Stallman On Unity Dash: Canonical Will Have To Give Users' Data To Governments 187
Giorgio Maone writes "Ubuntu developer and fellow Mozillian Benjamin Kerensa chatted with various people about the new Amazon Product Results in the Ubuntu 12.10 Unity Dash. Among them, Richard Stallman told him that this feature is bad because:
1. 'If Canonical gets this data, it will be forced to hand it over to various governments.'; 2. Amazon is bad. Concerned people can disable remote data retrieval for any lens and scopes or, more surgically, use sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping."
sad but true (Score:5, Insightful)
if a company collects any data on you it's inevitable the government will try and take it.
Re:sad but true (Score:5, Insightful)
If anyone collects data on you it's inevitable the government will try and take it
Fixed
Torvalds as a FOSS spokesmun (Score:3)
I don't know about RMS, but Torvalds? He's been known to use four-letter words to describe the things he don't like. As far as online reputations go, Torvalds sounds like a nicer person in person, but he tends to use more abrasive language than RMS, who mostly reserves his online rants to describing congressmen as "congress critters", stuff that he posts on his "personal" web site.
Read the stuff though that he's posted on the official FSF sites. They're more well-thought out than anything Torvalds has writt
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I'm not the biggest fan of RMS either, but I'm always prepared to listen to what he has to say. Criticize him for his opinion and words, not his appearance or occasional odd behaviour.
Re:sad but true (Score:5, Insightful)
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Defending "Laissez-faire" capitalism and strong individual rights, which you seem to think more coherent is what is called "Libertarianism".
The other extreme position of defending a strong governmental intervention in the economy AND strong restriction of individual freedom is authoritarianism, and it is usually ve
Re:sad but true (Score:5, Insightful)
They dont have to take it. It's available for dirt cheap at LexisNexis. I can buy enough data on you to freak you out. All I need is a name and an address and I can get your social Security number and pretty much everything else.
This is what most nutjobs don't understand. Stop worrying about the government, because corporations are already harvesting you and selling it to the government at a deep discount.
Re:sad but true (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why it's more important to give them false information 25% of the time than it is to worry about who or what is tracking you.
Poison the well.
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Do you really think they haven't figured out that a certain percentage of the db entries will be inaccurate? Inter-database correlations are powerful - e.g. there is a strong chance that this person nicknamed "Adolf Hitler" with a known birthday and an invalid address (and a 95% certain GeoIP) who wrote an online review of "Predator" is the same person as someone with the same birthday and ordered "Predator 2" a week later, and, oh look, the shipping address is close to the GeoIP area. That the errors are
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re: Who the hell gives out their real data? (Score:2)
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All that info self corrects. They have your Birth certificate, your DMV records and your tax records at Lexis Nexis as well as your ENTIRE CREDIT HISTORY. I can get a report that tells me what resturants you eat at and when.
Your script does nothing at all when you are forced to submit real information like a shipping address.
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Disregarding that they may or may not confine their interest to Americans, but you'll have tremendous difficulty finding out which restaurants I eat in. I pay with cash, so you'd need to get into either mobile phone tower records (IF I'd taken my mobile with me that night, AND left it switched on.) or CCTV. And that's a lot harder than credit card records.
Actually ... it's over a week sin
Re:sad but true (Score:4, Funny)
"Stop worrying about the government, because corporations are already harvesting you and selling it to the government at a deep discount."
But, but I TRUST the Koch Brothers when they say Government Is Bad.
The Invisible Hand Of The Market will protect me.
Re:sad but true (Score:4, Interesting)
Stop worrying about the government, because corporations are already harvesting
Bad governments have killed hundreds of millions in the last 100 years alone ... I think I'd prefer to base what I worry most about on actual evidence, thanks.
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yes they do. Because amazon sells it to them.
I suggest you actually READ your EULAS.
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Ask someone that has been raided for Copyright infringement if the movie industry cant raid your house.
