Looking to dip my toes into Linux for the first time. I have a 2016 Intel MacBook Pro with pretty solid specs collecting dust right now that I think I’m going to use. Research so far has indicated to me that the two best options for me are likely Mint or Elementary OS. Does anyone have any insight? Also open to other OS’s. I would consider myself decently tech savvy but I am not a programmer or anything. Comfortable dipping into the terminal when the need arises and all that.
@neinhorn
@linux
No telemetry is definitely a priority. Does Mint track?
To be fair, Fedora has opt-in telemetry. It’s 100% anonymized, though, and helps with development. I always say yes when I’m running a beta (like now).
That having been said, you should always check the privacy policies of any given distro. They tend to all be pretty up front about it (kinda hard to lie about it when anyone can check your source code…).
AFAIK, though, neither Mint nor Elementary collect telemetry by default, although they might have opt-in like Fedora. Both are based on Ubuntu LTS, but they also both scrape out so much stuff that they’re devoid of most of the Canonical junk.
No Linux distro “tracks” like Windows, Android, iOS or macOS do. This is nonsense. Fedora may introduce opt-something telemitry that will just help make the Distro better, and via one single setting you can always enable or disable it.
I have full data sharing on KDE and also report lots of bugs.
Pro-tip: set your username as “user” do avoid doxxing yourself uploading debug logs
Mint doesn’t by default, but it is based on Canonical’s Ubuntu which is not the most privacy friendly distro. Depending on how you install your software, some telemetry might go to Canonical.