The developers of the Manjaro Linux distribution, built on the basis of Arch Linux and aimed at beginners, announced the beginning of testing a new service MDD (Manjaro Data Donor), designed to collect statistics about the system and send it to the external server of the project. The author of the MDD intended to enable telemetry by default (opt-out), but the decision has not yet been approved and, judging by the objections of some developers and users, it is likely that telemetry will be offered as an option requiring prior consent of the user (a request to enable telemetry is proposed to be added to the greeting interface after the first download).

The report includes data such as host name, kernel version, desktop component versions, detailed information about hardware and drivers involved, screen size and resolution information, network device MAC addresses, disk serial numbers, disk partition data, information about the number of running processes and installed packages, versions of basic packages such as systemd, gcc, bash and PipeWire.

The sent data is stored on the project server in the ClickHouse database and visualized using the Grafana platform. The IP addresses of users are not stored, and the hash from the /etc/machine-id file is used as the system identifier.

Аccording to the code https://github.com/manjaro/mdd/blob/master/mdd.py#L40 sends everything.

  • MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml
    351·
    5 hours ago

    enable telemetry by default … MAC addresses, disk serial numbers

    Another reason to not use Manjaro. Just use Endeavour instead.

    Edit: I’m not against telemetry pre se. I have the KDE feedback enabled for example but that was opt in and sends no unique data.

    • rtxn@lemmy.worldEnglish
      151·
      5 hours ago

      It’s all about trust. Manjaro has given me reasons to distrust them.

      • exu@feditown.comEnglish
        2·
        2 hours ago

        When?

        Edit: I misread, though it said “trust” instead of “distrust”

        • rtxn@lemmy.worldEnglish
          10·
          4 hours ago

          They’ve let TLS certs expire on multiple occasions. They’ve made the decision to enable the AUR in the default installation, which can cause conflicts with out-of-date dependencies because of the delayed release schedule compared to Arch. They’ve shipped software on their stable branch that included unmerged upstream code. One of their developers temporarily broke Asahi Linux.

          I don’t hate the project, but I can’t trust the developers and management.

          • MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml
            4·
            4 hours ago

            They’ve let TLS certs expire on multiple occasions.

            And they told their community to set their clocks back. As a workaround, it will work but all your created and modified data will have the wrong timestamps.

    • sovietknuckles [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      5·
      5 hours ago

      Another reason to not use Manjaro. Just use Endeavour instead.

      Endeavour could be useful if it’s your first time running an Arch-based distro and you’re looking for software/configuration suggestions. Otherwise, Arch Linux is fine by itself and it doesn’t have telemetry

      • Handles@leminal.spaceEnglish
        3·
        3 hours ago

        I don’t think anybody would say otherwise. Both Manjaro and Endeavour mean to make Arch more appealing to users who aren’t comfortable with command line configuration.

        Endeavour has arguably done better than Manjaro, but yeah. They’re just some configs on top of a system that does very well on its own.

      • MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml
        5·
        3 hours ago

        Why?

        Let me put the question back to you. How do think the uniquely identifiable information will help them improve Manjaro?

        Do you think they’ve got a Russian satellite and will track down your HDD serial number from space?

        No.

        There’s lots of benefits to telemetry.

        As I basically said, if you bothered to read my comment.