Canonical displays controversial 'ad' in shell update prog

Some Ubuntu users are not happy at receiving a promotional message at the command line when upgrading their systems. As we described last week, Canonical's "Ubuntu Pro" support offering for its Linux distro is now free of charge for up to five machines. If you update your machine from the command line with the apt command, you …

[Zippy´s Sausage Factory]

It's all very well saying that this points people who don't live online at a free service. But this is the beginning. You normalise it here, where does it end?

One of the first unsolicited commercial emails was sent by DEC, and no less a luminary than Richard Stallman defended them. I think we can all see how that's ended well and nobody has abused that idea since then, right? </sarcasm>

[Androgynous Cupboard]

I agree, actually. Perhaps because I read through this this morning: https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/y1skxq/i_cant_deal_with_how_ht_google_and_alexa_have/, which feels very similar.

It's not advertising exactly, but it is a "Look! Look at this other stuff we can do" - I can just about deal with this with apt, but there's undeniably a trend here which will become *&%@ing annoying if ubiquitous. It's a distraction, I don't need more distractions.

[navarac]

All it does is steer me away from the brand carrying this utter crap.

[cream wobbly]

uh, no

It is advertising, exactly.

Just because it's free doesn't mean it's not drawing attention to a service. If it were a free to play game for Android, would you say it wasn't advertising? Or a political candidate?

It's like those foreign kids knocking on my door debating the meaning of "NO SOLICITING". They're not selling anything, promise! It's just a free assessment to see how much I'd save with solar! So, exactly like soliciting, then.

Same here with advertising. There's no debate, don't give them a break.

Per Oxford: https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/2975

4. a. transitive. To make generally known by means of an announcement in a public medium; spec. (a) to publish information about (a person (now rare), thing, circumstance, or event) so as to attract public attention; (b) to describe or present (a product, service, or the like) in order to promote sales. Frequently with by, in, on the medium specified (as a journal, radio, television, etc.). (Now the most common sense.)

[Ian Johnston]

Re: uh, no

Just because it's free doesn't mean it's not drawing attention to a service.

I wonder if the people wetting their knickers at being told of an free resource available from the company whose servers they are using get equally outraged when apt-get suggests or recommends packages to them.

[ThatOne]

Re: uh, no

> suggests or recommends packages to them

Mentioning required packages is not advertisement but factual information ("you'll also need this"). On the other hand if it's the usual "other users also downloaded..." or "now trending..." nonsense, it's ads and should be killed by fire.

_{(Didn't downvote you though.)}

[Logics]

Re: uh, no

Suggested or recommended in totally different from required.

This point is valid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: uh, no

Taken a step (or two) further, isn't this similar to the arguments over the past couple of years that Facebook, Twitter, etc can remove any posts they disagree with because they are private companies running private servers? Same thing seems to apply here - people using Canonical's private servers and services are bound by whatever rules Canonical decides to put into play. Displaying some silly advert seems rather tame, really.

But that's part of the bigger problem facing the online world - we're getting far too reliant on these "free" online services, and most users don't realize how hard the people running those services are trying to push their service/brand deeper and deeper into the general psyche.

And I guess THAT bigger problem is one component of the even bigger problem of corporate greed. And from there, I guess it's turtles all the way down.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: uh, no

> apt search foo

...lots of packages about foo

user is happy and informed

> apt search foo

... lots of packages about foo

By the way, have you considered "bar"? It's great, it does [something unrelated].

user is distracted and annoyed.

It's not that hard to see the difference.

[navarac]

As Microsoft has "Apple-Envy" so does Canonical have "RHEL-envy" and Microsoft-envy". Life is becoming one big ad-dodging exercise in IT these days. Ad senders need to know that I am not going to react/buy from them - ever. You are wasting your time sending stuff to me, as all you are doing is making me adverse to your brand.

[aerogems]

You say that, but

People always say, "I'm not affected by advertising" and advertisers just laugh all the way to the bank every time. They have literal mountains of research showing exactly the opposite is true, which is why companies still bother with advertising. You may think it's making you adverse to the brand, but maybe 6-months from now you are thinking about what your options are for upgrading some system and Ubuntu and RedHat might be the two names that come top of mind because of all the advertising. Without even really meaning to, you may rule out other possibilities because you forget they even exist and just look into whatever options you can think of off the top of your head.

