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.
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.
That’s insane
Why do they need information about the hostname? Is it really valuable for them to know how many systems are named daves-pc?
Opt-out? Seriously? What are the Manjaro devs smoking?
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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.
It’s all about trust. Manjaro has given me reasons to distrust them.
When?
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.
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.
That time they ddosed the AUR is an example. Incompetence is reason enough for me.
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
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.
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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.
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This may be illegal in EU if they don’t use opt in.
Even then it may be illegal for under 18 year olds to collect MAC addresses and disk serial numbers, as those can potentially be used for identification.The data is anonymized, and the IP is NOT stored. So I’m not sure this violates GDPR?
From the code we can see the machine ID is anonymized, sending only a SHA256 checksum.
def get_hashed_device_id(): # Read the machine ID with open("/etc/machine-id", "r") as f: machine_id = f.read().strip() # Hash the machine ID using SHA-256 to anonymize it hashed_id = hashlib.sha256(machine_id.encode()).digest() # Convert the first 16 bytes of the hash to a UUID (version 5 UUID format) return str(uuid.UUID(bytes=hashed_id[:16], version=5))This makes it somewhat a nothingburger IMO.
network device MAC addresses, disk serial numbers
That’s enough. I’m calling it evil from now on.
Thought it’s probably fine after reading the title, but this shit isn’t fine. What the fuck.
The MAC address is anonymized with sha256, and IP adresses aren’t stored.
So this seems to me to be perfectly anonymous.Why collect such data though? And you can call some Big Tech telemetry completely anonymous too if you trust their explanations.
You can see the code of what is send.
I’m not aware that Google claims they collect data anonymously, on everything where you are logged in.
So that’s a false equivalence.I’m not aware that Google claims they collect data anonymously, on everything where you are logged in.
I meant other companies but ok.
- users can be identified
- probably Opt-out (still in discussion)
Two nogos combined makes nonogogos. Why do they need host name, MAC address and disk serial numbers? Why can’t people set how much they want to send in, like KDE Plasma does? Will the data be shown to the user before its send in? Steam does that perfectly (show data and its opt-in) and that is even a proprietary application. Telemetry is okay if its done right, without user identification, opt-in and not hiding whats sent, preferably in multiple levels of what is being send.
I used Manjaro before and switched to EndeavorOS because I was not happy. Now I am. Manjaro can’t stop being stupid (not the users, I’m not attacking any user here, only the maintainers or developers of Manjaro).
The way I read it, the developer wanted opt-out but it’s likely it will be opt-in. I’m find with opt-in and vehemently against opt-out for telemetry.
I would prefer the information was statistical only. Rather than hostname (making the assumption they only want hostname to be able to somehow separate the data to follow changes over time), a much better idea would be some kind of hash based on information unlikely to change, but enough information that it would be unlikely possible to brute-force the original data out of the hash. So all they know is, this data came from the same machine, but cannot ID the machine. Maybe some kind of unique but otherwise untrackable unique ID is created at install time and ONLY used for this purpose and no other.
It amazes me it’s still as popular as it is and still own goaling at least once a year.
Why do they need half that data for a derivative of a distro? Fuck off. I don’t care if someone collects the model number of my GPU or whatever but that sounds like personally identifiable tracking data, not basic “telemetry” data to set development priorities or whatever.
Another reason to hate manjaro.
Don’t like it, don’t opt in
Even Debian has popcon
There are lots of benefits for developers to gather telemetry.
Don’t like that? Fork and do your own distro (presumably though you don’t contribute anything to open source, so id expect such people to simply whine and get angry at contributors)
Yeah, my only concern here was if it was opt-out. That’d be bad.
Now I completely understand the developer on this. This is useful info to have to help decide future changes/features and general direction, but balancing the right to privacy means this kind of data provision should ALWAYS be opt-in. Microsoft, you hearing me here?
I tried Manjaro last year and I hated it.
Something about the distro would lock up my PC, it would freeze from time to time.
I disabled the standby/sleep function, but allowed my monitors to go into standby. But if I left my PC for an hour or two my screens would not wake up, different types and brands. I had so many issues with Manjaro and while speaking with a friend I told him I had moved over to Nobara but he was still on Manjaro. But then a few weeks later he mentioned he was running Nobara. Seems he also ditched it.
My brother’s been injecting himself with Linux?
