Down with Canonical - Boycott Ubuntu Spyware

Kia ora koutou

The writing's been on the wall for Ubuntu since they made Unity the
default UI. I don't mind it myself, but that's because my main PC is
the kind of tiny laptop for which it was designed, and perhaps because
I voluntarily installed the "Netbook Remix" rather than having Unity
foisted on me unawares. That decision annoyed a lot of loyal users.

Then there was UbuntuOne, which broke the Ubuntu promise by including
a proprietary server-side package, and which they bundled with the OS,
giving people the reasonable expectation it was all free code:
http://www.coactivate.org/projects/disintermedia/blog/2012/09/28/ubuntu-one-breaks-the-ubuntu-promise/

The final nail for me is the bundling of the Amazon spyware in the
standard distro.
http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/ubuntu-spyware-what-to-do

This is unforgivably Microsoftish. I'm removing Ubuntu from all my
machines, and researching alternatives to recommend to anyone I've
ever helped migrate to Ubuntu. At the moment I'm using Debian stable,
which reminds me of Ubuntu circa 2009/10. Peppermint is nice if you
want a cute, lightweight (LXDE) distro just for doing internet stuff.
I've been offered help building a custom linux using Arch (watch this
space).

I will not even consider using or endorsing Ubuntu again until
Canonical hands over control of the Ubuntu trademarks to the
Foundation, and all nasty proprietary tie-ins and spyware are removed.
There are many, many alternatives, let's use them. I'll be interested
to see though, if resellers like ZaReason keep selling their gear with
Ubuntu as the default OS.

Ma te wā
Strypey

-- 
Danyl Strype
Community Developer
Disintermedia.net.nz/strype

"Geeks are those who partake in our culture."
- .ISOcrates

"Uncomfortable alliances are not just necessary; they reflect and
speak to the tremendous possibility of our political moment."
- Harmony Goldberg and Joshua Kahn Russell
http://www.nationofchange.org/new-radical-alliances-new-era-1337004193

"Both Marxists and Chicago-school libertarian economists can agree
that free software is the best model."
- Keith C Curtis
http://keithcu.com/wordpress/?page_id=407

_______________________________________________
DunLUG mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.ethernal.org/listinfo/dunlug
DunLUG Wiki - http://dunlug.kallisti.net.nz/