I think this new effort is related to Microsoft buying them out and having a more open policy to other marketplaces than the Blizzard of yesteryears.
I'd be really happy to see more Blizzard games on Steam, despite their horrible policy with their failed remasters. If I could play StarCraft 2 from Steam I would buy the whole thing.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: StalePopcornWow. I played that on my first comp— a Mac Performa 630CD— umpteen years ago!

Played this one on my PowerMac 7200/90, so many great memories with all the additional maps and stuff!

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: m2mg2

Quoting: omer666

Quoting: m2mg2

Quoting: omer666

Quoting: m2mg2

Quoting: omer666I think privacy advocacy may be going a little over the top on this subject. I'm all for it, I use a zero-access email provider, do my searches on Duckduckgo, have a LineageOS smartphone without Google services and so on, and yet I don't mind them collecting technical data. It's much less complete than Steam hardware survey and yet I'd bet every Linux gamer will gladly answer this one because they want to improve the system's visibility for game developers. Here the devs want to improve the system, but nope, no sir, this is bad and all.

Can you name anything that improved leaps and bounds after starting to collect telemetry? Gnome does telemetry but they continuously ignore the obvious will of users to do what they want instead. It's less about needing telemetry and more about following the industry trends of collecting data and IGNORING what users want in favor of what developers and platform owners want. The proponents of this over and over acknowledge they can't make it opt-in because users wont opt-in. They can't force an explicit choice because the choice will be no and they know it. This right here says it all. They should just not do it. They are already ignoring users in favor of what they want, you think they are going to completely flip and suddenly start doing things in the interest of the users? Nonsense.

They also make the arguments that users don't care, also total nonsense. Telemetry has been getting forced on users for years against their will. They are so bombarded it would take unrealistic effort to stop it so they submit, effectively by force. Then you guys turn around and say they don't care. They have never been given a choice, except in Linux and now people are trying to take that choice away as well. If you want to collect it, make people want to give it to you. If you can't do that, don't take it. Don't trick them, take via it attrition (bombarding them until they make a mistake by accident) and dark patterns. Be better, be ethical.

Well I am not using Linux just because of privacy, but also for technical reasons, so that's a different case altogether.

I never heard of GNOME using telemetry, but I have a pretty unpopular opinion about how they've been handling user requests since GNOME 3.0... I am glad they haven't listened :grin:

Pretty sure it's opt in, unlike the current proposal but I don't use Gnome and I find Gnome 3 to be an abomination. https://gitlab.gnome.org/vstanek/gnome-info-collect/#fedora [External Link]

I am fine with different people having different tastes :wink:
Following the link you provided, it seems it's never been used and it's not even in the official repos of the distros quoted (apart from Arch)

https://blogs.gnome.org/aday/2023/01/18/gnome-info-collect-what-we-learned/ [External Link]

Reading the paragraph about Research Limitations, we can observe that's a far cry from the idea of hidden/forced telemetry. But that's been put to use indeed.
Also in the same paragraph they explain how having such a limited and specific public opting in may have rendered the results quite irrelevant...

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: m2mg2

Quoting: omer666

Quoting: m2mg2

Quoting: omer666

Quoting: m2mg2 
"Firefox, Chrome, Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, Edge, Windows, IOS, Android, etc. already are collecting this type of data by default."

This quote is from the opt-in opt-out thread. People want Linux to be just like Windows. We use it because it's not Windows. Please, don't make it Windows. Then those of us that care about what Linux is/was, will have to go to BSD.... and we will. Not that the ones who take it over will care.

I don't understand why you think people wanting more freedom will go to an OS which is more closed-source friendly, but why not...

OpenBSD is not closed source friendly.

They still prefer the BSD licence, so I don't see how it is any different from other BSDs in that respect (maybe you can educate me on that subject, I am not that well aware of the differences in the BSD ecosystem)

My understanding of the BSD license and I'm no expert either is that is even freer than GPL. GPL has restrictions on how you can use the code. BSD is basically do whatever you want with it. These are license issues and have nothing to do with operating system functionality, how free it is or how respectful of it's users it is.

I thought I read somewhere that due to its licensing, the FreeBSD kernel could integrate some non-free code, but I may be mistaken...

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: m2mg2

Quoting: omer666

Quoting: m2mg2

Quoting: omer666I think privacy advocacy may be going a little over the top on this subject. I'm all for it, I use a zero-access email provider, do my searches on Duckduckgo, have a LineageOS smartphone without Google services and so on, and yet I don't mind them collecting technical data. It's much less complete than Steam hardware survey and yet I'd bet every Linux gamer will gladly answer this one because they want to improve the system's visibility for game developers. Here the devs want to improve the system, but nope, no sir, this is bad and all.

Can you name anything that improved leaps and bounds after starting to collect telemetry? Gnome does telemetry but they continuously ignore the obvious will of users to do what they want instead. It's less about needing telemetry and more about following the industry trends of collecting data and IGNORING what users want in favor of what developers and platform owners want. The proponents of this over and over acknowledge they can't make it opt-in because users wont opt-in. They can't force an explicit choice because the choice will be no and they know it. This right here says it all. They should just not do it. They are already ignoring users in favor of what they want, you think they are going to completely flip and suddenly start doing things in the interest of the users? Nonsense.

They also make the arguments that users don't care, also total nonsense. Telemetry has been getting forced on users for years against their will. They are so bombarded it would take unrealistic effort to stop it so they submit, effectively by force. Then you guys turn around and say they don't care. They have never been given a choice, except in Linux and now people are trying to take that choice away as well. If you want to collect it, make people want to give it to you. If you can't do that, don't take it. Don't trick them, take via it attrition (bombarding them until they make a mistake by accident) and dark patterns. Be better, be ethical.

