XPost: alt.os.linux.mint   
   From: lws4art@gmail.com   
      
   Paul wrote:   
   > On Mon, 2/23/2026 8:15 PM, Jonathan N. Little wrote:   
   >> Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:   
   >>> On Sun, 22 Feb 2026 03:43:04 -0800, El Kabong wrote:   
   >>>   
   >>>> The guy who runs Canonical put telemetry in Linux.   
   >>>   
   >>> Where?   
   >>>   
   >>   
   >> Maybe he means the installer prompt to send system specs ONE TIME after   
   >> the install to Canonical, or the crash reports you are also prompted to   
   >> send to help in debugging. Note that in each I said *prompt*, you are   
   >> given the option each time, and you can inspect the report each time.   
   >> Hardly "telemetry" as one gets with other OS's.   
   >>   
   >   
   > I have a simpler definition for this.   
   >   
   >    "Any form of excessive busywork in the background"   
   >   
   > There is tracker and tracker-miner, there can on some distros be   
   > "usage statistics", where as a user I have never noticed the user   
   > community frequent use of certain utilities, *ever* causing those   
   > utilities to be installed by default.   
   >   
   > When I booted up Zorin LiveDVD, there was a burst of network activity   
   > (and not the burble of DHCP either). Someone was receiving a g   
   od-morning-gram.   
   > And that is an example of busywork. And as busywork, should I be interested   
   > in what is shooting up there ? That represents "a load on my mind", just   
   > one more thing to remember. It doesn't matter what's in there, it's   
   > an irritant. If you want to send good-morning-grams, print on the   
   > graphics screen in the form of a notation, what was sent, then fade it out.   
   >   
   > Thunderbird has this too, attempts to track how many installs have   
   > been done and so on. One of the prices you pay for this, is an   
   > excessively complex "profiles.ini".   
   >   
   > The reason for my definition, is I don't want to get bogged down   
   > into discussions of "well, what could they do with this information?".   
   > That's a waste of the users time, installing walls and fences,   
   > digging trenches, covering holes in the back garden with nylon   
   > outdoor carpet. We shouldn't have to clean up this crap or   
   > intervene. I shouldn't need to be install PI-Holes.   
   >   
   > If you install the Diagnostic Data Viewer in Windows, the detail   
   > goes down to the level of whether you copied and pasted in Notepad,   
   > and whether you edited in markup mode (so it is tracking attach rate on   
   > a new feature). At one time, the DDV was entirely useless, just   
   > a shit-storm of numbers. Today, there is a good degree of plaintext,   
   > but as "studies" go, it's still over the top. I would have preferred   
   > to see "logs of crashes and install failures" shooting up to Vortex,   
   > but anything like that is relatively skeletal as "Telemetry". They   
   > do shoot up a snapshot collecting environment details on a major   
   > failure, and on my slow ADSL2 upload, that can take as long as   
   > a hour to complete. If you scroll the DDV, you'll be dizzy in no-time :-)   
   > But to give them credit, it's marginally more transparent, whether it is   
   > complete or not.   
   >   
      
   I think you are comparing apples to oranges. No one is challenging that   
   MS collects excessive amounts of data that is easily defined as   
   telemetry. Not only is it voluminous it is also continuous. That simple   
   is not at all in Linux, and even for Canonical's Ubuntu long ago bad   
   decision Amazon app. The "extensive" install "telemetry" data that is   
   collected once that you have the option to send is hardly dizzying not   
   nor intrusive:   
      
   jonathan@nomad:~$ ll -h  ~/.cache/ubuntu-report/ubuntu.24.04   
      
   -rw-rw-r-- 1 jonathan jonathan 2.0K Sep 23  2024   
   /home/jonathan/.cache/ubuntu-report/ubuntu.24.04   
      
   jonathan@nomad:~$ wc -l  ~/.cache/ubuntu-report/ubuntu.24.04   
      
   95 /home/jonathan/.cache/ubuntu-report/ubuntu.24.04   
      
   Just 95 lines of pretty-print formatted json. That is just 1950 bytes   
   that wouldn't have been too taxing back when I had dialup.   
      
   Telemetry, tracking, privacy, and data theft by corporations is a real   
   an serious threat, but Linux, even some the "bad" distros are not, (at   
   least currently), doing it.   
      
   --   
   Take care,   
      
   Jonathan   
   -------------------   
   LITTLE WORKS STUDIO   
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