[Bill Gray]

Re: You say that, but

They have literal mountains of research showing exactly the opposite

Funny, that. My research uniformly shows how wonderful my products are! (Well, at least the parts of my research that I've made public. The rest is for in-house use only.)

More seriously, I could believe that advertising is, in many cases, effective. That doesn't mean it works on everybody. Even if (say) 99.9% of spam is ignored/not delivered/elicits profanity, the remaining 0.1% makes some scammers profit. And somebody once said, "Half my ad budget is wasted, but I can't tell which half."

[call-me-mark]

"Half my ad budget is wasted, but I can't tell which half."

The half of your budget that the ad agency spent showing off to other ad agencies about how amazing they are. That's the half that was (from your point of view) wasted. Hope that helps.

[aerogems]

Re: You say that, but

Sure. Not everyone is going to respond equally well to every ad campaign, that wasn't the point I was making, but we are affected by them just the same. There's also more to it than just mailers or big displays in stores. The position of items on shelves, for example, is a kind of advertising. Companies pay a pretty penny to have their items displayed at eye level. Next time you're in a large retail store, walk through the toy section and I bet you'll find most of the toys are at the height where a toddler would be looking right at them. Then go to the home improvement section, or something intended more for adults and notice how all the recognizable brands are at eye level and the lower and upper parts of the shelves are relegated to brands you've probably never heard of. Also how anything that might be on some special promotion is typically right front and center. There's also the age old trick stores use for selling perishable goods, like putting the oldest stock in front because it sells faster that way.

People think advertising is just the ads you see in magazines or on web sites, but there are a lot of other, much more subtle forms. Take a classic "Buy 2 get 1 free" promotion. You're not actually getting anything free, they just discounted the price on each item by 1/3, but by claiming something is "free" it increases sales. Also, a lot of times if you look at the fine print on the tag, it might say you don't actually need to buy three items to get the promotional price, but they like people to just read the big part and buy three items instead of just one or two because they assumed that was the requirement.

[navarac]

Re: You say that, but

Nope. Not this fella!

[David 132]

Re: You say that, but

>You may think it's making you adverse to the brand

Well, I've heard that many times, but I don't think it's universal. In my own case, I have had a personal boycott of Mazda cars ever since they ran a print ad campaign back in the late 80s that dissed other manufacturers (including Volvo, my preferred brand at the time). I thought then that it was nasty and below-the-belt of them, and that attitude has stuck with me for nigh on 40 years now. Petty? Weird of me? Yeah probably, but my point rests, which is that annoying adverts aren't always simply forgotten leaving only "good brand awareness".

Not just Mazda, either; there's a whole list of brands who are very definitely and consciously on my never-buy list, simply for pissing me off with their adverts over the years.

[werdsmith]

Re: You say that, but

Without even really meaning to, you may rule out other possibilities because you forget they even exist and just look into whatever options you can think of off the top of your head.

Oh I remember advertising alright. In a very negative way and if I feel pestered or irritated by persistent ads then I deliberately blacklist that brand.

The advertising effectiveness of which you speak does not apply here. However, I believe I must be a minority of too few for the advertisers to give a shit about.

[aerogems]

Re: You say that, but

Actually, you proved my point. You were affected by the advertising by your own admission.

[MOH]

Re: You say that, but

The people whose whole existence revolves around manipulating others into believing that a particular product is superior have research showing that their own product is superior?

Who could possibly question that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: You say that, but

Not quite sure why aero was down voted. He's not advocating for advertising, he's just pointing out that it actually works and that's why people do it.

Of course, there are ways and ways, and sadly the industry has long been taken over by idiots with no technical knowledge or background advertising shit regardless of its merits or lack thereof, but that's a separate discussion.

[VoiceOfTruth]

Re: You say that, but

-> Not quite sure why aero was down voted. He's not advocating for advertising, he's just pointing out that it actually works and that's why people do it.

