There is no clear separation. When I do "quick searches" for private documents on my computer, I want to know that it is a search only on my computer. It's not in a "search online" lens, it's doing it in "search movies" and "search music". If you want to be data mined though, be my guest.

I do not help developers by offering to be spied upon, and at least then I would have a choice. The way it is now I have to do something proactive to protect myself. Simply moving to another distro is all that isn't *buntu.

You forgot the other ones. You need to remove the video and music lenses which pull info from YouTube, Google, and others, otherwise you will be querying those businesses even if you are just trying to search your own computer for content. It's a form of spyware.

Also having to remove crapware you don't want after you install something was an often-heard compaint about Windows. I'd rather not have it be on Linux now too.

Canonical: You're getting your morals turned around. Community should come before money. Forget what the spirit of Ubuntu was supposed to represent?

But your grandma got Linux because of you, and you shouldn't recommend spyware or adware to anyone.

Artificial scarcity. It is the backbone of the American economy as well as many other corporatist nations. Since you can't make money off free stuff, stores won't carry it. Even when selling hardware, if they can make more money selling restricted software along with it, they will. Before if you got a discount from buying a pre-built computer with crapware on it, at least you could wipe it all and install whatever you wanted. Now with “secure boot”, they can push control onto the software level and control the entire software stack if the wanted to. Don't like that Windows 8 Crapware Edition on there? Too bad, you're stuck with it, and the Crapware Edition won't allow you to remove the crapware on it either, plus it comes with adware and spyware (when you purchased this computer, you automatically opted-in to provide us with “information for marketing purposes”) pre-loaded which you also can't remove. I can also see this entire system pushing out build-it-yourself computers since the pre-built one offers more money. Even if some semblance of DIY hardware is still available, at the very least the pre-built systems will ultimately cost less because the hardware vendors will get a cut of the marketing and data mining profits.

I just figured I would share the future in advance with everyone so that the reality would set in sooner: Start supporting vendors which sell pre-built computers that aren't locked down as well as standardized DIY hardware. Also, start supporting home fabrication projects which will soon be able to create primitive computers, because ultimately unregulated capitalism will always find some way to fuck you otherwise. DIY hardware is already horribly unstandardized and consumer-raping. If you live in a country which is regulated so you feel you don't have to worry - just wait, you will. There is meaning behind the saying with the roots and the evil. No, not the recipe for making evil root beer.

I doubt the mega store chain thing will work since Intel, AMD, etc can simply give Walmart and others a bigger cut of the profits to keep the competition out, one of the bigger problems in the capitalistic world in many countries right now I think. I think Internet sales, smaller shops, and the fab@home movement perhaps might be the only way to get past all the anticompetitive roadblocks at this point, at least at first until things take off.

So...it's a CPU that uses an actual real standard for connecting to the rest of the motherboard/system?

Wow. Standards for freedom for end users, something the megacorps purposefully forget about. What a concept.

He got it 100% right, driver standards and more standards in general are very much needed. It's completely possible to make a powerful kernel and have support for a standardized and evolving and improving ABI/API that retains backwards compatibility. There is no proof that constantly breaking drivers is something which is needed in order to advance kernel code. Simply put, modularity on every level is needed for freedom, ease-of-use, and to avoid reinventing the wheel constantly (to make pieces of the stack re-usable without having to throw the entire stack away).

Computers aren't supposed to get you to the applications you want and let you get work and playing done! They're supposed to be time-sucking vampires from hell that make you throw them out windows.

Sillyface.

Yeah well Portage isn't cross-distro, and Zero Install is being de-coupled from GTK depedencies already.

With Zero Install you can install programs on any distro, making it the only package manager that is cross-distro-capable currently that I know of. This means it is the only current potential universal Linux packaging standard. I'm interested in seeing a distro made just from Zero Install packages. It is not just another package format. Also, this does not address the reason why distros don't integrate and make compatible their package managers with an actual standardized format. The reason they don't is because every distro company wants an Apple iStore. They want it proprietary, just like the old Unixes. This behavior is NOT pro-freedom and pro-standards.

Not being locked into one distro???? You're destroying the dreams of the distro company CEO's. STOP RUINING THEIR BUSINESS PLANS!

Seriously, someone take a hint: Linux is supposed to be free, and no one should be locked into a particular distro. If you release a piece of software, you need to make it EASY to install on ANY distro, which means using a software installation standard. What's that? None exists? Then use Zero Install because that's the closest one I know of since it can run on top of any and all distros.

is to make distros irrelevant by pushing devs to release cross-distro packages and push for cross-distro package formats so distros are only nice bundles to get up and going quickly and nothing else.

Yeah, god forbid a Linux desktop ever do as much as Windows or OS X can. I think KDE has come the closest out of all of them, depending on the distro, to being loaded with as many features, but they all still lack in critical areas. These are areas in which Windows is still, after decades, p0wning Linux.

The biggest problem is standardized Linux packaging. All these distros think it's lovely to keep users in their walled gardens, and it's extremely sad when Linux users don't mind. Sure, it's nice to have a cute little manager connect you to their walled garden, and some gardens contain a fairly big wealth of programs, but they are still gardens with walls. This leads to fragmentation due to the same programs being customized and fucked up in different ways instead of everyone being on the same page by downloading the default program from the developers directly. Great, now I have to look on *Fedora's* forums to figure out this Apache issue, or *Ubuntu's*, or *SUSE's*, etc, instead of being able to learn and rely upon real standards. Most importantly it leads to the inability for users to share programs directly, and instead they have to grovel and rely on their service-based repository while at the same time laughing at cloud OSes and saying they will never become reality. Guess what, Linux has been mostly a cloud OS because of walled garden reliance and a lack of packaging standards for a long time now. You only own your OS once you don't rely on a repository and your software is truly mobile and modular. Sure, you can make a server archive of all the packages, but only for a specific distro and specific version. Woohoo, great flexibility there, not.

Another area is driver management. I don't care of the solution is DKMS, making Linux have actual standardized ABIs for some/most/all driver module interfaces, or what, but the fact that there isn't an existing desktop solution there sucks. It's great when you never have to fuck with things, but that's true of all OSes, until you need to. Then what is the solution? Can users share drivers to get around issues? No, you're fucked unless you're a Linux geek, you're reliant on your distro and bring the problem to them instead of taking it to the actual developers directly.

Instead of helping Linux standards and working on the key problems, Linux users seem complacent to allow distros to put in proprietary solutions. They want to use proprietary leverage to get money instead of being good neighbors in the Linux communities and competing in fair ways while upholding user freedom. Sure, some of these companies have done some good things in different areas, but you can't ignore the bad just because of that.

Until Linux is free and no one has to rely on a single point of failure, a single dictator, a single source for their livelihood, and instead can help the world and Linux community as a whole grow by utilizing and helping with real standards so that software proliferates and helps instead of gets held back and controlled due to a lack of those standards, Linux won't ever be number one on the desktop.

Was to give Microsoft an excuse so they could proclaim that their systems followed standards and were cross-platform. Of course in reality, the standards are always only possible if you're using Windows, otherwise you get only partial functionality, which means it's not really a standard.