Ah yes, you need telemetry to help you compile kernels and draw a theme.
Please keep your flaccid attempts at sarcasm to a minimum. Thanks.
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No you need Telemetry to make the right choices.
No you need Telemetry to feed issues back upstream
No you need Telemetry to help with prioritorising hardware testing. This is especially important for small teams, as the finances required to purchase a wide range of Hardware is not there.
No you need Telemetry to prove to potential partners/supporters why they should be partners/supporters, which improves your financial position, making it viable to pay more people to get stuff done, and to test a greater range of hardware.
A Project or business needs information in order to grow, to improve their product.
I’ve mentioned it before. But it bares saying again. If you don’t trust the Developers, why are you even using the distro?
and lastly simplifying the building of a distro to simply building a kernel and applying a few themes is incredibly insulting, and demonstrates a lack of respect for those developers. respect the Telemetry nay sayers claim is owed to them, but who seem unwilling to reciprocate.
This is the Full KDE Telemetry on my machine.
{
"applicationVersion": {
"data": {
"value": "6.1.5"
},
"description": "The version of the application.",
"telemetryMode": "BasicSystemInformation"
},
"compiler": {
"data": {
"type": "GCC",
"version": "14.2"
},
"description": "The compiler used to build this application.",
"telemetryMode": "BasicSystemInformation"
},
"opengl": {
"data": {
"glslVersion": "4.20",
"profile": "compat",
"renderer": "HD Graphics",
"type": "GL",
"vendor": "Intel",
"vendorVersion": "Mesa 24.2.4-arch1.0.1",
"version": "4.2"
},
"description": "Information about type, version and vendor of the OpenGL stack.",
"telemetryMode": "DetailedSystemInformation"
},
"panelCount": {
"data": {
"panelCount": 4
},
"description": "Counts the panels",
"telemetryMode": "DetailedSystemInformation"
},
"platform": {
"data": {
"os": "linux",
"version": "manjaro"
},
"description": "Type and version of the operating system.",
"telemetryMode": "BasicSystemInformation"
},
"qpa": {
"data": {
"name": "wayland"
},
"description": "The Qt platform abstraction plugin.",
"telemetryMode": "BasicSystemInformation"
},
"qtVersion": {
"data": {
"value": "6.7.2"
},
"description": "The Qt version used by this application.",
"telemetryMode": "BasicSystemInformation"
},
"screens": {
"data": [
{
"devicePixelRatio": 1,
"dpi": 118,
"height": 904,
"width": 1607
}
],
"description": "Size and resolution of all connected screens.",
"telemetryMode": "DetailedSystemInformation"
},
"usageTime": {
"data": {
"value": 2330146
},
"description": "The total amount of time the application has been used.",
"telemetryMode": "BasicUsageStatistics"
}
}
It’s actually not all that useful, as I believe at least one KDE Developer has pointed out. It is also doesn’t assist in identifying me. Anything less than this, which is an option, is even less useful.
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Very good point there! (And a big factor in why I, and likely many others, don’t use Windows).
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Now, there’s usually a huge difference between trusting the developers and trusting management decisions when we speak of our friends in Redmond. 
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Yes, she did, and she’s not the only one. You will see several more members carrying the Manjaro Green™ shield on their avatar in the next couple of days. 
If you were actually using Manjaro, then you wouldn’t have needed to ask. Your package manager can tell you exactly which packages are built by Manjaro developers and which ones come straight from Arch.
For that matter, some of the Manjaro developers are also involved in developing — not just compiling — upstream projects which are also used by other distributions. One of these projects is the calamares installer.
Both macOS and Microsoft Windows have something even far more insidious than telemetry, which in and of itself also makes use of telemetry, namely backdoors.
Both Apple and Microsoft effectively have remote root/administrator access to the user’s system, because they can both remotely force an upgrade on you without your consent, and even without that you have the option to decline.
Furthermore, Microsoft’s backdoor also allows them to remove software from your computer — and not just Microsoft software! — without your consent if Microsoft deems that software to have been installed illegally or against Microsoft’s company policy.
The above has all been documented and has also already been publicly known about for about a decade among IT professionals.
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I’ve had that happen and these were specifically tools I was using to repair M$ systems at the time. Had to put said tools on read-only media. McCrappee™ and Snort-on™ … I’ll never need to deal with those again, with any luck! Also that one which (was, guess still is?) included with windows … Defender?
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There’s a big difference between trusting that the developers have genuinely good intentions and also knowing that they might be caught up in Moloch.
Moloch is a game theory monster that pits people against each other in a race to the bottom where everybody ultimately loses.
