and not caring is a reasonable strategy. In free software, RMS holds a lot of philosophical sway, but Ubuntu operates in the larger open-source ecosystem. Let's say that free software adherents decide that Ubuntu is bad for their interests. How will they react? The GPL prevents them from forbidding Ubuntu from bundling their work as long as Ubuntu's use of the work is GPL-compliant. This leaves them with few options. They can refuse to support Ubuntu, which is fine; other software developers can patch the bugs and fork projects that the original maintainers refuse to update. They can call out why Ubuntu is bad for a free software ecosystem; this is a good thing to do, but has little impact on those who are familiar with the four freedoms but don't buy into their absolute necessity. As a tool to exercise free use of software, GPL is very strong. But as a coercive tool, GPL is pretty weak (by design). Shuttleworth recognizing these strengths and weaknesses and adapting the company's motion to account for it is shrewd business. Accepting the notion "I don't approve of your use of my software, but I respect your right to use, study, redistribute, and modify free software" is an implicit aspect of the free software philosophy.
stinos 14y ago
>> when he searched for a string in the files of his Windows system, it sent a packet to some server anyone has a source for this? Was this built into windows? (It's not in mine, or it's not active)
- bcoates 14y ago
  Windows XP search assistant* has a database of file types it uses for filtering and to determine which files are worth searching into. It also has a small misfeature where it updates this database every time you search. It doesn't send anything to Microsoft about what you're searching for, it's just an overly persistent auto-update mechanism. The usual suspects freaked out about this, of course. * The little dog that makes intermittent scratching noises when you accidentally leave explorer open, slowly driving you mad
  - stinos 14y ago
    ah the dog. One of the first things to get rid of in XP :]
cparrino 14y ago
For context on what the Ubuntu Dash actually does and how it's evolving - please see http://blog.canonical.com/2012/12/07/searching-in-the-dash-in-ubuntu-13-04/ http://blog.canonical.com/2012/12/07/searching-in-the-dash-i...
DanBC 14y ago
There are two problems with the Ubuntu search box. 1) Not being very clear to your users that the search box is now global and will send information out of the local machine 2) Amazon search sucks. I haven't used recent versions of Ubuntu, but linking a good distro with the disaster that is Amazon search is not something appealing to me. I don't think it's going to improve my experience on Ubuntu. I strongly feel it's going to make my search experience really sucky. Note that I am ad-tolerant, and I don't really care about information getting sent off to other servers (so long as I'm told about it before hand) so Canonical have a bit of work to do to persuade me that the new experience is not as awful as Amazon search is on the website. PS: Apologies to any Amazoners here, but come on, you know the search is terrible, right?
valugi 14y ago
what to do? switch the flavor. Pack your stuff and switch to Debian for easy transition
Surio 14y ago
snip Even in arguments around copyright law (like this recently concluded debate... http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4882364 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4882364) the general consensus seems to flow around comments such as "... was not trying to reignite the Great Internet Copyright Argument for the millionth time, and instead was making a point about what was politically actionable today" On similar lines, why not acknowledge the reality of running a viable, commercial venture around FOSS by tapping viable revenue models? A few others have written some very good points that I really enjoyed reading. Here they are (in no particular order of preference): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4887261 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4887261 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4887132 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4887132 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4887365 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4887365 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4887294 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4887294 (I really hope that comment was rhetorical rather than being literal) that makes the point of why the situation is much more nuanced for someone like Canonical. And if Linux adoption has to succeed big time, we need the Canonicals and Mints (with their warts and all) that give the general public a viable alternative. Mandriva Linux was facing bankruptcy a few years ago, if I am not mistaken. EDIT: For the opt-in vs opt-out discussions: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4864783 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4864783 The difference is that - for a chunk of people - this functionality isn't crap. It's actually useful. It's out of the way for people who don't care. It's there for people who do. I've seen folk go "that's so cool" when the amazon stuff came up. This stuff is much closer to the adds folk get in Google search. It's often relevant to what they're doing at the time. (anecdata, sure. happens to match mine ;-) )
olgeni 14y ago
What's with this "distro" stuff... Can't we just boot into Emacs and call it a day?
bitcartel 14y ago
This should help de-Amazon your Ubuntu. 1. Ubuntu Settings --> Privacy -->Include online results [OFF] 2. sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping unity-scope-video-remote unity-scope-musicstores unity-webapps-service 3. Launch dconf-editor, navigate to: com -> canonical -> unity -> webapps, and then remove everything under allowed-domains, dontask-domains and preauthorized-domains References: http://askubuntu.com/questions/192269/how-can-i-remove-amazon-search-results-from-the-dash http://askubuntu.com/questions/192269/how-can-i-remove-amazo... http://askubuntu.com/questions/214755/how-to-remove-unity-web-apps http://askubuntu.com/questions/214755/how-to-remove-unity-we... http://xchamitha.blogspot.com/2012/11/de-amazonising-ubuntu-removing-webapps.html http://xchamitha.blogspot.com/2012/11/de-amazonising-ubuntu-...
- devcpp 14y ago
  Can we keep a sort of page where we put all the commands to remove the bullshit from Ubuntu? I think it's starting to grow and stink more and more.
pasbesoin 14y ago
Stuff like this should be opt-in. And, if you want it to succeed, it should be good enough that people want to opt-in. People search on Google -- they opt-in to Google Search -- because the results satisfy them (more than the competition). If Canonical's partners want people to opt-in to their collaborative offerings, they should make them offer significant value. And Canonical, for its part, if they want to successfully build out this revenue stream, should ensure that they partner with partners who demonstrably do so. I already use affiliate links when I think that the affiliate has given me something of value [1], in discovery or qualified opinion or some other combination of factors. I think Canonical provides me and the broader community things of significant value. Offer a monetization scheme that is 1) opt in, and 2) Respects my concerns, e.g. privacy, and I would be consciously, favorably inclined to use it. -- [1] One example, although Amazon may not particularly like this one: http://us.camelcamelcamel.com/ http://us.camelcamelcamel.com/
- slowpoke 14y ago
  >People search on Google -- they opt-in to Google Search -- because the results satisfy them (more than the competition). Um, no. A lot of people don't even know there is competition to Google. They don't "opt-in" to Google just as much as they don't "opt-in" to using Windows, they've just always used it because it comes with their browser/PC. There's a reason Google pays Mozilla a few million every year to be the default search engine.
  - pasbesoin 14y ago
    Fair point!
Osiris 14y ago
Taking a political angle on it: Won't the free software market decide winners and losers? In other words, there are hundreds of Linux distributions. Choose a different one. If you really like it fork it and rebuild it without support for that feature. Isn't the point of free software that you have the inherent right to do whatever you want to the software to make it do what you want (or not do what you don't)?
- TallGuyShort 14y ago
  You're exactly right - and his article is explicitly encouraging this behaviour. He's not calling for any additional action than for people to create, recommend and use distributions that don't do this, and to make others aware of the potentially harmful effects of Ubuntu's decision.
zellyn 14y ago
I'm slightly surprised to feel this way, but upon reflection, I actually like rms's rebranding of DRM as "digital restrictions management". Calling DRM "Digital rights management" is about as accurate as calling prison "freedom management".
loucal 14y ago
People really use Unity? I might be rolling my eyes a bit at Canonical for this decision, but seriously who would even want to use Unity, they can do what they want with it as far as I'm concerned. We can't have it both ways, for software to be free, Canonical has to be 'allowed' to do this. The community is now very aware of what is going on, and that is good. We can make our own decisions as informed users. Uninformed users have always been at a disadvantage, that will never change. Case closed to me, lets not turn this into an episode of the 'Real Housewives of the GNU' it really shouldn't be as dramatic as this comment war would have you believe.