Some people in some circumstances believe what they want to believe. It's called being opinionated. We often see it in The Reg comments - some people hate Windows/Apple/Oracle/Java/JavaScript/PHP/whatever. The idea that other people have different opinions on the matter is anathema to them. And so it is with advertising. I don't know *if* The Reg in particular attracts opinionated commentators, but I do see them here (myself included on some subjects).

[aerogems]

Re: You say that, but

Yup, that sums it up pretty well. The late George Carlin once described what he called the "Bigger Dick [US] Foreign Policy" which went something like, "What!? They have bigger dicks than us!? Bomb them!"

If you go to some story about how Microsoft borked the latest update to Windows for example, you'll no doubt see someone complaining about how Windows 10 started forcing updates on people. You then point out how, while it's annoying to be forced to reboot, if you take a step back and look around you notice that a lot of the email worms and other nonsense we used to have to deal with on a regular basis has all but disappeared since Windows 10 came along with its forced updates. That will get downvoted because everyone wants to complain about Microsoft and/or Windows, not be reminded that there's a good reason why this change was made.

And whatever god or gods you believe in help you if you ever dare say something bad about Apple. If there's ever been a company that attracts customers who can't take a joke, it's Apple.

[Triggerfish]

Re: You say that, but

For sure, if you don't believe adverts don't work, then have a think on how your boss suddenly got the idea to install x,y,z which you wouldn't touch with a ten foot barge pole.

They might not work on cynical bastard IT people, you aren't the target its the people who pay you.

[doublelayer]

"One of the first unsolicited commercial emails was sent by DEC, and no less a luminary than Richard Stallman defended them. I think we can all see how that's ended well and nobody has abused that idea since then, right?"

Or, quite possibly, Stallman was right about whatever DEC did and didn't mean that anything else was equally acceptable. Messages' acceptability isn't an all-or-nothing thing. Depending on the level of permission I've given to receive a message, I view its delivery differently. If I've signed up to an email list from a company deliberately, then I'm not surprised when they send me a message that has commercial purposes. If they do it when I bought something but didn't ask, I'm more annoyed. If they do it and I haven't interacted with them, I'm a lot more annoyed, but there can still be exceptions and variations.

In this case, I don't think it's a good thing, but it's a function of a program that people choose to run and don't have to. Lots of programs have such modes. For example, if I use Pip to install a Python package, it will check whether it is up to date, and if not, it will recommend I update it after it does what I've asked. I didn't ask for that behavior, but I also didn't object enough to it that I acted to disable the behavior. That's not the same as mandatory advertising brought in from others, and this false equivalence doesn't help make the point. We get that a lot and we know how different they are, so it doesn't prove that this part is bad.

[bombastic bob]

You normalise it here, where does it end?

Exactly! And I like your point about Stallman supporting spam-mail... when it first started.

[Dan 55]

Why not just do it above board?

Baking advertising in existing functionality will meet resistance.

But if a window appeared which showed you adverts after logging in or unlocking the screen which you could easily dismiss or click on to open the brower, there was a slider which let you disable them or set the minimum time between window pop ups after logging in/unlocking from 1 hour to e.g. 7 days, there was no tracking involved, and the installation wizard explained why advertising supports Canonical and lets people opt in, I bet people would choose to support them.

[Adrian 4]

Re: Why not just do it above board?

No, unwanted popups are just as much a red flag as unexpected CLI text.

I do look a little more kindly on popups with a button 'never show this again' but even a few of those are too many.

Linux is free. It's not ad-supported. If a distro has that as it's business plan it needs to very carefully separate it from actual Linux. If it's the only way something can exist, consider whether it *should* exist.

[Ian Johnston]

Re: Why not just do it above board?

Linux is free.

Not necessarily.

[bombastic bob]

Re: Why not just do it above board?

some flavors cost money but you get something for that (like support)

Most linux distros cost nothing in money. but occasionally I have fixed bugs and submitted those fixes to OSS developers. That is also a "cost" if you think about it.

In principle I agree as everything has a cost of some kind. But the truth is, a monetary cost only exists for SOME flavors of Linux.

