Canonical has just revealed some data collected by its operating system Ubuntu 18.04. It concerns the PC version of the Linux distribution.
During the development cycle of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver), Canonical announced the implementation of a new data collection tool. It was presented as a solution to help improve Ubuntu. Its arrival did not fail to create a polemic knowing that it took the form of a new home screen displayed only once after the start of the OS.
The nature of the data collected concerns several things. The tool recovers and transmits the version of Ubuntu, the user’s configuration, the type of network connectivity, the OEM that created the PC, the processor family used or the RAM present, the storage space and the definition. This collection goes further since the location of the machine is also affected depending on the options chosen during installation.
All this would be necessary for Canonical to better understand the needs of its users. We would be on some sort of need to make Ubuntu faster and more efficient. This argument is known since it was used by Microsoft to justify the transformation of Windows. This OS is now a platform to monitor the user through an advertising identification.
Canonical is aware that this rapprochement is inevitable so it was announced that these data collected by Ubuntu would be made public.
Ubuntu 18.04 and telemetry, assessment
We are thus witnessing the first publication of telemetry from Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver).
Will Cooke, head of Ubuntu’s office branch, says
“This data is based on the time zone selected during installation and not on the IP address geocoding. We do not store IP addresses. The United States has the highest concentration of Ubuntu users, but this could be distorted by users using default values. China and Russia are also major users of Ubuntu. We have users all over the world in all countries”.
The average time required to install Ubuntu Desktop is 18 minutes. Ubuntu 18.04 LTS was an upgrade from a previous version in 25% of cases and 15% of users used the new minimum installation option.
As far as hardware configurations are concerned, most PCs use a single processor with no specified number of cores. It usually comes with a single graphics solution and 4 or 8 GB of RAM. The most popular definition is Full HD either 1080P or 1920 x 1080 pixels.
Canonical said that all this information is completely anonymous. They will be available on a public website in the coming months. This approach is associated with the development of Ubuntu 18.10 (Cosmic Seichefish). This new version is scheduled for October 18, 2018.