268 points by cs702 14y ago

What distro would you recommend take the place of Ubuntu, as a recommended for newbs distro? I mean a distro that you would feel comfortable recommending to a stranger that you will not be able to help install or support the distro, as well as the more traditional "lemme help you with that." As a subset of that, what apt based distro would you recommend for that niche? Is plain Debian really something that people feel comfortable recommending to non-supported strangers? Something that you would not be embarrassed about if they looked you up and told you what happened?

willvarfar 14y ago
I recommend Xubuntu. And if they run Windows, install it as WUBI.
- antidoh 14y ago
  I mean something not derived from Ubuntu. Yes, Xubuntu (which I currently run underneath XMonad) does not (yet) have this and future related features, and that's good. But by using an Ubuntu derived distro, you lend credibility to Ubuntu and Canonical. I would prefer to recommend something higher up the derivation line between Debian and Ubuntu.
  - dagw 14y ago
    Linux Mint as a Debian based version of their distro, which comes with all the desktop polish of Mint, but in their own words: "it's not as stable. Things are likely to break more often but fixes can also come quicker. For this reason, LMDE requires a deeper knowledge and experience with Linux, dpkg and APT" Personally I'd take a look at OpenSuSE. It was a pretty good as a Just Works desktop last I looked, but that was a few years ago. Another option is actually PC-BSD. I've never quite gotten along with it, but that is mainly because I want to do all kinds of hacky strangeness, but for a newbie desktop it's solid with great documentation and easy to install software.
    - antidoh 14y ago
      "Linux Mint as a Debian based version of their distro," Didn't realize that, I'd always seen it as Ubuntu-derived. Thanks.
Surio 14y ago
I hope that my reading of your question as a rhetorical one than a literal one is correct? Because your entire comment is one big reason I have been rooting for Canonical from day one. I have been on Linux on and off since slackware 1.0, Redhat 5 (5.0 (Hurricane)/5.1 (Manhattan)) all the way to SuSE 7.0 and not one time was I able to get someone (anyone) to adopt it completely -- despite all my handholding and regular support! Finally resorted to recommending Cygwin as an alternative, and I was still called upon to help with "things" ;-) The first/only time I managed to get a successful switch and retain, was when I recommended Ubuntu.
- antidoh 14y ago
  I meant it literally.
ps258 14y ago
Fedora is good enough although it's a bit more bleeding edge.