Don't use Ubuntu (Score:3, Insightful)
Even if you can uninstall this feature, by merely using Ubuntu you're implicitly supporting them, and their intentions obviously aren't very nice if they're doing it. Use a different distro, there are also many other issues with Ubuntu to keep using it anyway.
Re:Don't use Ubuntu (Score:5, Insightful)
I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said, "Stop! Don't do it!" "Why shouldn't I?" he said. I said, "Well, there's so much to live for!" He said, "Like what?" I said, "Well, are you religious or atheist?" He said, "Religious." I said, "Me too! Are your Christian or Buddhist?" He said, "Christian." I said, "Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant?" He said, "Protestant." I said, Me too! Are your Episcopalian or Baptist? He said, "Baptist!" I said, "Wow! Me too! Are your Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord? He said, Baptist Church of God!" I said, "Me too! Are your Original Baptist Church of God or are you Reformed Baptist Church of God?" He said, "Reformed Baptist Church of God!" I said, "Me too! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915?" He said, "Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915!" I said, "Die, heretic scum!" and pushed him off.
Welcome to the world of Linux distributions. Who can figure out the mystery of the sub 2 percent combined desktop market share?
Obligatory xkcd (Score:4, Funny)
http://xkcd.com/1095/ [xkcd.com]
Mod parent +1 funny.
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Attribution: Emo Philips
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBKIyCbppfs
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We are all much stupider for having read this post. Yeah, ha ha, but the issue here isn't partisanship, it's that Ubuntu spies on you.
Re:Don't use Ubuntu (Score:5, Insightful)
"their intentions obviously aren't very nice if they're doing it"
Based on what we know of them so far, I'd say that they are just trying to figure out a way to make some money, not be evil.
Personally, I hope they are successful in making money, and if there users feel that this latest initiative is the wrong approach then I hope they will respond in a constructive manner and not abandon Ubuntu.
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Sanest thing I've heard all week. Thank you.
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They might try some more conventional approaches before being total scumbags.
You mean, for example, selling support services, offering affordable cloud services, and creating an online store for linux-compatible software vendors?
Yeah... they should really try that stuff...
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offering affordable cloud services
Yes, a for-pay cloud storage service for all my files, email addresses and contacts with no encryption on it. And when I asked actual Ubuntu employees "what's with the no host-end encryption? Can you please offer me a service that doesn't mean I have to trust you not to read my personal contact data?" they literally argued with me that no, I'm wrong, I don't need any protection, because "Ubuntu is a company of nice guys and they'd never abuse that priviledge".
Yeah, um, no. If that's the corporate direction
Re:Don't use Ubuntu (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the "ask for it" approach they're trying is a much less evil approach, and would probably pay off more in the long run, both in dollars and good will.
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Ubuntu doesn't need users, it needs money. It could exist in a vacuum if the bills are paid.
This being Slashdot, why give a fuck about "training wheels" distros?
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Because we install it on relatives computers and they need training wheels. Because it has all of the proprietary drivers built in so we don't have to hunt them down.
Re:Don't use Ubuntu (Score:5, Interesting)
Again some MBA was let loose with his spreadsheet. He crunched some numbers and everybody when woooooo. There are all kinds of bad things that look good when put on a spreadsheet. A really nice bold bottom line doesn't make them less bad; it just makes making a bad decision seem better.
Re:Don't use Ubuntu (Score:5, Informative)
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They are trying to make money supplying linux to private users.
Pretty much always the case with online services (Score:4, Insightful)
This shouldn't be surprising. If someone is in a position to collect data, and they do so, governments can get that data. Pretty much everyone collects data when you interact with their services. To paraphrase Eric Schmidt, If you don't want anyone to know what you're doing online, don't do things online.
Re:Pretty much always the case with online service (Score:5, Insightful)
Some how I think you've missed the point.
