Wubuntu controversy

When someone investigated the security issue in which those who bought the "activation key" for Wubuntu OS got their private information stored in the database, the developers of this OS had the audacity to alter some piece of information along with some writing that called the investigator an idiot and lamer or some sort. It wasn't a professional way to react and but it seems that the privacy violation stuff wasn't the only issue that sparked controversy. Other issue included the possible trademark and copyright infringement on the Windows 12 Lite level with icons, wallpapers and other assets taken from Windows OSes.

Wubuntu OS is part of the LinuxFX line of Linux OSes and recently, many content creators made their videos of it, demonstrating what it looks like for sure and deciding that it's not recommended for anyone to try out the OS. Tech enthusiasts already know what Linux looks like no matter how much disguise it can have. Obvious indications may include:

• The flow of the startup and shutdown process of a Linux OS
• Boot screen flow and asset positioning
• Login screen and various applications
• WINE for running Windows applications
• Additional processes related to WINE can be seen on screen

I guess that it's pretty much the same as disguising whatever Windows OS as the other through transformation tools and whatnot but in Wubuntu's case, it can be comparable to Windows 12 Lite in terms of a controversial Linux OS that deserves to be found out by Microsoft. This one looks like it will be found out by both Microsoft and Canonical for unauthorized use of Ubuntu branding and Windows related assets but the real red flag in my eyes has to do with the data collection stuff and to pay for "additional features".

eXtern OS Beta 2

Well, Beta 2 of the controversial hobby Linux OS was recently released to the public although the Beta 2 was previously released exclusively to the Patreon users in which Beta 2 had tons of progress going on. Unfortunately, there were mishaps occuring on me when using Beta 2 on the virtual machine on Virtualbox and VMWare.
On Virtualbox, the Live DVD mode partially worked with the Installer mode not having whatever UI problem whatsoever but on VMWare, the Live DVD worked with blank screen. On Beta 1, the eXtern OS' own desktop environment worked in Live DVD Mode but that was when I used it on VMWare hypervisor software.
At the time, I was like customizing the whole eXtern OS Beta 1 that was installed to the VM HDD to have the package list match the one from the other Linux distribution including PureOS 9's. I went through tons of troubles in customizing the Beta 1 although I still have some remaining troubles like the eXtern OS Live Session account is missing by default that I'm not able to login when booting up in Live DVD mode and I did the same things to the Beta 2 by customizing the customized Beta 1 build even further to make its package list match the one from the Beta 2 build of the OS which required that I installed KDE Neon on the Beta 1 virtual machine as well as putting the data files from the eXtern OS Beta 2 Live DVD into it. Of course, there will be no guarantees of the web data working correctly embedded on the virtual machine but the funny thing was, while customizing things, I sort of ran the eXtern OS desktop app from the Lost & Found menu which opened its own taskbar and desktop wallpaper after setting up the correct path. Of course, the data was from Beta 1 when I test-opened like that.
The system requirements are more or less changed and especially for the EULA which is absent in Beta 2. Other initial impressions are that you should be able to install Beta 2 of eXtern OS officially as well as access Terminal easily. In Beta 1, you should be able to install provided that you have the Linux distribution setup app like Ubiquity but that was an unofficial way and even then, in-place upgrades from Beta 1 to Beta 2 are NOT available. In theory, you should be able to upgrade from Ubuntu 16.04 to 18.04 but, Ubuntu 16.04 to KDE Neon? That seemed impossible to me that I would have to do a clean install or some sort. Last impression is that there's even Over-The-Air update or some sort in Beta 2.
The end result was that the customized ISO of eXtern OS Beta 2 I did had lesser file size than the original ISO's file size which is 3GB+ compared to the Beta 1's 1GB+. I don't know if the controversy regarding data collection is gone in Beta 2 or not but this is one Linux operating system that you should keep it in check. Also, another concern is that eXtern OS has a bunch of stuffs that required paid licenses for implementation which the author had paid for as they don't seem to make it open-source.

