Canonical Begins Tracking Ubuntu Installations

[gtrawoger]

Not a huge fan, but I also don't see a better solution to the problem Canonical wants to solve: They'd like to see what the conversion rate of OEM Linux machines to something else is.
You can't just ask people about that- it's not like a program where you could have an exit survey.

I agree, simply no better way to be accurate about it. Canonical most likely is looking for good numbers here to show to Dell (or other vendor, exchange 'Dell' with XYZ company), to justify Dell's investment for support of Ubuntu Linux. And this would be the most accurate way of telling them how many people leave the original Ubuntu installed, i.e. are *regular* customers without the need to change OS right away.

Another way would be to have a BIOS check in the installer (checking for the Service Tag) and a prompt to ask if they want to participate in the survey. If not, don't install the package.

Part of my job is collect data for the company I work for, and it's the best way for a company to know if their money is well placed. But of course, your reports are only as good as the data, so accuracy is primary.

[Mardok]

Google is all around the world and is widely used. Surely they have a pretty good guesstimate for what the operating system distribution is across Windows, OSX, and Linux.

Why can't Canonical just ask Google what they think the operating system spread is? Do they want to have numbers on Ubuntu specifically?

At the very least, during the installation process, please ask the user if they can install the package!