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Recently I had been looking at Ubuntu thought to shift my LFS box to an Ubuntu.
But I found this,
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ubuntu-spyware.html
Do you think this is true? Cause I feel GNU is jealous because of Canonical. Or maybe Ubuntu is spyware.
Richard Stallman talking about spyware :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CP8CNp-vksc

nerdguy wrote: Do you think this is true?

More than likely. It's the modern surveillance society. If you grew up in the "west" during the cold war then you'll know that we're now having things done to us that we used to criticise the Soviet bloc countries for doing to their own people. The setup costs for building your own DDR are shrinking by the year, now private companies have the means.

I personally encrypt alot more these days. Here's a typical script I have: Do you encrypt your projects? The way I see it is that it takes next to no time to encrypt all my backups. I see little point in not doing it to be honest.

nerdguy wrote: Cause I feel GNU is jealous because of Canonical. Or maybe Ubuntu is spyware.

Forget Ubuntu, GNU is jealous about Linux https://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html. Can't say that I blame them to be honest.

nerdguy wrote:Recently I had been looking at Ubuntu thought to shift my LFS box to an Ubuntu.
But I found this,
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ubuntu-spyware.html
Plus you can see my signature for a YouTube video about Richard Stallman talking about Ubuntu.
Do you think this is true? Cause I feel GNU is jealous because of Canonical. Or maybe Ubuntu is spyware.

Are GNU and Stallman jealous of Canonical? Quite likely.

Does the Unity Dash send what you search for on the Dash to an internet server? Yes. It does a product search on Amazon for whatever you search for on the Dash.

Is this spyware? Depends on what definition you use, but it's probably a bit of a stretch to call it that. It's certainly a security issue, but the software involved is open source, so we know exactly what it does, and it can be turned off, though it really should be off by default.

Is it a reason not to use Ubuntu? Probably not. As I said above, it can be turned off, and, the software involved being open source, we can verify that it actually will turn off when asked. Furthermore, Unity is a steaming pile of crap interface-wise anyways, so many users will be using something like MATE or KDE anyways, making the whole issue moot for them.

I have a ton of issues with Ubuntu (and Canonical) on a bunch of different fronts. I think that if they are "spying" on people, it's probably just at an overall, "let's make our product better by watching what people do" kind of level. I have some faith in humanity. I could be wrong. However, that doesn't change the fact that the more people who switch away from Ubuntu is great. This hasn't changed in my mind since the day Ubuntu appeared on the distro scene. There's so many reasons why Ubuntu is bad for the community it's not even funny. Simple fact: 5 years ago I would ask a prospective hire if they new linux and linux admin... if they answered a decent "yes", then they were hired regardless of distro (Debian does rock!). Now, I ask the same question and they answer that they run Ubuntu, I know positively that they know absolutely nothing about linux and they don't get hired (proven consistently with follow up questions). Simple fact: Ubuntu is mis-thought-of as "Linux" (the only linux), "Gnome" (the only gnome... that they forked), that X is Gnome is Linux all equaling Ubuntu, etc (youtube if you don't believe). Simple fact: In their pursuit to make linux accessible to everybody they've managed to completely clobber some of the hard-won things that the OSS *NIX community has learned of the many years... examples: sudo, proprietary software distribution, facilitating and encouraging absolute and complete reliance on gui tools. The community, in masses, has not only gotten significantly crippled by this type of "endorsement", but these things are slowly migrating to other distros as well, perpetuating the problem. Simple fact: Canonical forks and doesn't contribute back. Simple fact: This is all Canonical's MO... from the beginning.

Do I think that Canonical could be up to no good? Yes. Do I think they probably are? No. Do I think, regardless, that everyone with half a brain needs to flee them regardless? Undoubted.

Wait, this was the ramblings area right? Oh good.

Well I guess I should stick with Linux (Version : 2.6 from kernel.org ), since I guess Ubuntu is too heavy and loaded with things like Unity which gets my PC heated up(It's a Pentium D) It's my choice and I'm pretty sure that Unity looks awesome and MANY people like it, but I don't want to load my PC with things that it can't properly handle. (Linux Mint would a good choice then).
@bwat
I don't think I need encryption anyways thanks for the script (I use Linux Compiled from Sources Version 2.6 for development)
Yeah, It's pretty sure that GNU is jealous because of Torvalds, They made GNU Hurd which was so-called replacement of the Proprietary UNIX, the problem is that whenever they start a project, they want to "replace" another product.
Like FreeBIOS : It was made to "replace" the proprietary firmware.
Hurd : "Replacement" of the non-free UNIX Systems.
And look what I found:
http://www.fsf.org/facebook
You know what they say? "Stop" being on facebook.
Plus the GNU/Linux isn't the correct way representing the Linux Operating System, You take some other guy's code,
add some programs,compilers,etc. and then called it GNU or Linux (GNU/Linux). I certainly can't understand that why
are they saying that you run a GNU system, in fact it should be corrected to "you are running a Linux System with GNU related programs."
Even Linus Torvalds says:

Well, I think it's justified, but it's justified if you actually make a GNU distribution of Linux ... the same way that I think that "Red Hat Linux" is fine, or "SuSE Linux" or "Debian Linux", because if you actually make your own distribution of Linux, you get to name the thing, but calling Linux in general "GNU/Linux" I think is just ridiculous

So the discussion is clear I guess.

nerdguy wrote: I don't think I need encryption anyways thanks for the script (I use Linux Compiled from Sources Version 2.6 for development)

What about the daemons and other processes that have superuser permissions that aren't in the kernel source tree? I've got 24 of those running on my machine right now.