Ubuntu 17.10 Update

The amended release of those ISO images had the promise not to brick those laptop computers and it was released this year. It appears that certain brands of laptops like Acer, Dell, etc. were bricked at the BIOS scale in which they were not able to boot.
So much controversial mistakes until now probably came from Intel and the other tech companies after the fact that the patches against Spectre and Meltdown either caused certain computers not to boot or suffer something else like BSOD on AMD computers affected by those faulty patches but that's an on-going story for another time. Before those vulnerabilities were discovered by the public, there laid a bug affecting the Intel SPI driver which rendered those laptops unbootable. The amended release of Ubuntu 17.10 had disabled the driver and its official warning says that it should not be enabled unless you what you're doing as doing so can overdrive the SPI flash. The worse thing is that those laptops can be simply bricked with the live boot whether it's USB or the DVD disc of Ubuntu 17.10 prior to the amended release.
There may be solutions to undo the damage but the worst case scenario is that THE ENTIRE MOTHERBOARD WILL HAVE TO BE REPLACED! So, if you want to update or upgrade something, how can you make sure that none of the patches tampers with the hardware component at the motherboard level? If this is how they make patches or upgrades available like that with motherboard tampering, there will be a serious lawsuit against them and their reputation can be affected! What about Intel? Are they aware of this serious issue?
Another important thing is that Ubuntu 17.04 was already out of support and to upgrade to Ubuntu 17.10 at this time will be no easy feat. I don't know what the future Ubuntu versions may contain after seeing this news on various tech sites like Softpedia and OMG Ubuntu, etc. The same kind of concern may take place in MacOS and Windows as well in addition to Linux. Not to mention the patches that will require altering something at the motherboard level like the BIOS-level hardware component for instance, are NO PLAYTHINGS. Applying those will be no easy feat even when there's a serious technical situation that is another story of another time. What about the computer magazines containing Ubuntu 17.10 in the optical discs? Well, the publishers of those magazines couldn't be blamed when things stated above already happened enough. There may be great things about every future version of Ubuntu but certain versions have already caused controversies and this one has caused a more serious controversy than the other versions of Ubuntu that did so.
Lastly, for the enterprises, if everything is okay with the patches, they should be ready to go level-by-level with the critical-level being the production environment. But before you plan to deploy those patches, you may as well wait to see if there's any bad news regarding them. It may probably take days, weeks or even months should there be any bad news. The example of a bad news for patches is that they may render the computer unbootable at either the OS-level or even worse, the BIOS-level as if the BIOS itself is tampered with.

Python 2 to be demoted to universe repository

Perhaps, a few years later, Python 2 will be obsolete in favor of the later version of Python technology. I don't know which one uses Python 2 or 3 and I still find programming a major pain to do in terms of difficulty. However, the Python language is more or less the first step in learning programming and especially that Python courses are everywhere in MOOC websites like Coursera for instance. This still poses students the challenge like it already posed me one a few years ago.
The technology has been transitioning and especially that even Windows 7 will go out of extended support a few years later. For future Ubuntu releases, they have plans to demote Python 2 to 'universe' repository in favor of later versions but this is not easy as many of the packages still have yet to reach version 1.0 and especially that current components/packages used in Ubuntu today still make use of it.
So far, it seems that later images of Ubuntu 17.10 or something don't come with Python 2 and it will be the same for future releases. One of the programs is OpenStack which still uses Python 2 and the developers will need to support Python 3 ASAP in the future. According to Softpedia, there are about 35 issues detected by Ubuntu developers and it is unlikely that Python 2 will be demoted in time for Ubuntu 18.04 release. To get Python 2 removed from Ubuntu ISO images completely is the future story.

