FrankForum (Frankness IS Forum)

Ubuntu is probably the most popular of the Linux distributions, but there's a few things you should consider:
#1 Canonical reroutes searches performed to their servers and ultimately to amazon / other 3rd parties (meaning the phrases you type are stored, although no different as using Google, as they too store search phrases). This is not done for "conspiratorial" reasons, but for providing you advertisements and revenue for Canonical ~ which is in my opinion far more distasteful
#2 Canonical has implemented Unity which for a lot of traditional interface users, has reportedly been alienating (I have not used it myself).

It appears you can finally disable the Amazon spyware in unity on the latest release:
http://www.howtogeek.com/126995/how-to- ... nity-dash/
(I am not sure if that also applies if you're not using Unity)

There are forks of Ubuntu that others have released which deliberately removes the Amazon spyware, just in case someone wants to use Ubuntu and doesn't want the spyware.

Does search work if offline, then? I'm not an Ubuntu fan at all, but some will wonder. For in Windows 10, once you cut off Cortana and the web from searching, you are not likely to be able to find anything stored on your local drive. I gave up trying to get search to work and used ZtreeWin.

It will find some things, but Windows system files it won't find, even if you set search to index and even if set to display hidden/system files. If I remember rightly.

Is Ubuntu therefore, the same? If so, for how long has it been like this? IF for a long time, then maybe Redmond is aping Ubuntu.

It's been like that for years, far before Windows 10 if that's what you wanted to know (unfortunately I don't know when it was first implemented).

Microsoft is [r]aping the behaviour from many products and trends: Google, Autodesk, Adobe, Ubuntu (to a small degree). I think the goal of Windows 10 is ultimately implementing internet operated subscription fees. So to use Windows you'll need to pay X amount of money each month / year, and it becomes incrementally more depending on how many features you want. This would explain why Microsoft wants everyone to upgrade to Windows 10 "for free", I could be completely wrong-- but it would make sense.

This is the case for Adobe's 'Creative Cloud', Microsoft's 'Office 365', Autodesk's suite of products, etc. So you never 'own' the product, you just continually rent it. Like paying a video store to keep a movie as long as you're willing to pay them :p

Ubuntu's spyware motives are *purely* based around profit.

Okay, understood. I've known since Nadella's maiden speech that he was going to turn Windows into a subscription OS. Frankly I don't have much trouble with that idea, if the OS worked. I pay for light and gas that way. But the OS doesn't work, and it makes MSFT the policeman over all my private data if I use it, so even if it did work, I can't use it.

Since it doesn't work, and it makes me a lawsuit target for any third-party data I curate -- for THEY aren't consenting to MSFT's slurping -- then it has to be pushed down the pipe and has to be falsely advertised as 'FREE' in order to get junkies.

Then comes the pricing. But the price is already too high.

So if Ubuntu is being aped, one wonders what their terms really are. I don't want to know. I don't like Shuttleworth or Canonical or anything Ubuntu makes, plus they are as fickle as Google (ie removing the Software Center).

An operating system shouldn't carry a subscription fee model, because an operating system carries functions that are incompatible with it--if the subscription is accidentally canceled, terminated by the manufacturer, problems with payment etc. I don't pay a subscription fee to wear my shoes or for my heart to pump a certain amount of cycles.

Think of it like this, you pay for [only] the gas that will be used by the vehicle; with the subscription model you would be paying for gas that you theoretically wouldn't be using if the car isn't being driven 24/7. Even worse, let's say that Microsoft were to implement 'subscription fee' for owning the Surface. And if you don't keep up on your payments they take it back along with all of your data.

A subscription fee makes sense for software developers to get more profit, but there are some things that shouldn't have a subscription to use. And I think an operating system is one of those since it is necessary for the hardware to function.

So you can't have hardware without an operating system, or an operating system without the hardware: they're inseparable. Therefore a subscription fee model means the hardware is only ever useful with continual payments. You don't have any [control] over your hardware with that type of model. If my old computers held that model, I wouldn't be able to use them to this day since the software has long since depreciated and no longer supported by any of the manufacturers, both on a hardware and software level.

Even worse... subscription models require 'the internet'. I don't want all of my computers on the internet 24/7. It would be like if you had to keep your car connected to the gas station, well, you're not going to get very far!

...Of course there are exceptions, but I want pure control over my hardware. There's way too many people against subscription based models for MS to implement it into windows gracefully (which actually increases piracy), so Microsoft could actually propel more people into using Linux.

Okay, but in effect we have been paying a subscription price for Windows, all along. It comes out, two years, new version so old must stop being sold, five years, the old version no longer supported. So every two to five years, you spent $100-$300 for the OS. OR, the OEM did and you bought from the OEM. Same price in the 1990's as now.

So had I been ABLE to keep up the OS on my Win98 machines -- I have five -- then I'd have paid for the XP upgrade, the Win7 upgrade, and of course there were several in between each, but I'm only counting the ones I actually got on other machines. If counting all of them, it was what: ME and 2000 (or were those the same), then Vista, then 7.

So depending on how you count it, the $300 retail price for Win98 would repeat again apples to apples, up to 5 times. Or, an OEM price of $100 at Win98 (I paid more than that, but okay), up to five times.

So it really is a subscription. Just called 'upgrade' or 'new edition'.

Now, I pay $6,000 per year for a 'subscription' to the same legal documents which don't change much each year, but that's cheaper than if I maintained them myself. So maybe that's why I'm not too disturbed.

Okay, shutting up now, feel free to lambast.

Well my biggest problem is that [IF] subscription models requiring authentication over the internet existed for software back in the 80's and 90's, I wouldn't be able to legally use any of those operating systems anymore as all of the developers would have long since canceled the ability to subscribe; much like how Microsoft is disallowed to distribute 9x due to some Java components. Thankfully that's not the case and I can continue on happily using DOS, Windows 9x, OS/2 and OS/400.

Ahhh, good point, haven't thought of that. So if the OS is made subscription, then I couldn't use my subscriptions. Except, that Linux doesn't need one...

Richard Stallman on Ubuntu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CP8CNp-vksc