Don't take me too seriously, I'm just playing devil's advocate. I only encrypt backups that end up on my mobile phone or on USB sticks as these are more likely to fall into the hands of others.

nerdguy wrote:Well I guess I should stick with Linux (Version : 2.6 from kernel.org )

When you're running an ancient kernel, you probably shouldn't make any assumptions of security (and consequently privacy). Or is there still some 2.6 branch that gets all security updates and you upgrade to it regularly?

Kevin wrote:Or is there still some 2.6 branch that gets all security updates and you upgrade to it regularly?

Version 2.6 from kernel.org may be ancient and unsupported (btw, this is LTS and even kernel.org says that it's still supported, although Mid-2014 (planned EOL) is really near) but you can look and RHEL5 and even RHEL6 (and their derivatives): they are based on 2.6 and it seems that they will be supported till ~2016. RHEL is rather secure thing, isn't it?

Note: I don't assume that nerdguy is using RHEL, I just wanted to say that kernel with 2.6 label may be not so ancient and insecure.

I don't usually get into the whole GNU discussion, but I really have nothing better to do at this time of night, so... here goes.

I don't know whether you can take the FSF's word for anything any more. Ten, twenty years ago, when the free and open source hacker revolution was in full force? Maybe. Now, when the main concerns in the wonderful world of information technology include government surveillance? Not so much. As the voice of the Free Software Foundation, rms is pretty much devoted to what boils down to "freedom"-inspired campaigns against anything that's not totally free and open source. It's part of the great paranoia that inspires him -- the same paranoia that causes him to read his emails through wget.

I don't mean to hate on him, but have you read his "eulogy" to Steve Jobs? It includes the line "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone." All because Jobs' products had different degrees of locked-in computing. And this is what his organization seems to support, or at the very least, does nothing to differentiate its own views from: the targetting of different individuals, organizations, and ideas because of a conflict in the idea of freedom.

rms is a tacky, paranoid old man. Not a hero of the hacker revolution. Just one of those people with a loud voice and a deep sense that the world is out to get him and his freedom. And that voice is the representative of the Free Software Foundation.

Nable wrote:Note: I don't assume that nerdguy is using RHEL, I just wanted to say that kernel with 2.6 label may be not so ancient and insecure.

Indeed, RHEL is an entirely different story. Even though the RHEL 5/6 kernels identify as 2.6.18 and and 2.6.32, they are actively maintained (and the downstream version number after the dash keeps increasing).

But he said he was running a self-compiled 2.6 kernel from kernel.org, and before that he also mentioned that he's running a LFS. So my assumption was (it may be wrong, though) that if he did do the work to compile a newer kernel, he'd probably have gone all the way to a recent 3.x kernel instead of compiling the stable branch of an old kernel.

Kazinsal wrote:rms is a tacky, paranoid old man. Not a hero of the hacker revolution. Just one of those people with a loud voice and a deep sense that the world is out to get him and his freedom. And that voice is the representative of the Free Software Foundation.

Last year he gave a speech at the university I attend. I really liked his ideas ‒ I could never live them, but I think it's good for all of us that he does and that he's as paranoid as he is. There aren't too few paranoid ideas which prove to have been true in the end. For instance, for the last ten years there were always new laws (in many western countries) against “terrorism” which some claimed could be used to spy on anyone and undermined the respective constitutions. This was pure paranoia. However, today, we see they were at least partly true.

I'm glad there is someone as RMS who is extremely paranoid and denounces every part in the system which can be unjustly used against people. Most of the time, this is just pedantic and doing everything his way would often be extremely impractical. I couldn't live his life. But I'm glad there is someone like him. We always need people with extreme positions to define the center. Torvalds is pretty much near the center and that's why we try to follow his ideals. But if RMS was gone, Torvalds would be the extreme and we would denounce him as being an idealist instead of RMS.

RMS will never be the center of (IT) society and probably nobody will ever see all his ideas as being useful for the actual world; he is just an idealist. And that's exactly why we need him.

EDIT: And don't forget what he's done in the past. He's responsible for GNU. In the very least, we owe him GCC. But the whole GNU project is responsible for the way Linux was able to go. Without GNU, Linux wouldn't be where it is today (even if we assume GNU not to be important for the standard Linux distribution today). Maybe there wouldn't be any free software at all.