Ubuntu of this year

OK, at least there was a previous time where I mentioned stuffs like Ubuntu 17.04 along with the fact that Ubuntu will be switching to GNOME soon as Canonical had ceased development of Unity in favor of more cloud computing plans along with IOT stuffs so there won't be much to say here. But then, it seems that Ubuntu 17.10 will be the one to use GNOME by default although things won't be the same as in the past as I guess that it will be using GNOME Shell.
Ubuntu 17.04 ceases support for 32-Bit PowerPC architecture but that's not something you can worry about easily. One past worry instead was something to do with the Mir technology as part of the Wayland protocol which will replace the X11 in Ubuntu 17.10. I don't know if there are still improvements or not like this new technology was finalized and stable enough or what not but we shall see about what's happening in the future throughout the globe or something like that. Of course, there will still be blog posts about upcoming products, wrong things done by the corporations when it comes to privacy and other internet freedom although there isn't anything else to say about various apps, devices or services invading the customers' privacy or some sort because of one thing we already know, once the violation starts, customers start to complain or even worse, file a lawsuit against the company who did this, and then force the company to explain the technical situation on why are they doing this.
So, will Canonical gain additional users when Ubuntu 17.10 comes out with GNOME being used by default? Who knows but at least we already know that Canonical is doing the right thing this year. In the future like next year, Ubuntu 18.04 will be making use of GNOME 3 as they are already concentrating on desktops, servers, cloud computing and IOT stuffs since the Ubuntu phones and tablets didn't provide so much momentum whatsoever.

Unity to be dropped in favor of GNOME in Ubuntu 18.04

During the time the netbooks were around, there was a Netbook Remix edition of Ubuntu that used the Unity UI which was eventually brought over to all editions of Ubuntu with Netbook Remix edition being made obsolete. It was a controversial move at the time as if the UI layout and design were different while still bringing in some shiny looking icons until Unity 8 is where all the glassy-ness is gone with solid looking rounded squares. The icons in Unity for Ubuntu may probably look like the Superbar from Windows 7 although the others may compare the Unity UI to the Mac Dock UI. The similarity is that you click on the icons to open their corresponding programs and if you close those programs, the icons in the Unity bar are still intact. However, if you open a different program whose icon is not in the Unity bar, it's a similar vein to opening a different program in Windows 7 and Mac OSX. Certain programs in Mac Dock have their special menus where else in Windows 7 and Unity for Ubuntu, certain programs have special commands on the menu when you right-click on them on the taskbar.
In the near future starting next year, Ubuntu will be switching back to using GNOME although it uses GNOME 3 whose UI is different than the classic GNOME so if you click on the top left in GNOME 3 and Unity, you get to see many apps on the screen and somehow, GNOME 3 has the similar elements to Unity UI. So, the controversy isn't over yet when switching back to GNOME like that with GNOME 3 in the future. The workaround is to install the classic GNOME like I already did with Ubuntu on my computer the last time although the UI layout was restored that way, it wasn't the same from the way it looks in current Ubuntu OSes like everything is going all solid with lack of gradients.
The situation is that Canonical is moving towards cloud computing, Internet of Things along with Ubuntu Core and Snap apps which are applicable to IoT devices. Of course, running their own data center for the sake of cloud computing is energy and money consuming but what will they get is the money from the users running virtual machines in the cloud as part of the monthly subscription. This obviously makes more business sense that way as having to turn a phone into a computer will still give you limited software resources that is if you're running Windows 10. On Ubuntu Touch for phones and tablets, you're still sort of limited in the same vein as Windows 10 Mobile but from their demonstration, you should be able to run desktop-like apps stored on those devices when using Convergence.
Needless to say, both Unity and newer versions of GNOME are likely to take up more resources than the classic version. You could have run the other editions of Ubuntu if that's the case on the old computers.

Privacy issues in Ubuntu 12.10

We're not sure if Canonical will do their best to increase privacy levels for Ubuntu but it seems that they're already do so and Android is one these OSes they want to teach a lesson of.
For some reason, switching from Mac OSX or Windows to Ubuntu is not recommended probably due to some privacy issues but there are some workarounds.
You can uninstall the unity-lens-shopping package from the terminal or something and disable Include online search results in the Privacy app. Not enough? Then you can switch to other desktop environments such as KDE, GNOME or Cinnamon. Just install one of them, log off and switch the desktop environment from the login screen and log back in.
Next is the installation of Ubuntu. During the setup screen, you can encrypt the new Ubuntu installation for security purposes. That is, before the installation process begins. Then, you're given the security key screen to enter your security password. This is probably the disk encryption and if you lose or forget this security key you have made, all data will be inaccesible and lost.
Another thing from EFF to Ubuntu users is that you may need HTTPS Everywhere extension for Firefox and Chrome.
Well, that is more of the summarized news divided into two parts from EFF website. We hope that Canonical can show Google on who's boss in privacy.