Hello everyone,
I just saw a video on Ubuntu from Richard Stallman :
The point is, does Ubuntu MATE is different on this point ? Does it send personal data to Amazon or other companies ?
Regards
1 Like
As far as I’m aware, no.
1 Like
IIRC, anonymized data is passed to Amazon on Ubuntu throught the Unity lens, and maybe some stuff related to the online accounts, both features that are not included in Ubuntu MATE and specific to the Unity desktop environment (not sure they’ve ported part of these to GNOME 3 now that Unity has been dropped).
As for other companies, Mozilla has (had?) a partnership with Google to set their search engine as default in Firefox. I don’t think it sends specific data, though (well, not more that using Google in any browser).
2 Likes
That was a very interesting clip. I have not tried Ubuntu 16.04, so I have no idea if there was some setting to disable the sending of data to Amazon. But I would have to agree with the video if that option did not exist.
I think it was in Unity from the start, which goes back to 2010 (EDIT: it appeard in 2012, in fact). It’s always been controversial.
All of the official flavas have their own “personality” just like any other Ubuntu based distro, the only difference I know of atm is access to help from Canonical.
Many of the 70+ (at least) Ubuntu based distros deserve a bit of research to find out about them, as well as for the 150+ (at least) Debian based ones, which like Ubuntu, try to make Debian a bit, or a lot better.
That video is several years old. Didn’t Canonical disable the controversial lens after that?
1 Like
It was disabled by default in 16.04: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/01/ubuntu-online-search-feature-disabled-16-04
1 Like
It was disabled by default but not removed.
Hallo
This video is referring to a feature of the Unity-Desktop that was “tied” to the HUD-Search feature. The Mate-Desktop does not have this feature (it never did). 
1 Like