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Comment by peter422 | Hacker News Reader

I recently installed Windows on my machine and in attempting to download chrome and make Google the default search engine, the OS tried to persuade me not to do it at least 2-3 different ways.

I think we can and should be upset at these deals but Google is not the only person pushing their own stuff.

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GNU and GNU/Linux are the only systems which respect user privacy and freedoms, this is a classic and practical precedent where adherence to ideology and principles (of commons) clearly demonstrate a resistance to crony capitalism (of big tech, et al). Society, in general, should start moving away from proprietary systems to Linux distros like Debian, Ubuntu, etc. and this change should start from the OEM or manufacturers themselves.

Please don't forget that there are other, non GNU, operating systems which respect user privacy and choice. The first examples that come to mind are OpenBSD and FreeBSD.

But sadly, the permissive ones don't have this ideological defense mechanism built into them. That's why Apple was able to eat FreeBSD for a lunch.

But there are few exceptions where permissive projects can also sustain and defend themselves provided they're people powered and well organized. Apache Foundation is a great example here. Despite being permissively licensed, they're able to build projects and products with meritocracy which is apparently untainted by big tech influence so far.

Mozilla is a another example though their acceptance of Google's royalty is an influence of taint which is pretty much visible in their end product, Firefox.

FreeBSD is not worse because Apple used some of its code.

Lets put it this way, in an alternative universe where Linux did not happen, after BSD had won the lawsuit against AT&T, there would be UNIX as usual with everyone taking the bit and pieces they liked from BSD into their own UNIXes.

To be honest I wouldn't mind, I always liked SGI, Solaris, HP-UX and Aix better than plain GNU/Linux.

Ubuntu literally feeds you adverts from Amazon.

Sure you can opt out, but that’s not respecting user’s privacy.

Fork it, or use somebody else’s fork. And wasn’t that years ago? Didn’t they stop?

There’s a bunch of Ubuntu forks, I think.

OP just mentioned Ubuntu specifically when making a case for software that respects privacy

They're also obsessed with pushing Snaps down the user's throat these days. The height of their attitude happened when they made firefox available ONLY as a Snap package and took it out of Ubuntu APT repository entirely! That's when I decided to bid them farewell and test out Debian and Mint which are still untainted by Snaps/Flatpaks.

This feature has been opt-in since 2016.[0]

[0] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/ubunt...

That's Canonical's problem.

The creators and maintainers of Ubuntu

Its not all Linux. The *BSDs are also quite respectful of your privacy.

I fear that it only works out the way it does because overall the distributions are still fairly small. Ubuntu has tried inserting such spyware in the past and if user bases grow enough, the temptation to give in and profit may become too large to ignore.

99.99% of the development of open source distros is done by mega-corps. IBM, Oracle, Google, etc. all have complete control of the Linux ecosystem. The only difference is that they have to play nice with each other, not with you, the user. You also get the worst possible experience because they have no incentive to make the desktop experience better.

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