EwanToo 14y ago

It's always interesting to read RMS' posts, though I don't agree with a lot of them. In this case, he's got a very valid point (I disabled the adverts on my Ubuntu install), but he uses such over the top language that it makes much of his writing seem like a parody. Ubuntu sending all desktop searches to Amazon by default (even if it's via a proxy) isn't cool, and isn't what most users would expect, but I don't believe screeds like this aren't going to make Canonical think again.

daniel-cussen 14y ago
He's not good at getting his point across, only at having good points.
- jeremiep 14y ago
  I believe its the other way around; the general public is not generally good at understanding the wisdom of his points.
  - rahoulb 14y ago
    As someone who nods my head in agreement to RMS most of the time (although I use proprietary software extensively), when I actually went to see him speak in person, I ended up feeling that he had weakened his case with the way he presented himself. However, this article is well-written and clear.
  - robinh 14y ago
    I don't really think that's how communication works.
- eternalban 14y ago
  Right, and for his good point to 'get across', it needs a connector of some sort. One end point of that connector is in your control. RMS has been /clearly/ right-on regarding these matters from day 1. It is the proverbial 'you' that is refusing to 'listen' ...
- 14y ago

apawloski 14y ago

Ubuntu is also shipping with two new Firefox extensions that ask to "install" certain web apps when you visit them. Havent audited them yet, but my tinfoil suspicion is that these add-ons are leaking private information to Canonical by asking "is this a web app that can be downloaded?" (this is in addition to the current controversy that Unity searches are being leaked). By the way, Amazon is pre-installed. I noticed yesterday that Amazon web pages still open up in the Amazon icon on Unity -- even after I had removed the unity-shopping-lens.

quarterto 14y ago
That's almost certainly implemented by looking for HTML offline cache manifests. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/HTML/Using_the_application_cache https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/HTML/Using_the_appl...

rlpb 14y ago

"When the user searches her own local files for a string using the Ubuntu desktop, Ubuntu sends that string to one of Canonical's servers." That's not how I see it. I'd correct this to "When the user performs a global search for a string using the Ubuntu desktop, Ubuntu sends that string to one of Canonical's servers to perform that search". If a user wants to search his own local files without searching the entire Internet, then perhaps he shouldn't perform a global search. The global search box (the Dash) didn't previously exist before Canonical invented it. I think it's fair that they get to define what it does. If you don't like it, then don't use it, or change its behaviour (it is open source, and you don't need a fork to change what is effectively a setting), or just use Xubuntu, Lubuntu or Kubuntu, all of which are acknowledged as official flavors by Canonical and none of which use Unity or the Dash by default. "People will certainly make a modified version of Ubuntu without this surveillance." And Canonical even support the existence of these modified versions! If you don't like it, just vote with your feet and install Xubuntu instead. Install popularity-contest to show people your vote. Job done. By all means go ahead and complain that the default doesn't do what you want it to do, but please stop with the hyperbole that is actually misleading to readers about what the real situation is.

raverbashing 14y ago
Yes, using find and grep won't trigger a network search (unless of course it's on an NFS server or something like that)
- drcube 14y ago
  They're on it. :) https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-terminal/+bug/1055766 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-terminal/+bu...
  - chipaca 14y ago
    I hate to point out the obvious, but for people who don't click the link: that bug was filed in irony (and by somebody who didn't "get" the home lens as a global search tool, but that perceptual problem is ours more than it is anybody else's). The global search functionality could be queried from the commandline (by writing a tool that talked to the backends over dbus, as the dash does), and I half expect somebody to implement a kludgy version of "grep" that did exactly that, it is in no way something we're going to ever ship.

retube 14y ago

I have to say, having been a huge ubuntu fan for many years, I am seriously dismayed and dissapointed. This destroys my trust in Ubuntu completely. They have ruined a great thing. Was just about to put Ubuntu on a new machine, now I'll have to switch distos. Any recommendations? Edit: I think I have misunderstood. I assumed this referred to a commmand line (s)locate or find or grep or similar. Apparently it refers to a GUI search box on the desktop from which you can do global searches (local plus web). OK not so bad - in fact I have no problem in supporting Ubuntu in this way, providing local searches remain private.

meaty 14y ago
Local searches do not remain private as there is only one search box for global and local stuff. So when you type "goat porn" expecting it to open your folder of goat porn on your workstation, it will send it to amazon and show goat porn that you didn't want to see and tell amazon and canonical that you are interested in goat porn. In a few years time[1], on your lifetime leased IPV6 address you will pop up a legitimate web site and get adverts for goat porn. Look at the display on the fridge: goat porn. Walk into the bedroom to see your Android Clock showing you the latest "Russian Bride Goats". [1] This is apparently not possible at the moment as they "don't store or process your IP address", but we all know how Mark bends over when someone waves cash at him. After all he is a businessman.
- shardling 14y ago
  It's pretty obvious from the post he meant explicitly local searches, like those he gives examples of.
- takluyver 14y ago
  Not fully accurate. The main search box does local+global search unless you turn off the global part in settings. But you can easily do local searches only: Super+F for files, Super+A for applications.
  - meaty 14y ago
    Yes fully accurate. By DEFAULT it does local+global search. Motivation for user to turn this off - low. Education on what it's going to do - none. This is about as unethical as it can get. Even Windows 8 asks religiously before sending anything.

damian2000 14y ago

Do people using Ubuntu not also use web browsers? If so, then they are also being spied on by others such as google, amazon, facebook, twitter - every time they use one of their sites. I just find it overly dramatic to be focusing on this one point of Ubuntu's search being harvested for keywords when this sort of thing is commonplace on the web. At least with Ubuntu you have the option to turn it off.

