Definitely agree with his opinions

1 Like
  1. Telemetry is not bad :man_facepalming:

I can’t continue after that one :scream: :rofl:

4 Likes

It isn’t. It’s a matter of WHAT is sent.

1 Like

Is “how many people are downloading packages from our servers” telemetry?

3 Likes

Technically wouldn’t it be? it’s gathering data.

2 Likes

I don’t want to start flame-war :laughing:

But to me it’s like a logical fallacy, regardless of what is sent.

It’s kinda like classical dilemma:

  • Big government is ok!
  • Well…what about dictator coming to power next and use all that big government?

I’d say generally you don’t want to give anyone any possible power and means to use your personal data with or without agreement, because even if you trust that someone now, it can quickly change hands silently, which happens all the time.

So let’s say if i really trust some distribution or program, and then it introduces some telemetry - i would think twice before keep using it, to me it is already a breach of trust.

For example i don’t want to use KDE anymore because they’ve introduced user feedback which is cool because it’s optional and opt-in…But what about some bugs which can accidentally enable it?
Can you guarantee bug-free experience in such big DE?

Years of experience tells me no. Even if we assume no malicious intent.

It happened to me before too, so no thx - personally i don’t need any additional potential point of failure in my trust :slight_smile:

More like statistics i’d say, usually telemetry is meant as anything personal identifiable, hardware, software info, ip etc…then more…and more…and mooooore :laughing:

5 Likes

No, that’s not telemetry. That’s just server logging the requests.

Telemetry is when a program running on a user’s machine connects to some server in order to send it information it collected. Spyware is when it does it without the consent of the user.

I kind of agree with the video in the OP that telemetry is not necessarily bad. But I think it needs to be specified exactly under which conditions telemetry is not bad, and I can think of these two conditions that would make me not consider telemetry bad:

  1. It is disabled by default and has to be explicitly enabled by the user. This is to ensure consent by the user.
  2. It shows to the user exactly what info it is sending and every time it does it. If this is annoying, there could be an option to disable it, but it should be enabled the first time it happens.

What I vehemently disagree with the video is about snapd not being bad. Yes it is. Snapd is the devil. I’d rather run windoze than have snapd installed. The only distro that treats snapd properly is Linux Mint, bless their hearts!

Also, he is completely wrong about Arch. I use it on all my production machines, never had any issues. It does not break, because I’m not an idiot (at least not an exceptional one), and even if I were, I’d still use timeshift.

11 Likes

“Arch Linux: The Not-an-Idiot Proof Linux Distro!”

:rofl:

9 Likes

0,01% is a pretty decent proof factor :rofl:
Only Linux from scratch is better!

It should definitely always be opt-in, and always easy to understand the options. BUT I completely fail to get the idea of running say Firefox Nightly and NOT have it enabled (as a user) since you actually don’t help Mozilla at all if you DON’T let them see your crash reports…

4 Likes

This. If you’re running Nightly then you really need to be allowing submission of bug reports and telemetry data because it helps them develop the browser.

And if you don’t, they do things like remove the RSS reader and Panorama because “people don’t use them”… :angry:

5 Likes

When it comes to Firefox Nightly and development versions like that, I completely agree, telemetry makes perfect sense! It’s helpful to the developers to know when stuff goes wrong and under which conditions, and also which features are used the most and deserve the most focus.

But still, the two conditions from my post (which I clarified a bit better by editing my post) should apply, in my opinion. For example, there could be a popup dialogue when the program is run for the first time that says something like: “Thank you for using our development version. We would like to collect such and such data from you, do you consent? For more info, please visit this webpage that tells you exactly what data we collect.”

The only way you deserve the trust of your users is by being 100% transparent and honest. One violation of that is enough to destroy all trust.

11 Likes

I wouldn’t go QUITE that far - but half is the most I could give him. I wouldn’t use Arch for a server situation, unless it was one I was personally ‘baby-sitting’, and it was the only one. The big issue is the unattended operation - and no changes are wanted in those conditions!

For any other ‘production’ use, I have found it be as stable as anything out there - and the issues it DOES come up with are minor and easily fixed - usually by the time you find out about it! Timeshift is one factor (update rollback on demand) and another is that generally machines are spec’ed with enough in the way of spare resources to enable instant amelioration - whether by swapping in a backup, or by switching to an ‘on machine’ alternate (from EnOS to Arch for instance) while working with the same data. No advantage to not being on ‘the edge’ to be found in that - and improvements that may enhance your production are more frequently found!

2 Likes

I can see how servers can be an exception to this. When it comes to servers, nothing beats Debian Stable, simply because it does not require a lot of maintenance.

But if you can maintain it, there is nothing preventing you from running a server on Arch. It will not be any more unstable than a Debian Stable server, it will just require more maintenance.

But even if we take servers as a complete exception (and unquestionably accept that Arch is universally bad on servers, which is not, but for the sake of the argument), that’s just one exception. A production machine is any computer on which you get stuff done. And for personal computers, Arch is completely viable (and I count EndeavourOS as Arch), though not idiot-proof.

If you have a deadline for some project tomorrow and you haven’t even started working on it yet, and you decide to update your DE and the software you need for that project, and you don’t have a backup, and something breaks, that’s not a problem with Arch. That’s a PEBCAK :wink:

5 Likes

I have to agree. This issue of telemetry is very wearing. It’s always accompanied by a bad attitude at anyone who disagrees, trying to force agreement, which just confirms that telemetry isn’t a good thing. Not possible to trust, when pressure and criticism is the response. Respect of data is a perfectly normal thing to want, and saying ‘yes’ to some apparently tiny amount of data collection does always leads to pressure to accept the next little bit of data collection. The value of privacy and peace of mind is far far above any need for telemetry, especially in this day and age.

Without doubt, I drop anything that starts to sneak in, or openly force, any telemetry.

3 Likes

:100:

3 Likes

I guess I somewhat agree with most of his points. I use Arch on my web servers but that’s because they’re not important (just personal sites) and I find it fun. If I was using them for business purposes I guess I would probably still run them, but do the updates far less frequently and probably have some redundancy in place in case something dies. Only once have I had an update screw me over and I’ve been using Arch for around 10 years so I’m pretty confident with it.

I don’t have an issue with telemetry. I understand some people are very paranoid about their privacy but for me the kind of things I wish to remain private are rather specific an minimal and it’s generally never an issue when it comes to the information most programs wish to gather.

As for snaps, I don’t care what Ubuntu does. 5 years time snaps won’t exist and they’ll pick up Flatapks or AppImages, or even both. Never place your bet on Canonical technologies cough, Mir, cough cough Upstart, cough Unity, cough cough Ubuntu One

1 Like

That does make firefox bad . Because it uses google as search engine by bdefault . When google is set as default search engine it will send some info to google on start up . So even if you choose DuckDuckGo in settings some info are sent to google already . And I do hate that .

Because sending the info or not is a small issue ( or ‘thing’ ) but I can’t even decide that .

So it’s some serious issue . The only thing we can do is either create a company of our own or relay on community projects Like Endeavour

3 Likes

The video just felt like he’s reading off a list he thinks he agrees with. There’s also the “it’s proven people click on faces in thumbnails” thing for Youtube. There’s no passion or interest, the points are vague. “A fringe part of a community can be not nice” and “you shouldn’t attack people for what they do with a computer” – very unpopular opinions right there.

2 Likes

Snowden’s words

Your rights matter , because

You never know when you are going to need them

3 Likes