Canonical's Ubuntu Desktop division manager Will Cooke announced yesterday that the company wants to implement some kind of data collection mechanism in future versions of Ubuntu Linux to improve features that matter most to users.
The information will be managed by Canonical's Ubuntu Desktop engineers and is needed to improve certain features of the operating system, such as user settings, installed software, Ubuntu flavor and version, network connectivity, CPU family, RAM, and OEM build.
Additionally, the company says it will need to know your location, but promises not to store users’ IP addresses.
Other information that will be collected includes total installation time, auto-login information, selected disk layout, whether LivePatch is enabled, and whether you choose to install updates or third-party software during installation.
Canonical says it plans to implement the new data collection option from the installer via a checkbox called “Send diagnostic information to improve Ubuntu,” which will be enabled by default.
Of course, you can disable this during installation if you don't want to give your data to Canonical.
Canonical said that all data collected by the installation will be sent securely to a service managed by Canonical's IS team over HTTPS.
The data will be stored locally on your computer and sent to Canonical upon first boot and once an active network connection is detected.
All users will be able to access the file containing the collected data, according to the company, and that the results of this data collection will be made public.