justinf 14y ago
It's a question of context and expectations. I expect people to look at me funny when I walk around in boxer shorts in public, but not at home. Were someone to stand at my window while I'm on my couch and complain about my choice in clothing, I'd have a right to complain. Your angst over this new system depends largely on whether you consider behavior outside of your browser to take place in a public or private space.
- Ntrails 14y ago
  That depends on how you view the global search function - which is more like being in your back garden and looking at the view. In that location people can and have successfully argued you should put some clothes on.
  - justinf 14y ago
    Have you been talking to my neighbors? I completely agree, but not everyone will, and that perception is key to the discussion.
drcube 14y ago
It is clear when you're on a browser that your search terms and text inputs go to a server somewhere. And RMS has plenty of warnings about such things as Google Instant, Facebook "likes" and other sneaky ways websites spy on you. But at least up until now you could stay away from that stuff by just not opening a browser, and you knew to be careful when you did. Now there is no line, just "be careful what you type on a computer, period. You don't know who's watching". And that's a lot worse. What if your private journal on your hard drive is mined for targeted advertising? No, keep the web and my desktop separate, that's the point.

justinf 14y ago

I'd guess that the only way to really dislodge the Amazon widget would be to make sure it remains unprofitable. If it remains a major talking point and doesn't pull in enough money to compensate for its negative effect on community evangelism, it won't last long. I have mixed feelings about the new system. On the one hand, I respect a lot of what Canonical is doing with linux regarding mainstreaming, streamlining, and even Unity. I also recognize that they are a company and need to make money, and think Amazon integration is preferable to dozens of preinstalled, hard-to-remove junkware applications. On the other hand, I really don't like the intrusive-by-default nature of the integration, and the fact that I'll have to go tell all the folks I've installed Ubuntu for that they need to essentially disable spyware the next time they do a distribution upgrade. On the third hand (what, you don't have one?) I'm not sure what other profitable solutions Canonical might implement in a community that values privacy and freedom.

curiousdannii 14y ago
Amazon postage is prohibitively expensive for those outside the US (except perhaps for those who live in another country where Amazon is based?) The only time I'd ever use Amazon is if I'm after an old rare book which is out of print and Amazon is the only place I can find a second hand copy. And in those times I'd actually be deliberately searching for it, checking many sites in my browser, not casually using Unity!
- takluyver 14y ago
  According to Wikipedia, Amazon has national sites covering North America, most of Europe, Brazil, Japan & China. That's a pretty substantial slice of the world's population.
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shabble 14y ago

Whilst his point is clearly that Ubuntu should be punished (by users switching to alternative distros), it would have been nice to provide or link to some detail about how to disable this behaviour, for those who can't or won't reinstall. Also, 'virtual book burning', really? These snide little terms detract from his core (and important) message, and come across as just petty. I think there's probably an Internet Law that you can safely ignore anything by people who use a $ symbol in the word 'Microsoft'.

antidoh 14y ago
Book burning: Amazon turned off access to people's Kindle copies of 1984, that they had purchased from Amazon. When I buy a book at the store it stays bought, and the store is not going to break in to my apartment and take that book back. Giving me my money back would not make up for it in the slightest. If there's a dispute with the publisher or copyright inheritors, that's Amazon's problem post-sale. If they can do this in a quasi-legitimate situation ("We're going to get sued! Fuck the customers!"), then they could do it at the behest of a government or investor, or maniacal CEO. When I buy a DRM-free book from O'Reilly or Packt, it stays bought. Yes, book burning may be an inflammatory phrase, but I think it's apt.

drcube 14y ago

I came back to Ubuntu when I got a System 76 laptop earlier this year with it preinstalled. I was actually impressed. It was pretty good, with some tiling features I liked and lots of keyboard shortcuts. But the prospects of 12.10 spyware made me dump it for Slackware 14, which came out around the same time. And I never looked back, because man, Slackware is great. Install that instead.

16s 14y ago

I've used Debian GNU/Linux as my primary desktop OS and as a server OS since 1995. Many ditros (such as Ubuntu) are derived from it. People who have grown accustomed to deb packages and synaptic, etc may like to try it.

nicholassmith 14y ago

Ubuntu install a custom application that does something involving sending data out -> We're doomed! They're spying and tracking you! Grab the pitchforks! Of course, that's RMS' viewpoint and he's entitled to it, and it often provokes some very interesting discussions around it, but he's terrible at being anything other than over the top. For what it's worth I don't think what Ubuntu did was that a bad a thing, it's a nice revenue stream for those that use it and that's a good thing for the future of the project, but I can also understand the view point of people who are uncomfortable with search results peppered with ad's.

keithpeter 14y ago
"...it's a nice revenue stream for those that use it..." I'm not entirely convinced that this is going to make a lot of money for Canonical. It will be interesting to see figures in a couple of releases if Canonical (which is a private company) decide to tell us. What do we think the value to Amazon is of my random desktop searches for files & stuff on my desktop? The 'slow typing' problem is real: search is dynamic and can, as a result of network latency and fat fingering show results of unfortunately shortened search terms. There is no content filtering on the results. That is actually why I switched it off.
- nicholassmith 14y ago
  I'd imagine they'll get some money out of it, even if it's not a huge amount, there's plenty of people who like it and think it's useful. The value to Amazon isn't what you're searching, but that you might go "Hey, that's the album I was thinking of buy", and then you're in their content ecosystem. I don't use Unity as a daily driver but I switched it off due to the network latency and general slowness inside a VM. Aside from that I thought it was pretty decent, it'd be nice if there was more content sources but you can't win them all.
- chipaca 14y ago
  Could you re-enable it for a little bit and test that slow-typing thing? We did a bit of work to make it a little bit better at that.

