Amazon 'adware' laden Ubuntu passes ICO's data smell test The Amazon "shopping suggestions" feature built into Ubuntu desktops does not violate consumer protections under European and UK privacy law. That’s according to the Information Commissioner following a complaint lodged by a Ubuntu blogger over Ubuntu’s controversial Shopping Lens. Introduced in Ubuntu 12.10, the Amazon Lens …
"I did try to answer my own question btw - I cant find any info on their revenue from the Amazon hookup. Weird."
Yes, they keep the numbers really quiet generally. Either the revenue from this feature is peanuts and Canonical are to embarrassed to admit that given the hoo-ha, or its huge and people will then ask why Amazon are paying so much for anonymous random desktop search terms like lett*82014*tax*.odt, with the implications that the search terms are not so...
As others have said, I just started using Debian. Quite like Wheezy.
Try google, there are clear instructions on how to remove this specific dash lens widely available.
http://askubuntu.com/questions/366238/how-do-i-remove-only-shopping-searches
And turning off all online search results stops it doing it.
Must admit, I thought it was a bit cheeky, but I'm happy enough with it disabled, which means no online search queries, period. I would normally qualify that with 'allegedly' but I'm pretty sure this code got looked at fairly closely after the kerfuffle with it caused...!
Steven R
The point of Linux is to avoid windows.
Not watch a distribution turn into windows.
My current "other computer" has Ubuntu 11 on it . It's all it can handle so it's not upgrading.
My current windows machine , when I get a new machine the current one will go to Mint , or whatever is easy to use / not a windows Wannabe. Ubuntu is now off the list.
Problem is, tho, I'd love to go back to Debian. Unfortunately, Ubuntu and it's derivatives seem to be the only Distros in town that supports GPT-on-RAID arrays. I have a RAID-0 PC with UEFI, and the only distro that works on it out of the box or with minor tweaking is Ubuntu. Other distros get stuck at the initrd because for some reason they seem to think DMRaid is sufficient for handling RAID (DMRaid doesn't do GPT. That's the problem, you need KPartX to handle the GPT arrays). At that time the only advice I could get from other users of Debian was "turn off RAID and use LVM" which is an unacceptable solution for me.
That's what I think that Canonical has done.
They still have a good following but they are doing their utmost to drive them away as quickly as possible.
tho prime examples are
Unity
Amazon
Buggy releases and getting worse since 10/04
Like a previous poster their behavior has drivem me away. I've gone to the other oasis of stability, CentOS. I was a RH user before getting on the Ubuntu steamroller. That steamroller is IMHO running out ot steam rapidly.
Two years later, the ICO has now said it’s satisfied that Canonical, chief steward of Ubuntu, has “reasonably ensured compliance” with the Data Protection Act.In other words, it’s happy users’ data and privacy are protected.
I'm happy it's happy. But I'm not happy that Canonical seems to think that SPAM needs to be built in as a key "feature" of the OS, so Ubuntu is (still) off the list...the ICO notwithstanding.
And that's the fundamental issue. MS appears to have bought the 'people want advertising' line... while I have met many who don't bother to kill adverts, and some who don't really care, I have never met anyone who claimed that the *wanted* advertising.
And after all, if you want to search the web, use a browser, where you know the interface and can control what you see; where the search engine will return many vendors for a particular (or similar) product or searching of an individual site.
Away with it. As above; it's not a feature, it's a bug. And I try not to install buggy software.
At one time I used and like Ubuntu a lot, latest features,nice interface, and easy update. Then I noticed that they were becoming more like Microsoft. Telling me what I should use. Face it if you have to go outside of their repo's they are saying don't use that, use our selection instead. Some of the ones that they insisted on were crap, examples: Unity, Amazon, Shotwell, loss of config utility. The problem is that I want controll of my machine. I finally went back to Debian and installed Mate. More work but now I have a system I like.
Face it a lot of dev's go more for the new shiny,shiny and less for KISS.
" De Souza wrote: "I rest my case. I am still happy to use Ubuntu..."
It just goes to show, you can fool some of the people all the time.
Personally I wouldn't touch Ubuntu with a bargepole, with or without that lens nonsense. If you want to use Ubuntu like it should have been, use Linux Mint. Just look at the Distrowatch rankings, Mint is way ahead of Ubuntu or any of its derivatives.
They must be doing something right.
Distrowatch measures a distro's page hits on the website, not how successful a distro is. Mint is not by any means "way ahead of Ubuntu", and is still heavily dependent on Ubuntu as a base. So if you wouldn't go anywhere near Ubuntu, by extension, you shouldn't even be using Mint... The code is open to look at, there is nothing malicious about the Unity shopping lens, and it can be disabled in 2 clicks. It will even be disabled by default in Unity 8. Get over it already.
That Ubuntu have not listened to the people that use it for so long.
That the ICO said it is reasonable (thus not understanding the point of his job)
or that it took the ICO two whole years for him to come to that "Brown Envelope" position.
Still for me Mint is a nice replacement and has been since 11.10 :)
The kill button is a step in the right direction, but it really needs to be an opt-in if they want to include this feature, not an opt-out.
Then again I've never liked Ubuntu. All the user friendliness - or lack thereof - of Debian with all the stability of Windows XP before its first service pack. I'm a recent convert from Debian to Linux Mint Debian Edition. Its as easy to use as the more traditional Mint and has all the stability I've always loved in Debian.
A lot of grumbling here aimed at Canonical. Please allow me to offer a humble difference of opinion, as someone who is enthusiastic about libre software and who adopted Linux in 2000 and Ubuntu (non-exclusively) in 2006.
I too left Ubuntu for Mint shortly after Unity was introduced - slow, buggy, limited functionality, *different* from Gnome's logical and beloved tri-menu - but I returned at the next release as improvements began to address my concerns. I test a lot of distros, and use SUSE and Red Hat heavily at work, but Unity is now my favorite interface. I use it exclusively on my dual-monitor home workstation - clean, fast, and productive. I particularly love hiding the menus in the title bars - it works despite my initial misgivings, and is quite clever and efficient!
I'm also not angry at Canonical for attempting to generate income from their consumer-centric product. The other options - pay by SKU aka Microsoft, premium proprietary hardware requirements aka Apple, or overt aggregation of personal data for profit aka Google - strike me as much less desirable. I realize you'd like for Ubuntu to just be free, like air, but to be commercially viable in the long-term, Canonical must have consistent revenue, and anonymous ads are the least objectionable revenue stream for a commercial company that I've yet seen.
We've always had free, geeks-only options like Debian, and I certainly don't want to lose them (nor do I think Canonical threatens them in the slightest). Two thumbs WAY up for free-as-in-liberty software. But I've become convinced that those projects and products will always be niche products, unknown by the mainstream. I would like to see at least a few Gnu Linux-based products aim to achieve enough commercial success that a broader audience could experience its benefits and know they have a choice. Canonical is investing a lot of Mark's money to make that happen, making what I consider reasonable and pragmatic decisions, and I choose to give them the benefit of the doubt.
And yes, if it is of similar quality to desktops based on Unity, I'll buy an Ubuntu phone when they launch this year. Still wish I could be using my Edge by now. :-)
I actually have nothing against Ubuntu.
The problem is with stunts like this , Canon is demonstrating they think they're the next Windows, and I'm using ubuntu because I'm running away from Windows,not running into the arms of the next Windows Wannabe.
thats where my problem lies.
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