Ubuntu 26.04 Forced Telemetry, snaps, features

Thoughts & Feedback
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Hello, everyone!

I’m a long-time Linux user, ever since version 10.04. That was the distro that saved my poor laptop from Windows Vista (that is not a joke: I had to take it to repair since Vista damaged the hard drive).

When I started using Mate 24.04, I had several issues, including: OS not booting at all, much slower performance compared to 22.04, and all of my NTFS partitions were set to "read only” by default. Many software/apps run poorly, forcing me to run back to 22.04 (my current OS).

So now that we are approaching the release of 26.04, I was curious to learn about its new features. When I did some research, the first result was this video:

Now, I do not trust anything at face value. I need to have proper sources to review before having a clear picture.

These are the key points of the video:

  • Relentless advertising for Ubuntu Pro (really?)
  • There’s a package called “Ubuntu Advantage Tools” that cannot be removed, like it or not
  • Snap packaging gets forced, even if you install the “non-snap” version of a software (Firefox is used as an example)
  • You need to manually enter a command in the terminal to finish security updates (?!)
  • Telemetry: collected by 4 separate tools. When you decide to opt out, it still leaks your IP address and HTTP headers, and in case of multiple users on the same machine, it still leaks data if one user decides not to opt out

Now, the video is two months old, and it could be the classic clickbait-y hollow YT video, but I’m curious to see if any of this is true. I could not find other sources to refute these arguments, that’s why I’m here! :smiley:

Any insight will be appreciated! :slight_smile:

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Clickbait and misinformation.

I'd refute those claims simply by grabbing a live USB with 26.04 and doing exactly what that videos says we cant (e.g. we can remove snap infrastructure, telemetry is opt-in, etc).

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I’m glad to hear it. I’m less glad that it was the first search result, since it might lead many people to get the wrong idea. :sweat_smile:

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Ubuntu 26.04 LTS is available for download on many ISOs, using different installers, but NOT all of them force a snapd install. (If you're not aware, snapd is the snap infrastructure package)

I zsync'd a daily earlier today, and whilst I wasn't intending to QA test the snapd free install, I do believe it still exists (I ran out of time & didn't boot/install anything today in QA) and I'd sure be surprised if it had been removed and I'd not noticed it.

Ubuntu developers and members have blogged about pinning your system so it won't install or re-install snapd; those docs are possibly what Linux Mint devs used in their own docs anyway, but even if it's not; you can peruse the Linux Mint code yourself anyway (and Linux Mint won't be snapd free anyway if that's the case; unless you're using Linux Mint Debian Edition)

The Ubuntu installs made without snapd pre-installed, will happily install it for you; in fact the QA check to ensure snapd isn't installed is to run the command snap list where the expected result for a snapd free install is an error message telling you the snap command is unknown, AND it tells you how to install it!

Myself; I've never used the snapd free install on any of my own systems (24.04 - resolute or what will be 26.04), but as some packages that an install WILL or MAY NOT require are only delivered as snap packages, the consequences vary. eg. my current Dell Optiplex gets firmware updates from Dell, and those are delivered for Ubuntu through a firmware-updater that is only available as snap package on my current resolute install... but another older box (also Dell Optiplex) is too old & doesn't get firmware updates from either Dell, Intel (CPU), AMD (Graphics) as all the hardware is too old; so not having firmware-updater on that box is moot.

That just isn't the case; Quality Assurance tests I've performed ENSURE that isn't the case; so again I have no idea why that is said.

It's very hard to NOT leak detail, eg. using a web browser will leak your IP address (required so the page you requested shows on your screen; it needs to know where you are!) let alone running commands like sudo apt update... Without specifics of what they're talking about; that concern is 'of no value' to me & probably nothing more than paranoia.

If you want the install to be quiet; do an offline install & problem solved !

I have NOT watched the video; I started listening & heard an outright lie (in my opinion anyway), and concluded it was garbage (& stopped it playing; I assume 'AI slop')

FYI: MOTD or message of the day on all prior releases could be culled, and I'm not aware of anything that would prevent that from occurring on resolute; but I've also not looked into it. I just ran sudo apt update; sudo apt full-upgrade on this box and no Pro advertizing appeared... but given this release is still in alpha no Pro is available anyway (so this result maybe invalid).

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