Canonical Pursuing A Hardware/Software Survey For Ubuntu Installations

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Canonical Pursuing A Hardware/Software Survey For Ubuntu Installations

Will Cooke, Canonical's Director of Ubuntu Desktop, has announced plans to collect more diagnostics data from Ubuntu installations. This would involve collecting system hardware/software details during the installation process and be uploaded to Ubuntu servers, but users could opt-out of said survey...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu-18.04-Stats-Plan

[paupav]

Finally, response to the Intel's Clear Linux project. I can't stand that much of performance difference between Clear Linux and other distros.
I was this close | | to installing Clear Linux on my workstation and using it as my main OS.

[boxie]

Finally, response to the Intel's Clear Linux project. I can't stand that much of performance difference between Clear Linux and other distros.
I was this close | | to installing Clear Linux on my workstation and using it as my main OS.

are you commenting on the right story here? this is about collecting installation information.

which I am cool with - especially if we have access to it steam style!

[Sonadow]

If it will help to get more drivers (especially 802.11ac USB wifi drivers) into the mainline kernel, I'm all for it.

Otherwise, I hope it crashes and burns. Linux is already messy enough as it is; we don't need any more single-distribution-only driver patches that users of other distributions need to reverse engineer.

[ElectricPrism]

I really hope Ubuntu does something like Ubuntu.com/HwSurvey to publicly share the data like Steam does -- I would absolutely 100% be down for that and I think it would incentivize people to recommend Ubuntu again to boost those stats to bring more relevance to Linux vs other OS's.

[dstaubsauger]

Nice to see them invest in the desktop/laptop platform!

Canonical is looking to collect more system information about […] whether they have network connectivity […].

How are they going to know when someone does not have network connectivity?

[Adarion]

Nice to see them invest in the desktop/laptop platform!

How are they going to know when someone does not have network connectivity?

They ask you to send the data on USB Stick by snail mail to them.


OptIn would be okay, OptOut... meh.

[Brisse]

Usually I'm against this sort of thing and it's kind of a big reason why I left Windows behind, but if they implement it like the Steam survey, as opt-in rather than opt-out, and make the data public then I'm actually thinking this could be interesting.

[andreyponomarenko]

Why not just probe a computer by hw-probe after installation? See Ubuntu probe https://linux-hardware.org/?probe=4b3b9a06f5 for example.

[lucrus]

How are they going to know when someone does not have network connectivity?

The survey will offer you a few choices:

1) you plug a USB pendrive to save your answers, then it will install a minimal Ubuntu on your pendrive with a script that uploads the results as soon as it finds network connectivity. Booting from the pendrive on a connected machine is all you have to do.

2) the survey provides you with a unique 8192 digits contribution code that you can use from a different, network connected machine, by simply typing it as reply to the question about network connectivity. That way they will know your replies are about a different machine than the one you're using to answer.

3) you print out the survey results and fax them in: +44 20 7630 2401

4) same as 3, but you send the results by paper mail to:
Canonical Group Limited
5th Floor, Blue Fin Building
110 Southwark Street
SE1 0SU
London, United Kingdom

5) you capture the survey screens with your smartphone camera and send them by email using your smartphone connectivity

6) you don't fill the survey. They will know how many do not have network connectivity by subtracting the number of received surveys from the number of Ubuntu DVDs they sell.