To be fair, Fedora has opt-in telemetry. It’s 100% anonymized, though, and helps with development. I always say yes when I’m running a beta (like now).

That having been said, you should always check the privacy policies of any given distro. They tend to all be pretty up front about it (kinda hard to lie about it when anyone can check your source code…).

AFAIK, though, neither Mint nor Elementary collect telemetry by default, although they might have opt-in like Fedora. Both are based on Ubuntu LTS, but they also both scrape out so much stuff that they’re devoid of most of the Canonical junk.

TL;DR: Don’t lay this one on me, buddy. You walked in here looking for a fight.

I didn’t much care for the direction you started in. If you wanted an actual discussion, then opening with hostility and claims that could be refuted if you’d bothered with less than a minute of research is the wrong way to go.

If you want a civilized discussion, you have to start with a civilized post. My responses have been no more hostile than your opening salvo.

As it happens, Google’s influence over Mozilla is of massive concern to me. And I agree that the change was not needed. But it’s not obscure, it’s not hard to find out how to do what you wanted to do, and your hostility to responses suggesting DuckDuckGo only confirmed my suspicion that you didn’t want an answer, you wanted a fight.

So I gave you one.

Here’s the deal. If you walk into a place with guns blazing, you don’t get to act all surprised and indignant when someone fires back.

Maybe. But even if that was the case, the way it is now isn’t obfuscated. It’s not difficult. It’s not hard to find out how to do it. You made a big long post to complain about an “obfuscated” feature that I found in under a minute.

Next time, either do a search or ask for help, instead of whinging like a n00b. Or worse, some kind of Google FUD-spreading parasite.

FFS, Jesus Wept. I finally understand those blokes over at FreeBSD telling me to RTFM twenty years ago.

Edit: Apparently, the synonym for complain I used before was offensive. It was not the “B” word, which I only use in reference to female dogs. Just wanted that to be clear.

What are you talking about?

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-or-remove-search-engine-firefox#w_add-a-search-engine-from-the-address-bar

That took me like two second to find. You can also use addons, like this one for Qwant:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/qwantcom-for-firefox/?utm_source=addons.mozilla.org&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=search

Which I like. But none of this is hard or “obfuscated”, and it’s literally identical to changing or adding a new search engine on Waterfox.

I have a lot of issues with Mozilla, not least of which is their reliance on Google for income. It’s like hiring a dingo as a babysitter. But c’mon, man.

I personally can’t stand those neon icon themes, but this looks like a lot of care and work went into it! It’s always fun to see stuff that makes fellow Gnomies happy.

Oh, no dude, it’s not kind of weird…

It’s fucking creepy and bizarre culty shit. And that’s coming from someone who grew up doing it.

This seems awesome and all, but I can’t install any of the add-on on my Firefox Beta. The add-on site says I need a newer version of Firefox.

“It has a cool default theme for Gnome, and there’s a colored bash prompt.”

The “cool default theme” in Fedora is the default Gnome theme. There isn’t a “colored bash prompt.” Fedora is a major distribution on par with stuff like Arch and Debian, so news about Fedora is news about linux.

Love Fedora, hate Fedora, I couldn’t care less. But at least do a little research.

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During the initial startup, you’re asked if you want to share telemetry. I honestly can’t remember if it’s default on or off, but you can’t miss it.

Oh, I agree it’s a leap. It’s just slightly less of a leap than complaining about the NSA. I’m not saying you’re wrong about the knee-jerk reaction some Americans have to Chinese tech and China in general.

It’s just that the sputtering nonsense makes very slightly more sense after you mentioned the ban in the original post. You opened a crack in the door, is what I’m saying, and if an American Jingoist Asshat can get his head in the crack, he’s gonna get all the way in.

Well, it doesn’t really, except that you mentioned the US trade ban, which brings the reason for the US trade ban into the topic at least tangentially.

I do. I’m with you on that. But it makes marginally more sense that bringing up the NSA would.

Oh, I care about Five (Seven, Nine) Eyes every bit as much as I care about China, I assure you. But in a thread about a Chinese company’s new tech, it would be a bit weird to complain about NSA data mining. Kinda off topic, if you see what I mean.

Here’s the thing, YouTube. When you first started running ads, I didn’t really mind. They were short, there weren’t that many, and if they were particularly annoying or repetitive, there was a skip button. I respected that you needed to make money and that you wanted to pay the content creators, and you respected my time.

But then you decided to flood the fucking platform and cut the revenue share with the creators. Without adblock, I can’t watch a 5 minute video without 5 minutes of ads. You’re trying to force me into paying for your premium service by annoying me to death.

Which I might do if I thought the people whose videos I actually like got a decent share of the revenue. But they don’t. Hell, at least one of my favorite YouTubers is regularly demonetized, so they wouldn’t see a penny.

So, YouTube, I’ll keep blocking ads and use services like Patreon to support my favorite YouTube folks the best I can. And if you won’t let me use adblock? Well, I guess I have to find some other way to occupy that hour or so a week I use your service, because I’m sure as shit not using half of it to watch ads that don’t benefit the people whose videos I enjoy.

ETA: this post contains hyperbole (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hyperbole ).

Traditional with an actual mouse, natural on my track pad. On the track pad, traditional feels super weird.

That’s actually the beginning of the Armed Services oath you take when you join the military here.

But yes, kids do still say the Pledge of Allegiance in schools. That’s hand on the heart, not raised right hand though. And it also sucks.

Me to, brother.

I raised my right hand and swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

That wasn’t my best decision ever, and I kinda knew it while I was doing it.

I feel like the response may be as much to your open hostility as it is to your point.

It’s a point I agree with, before you blast me - I remember reading the mozilla should unfck itself article a while back and nodding along while I read it. And while I use Firefox (or a derivative) every day because it’s part of my feeble stand against Google’s browser engine monopoly, it definitely needs to unfck itself.