itry 14y ago

I find this spyware by default as wrong as Stallman. I dont want my machine to send anything anywhere without me explicitly telling it to do so. What I find even more frightening is Mark Shuttelworths view of this: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1182 http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1182 "Don’t trust us? Erm, we have root." Looks like he gets the issues of privacy and trust completely wrong. Imagine catching your cleaning lady reading your diary. And she says, without a sign of guilt, "Don't trust me? Erm, I got keys to your apartment.". Time for a new cleaning lady. Time for a new distro. I happily switched to Mint.

antidoh 14y ago
"Time for a new distro. I happily switched to Mint." Does my irony meter need calibration?

jasonkostempski 14y ago

Are there other distros with Wubi (or something like it) and automatic updates? If it weren't for Wubi I don't think I would have ever fully switched to Linux. VMs are OK for a bit and repartitioning is right out if all you want to do is try something out for a while. I don't use Ubuntu anymore but Wubi really was the gateway drug for me. I personally don't care about automatic updates but I think it's a big one for some others. When I switched away from Ubuntu I thought I'd be missing out on the community behind it but it's really the Linux community in general that's awesome, a lot of the stuff just ends up on Ubuntu forums and much of the advice is universal. I think people need to know that.

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icebraining 14y ago
Wubi-like: http://goodbye-microsoft.com/ http://goodbye-microsoft.com/
willvarfar 14y ago
Xubuntu is a WUBI option now. Works a charm.

meaty 14y ago

I'm a little surprised at how accepting people are here relating to the Amazon feature in Ubuntu. I would assume that there are a lot of critical thinkers here as comp sci people tend to have that mentality. Possibly not! The usual excuses are "we can turn it off etc" or just shrug it off and carry on. Have you thought long term? If you don't make a stand with this feature, one will eventually be added which can't be turned off or is far more invasive.

ramayac 14y ago
> The usual excuses are "we can turn it off etc" or just shrug it off and carry on. Yes, that's what everybody says sadly, it's a very weak stance in a (very) long term problem.
antidoh 14y ago
Indeed. If spyware is a continuum from onerous to innocuous, then at the moment Canonical's string sending/sharing is somewhere near the innocuous end of the line. But it's still within the continuum. By excusing it as innocuous and (for now) flippable, we shorten the line. And then shorten the line again for the next thing that finds itself happily closer to the innocuous end of the line. And again.

decasteve 14y ago

I am running 12.10 and disabled this right away in the privacy settings. Why not have it opt in instead of the ninja mode opt out? Explicitly prompt the user to enable this when first using Dash but disable by default.

bitcartel 14y ago
Did you also remove the Unity - Amazon webapp integration?

belorn 14y ago

A lot of people are pointing out that if you do not like something, don't use it. It's simple enough, and have a "sounds right" tone to it. As an implied statement with this, anyone complaining should just shut up then. This is a rather crazy line of thought once one actually starts to think about it. If I see a poisonous (say rotten) food being sold, I find it almost my duty to inform people. Somehow it's now being argued, that I should stay quiet and vote with my feet/wallet instead? If a company does something clearly distasteful and harmful to others, staying quiet and voting with your feet is not a good idea. This should be obvious to everyone. At best, you are ignoring the problem, and at worst, you are implicitly allowing the situation to continue. If something is harming others, staying quiet or saying that "users should know better and not act like they do" is not the way to go. If the search box was labeled "ask amazon about this", then this would have been a no-brainer and no one would object to this. Its the same as labeling some food-like objects as non-edible. Canonical search however does not do this, and tricks users to send data that they believe is private. Imagine a worker at a company, using this function to search for internal document including a string with company secrets. Whooops, now that data is at Amazon. Imagine a police worker, seaching for email with witness details. whooops, now that data is also sent to Amazon. Imagine a normal person searching for emails that includes their credit card. Whoops, gone gone. And let's not discuss things that private people honestly, truly, do not wish other people know, or for that matter, journalists. This is not fair to the users, and RMS points this out. It might even be illegal in some if not all european countries. At the least it's something to write about and inform users about the risk involved.

louhike 14y ago
Even if I get your point, it sounds like you're trying to imply that the results of the search (documents, email, etc.) are sent, not the search alone, which is completely false.
- belorn 14y ago
  >"function to search for internal document including a string with company secrets" Ie, that string is now gone. Some people select rather large parts of a document to find other documents with the exact same data in them. If one were to ask Google, I think they would say that they get everyday multiple page documents sent in a single search request.

jdangu 14y ago

Was pleased to see a reference to Fravia in RMS's article. For the sake of comparison, here's a 1998 essay about what Microsoft was specifically doing in Win95: http://71.6.196.237/fravia/mmstory.htm http://71.6.196.237/fravia/mmstory.htm

idm 14y ago
Good old Fravia. Like Stallman, Fravia seems to have been "hard to swallow" by the community at large. However, just like Stallman, when you dug into Fravia's stuff it turned out to be pretty great.

harel 14y ago

You can always turn it off. You can always use Gnome Shell over Unity (should anyway as its nicer). You can always buy another operating system. You know, vote with your wallet. Ah, wait... There has to be a price for free. In RMS world everybody is a hacker, everything is free (as in love) and open and nobody needs to eat, kids grow up not costing a penny. But in my world, I understand that sometimes I'm getting something for free that is actually superior to the paid stuff, and sometimes those giving it to me need to feed a kid or two, or buy their Mrs that new outfit on the high street. And since they don't charge me outright they try different things, one of which is trying to sell affiliate links to Amazon. They don't even force me to do it because I can turn it off. But they do it by default hoping that I won't. Its a revenue channel, albeit probably a small one at the end of the day. And you know what, had I used Unity I'd probably keep it on and do my Amazon shopping via the OS to give something back. I also understand RMS-style extreme is vital to balance out the Corporate extreme of the software world. But come on man, choose your battles better and you'll have my support. This one is a waste of time.