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No, not really... If you use ANY mainstream ISP they are already logging your requests for marketing purposes... Just not specifically about "you". That was the deal with DNS being hijacked... It's not like they don't still do it. The guy that owns your "wire" has 100% of the info you send.
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Would you care to enlighten me?
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I.e. if you search for something on your local computer, using your local machine to do the search, you would normally expect that search to remain local, but you now have to take extra steps to ensure that an offline search remains offline.
The point I suggested you missed is that line betwee
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The truth is that everybody likes privacy, but shits like Schmidt will say anything to convince people to give up their rights so that they can be exploited. Don't drink the cool-aid.
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If I want you to know what I'm doing Ill tell you otherwise mind your own fucking business.
Is that what you tell the clerk at the grocery store? You just expect everyone you meet to become an amnesiac after you're done talking to them?
Don't mistake my post as an argument in favor of tracking everything you do. I'm just pointing out that this is the world we live in: things get logged. Governments can compel people to produce logs. Ergo, online activities are discoverable by governments and if you don't want that, you must avoid using online services.
sudo apt-get install shred (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:sudo apt-get install shred (Score:5, Informative)
Then install debian.
Stallman's organization maintains a list of approved distributions [gnu.org].
Debian is not there, so he won't recommend it.
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I believe the FSF uses Debian as well. Debian is 'libre' by default even the kernel nowadays. Stallman won't recommend it because it has non-free repos. But they're disabled by default. Debian is perfectly fine if you don't enable those repositories.
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Afaik it also adds stuff that Debian considers non-free (GFDL docs with invariant sections).
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Here's what the FSF has to say about Debian:
Debian's Social Contract states the goal of making Debian entirely free software, and Debian conscientiously keeps nonfree software out of the official Debian system. However, Debian also provides a repository of nonfree software. According to the project, this software is “not part of the Debian system,” but the repository is hosted on many of the project's main servers, and people can readily learn about these nonfree packages by browsing Debian's online package database.
So with Debian, the people can learn that there is non-free software! Oh the horrors!
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Which is exactly what rubs me the wrong way with RMS, he doesn't want coexistence or choice. In his ideal world there is nothing but free software and you will use it because using anything else is "unethical". I much prefer the people who strive for OSS software to win on its own merits - functionality, quality, cost etc. because it's the superior solution and not just by ideology. One sounds more like a religion "Thou shalt not have any other software but Free" and the other more like a self-help communit
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Then install debian.
Stallman's organization maintains a list of approved distributions [gnu.org].
Debian is not there, so he won't recommend it.
Because Debian lists repositories where you can install non-free stuff, he rejects it. I guess Stallman uses windows to watch YouTube stuf. Ditto for Fedora, (ATI and Nvidia and Flash are non open and can be installed, and therefore the distribution is rejected). Sigh, I don't want to live in a sealed box
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That man is partially responsible for the progress that has been made in the spread of open software. I think his opinion has more value than a lot of others, especially these days when things in the area of personal computing are growing more closed very quickly.
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especially these days when things in the area of personal computing are growing more closed very quickly.
Hmm... You must be young. The trend is actually quite drastically in the other direction.
As for Stallman's contributions, yes, he's done some good things. Doesn't change the fact that every time he opens his mouth he just comes across as being either a lunatic, or really, really stoned.
I'm sorry, but getting paid for your work, in a world where money is necessary to survive, is NOT morally wrong.
Re:sudo apt-get install shred (Score:4, Insightful)
Server computing, development frameworks, etc, are getting more open. Personal computing is getting more closed. iOS, and now the Windows 8 store for me are a very big push against all the progress that has been made. I'm quite old ... I remember the IBM days and I remember AOL ... both very restricted. I have a feeling most people don't remember those and are taking the freedom they have (or had) for granted.
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I'm old, too. I remember the days when "going online" meant dialing up a local BBS. Any software you could find that was free was almost universally crappy. Then there was limited functionality shareware, some good, some crappy. Beyond that you went to the store and forked over big bucks for commercial products.