And Canonical is BLOWING it, big time.

From the article: you get an unsolicited ad for the scheme – and some users are not happy about it.

Only SOME users? (I think most who are angry are a silent angry majority)

[doublelayer]

Re: Why not just do it above board?

I don't think this is or will become advertising. If they did start running advertising, even with the provisos you specified, I would immediately stop using Ubuntu. I donate to support things. I don't need to be shown ads to do it as well. One of the reasons I use Ubuntu among other Linux distros is that it gets out of the way and allows me convenient use of my computer, and running ad pop-ups is inimical to that goal.

[Dan 55]

Re: Why not just do it above board?

You could not opt in if you just wanted to donate.

This is, after all, what is a paid-for distribution because it has added features (five more years of updates and Livepatch). Opting into advertising is a way to pay for them if you didn't want to/couldn't afford to donate. Would it be that much of an anathema to see a non-tracked advert for Rackspace once a day when you unlock your screen in the morning in return for them if you weren't donating? TFA even said asking for a donation on the download page was controversial as well. I don't know, sometimes pixie dust just isn't enough to pay the bills.

This doesn't mean I approve of sticking sponsor of the day message into apt. That's not above board because tomorrow we'll have rsync brought to you by AWS.

[doublelayer]

Re: Why not just do it above board?

"Would it be that much of an anathema to see a non-tracked advert for Rackspace once a day when you unlock your screen in the morning in return for them if you weren't donating?"

It wouldn't be unforgivable for them to make that decision. It's their choice to do. I would still consider that a good enough reason not to use the product. Pop-ups annoy me, sometimes a lot, and ads that were irritating or repetitive would get on my nerves quickly. It wouldn't take long until I opted out again, by whatever mechanism it took, so to avoid having to do it, I would simply not accept it in the first place. I don't mind them selling the version with added support as a commercial product, and I don't really mind them telling us about it. I also have no problem with a donation button on the download page. Each of those are limited to their own services, very optional, and thus much less annoying to me.

[Binraider]

Re: Why not just do it above board?

One more step along the road to the inevitable Canonical/MS merge.

In your face advertising and tracking BS; along with declining UI and loss-of-control are major reasons to leave the "other" ecosystems.

Developers obviously need to earn a living and corporate types want their cut for shareholders. Unless they are "happy" working for free of course; or are perhaps looked after in academia. Businesses (and users) that want clean OS must contribute to projects to enable that.

So, RHEL, Suse are doing OK with many business users and support arrangements rolling. What about the rest...?

We all like free stuff, but when was the last time you actually contributed financially to a FOSS project...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Why not just do it above board?

> We all like free stuff, but when was the last time you actually contributed financially to a FOSS project...

Just for the record: this morning.

I also write FOSS and used to package other people's.

And I'm a happy OpenSUSE user. Won't touch Ubuntu with a very large bargepole.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Why not just do it above board?

[Article author here]

I've used both. I worked for SUSE for 4 years. It's a good solid OS.

The problem is that openSUSE Leap might just die when SLE transitions to ALP.

So your choice will be Tumbleweed, or switch distros. And Tumbleweed is a very good rolling-release distro, because of Snapper... but Snapper relies on Btrfs. As a result of Snapper and Btrfs, I had to reinstall my PCs at least 6 times in 4 years.

I am not a fan of Btrfs as a result.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Why not just do it above board?

> The problem is that openSUSE Leap might just die when SLE transitions to ALP.

But if Leap dies, so does Suse. I figure they won't be that silly and will back track in time if things start to go wrong.

> I am not a fan of Btrfs as a result.

Neither am I. In fact I still have to meet a Btrfs fan.

It did get more stable in the last few years, at least compared to 2018, when my laptop would freeze for half a day every morning doing filesystem stuff.

Nowadays I leave Btrfs selected during installs (except for servers) with no adverse issues, though I still don't like it.

(Same AC as above, btw)

[Liam Proven]

Re: Why not just do it above board?

[Article author here]

Because Canonical is making money from servers, not the desktop version.

Most servers have no GUI and no windows. They are headless boxes, probably running in VMs, managed over ssh.