Surio 14y ago
>>> I'm getting something for free that is actually superior to the paid stuff, and sometimes those giving it to me need to feed a kid or two, or buy their Mrs that new outfit on the high street. Classy. You get my vote for that and subsequently pointing out that "They don't even force me to do it because I can turn it off". This. I also liked the way you ended it. We definitely need RMS, but he definitely needs to choose his battles wisely.
- dradtke 14y ago
  But why not present it as an option to the user on first launch, or first search? Considering how relatively few people actually want shopping suggestions on their desktop, I expect the majority of users who don't turn it off to be people who simply can't be bothered to find the setting and change it. Exploiting user apathy is not my idea of software that respects its users, which is what the FSF is all about.
  - 14y ago

iamtherockstar 14y ago

My sister home schools two kids, cooks three squares a day, and doesn't care if someone knows she googled for "bread pudding recipe." They have an old, aging computer, and when I gave an Ubuntu CD to her husband, they were so incredibly grateful. I see this feature being excellent for her, because she has a bunch of documents on her computer that contain her recipes, and then maybe she'll see a cookbook she might want to buy. Maybe she'll be looking for the days curriculum, and see a book that might help her youngest figure out her multiplication tables. These are all relatively impractical use cases for the nerds of Hacker News. Ubuntu will still serve their needs, but Canonical wants to "cross the chasm" and have ordinary muggles using Ubuntu. Those people will find all of these features "valuable" and don't actually want to turn them off.

Surio 14y ago
+1. I liked the framing of this entire thing. Wow. Thank you for writing this. I wish more people upvote this so it can move somewhere close to the top to provide a much needed perspective on things.
bad_user 14y ago
This is such bullshit. There is a big difference between googling and searching your own files, while the anecdote you give probably accounts for only 1% of that computer's usage or even less. Reading this opinion I even pictured a stock-photo with family members gathered around a laptop, stupidly laughing at a photo of "bread pudding". Your sister could be searching within her own files for strings like "last year debt", "ass ventura crack detective", "bondage", "dvdrip" and "office keygen". I'm sure your sister doesn't do that, but other people do. And searches can express and hint to your deepest desires/taboos and things that might lead one to think of illegal activities. My non-technical wife asked me one day, during a funny conversation about sex gadgets, if people at Google can see what she's typing and I taught her how to use incognito mode. At some point I also made her aware that Facebook sends and publishes her lat/lon coordinates when typing a message from her phone. She understood the dangers of online activity and took steps to protect herself, without me even trying too hard to explain, but this required some amount of education which is out of reach for most normal people who either don't have a technical friend that understands such issues, or that technical friend thinks it isn't a problem, such as yourself.

takluyver 14y ago

Relevant: Canonical have just said there will be more retailers integrated in 13.04 (which was always expected). And: "We are also testing a few additional user controls like filters for local and global searching – more to come on this front as we learn from those sessions." http://blog.canonical.com/2012/12/07/searching-in-the-dash-in-ubuntu-13-04/ http://blog.canonical.com/2012/12/07/searching-in-the-dash-i...

rlpb 14y ago
"...we have made it dead easy to switch the online search tools off with a simple toggle in settings."
- takluyver 14y ago
  That bit's not new, though - the toggle is already in place, and I have used it.

jfreak53 14y ago

I agree, the Linux community as a whole has never stood for these malfeasons ever!! I say we stand up, I use Ubuntu on ALL my PC's home and work, so we're talking 15 to 20 PC's that I might have to move over to another Distro here soon. This is not the first time Ubuntu has tried these "Windowz" practices on it's users, but this needs to be the last! The first was taking away our choice in the first release of Unity, it was sooooo much a pain in the but to get back to default Gnome that most people didn't try. Mint allowed it's user's to do so from the get go, so that means it was possible but Ubuntu made the choice for us instead of allowing configuration choices, that's what Linux is all about, choices! Ubuntu has been trying to take our choices away for a long, long time. We as a Linux community first and foremost need to stand up and let the Linux community as a whole know we will not stand for this. Ubuntu is the first doing this, but if we let them get away with it then companies like Amazon might go to other Distro's and try the same thing. If a small distro see's an easy way to make money and people don't care, or don't show they care, they might do it. With no place to run Linux becomes "Windowz"! We need to let them know we are not standing for this before it gets out of hand and happens all over the place. I personally haven't used Unity since day one on any of my 20 PC's, I hate it. So I have never been in the position to be used by Canonical to pad their pockets in this search thing. I don't ever even suggest people to use Unity since it's such a pain in the butt! But other people will be affected by this more than likely. My simple solution is don't use Unity ha ha but that's not a solution, that's a band aid. If we let Canonical get away with it without screaming they will just continue as long as Amazon funnels cash into their caufers! If they loose user base then we win and Linux as a whole wins since they are the big distro on the block.