Today I can choose from a choice of multiple free operating systems, and even on Windows I can meet all my needs without having to spend a dime on additional software.
The one thing that hasn't ch
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I'm no hardline stallmanite, but what does this have to do with free software? Nothing in the definition of free software precludes you from making money through it. At most, it forbids certain ways of making money with it.
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NBA [nba.com], CBS [cbscares.com], Care Bears [care-bears.com], etc. do! [grin]
Mission Creep (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if we accept Stallman's rather innacurate description of ALEC's activities, neither campaign finance, gun rights, or minimum wage laws have anything to do with the free software movement. Stallman's belief to the contrary, Linux is not his personal political hobby horse.
Re:Mission Creep (Score:5, Insightful)
So Stallman isn't entitled to have an opinion on these subjects? Or is he just not allowed to voice it, whether asked or not? This is his personal website you're talking about.
Tell me, what qualifies you to say that campaign finance, gun rights, and minimum wage laws are none of Stallman's business?
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Or is he just not allowed to voice it
Oh, he's allowed. It's just that his causes would be better served by not having his nutjob name attached to them.
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Where's the entertainment value in that?
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If you want to politicize Linux and Open Source Software, go right ahead. But there are many downsides to it that shouldn't be involved with software or open source. If we get a right wing government anywhere in the world, should they automatically ignore the concerns of OSS because it is seen as a front group for left wing nutters?
As for qualifications, I would suggest the same thing qualifies him to speak out against stallman entangling political views with OSS as does qualify you to speak out against him
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If you want to politicize Linux and Open Source Software, go right ahead.
Stallman doesn't care as much about Open Source as he does about Free Software. The differences can sometimes seem small, but I think the latter is inherently political, as is "hacker culture" in general.
If we get a right wing government anywhere in the world, should they automatically ignore the concerns of OSS because it is seen as a front group for left wing nutters?
As a "left wing nutter", I wouldn't have too much hope of a right wing government doing much of anything that benefits common (working class) people. I think trying to get them to pass "OSS-friendly" laws would be a futile endeavour.
As for qualifications, I would suggest the same thing qualifies him to speak out against stallman entangling political views with OSS as does qualify you to speak out against him for doing it. Stallman is not on some pedestal that make him irreproachable or uniquely off limits to criticism for his comments or stances.
Of course. But he seemed to suggest that since political topics have (in hi
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The comments in question have little to do with free software though. Do you think it is appropriate to conflate free software with Gun rights or abortion?
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So tell me, if Europe decided that software patents were a good thing and some right wing governments wanted to make it law, would the opinion of software enthusiasts and advocates have more impact in this decision or would the opinion of left wing organizations crying about software freedom?
The European Patent Office has already decided that on its own, by granting thousands of software patents, openly disregarding the law (which says software is unpatentable). If you believe that "neutral" software freedom advocates have any real power to influence governments to act against the interests of capital, you're naive.
If governments were deciding to change their software, would FOSS be considered when it is seen as a political opposition group? As uncomfortable as it may be for you, the seemingly neutral advocates and enthusiasts would carry more weight in these decisions then groups of political opposition who are also interested in software.
On this I agree with you. If you only care about the number of Linux installs or some similar metric, appearing neutral will help. But I doubt that's all Stallman is after.
I took the op's statement to mean more that Stallman should not be conflating FOSS with outside political ideas like Gun control and so on. That has no place in in FOSS in my opinion. But if the "leaders" want to entangle FOSS with politics like that, they better be ready to accept the consequences of being relegated to just another political mouth piece when something important comes up.
What do yo
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So because one action operated outside of the law, we should give up on trying to influence the law. OK, I get where you are coming from now and understand why you are left wing.
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So because one action operated outside of the law, we should give up on trying to influence the law. OK, I get where you are coming from now and understand why you are left wing.
