Canonical Begins Tracking Ubuntu Installations

Canonical Begins Tracking Ubuntu Installations
[Phoronix] Canonical Begins Tracking Ubuntu Installations

Welcome crap/bloat-ware to the linux front. Now we'll have to write clean-install guides for linux Seriously, though, uncool...

 

Ubuntu's always been the fat and easy chick at the Linux ball. Start with Ubuntu when you don't know what you're doing but want to try something new, but once you look under the hood you realize you need to gtfo and find a better OS/interface

flame war, begin!

 

I've done gentoo and LFS and ran both for some time. I use Ubuntu because it's good, not because it's easy. Under the hood, it's all the same thing anyways. the interface is similar to most interfaces. Stop trying to intentionally start a flame war, though, thanks.

 

Heh, not exactly trying to start a flame war, just expecting someone to get riled up that I called Ubuntu a fat and easy chick.
The GUI is just Gnome, so the interface and apps will look the same, and the kernel is basically the same wherever you go. I'm just not a fan of some of the package and application choices Ubuntu tacks on in favor of uber-compatibility and the presumption that we all like the same things. I get the unwillingness of Canonical to include codecs to avoid licensing shenanigans, but I wish there were a true Medibuntu spin, as well as the option during install to opt-in/out of various application installs instead of doing it manually later. Then again, I'm mostly describing Mint, to some extent.

Anyway, to get back on topic, it looks like it's just for OEM installs, probably at the request of the OEM for sales figures. The sum total of the clean install guide is just an apt-get remove [pinger], although there's a crap ton of stuff that just about every Ubuntu user ends up installing/customizing, as mentioned above.

 

Ubuntu 10.10 will have a new installer that will automatically install codecs and such on request, actually.

 

o rly? That's a bit of welcome news. I should probably go look up what's planned for Maverick before I keep ragging on Ubuntu.

 

Who's going to sue them if they (Ubuntu/Mint, etc) is not selling the codecs?

 

OP, did you even read the article you linked? Canonical is planning to do this for OEM installations only. Except for a small minority, nobody uses these OEM versions anyway... And if you purchase a PC with Ubuntu preinstalled, you can simply download (a non-OEM version) from ubuntu.com and reinstall.

No need for clean-install guides or the like (unless you consider my post a clean-install guide).

 

Yes, I've read it... That's why I said that vendors will start adding crapware on their linux preinstalled machines as they did in Windows. I know I always wipe my drives clean, but it shouldn't really be that way if you buy something brand new.

 

Well at least with Linux you can write a shell script to get rid of the crapware ...

 

hehe....that's the truth....

 

There are upsides to that, too. Consumer PCs that ship with Ubuntu cost about the same as consumer PCs shipping with Windows. In part, that's due to the fact that manufacturers install "bloatware" on Windows boxes but not on Linux boxes.

Given how painless reinstallations of Linux are on machines which ship with Linux preinstalled (since they tend to use compatible hardware), I wouldn't mind purchasing a bloatware-loaded Linux system if it means $50-80 lower price.