rlpb 14y ago
> Ubuntu has been trying to take our choices away for a long, long time. How has it taken any of your choices away? All of Debian is available in Ubuntu, and Debian is all about choice. You can manipulate your systems as you please. You can even roll your own installation CD exactly how you want it. Canonical even supports Xubuntu, Kubuntu, Lubuntu etc., all of which have taken a different set of choices and all of which are released at the same time as Ubuntu itself. How is any of this about taking choices away?

btilly 14y ago

Canonical is not the first to do this. And nobody minded. In Chrome, every time you start to type a URL, it tries to autocomplete. One source of autocompletions is that it contacts Google, which sends back suggestions. Therefore by default Google knows every search you do in Chrome, even if you didn't want to go to Google. (They turn this off for incognito mode.) I don't know how long this has been the case for Chrome, but I use this feature a lot more than I'd use Canonical's search.

TallGuyShort 14y ago
I recall complaining vocally about that and seeing others do so. It's still the only reason I don't use Chrome.
- k3n 14y ago
  Well, you _can_ disable it, so no need to cut off your nose to spite your face. Unless you're boycotting Chrome on the principle of this feature.
  - TallGuyShort 14y ago
    I'm kind of boycotting on pricinple. I recognize that Google has an on-going interest in that kind of practice, and I don't want to deal with it in the future. If a key benefit of open-source is more-eyes-on-the-code, there's another browser that has more-eyes-with-the-same-priorities-as-me on the code.
yungchin 14y ago
Yes, but it's somewhat less of a privacy violation, because you usually expect to send out the URL you type over the internet. That's different from trying a local search on your machine and finding it ended up on the internet.
- drcube 14y ago
  No, you only expect it to send the URL when you hit "enter". For instant results, however, it must send each character typed to Google. Also, when I type a non-google URL into my address bar, I don't expect Google to be notified. As it is, they can track all your internet travels from Chrome, and I don't like it. Hence why I use Firefox and Duck Duck Go.

mistercow 14y ago

It's a pretty big stretch to call this "spyware". It's an ill-advised feature, sure, but "spying" indicates secrecy and subterfuge. If I came up behind you while you were typing, and started reading aloud your words as you typed them, would you call me a "spy"? I think real spies would be offended.

kokey 14y ago

I find it ironic reading this article on a site that collects my visitor data using piwik stats without explicitly asking me first.

acabal 14y ago

I'm pretty surprised that Shuttleworth didn't see this kind of reaction coming, considering his long-time involvement in free software. Or maybe he did see it coming, and just doesn't care? In either case, you're in a bad position when you're distributing a Linux distro that RMS starts to call out. Shuttleworth would do well to observe what happened to GNOME: they ignored their core user base, and they've been in such hot water for it that now they're backpedaling (GNOME Legacy). If Linux can't even please its core user base--aka the evangelists--it doesn't stand a chance in the wild.

fixermark 14y ago
Seeing this reaction coming and not caring is a reasonable strategy. In free software, RMS holds a lot of philosophical sway, but Ubuntu operates in the larger open-source ecosystem. Let's say that free software adherents decide that Ubuntu is bad for their interests. How will they react? The GPL prevents them from forbidding Ubuntu from bundling their work as long as Ubuntu's use of the work is GPL-compliant. This leaves them with few options. They can refuse to support Ubuntu, which is fine; other software developers can patch the bugs and fork projects that the original maintainers refuse to update. They can call out why Ubuntu is bad for a free software ecosystem; this is a good thing to do, but has little impact on those who are familiar with the four freedoms but don't buy into their absolute necessity. As a tool to exercise free use of software, GPL is very strong. But as a coercive tool, GPL is pretty weak (by design). Shuttleworth recognizing these strengths and weaknesses and adapting the company's motion to account for it is shrewd business. Accepting the notion "I don't approve of your use of my software, but I respect your right to use, study, redistribute, and modify free software" is an implicit aspect of the free software philosophy.

stinos 14y ago

>> when he searched for a string in the files of his Windows system, it sent a packet to some server anyone has a source for this? Was this built into windows? (It's not in mine, or it's not active)

bcoates 14y ago
Windows XP search assistant* has a database of file types it uses for filtering and to determine which files are worth searching into. It also has a small misfeature where it updates this database every time you search. It doesn't send anything to Microsoft about what you're searching for, it's just an overly persistent auto-update mechanism. The usual suspects freaked out about this, of course. * The little dog that makes intermittent scratching noises when you accidentally leave explorer open, slowly driving you mad
- stinos 14y ago
  ah the dog. One of the first things to get rid of in XP :]

cparrino 14y ago

For context on what the Ubuntu Dash actually does and how it's evolving - please see http://blog.canonical.com/2012/12/07/searching-in-the-dash-in-ubuntu-13-04/ http://blog.canonical.com/2012/12/07/searching-in-the-dash-i...