This message, like the one in the MOTD that I mentioned, is visible when you log in to a remote box with no GUI.

[gerryg]

And thus the free software ecosystem is revealed.

Nothing locks anyone into Free Software. If you don't like this distro then feel free to decamp or, gasp, obtain the source and compile it all from scratch.

Never used Ubuntu, never intend to. No-one is compelling anyone else to use it either.

You don't like their approach but as an alternative to finding an alternative luckily something else free to use gives you an opportunity to be an outrage warrior.

Wikipedia provides an interesting analogy. I've bunged it a couple of quid every now and again and yes its annual fundraising banners are a bit annoying. But if they are to be believed 99% of users do not give anything. Perhaps LibreOffice have a point?

[VoiceOfTruth]

Re: And thus the free software ecosystem is revealed.

Any one of the curmudgeonly complainers could always fork Ubuntu and make their own distro. But that is a lot more work than complaining.

[werdsmith]

Re: And thus the free software ecosystem is revealed.

Any one of the curmudgeonly complainers could always fork Ubuntu and make their own distro

Do you think any one of them would have the knowledge or time to do that? I don't.

I pulled the default Unbuntu image into Parallels, tried it for half an hour and almost puked. Deleted it and pulled the Debian instead.

[Liam Proven]

Re: And thus the free software ecosystem is revealed.

Which they frequently do, and I review them.

And often when I do, you, Mx VoiceOfTruth, comment disparagingly, complaining about how there are so many Linux distributions. You have done it so much that you have noticed and coined your own acronym, which nobody else uses.

I just did, with Zinc. Predictably, the result was someone complaining about YALD.

[Ian Johnston]

Re: And thus the free software ecosystem is revealed.

Predictably, the result was someone complaining about YALD.

I would never complain about YALD myself, but I might express my reluctance to use a "remix" produced by a very small team of doubtful future.

(Currently running mostly Xubuntu, with one MINT/XFCE which will probably be my destination when I can't fight off Snap in Xubuntu any longer)

[VoiceOfTruth]

Re: And thus the free software ecosystem is revealed.

-> I might express my reluctance to use a "remix" produced by a very small team of doubtful future

This is one of my complaints about YALD which you have now shown.

[aerogems]

Re: And thus the free software ecosystem is revealed.

You COULD, but you ever notice how some people aren't happy unless they're miserable?

Simple fact is, until we live in a Star Trek-like post-scarcity world where all your basic needs are taken care of free of charge... people need money to live. We all like free stuff, but there's nothing wrong with the people putting in a lot of hours to want to get paid for their time and efforts. I mean, if everyone who used Ubuntu chipped in a fiver each year, the company would probably be rolling in cash relative to now. However, as you and another commentard pointed out, people just want an excuse to complain. It's all performative and 99.9% of the people complaining will not even make a nominal effort to find a way to avoid the "ads".

[GuldenNL]

Re: And thus the free software ecosystem is revealed.

I’ve been using Mint for my desktops\laptops for 14 years. I estimate that I’ve sent them US$750 over that time. No complaints from me when they mention the ability to contribute in their release announcements. But they don’t do it in the distro CLI.

[VoiceOfTruth]

Re: And thus the free software ecosystem is revealed.

I have to say that $750 is a chunk of change. I have bought FreeBSD and Linux CDs/DVDs and various merch over the years to help contribute. But it's nowhere near $750. I have to say that you have indeed put your wallet where a lot of people just put their mouths. I take my FreeBSD d(a)emon hat off to you.

[keithpeter]

Re: And thus the free software ecosystem is revealed.

Works out to $4.46 per month (ignoring present value of earlier donations, inflation &c). So basically a fancy coffee every two weeks.

I've not been doing this for 14 years, but a couple of years ago I set up a patreon subscription payment to the Slackware project for an amount in roughly the same ball park. Set and forget. I don't notice it.

Sort of like BT used to rent you a phone handset. You realised the thing had cost you thousands over the years but it didn't seem like it at the time.

Icon: virtual pint for all who donate or buy tat to support something they value.