Moloch is a race that’ll probably kill us, but that we can’t help but run.
Everybody is running the telemetry race now, and they can’t help but run it, because there are “reasons” why they “need” it. It pays off, until it doesn’t
It’s the same with AI. Companies are building ever stronger AI models, which might ultimately lead to our end one day, but they can’t stop themselves from developing better AI, because if they did, they would fall behind.
The reasons have been explained — multiple times now — and if these reasons are going to be considered so unacceptable by everyone, then I doubt whether anything we say or do will make any difference anymore.
Also, the consensus so far appears to be that mdd will be made opt-in. Even if it comes installed by default, then this still does not mean that it would also automatically be switched on by default as well — akin to kuserfeedback, which is an intrinsic component of the Plasma desktop environment, and yet is switched off by default.
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In this case, though, we are being openly consulted on what that telemetry is for, and why it might be useful. Nothing is being hidden; I don’t expect any changes in that respect if any updates are made to the tool(s) used.
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Since that applies, regardless of Telemetry, the question of why people with these weird trust issues are using Manjaro remains.
The statement above still says “I/we can’t trust the integrity of the Manjaro Devs”.
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If you studied your history you would be aware that Moloch was a Phoenician deity that required human sacrifice.
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Looks like we have a new slippery slope argument against mdd:
Mark my words, the implementation of system telemetry will eventually lead to child sacrifice! Won’t somebody please think of the children?
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I suppose the next argument will be that MDD will be transmitting information about how many children are in the household. You know, so those households will be targeted first.
[I really shouldn’t add any more fuel to the runaway paranoia here, should I?]
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No, best not.
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… to shape-shifting baby-eating reptilian communist satanists of the 137th dimension, over in the Andromeda Galaxy…
Formfitting high-quality tin foil hats available by the entrance. Buy now and you’ll get a second one for free!
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Careful with this line of thought … we’re going to start losing the Opt-in voters pretty soon.
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Install counting due to licensing
Lets take the telemetry out of this example and just focus on install-counting.
Therefore we use the Cloud-based OS called FydeOS. It is based off of ChromeOS and has some Android and Linux aspects to it. You have a proprietary version and a FOSS version of the OS. We will focus on the commercial version with this example. The OS has its usage terms and privacy policy. To use the OS you either need to create an fyde account or use the google account. So you can say that some tracking and telemetry might be involved. However, we just focus on install counts.
When we use the basic OS it is kinda free-ish. Complimentary for maintenance updates within a milestone version; optionally chargeable at £2.49 for major updates across milestone versions. Else you can pay £12.99/year to get one personal license. Those who want to know more about privacy settings can go here. Basically it is a Chrome Web Browser with some apps around it.
When we look from an Enterprise you bought some subscriptions or licenses with their pricing and your IT department will manage the devices.
So you have registered with Fyde and have either a Google Account or the Fyde Account linked to your installation. As a private person you pay £12.99/year per device. If you are a business the fee per device is £14.99/year or higher, depending on the subscription model.
That you get counted with your installation is in this case clear. Fyde needs to match the subscription model you or your company has bought and make sure you can only use as many installations you have bought licenses from them.
The terms are clear, also their privacy policies, as you saw them on their website and within their installation routine.
Package Stores
Another example would be the packaging format snap. I was once at the Snapcraft Summit in Vancouver Canada when Canonical invited me. There I met with a lot of snap developers and was even able to implement snap into Manjaro Linux during that summit. The distribution format has its own documentation for users and developers. Since only Canonical is maintaining the store it is easy for their publishers to see the provided Store Metrics per application a publisher distributes via the store. So the publisher can review the distributed versions of their applications, the regions the applications are used and on which OS they are installed. For users only a graph without numbers is displayed, however you can see how popular each distribution per application may be. Examples: LXD, Chromium. However, not many share the public metrics on the store.
Since that is built-in to the package management, snapd will always phone home to Canonical, even you have no snap packages installed. Also it is hard to turn those functions off, unless you remove snapd from your system. More about that in this blog post: Disabling snap Autorefresh - Alan Pope's blog
So regardless if it is a proprietary product, you agreed to an EULA or a packaging system like snaps, the user might need to know what data gets collected and sent.
That is why we are crystal clear on our data, we may want to collect. The initial tests showed that some interesting results had happen, with even that small data-set. So we still have to secure the server side and find a secure and meaningful distribution way of MDD. Therefore we are in this open discussion with our user community to see what their initial feedback about this topic is.
It still needs time to process the given feedback and plan our next steps regarding that.
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Off topic:
I seem to recall that decapitation was the name of the game.
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