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.

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).

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.

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