[jilocasin]

apt-get is infected as well

Just a minor point of correction, apt-get is also infected with this malady.

The devs have stated that they will move the ad to the bottom of the message output, in a minor concession to those who parse the output automatically.

They have also stated that they WILL NOT remove this 'functionality' since _this_ particular message will disappear in a short time on its own. You know, when the ad campaign runs its course.

Amazon ads, Snaps, now hijacking command line apps to spam users. Every day Canonical makes me question why I use their distros.

Perhaps Debian or even something in the RedHat family if they keep this up.

[VoiceOfTruth]

Re: apt-get is infected as well

-> Every day Canonical makes me question why I use their distros.

So why do you? Are you forced to? There's 100,000 other distros out there to choose from. Or you could make your own.

[bombastic bob]

Re: apt-get is infected as well

Devuan maybe? (It's all I use these days whenever i can avoid something infected with systemd)

[teknopaul]

Slight overreaction

If you cant advertise your own free services within your own free tools we are going to have to ban menu options that introduce you to new features, and welcome dialogs.

A "careful where you go with" that perhaps is in order but nothing more IMHO.

Canonical have to be able to advertise themselves in Ubuntu or there will be no distros that work like this. If you don't like this model use upstream Debian.

[Roland6]

Re: Slight overreaction

I wonder how many people clicked the box: Inform me about Canonical's offerings...

[teknopaul]

Re: Slight overreaction

I take it all back, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS has made netplan.io and snapd hard dependencies of ubuntu-minimal.

Time to go to another distro

[teknopaul]

Careful what you wish for

Try not to forget: Free Ubuntu itself _is_ an advert for paid Ubuntu.

Bitching like this lost us a well supported desktop option.

Nothing to stop Canonical dropping the free version ala IBM.

I for one am greatful that Ubuntu is what it is.

[Steve Graham]

Perhaps some of the irritation is because the advert isn't anything to do with the application?

"Install this package."

"Yes, but did you know that Pro Ubuntu is now free for up to 5 machines?"

[Ian Johnston]

Jesus wept. This faux outrage is now the main headline on the site homepage. When did El Reg become a tabloid?

[MOH]

Obviously running amok with no Dabbsy around to bring order (and appropriate music videos)

[Liam Proven]

[Insert "always has been" meme here.]

Didn't you notice the red top?

[Ian Johnston]

Good point, well made. Presumably Steve Jobs and Elon Musk appear on Page 3.

[Logics]

What is advertising, and what is the big problem?

According to the definition one poster gave to claim that this is advertising, then me saying in this post that I am a systems analyst makes this post advertising, (and spam at that)!

The fact is that this is not apt suddenly selling you on the idea that Ubuntu has a new product which they want you to try. It is apt staying that a previously premium product has now entered the free repository.

They did not try to dissuade you from whatever you are now using, they did not give you reasons to install it, they did not show some women in painted on jeans smiling while using the product. They said that the product is now free. That is informative. I do not see a problem with that.

The problem is that the way they choose to inform me is by updating the MOTD file across the internet. Now apt has only one job; update files across the Internet. Wait…. So apt did what it was suppose to do?

The issue now is, who owns the data in the MOTD file which apt updated. I know that when I SSH into my servers, I may see several MOTD texts, including some from apt, informing me of how many packages need updating, etc., but these messages are locally produced, (after apt has updated other files across the Internet).

So how outraged am I supposed to be, now that apt has done pretty much what it always has done; update files across the Internet, and inform me of my update options using the MOTD file? Is informing me that a file which was once premium, is now free, going above and beyond the duties of apt? Is updating. MOTD across the Internet above and beyond the duties of an app which is designed to update files across the Internet?

If some other (non-Canonical) application which is now premium, becomes available for free, and apt has not inform me,… that, I believe, is the time to become outraged. Right now, I am quite chill.

[Mike_R]

Relax, folks, just get rid of it

Start at:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1434512/how-to-get-rid-of-ubuntu-pro-advertisement-when-updating-apt

for several options, some of which worked for me.

Or:

https://lmgtfy.app/?q=ubuntu+remove+message+about+%20%22Ubuntu+Pro%22