Well I am not using Linux just because of privacy, but also for technical reasons, so that's a different case altogether.

I never heard of GNOME using telemetry, but I have a pretty unpopular opinion about how they've been handling user requests since GNOME 3.0... I am glad they haven't listened :grin:

Pretty sure it's opt in, unlike the current proposal but I don't use Gnome and I find Gnome 3 to be an abomination. https://gitlab.gnome.org/vstanek/gnome-info-collect/#fedora [External Link]

I am fine with different people having different tastes :wink:
Following the link you provided, it seems it's never been used and it's not even in the official repos of the distros quoted (apart from Arch)

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: m2mg2

Quoting: omer666

Quoting: m2mg2 
"Firefox, Chrome, Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, Edge, Windows, IOS, Android, etc. already are collecting this type of data by default."

This quote is from the opt-in opt-out thread. People want Linux to be just like Windows. We use it because it's not Windows. Please, don't make it Windows. Then those of us that care about what Linux is/was, will have to go to BSD.... and we will. Not that the ones who take it over will care.

I don't understand why you think people wanting more freedom will go to an OS which is more closed-source friendly, but why not...

OpenBSD is not closed source friendly.

They still prefer the BSD licence, so I don't see how it is any different from other BSDs in that respect (maybe you can educate me on that subject, I am not that well aware of the differences in the BSD ecosystem)

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: m2mg2 
"Firefox, Chrome, Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, Edge, Windows, IOS, Android, etc. already are collecting this type of data by default."

This quote is from the opt-in opt-out thread. People want Linux to be just like Windows. We use it because it's not Windows. Please, don't make it Windows. Then those of us that care about what Linux is/was, will have to go to BSD.... and we will. Not that the ones who take it over will care.

I don't understand why you think people wanting more freedom will go to an OS which is more closed-source friendly, but why not...

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Valck

Quoting: omer666I think privacy advocacy may be going a little over the top on this subject. I'm all for it, I use a zero-access email provider, do my searches on Duckduckgo, have a LineageOS smartphone without Google services and so on, and yet I don't mind them collecting technical data. It's much less complete than Steam hardware survey and yet I'd bet every Linux gamer will gladly answer this one because they want to improve the system's visibility for game developers. Here the devs want to improve the system, but nope, no sir, this is bad and all.

I too use DDG, and I don't have a "smart" phone to begin with, but I admittedly do use Steam to play games that are not available in physical form, or digitally elsewhere, yet I balk every time I have to launch it.
And I do, did, and will reject every invitation to the Steam Survey I am presented with.
I wouldn't bet that there are many others out there that do the same, but you just lost your bet. Awaiting the money... ;)
But seriously, even if something looks like a "sure bet" it's not necessarily true.

Steam already has more than enough data about me than I'd like them to have, and IMO every new iteration of the client makes it even less appealing – the latest brilliant feature is to open a separate window with a prompt to inform me that I'm not signed into their chat system; well guess what, I'm not signed into their chat system for a reason, thank you very much, yet on each and every launch of the Steam client, that window pops up again and needs to be dismissed.
I somehow doubt that having more data would change its direction in the slightest.

And while none of that was specifically about Fedora and its flavour of "telemetry", it all applies just the same, as the comment about the Gnome devs perfectly illustrates. And Fedora the Linux distribution is so much more encompassing than just Gnome the desktop environment.
"Telemetry" certainly is not about aiding the users and improving their experience.

I always lose at bets, that's awful :happy:

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: m2mg2

Quoting: omer666I think privacy advocacy may be going a little over the top on this subject. I'm all for it, I use a zero-access email provider, do my searches on Duckduckgo, have a LineageOS smartphone without Google services and so on, and yet I don't mind them collecting technical data. It's much less complete than Steam hardware survey and yet I'd bet every Linux gamer will gladly answer this one because they want to improve the system's visibility for game developers. Here the devs want to improve the system, but nope, no sir, this is bad and all.

Can you name anything that improved leaps and bounds after starting to collect telemetry? Gnome does telemetry but they continuously ignore the obvious will of users to do what they want instead. It's less about needing telemetry and more about following the industry trends of collecting data and IGNORING what users want in favor of what developers and platform owners want. The proponents of this over and over acknowledge they can't make it opt-in because users wont opt-in. They can't force an explicit choice because the choice will be no and they know it. This right here says it all. They should just not do it. They are already ignoring users in favor of what they want, you think they are going to completely flip and suddenly start doing things in the interest of the users? Nonsense.

They also make the arguments that users don't care, also total nonsense. Telemetry has been getting forced on users for years against their will. They are so bombarded it would take unrealistic effort to stop it so they submit, effectively by force. Then you guys turn around and say they don't care. They have never been given a choice, except in Linux and now people are trying to take that choice away as well. If you want to collect it, make people want to give it to you. If you can't do that, don't take it. Don't trick them, take via it attrition (bombarding them until they make a mistake by accident) and dark patterns. Be better, be ethical.

Well I am not using Linux just because of privacy, but also for technical reasons, so that's a different case altogether.

I never heard of GNOME using telemetry, but I have a pretty unpopular opinion about how they've been handling user requests since GNOME 3.0... I am glad they haven't listened :grin:

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I think privacy advocacy may be going a little over the top on this subject. I'm all for it, I use a zero-access email provider, do my searches on Duckduckgo, have a LineageOS smartphone without Google services and so on, and yet I don't mind them collecting technical data. It's much less complete than Steam hardware survey and yet I'd bet every Linux gamer will gladly answer this one because they want to improve the system's visibility for game developers. Here the devs want to improve the system, but nope, no sir, this is bad and all.

View this comment - View article - View full comments