It’s apt that I’m writing this on Valentines day as I just found out that Ubuntu wants to get to know me a little bit better.
Or more specifically, my system.
Yup; I’m forever the bridesmaid…
Canonical has chosen today, the international day of forced romance and overpriced heart-shaped tat, to tell the Ubuntu community about its plans to add a data collection tool in the upcoming Ubuntu 18.04 LTS release.
This feature will compile information on system hardware and send it back to Canonical.
Tbh, I’m surprised Ubuntu didn’t already collect this sort of data…
But before anyone freaks out, reaches for rotten fruit, or fishes for an angry placard last waved in Canonical’s direction circa-2013 — deep breath — I have to be ask:
Don’t you think this sound like a good idea?
You can Improve Ubuntu …By Doing Nothing?
Canonical’s desktop team lead Will Cooke shared more about the initiative in an e-mail posted on the Ubuntu development mailing list, writing:
“We want to be able to focus our engineering efforts on the things that matter most to our users, and in order to do that we need to get some more data about sort of setups our users have and which software they are running on it.”
Since few (if any) users would choose to opt-in to share this sort of data, Canonical is making participation in the scheme entirely opt-out.
That means, unless you choose otherwise, Ubuntu 18.04 automatically compiles data about your system and sends it to the cheerful chaps (and chapesses) at Canonical HQ to “help improve Ubuntu”.
Don’t want to share data with Ubuntu? You can opt-out before anything happens
It isn’t a particularly unreasonable request.
You, like me, might be surprised to know Ubuntu doesn’t collect that sort of data already!
Besides, compared to man-handling personal data gets on other a certain other operating system, Ubuntu’s ask for a few sedate sounding system specs seem but a soft tickle in the privacy department (oo-err).
On the flip, concerns are earned: Ubuntu’s track record in the area of privacy — leaky Unity search results, Big Brother awards, and so on — will mean people are uneasy at the development.
But anyone doesn’t want to share their system specs with Canonical can opt-out.
What Data Will Ubuntu Collect?
The data Ubuntu says it wants to collect about your system sounds rather innocuous. It will include:
- Which version of Ubuntu you’re installing (including which flavour)
- Whether you have network connectivity
- Hardware stats, including CPU, RAM, GPU, etc
- Your device vendor (e.g., Dell, Lenovo, etc)
- Your country
- How long your install took to complete
- Whether you have auto login enabled
- Your disk layout
- Whether you chose to install third party codecs
- Whether you chose to download updates during install
Canonical says no IP addresses are stored or as part of the process, and that all data is send using secure, encrypted connections.
If you use something like the Neofetch system info tool in your desktop screenshots you probably share a lot of this data with the world already.
Beyond collecting some install-time data Canonical also says it wants to enable two other services to collect other data as you use your system:
- Ubuntu Popcon to track the relative popularity of apps, packages and so on
- Apport — to automatically send anonymous crash reports
Alongside the option to opt-out of data collection during the installer, options will also be added to the Privacy panel in the Settings app so that you can disable/opt-out of at any time.
Ubuntu will make the results of the data public, for everyone to see
You know what’s most interesting about this?
Canonical says it will make the results of the data it gathers public.
Anyone with a curious eye or of a nosey persuasion (i.e. bloggers like me) will be able to go online and see the overall percentage and spread of Ubuntu installs across the world, the hardware Ubuntu runs on, the amount of RAM users have, the apps they use the most, and so on.
And that excites me greatly!