DanBC 14y ago

There are two problems with the Ubuntu search box. 1) Not being very clear to your users that the search box is now global and will send information out of the local machine 2) Amazon search sucks. I haven't used recent versions of Ubuntu, but linking a good distro with the disaster that is Amazon search is not something appealing to me. I don't think it's going to improve my experience on Ubuntu. I strongly feel it's going to make my search experience really sucky. Note that I am ad-tolerant, and I don't really care about information getting sent off to other servers (so long as I'm told about it before hand) so Canonical have a bit of work to do to persuade me that the new experience is not as awful as Amazon search is on the website. PS: Apologies to any Amazoners here, but come on, you know the search is terrible, right?

valugi 14y ago

what to do? switch the flavor. Pack your stuff and switch to Debian for easy transition

Surio 14y ago

snip Even in arguments around copyright law (like this recently concluded debate... http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4882364 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4882364) the general consensus seems to flow around comments such as "... was not trying to reignite the Great Internet Copyright Argument for the millionth time, and instead was making a point about what was politically actionable today" On similar lines, why not acknowledge the reality of running a viable, commercial venture around FOSS by tapping viable revenue models? A few others have written some very good points that I really enjoyed reading. Here they are (in no particular order of preference): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4887261 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4887261 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4887132 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4887132 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4887365 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4887365 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4887294 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4887294 (I really hope that comment was rhetorical rather than being literal) that makes the point of why the situation is much more nuanced for someone like Canonical. And if Linux adoption has to succeed big time, we need the Canonicals and Mints (with their warts and all) that give the general public a viable alternative. Mandriva Linux was facing bankruptcy a few years ago, if I am not mistaken. EDIT: For the opt-in vs opt-out discussions: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4864783 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4864783 The difference is that - for a chunk of people - this functionality isn't crap. It's actually useful. It's out of the way for people who don't care. It's there for people who do. I've seen folk go "that's so cool" when the amazon stuff came up. This stuff is much closer to the adds folk get in Google search. It's often relevant to what they're doing at the time. (anecdata, sure. happens to match mine ;-) )

olgeni 14y ago

What's with this "distro" stuff... Can't we just boot into Emacs and call it a day?

bitcartel 14y ago

This should help de-Amazon your Ubuntu. 1. Ubuntu Settings --> Privacy -->Include online results [OFF] 2. sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping unity-scope-video-remote unity-scope-musicstores unity-webapps-service 3. Launch dconf-editor, navigate to: com -> canonical -> unity -> webapps, and then remove everything under allowed-domains, dontask-domains and preauthorized-domains References: http://askubuntu.com/questions/192269/how-can-i-remove-amazon-search-results-from-the-dash http://askubuntu.com/questions/192269/how-can-i-remove-amazo... http://askubuntu.com/questions/214755/how-to-remove-unity-web-apps http://askubuntu.com/questions/214755/how-to-remove-unity-we... http://xchamitha.blogspot.com/2012/11/de-amazonising-ubuntu-removing-webapps.html http://xchamitha.blogspot.com/2012/11/de-amazonising-ubuntu-...

devcpp 14y ago
Can we keep a sort of page where we put all the commands to remove the bullshit from Ubuntu? I think it's starting to grow and stink more and more.

pasbesoin 14y ago

Stuff like this should be opt-in. And, if you want it to succeed, it should be good enough that people want to opt-in. People search on Google -- they opt-in to Google Search -- because the results satisfy them (more than the competition). If Canonical's partners want people to opt-in to their collaborative offerings, they should make them offer significant value. And Canonical, for its part, if they want to successfully build out this revenue stream, should ensure that they partner with partners who demonstrably do so. I already use affiliate links when I think that the affiliate has given me something of value [1], in discovery or qualified opinion or some other combination of factors. I think Canonical provides me and the broader community things of significant value. Offer a monetization scheme that is 1) opt in, and 2) Respects my concerns, e.g. privacy, and I would be consciously, favorably inclined to use it. -- [1] One example, although Amazon may not particularly like this one: http://us.camelcamelcamel.com/ http://us.camelcamelcamel.com/

slowpoke 14y ago
>People search on Google -- they opt-in to Google Search -- because the results satisfy them (more than the competition). Um, no. A lot of people don't even know there is competition to Google. They don't "opt-in" to Google just as much as they don't "opt-in" to using Windows, they've just always used it because it comes with their browser/PC. There's a reason Google pays Mozilla a few million every year to be the default search engine.
- pasbesoin 14y ago
  Fair point!

Osiris 14y ago

Taking a political angle on it: Won't the free software market decide winners and losers? In other words, there are hundreds of Linux distributions. Choose a different one. If you really like it fork it and rebuild it without support for that feature. Isn't the point of free software that you have the inherent right to do whatever you want to the software to make it do what you want (or not do what you don't)?

TallGuyShort 14y ago
You're exactly right - and his article is explicitly encouraging this behaviour. He's not calling for any additional action than for people to create, recommend and use distributions that don't do this, and to make others aware of the potentially harmful effects of Ubuntu's decision.

zellyn 14y ago

I'm slightly surprised to feel this way, but upon reflection, I actually like rms's rebranding of DRM as "digital restrictions management". Calling DRM "Digital rights management" is about as accurate as calling prison "freedom management".

loucal 14y ago

People really use Unity? I might be rolling my eyes a bit at Canonical for this decision, but seriously who would even want to use Unity, they can do what they want with it as far as I'm concerned. We can't have it both ways, for software to be free, Canonical has to be 'allowed' to do this. The community is now very aware of what is going on, and that is good. We can make our own decisions as informed users. Uninformed users have always been at a disadvantage, that will never change. Case closed to me, lets not turn this into an episode of the 'Real Housewives of the GNU' it really shouldn't be as dramatic as this comment war would have you believe.