I didn't say we should give up. Just that even "neutral" advocates will be ignored as long as their goals don't line up with significant corporate interests. Therefore I don't think appearing neutral should be paramount, I think other ways of trying to influence laws are more effective.
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If you want to politicize Linux and Open Source Software, go right ahead.
If you want to de-politicize Free Software and call it "Open Source", go right ahead. And if you then want to lambast the inventor of Free Software for not following you down the apolitical route... go right ahead, I guess. But don't expect to be taken very seriously.
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He's concerned about individual rights and freedoms. He sees an association between a Linux vendor and a company as a negative in part because of their ties to a PAC that tends to aggresively favor corporations over people.
On an aside, can you highlight how his description is inaccurate?
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http://www.mcall.com/news/local/mc-allentown-amazon-complaints-20110917,0,7937001,full.story [mcall.com]
read that and then contrast with this from ubuntu.com
Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning 'humanity to others'.
You might think with these radically differences this might be a bad fit.
Maybe it was a few years back, but Ubuntu doesn't seem to even being developed by the same people who made it great. At least there are good alternatives to Ubuntu. Although if Mint doesn't stop with the configuring firefox to expressly not have google as a default search option or make it eas
Ethics should apply in your life (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think Chick-Fil-A is an unethical company too. Does that mean that open source web browsers should be refuse to resolve URLs pointing to their domain? He is basically arguing that the functionality of Linux should be limited based on what people wish to do with it (in this case buy things from Amazon). That is, in fact, a betrayal of the principles of free software, which apparently now take a back seat to Stallman's other political interests.
If that's how he feels, than fine, but then it needs to be r
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It is not different than saying that we should not be putting Chic-Fil-A advertisements on the Unity desktop, unless people opt-in.
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I think that is the problem with these anointed leaders of Linux and Free Software espousing political commentary not related to Linux and Free Software. It makes it appear as if they are trying to include the people who support them and their ideals as support for the political externalizations.
Of course there are people like you who without knowing how qualified he is with something outside Linux and Free Software who hang on his words. But there are people who support the opposite of what Stallman is s
Or just wipe unity from your machine (Score:3)
And use kubuntu instead!
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Well it was hard as I recall primarily because the installer required X, and the standard cd at the time didnt properly detect my card. Like I need a really pretty installer just to make partitions and copy files? Who thought that up?
Speaking of partitions, it defaults to brain-dead. It looks like someone who didnt know what they were doing mindlessly copied windows.
Alienating your user base (Score:5, Insightful)
But then, from Shuttleworth's words [markshuttleworth.com]:
Seriously? it should "let me find"? You put tons of advertises in user's computers *and* tons of user's data on Amazon servers and you didn't provide it as opt-in feature? And I can't even disable it [until a rushed update came out]?
Good job! You're alienating the most important thing you gained so far, your users. You know, not only it is important to bring Ubuntu in the mainstream: you need to be sure you don't get there alone, you know?
It seems another case of "shut up, we know better than users what users really want".
Do you? [launchpad.net]
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Listen to this parasitic fuck's arrogance: "Donâ(TM)t trust us? Erm, we have root. You do trust us with your data already. You trust us not to screw up on your machine with every update."
No, no I don't. In fact, I don't know anybody who simply trusts Ubuntu's update feature - all the Ubuntu users I know have been burned to a lesser or greater extent on EVERY update.
Sorry, Shuttleworth, I don't trust you, you don't have root, and I'm not going to fund your private Isle of Man party by allowing you to
Can someone explain TFS, please? (Score:2)
And, as the links all appear Slashdotted, I have no fucking clue what the summary talks about. I recognize a lot of the words, the overall tone interested me enough to "look inside", but... What does "Unity Dash" mean, why does it mean giving info to governments, and what does Amazon have to do with turning off lenses and scopes? And what lenses and scopes?
