[Barrin92]

I can understand the slippery slope threat in a proprietary system, but Fedora is a open system. Should data collection at some point go beyond whatever it is the devs announce, someone is going to pick it up and everyone is going to drop the distro like a hot potato. So I'm not sure this is a big issue.

[Karunamon]

The lack of serious consequences to Canonical regarding their spyware-like, opt-out search integrations in Ubuntu with Amazon way back when (and then doubling down with legal threats against fixubuntu.com) gives me doubt as to this being the case.

That goes double given Fedora's position as what boils down to RHEL upstream. Too much corporate support for any backlash to make a dent, even if it could get critical mass.

[reacweb]

IMHO, there were serious consequences. 5 years ago I would not have consider using fedora on my desktop because ubuntu was trustworthy and I was considering fedora as useless fragmentation. Now, I see redhat as a knight on my side to improve linux adoption (I hope that IBM will not ruin this) and I see fedora as stable and up to date than ubuntu.

[Jedd]

Can I ask what was / is it about Debian that made you discount it, and embrace RH / Fedora instead?

[Grimm665]

Not the OP, but I made a similar transition. I got fed up with using APT to manage packages while Yum/DNF seem much more complete and elegant. I seem to get far fewer package conflicts with Yum, and the error messages when something does go wrong are more digestible, though this may be just due to my use case/package selection. I also dislike the use of the dash shell by default. To me, it just further muddies the water between compatibility of sh, bash, and dash. I'd rather just have bash and be done with it.

Fedora's packages are also more up to date while being as or more stable than Ubuntu. Debian is still probably king of stability, but when compared to CentOS, I prefer CentOS' default package selection and configuration (postfix vs exim, sudo installed by default, ssh installed and enabled by default) , especially since they embrace systemd while Debian seems to use it grudgingly while also keeping around old methods of configuration that don't quite fit with systemd (network configuration being the big one here, don't even get me started on Ubuntu's adoption of friggin' Netplan)

[Jedd]

Thanks for the reply. The past 9 months I've had to dive deep into rhel again, and it's been a disappointing experience, but that may be due to a) more than two decades comfort with Debian, and b) some number of third party addins to rhel 7 systems, but conflicts have been much more painful in the rhel side. I've never noticed or been bitten by the dash / bash arrangement. package selecting in both cases is defined by cfm (salt or ansible) so I've never felt pain in that front either. Systemd seems to be full commitment by Debian, including network config, but perhaps the migration scripts weren't working for your system(s).

[JohnFen]

> especially since they embrace systemd

I will never forgive Red Hat for SystemD, and even more than that, I will never forgive Debian for adopting it. But that's off-topic.

[Grimm665]

To each their own, of course. I happen to like it a lot, but I'm still surprised Debian chose to use it as well.

[freedomben]

Your question pre-supposes that the GP evaluated Debian and decided against it. While this may be true, he/she never said that.

In my case tho, I found Debian to be moving at a glacial pace. Fedora OTOH is always fresh and current. There's nothing wrong with Debian, and sure some people don't mind running Sid. Fedora is my favorite flavor of ice cream tho.

[Jedd]

Wasn't my intent.

Parent omitted reference to Debian, while bemoaning Ubuntu quality degradation - I would expect most people disappointed with Debian derivatives, but familiar with the tooling, would consider moving further upstream rather than outright abandonment.

[JohnFen]

> I found Debian to be moving at a glacial pace.

I view this as a feature, not a bug!

[freedomben]

For servers I agree! For desktop tho, it drove me nuts. I still use Debian as the base of most of my servers cause the stability is amazing.

[Barrin92]

As one other commentator has pointed out, there actually has been serious consequence to Canonical, as least as far as Ubuntu as a desktop end-user distro is concerned. Many other community distributions have risen in popularity specifically around this issue of corporate involvement.

But more importantly, I don't think there is anything wrong in principle with Ubuntu collecting user data if they openly communicate it to their users. I do not agree with this Stallman-esque usage of the term spyware, if the exchange of data is voluntary and the consequence of informed decision.

If customers disagree with Ubuntu on data collection they can switch to a different distribution, but as long as the information is out there, this is not an issue, spyware or a slippery slope.

[JohnFen]

> I don't think there is anything wrong in principle with Ubuntu collecting user data if they openly communicate it to their users.

As long as it's opt-in, I agree.

> I do not agree with this Stallman-esque usage of the term spyware, if the exchange of data is voluntary

Being truly voluntary is key. If that's the case, then I agree with this. However, if data is being collected about me or the hardware/software that I'm using without my affirmative consent, that completely qualifies as "spying".

[jammygit]

Didn't know about the fixubuntu story, thanks for the share