And yes, I know about Ubuntu's recent whoring itself to Amazon for
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Its basically saying that Amazon can keep the data they get and it might find its way to Government at some point. **But** most operating systems these days are centralised around package repositories. You install and update from one place so canonical already knew that what you installed, as do debian, mint, etc. Microsoft knows that as well. The information about what you search for is more valuable but you can disable that but then you lose the integrated search with amazon, which might actually be usefu
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Unity Dash is what Unity (Ubuntu's default window manager) uses as a start menu substitute/replacement: it's basically a set of specialised search engines (one for applications, one for files, one for videos, etc.). They search within your computer, but also into repositories (so you can search for a program you don't have installed and will be given the option to install it. The individual search engines are referred to as lenses and scopes; there's some sort of technical difference that most people don't
Thanks (Score:2)
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Why stop there.
Just do "sudo apt-get remove unity.*"
Regular expressions are a beatiful thing.
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Unity? (Score:2)
Does anybody actually use the Unity interface? All I've every heard about it is negative, and it's easily replaced e.g., with Gnome 3. That's part of my standard procedure for installing Ubuntu, since I also find Unity unusable.
If nobody uses it, there's no need to be concerned about its features.
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Re:who even uses ubuntu (Score:4, Informative)
Linux Mint is way more legitimate in every way... UBUNTU IS NOT RELEVANT
It may have changed — my last install of Mint was Helena — but is Mint not based on Ubuntu [distrowatch.com]?
For Mint, I'd have thought Ubuntu was very relevant indeed.
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I had a look at Mint, but it doesn't appear to have Unity. So, back to Ubuntu, then.
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It's a bit unfair to too mention Ubuntu and Gentoo in the same sentence considering the topic. Leave Gentoo alone, what have they ever done wrong?
Or is it that you found the install too hard...
what did gentoo do wrong? well, for starters they created a bunch of users who now think that their browser is faster because it doesn't have support for ps/2 mouses..
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what did gentoo do wrong? well, for starters they created a bunch of users who now think that their browser is faster because it doesn't have support for ps/2 mouses..
Mostly, these mythical users with a wrong understanding of optimization exist only in your head. This straw man is revived every time there's an opportunity to snipe at Gentoo. In reality, the vast majority of people who use Gentoo do so because of Portage and the vast potential for customization at every level, not speed. It's a great distro, as is Debian and Fedora. It's not what I recommend for Grandma, but Gentoo certainly has earned its place on the short list of great meta-distributions.
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Need to know about your motherboard?
lspci
This is the same information that the kernel uses to determine what device drivers to load for you. Mandrake took advantage of this for the very first 3D card (voodoo) supported by Linux and did it all automagically.
The same goes for USB.
While LIRC is a convoluted a beast. It's also had automated configuration support since 2007.
Re:So tell me... (Score:4, Insightful)
"He's a dirty fucking hippy." who is usually proven correct, and who doesn't prefer comfortable slavery to freedom.
I don't care if he smells like a burning landfill, he's done more for freedom than either of us ever will.
False Dichotomy Peddlers (Score:2)
...yes because the only alternative to Crassus Maximus is Julius Ceasar.
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Nothing stops you from compiling an ubuntu derived distribution with this feature taken out by default and distributing it.
That is not the point. (Score:2)
Comments like these hold Linux back in the dark ages. "Compile it yourself, roll a new distribution, the command line is all you need, you only need to edit ten thousand configuration files to do things that can be done with a click elsewhere, RTFM, google it, go to IRC for help..." and the litany of other so-called solutions simply aren't acceptable if Linux adoption is to proceed beyond a tiny minority of ubergeeks. The very same people who are most vehement in the superiority of Linux are the same o
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No because Canonical want to make money from their product. Not just break even and keep a few engineers employed. They want to make billions of dollars out of it (like Thwaite). The product is certainlty worth that sort of money. To do that they have to sell information and services. You don't opt in to paying money when you buy a house. You pay up front. Why should using ubuntu be any different? And for the rest of us there are the command line tools.
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Do you mean that he is living on unemployment benefits?