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.
data such as host name,
Okay why do they need to know that? Why do they need to know if the computer is called “Melissa’s Laptop” or “Workstation 15, Internal security division”? Seems like this kind of data could if stolen be misused and it has minimal legitimate purpose IMO as anyone can put anything as host name and while in organizations it often corresponds to use it doesn’t have to for individuals. Someone could call their machine “Mack’s Porn Rig” and they only use it for doing banking and a little coding.
kernel version, desktop component versions, detailed information about hardware and drivers involved, screen size and resolution information,
This all seems legitimate enough, this would be helpful for understanding the hardware their users run on and targeting features or bug fixes.
network device MAC addresses,
Not great but there is an argument for it, they could just grab and send the first 3-4 octets which would give them the info they need on manufacturers without getting uniquely identifiable data that along with some of this other stuff is concerning for fingerprinting.
disk serial numbers,
Okay, what the fuck. Why do they need disk serial numbers? What possible use is there for that. Those are used for warranty claims and could be used as part of uniquely fingerprinting a computer and person. Not cool.
disk partition data,
This is vague enough. I guess one could choose to see this as just info about partitions in use say if there’s also an NTFS partition that looks like a Windows install that would be useful but on the other hand data encompassed within a partition could also nefariously be read as allowing them access to all your data. Partition layout, partition labels, and file systems used on disks available to the system would be a clearer way to put this and erase any doubt.
information about the number of running processes and installed packages, versions of basic packages such as systemd, gcc, bash and PipeWire.
All this is also fine just technical data stuff.
Dammit, Manjaro. Why you gotta be WEIRD?! I used to love their branding, but they keep doing crazy things that would clearly alienate the userbase that’s left…
Once again proven right that EndeavourOS is the superior downstream Arch distro
I moved one of my computers to endeavor, but one is still on manjaro and the contrast is kinda hilarious. Manjaro machine always gets funky after updates, it struggles to deal with sleep and hibernation, and it feels slow even when its like 4x as powerful as my EndeavourOS machine.
Glad i said fuck it and went straight to actual arch when i wanted to try arch based. Literally like 9/10 times i hear manjaro brought up its not going to be in praise. Ffs lol
I’ve defended Manjaro many a time, despite the mistakes they’ve made. The main reason for this, Manjaro is the most stable Linux distro I’ve used.
However, the main reason I ditched Windows as my primary OS was telemetry (and bloat). If Manjaro introduce this, it absolutely must be opt-in.
I actually contribute to the Steam hardware survey as I want to ensure Valve, but more so hardware manufacturers, are aware desktop Linux systems for gaming and creative work are viable. But it’s my choice to contribute.
If Manjaro don’t implement this as an opt-in then I’ll be installing Arch. It will be a pain to configure my software again but needs must.
If manjaro is the most stable distro you’ve used you can’t have used a lot
Yeah the Manjaro devs have a long history of gaffes not to mention the infamous one with PGP keys requiring users to reset their system clo k
I mostly used Ubuntu based desktop distros and frequently had issues with the 6 monthly update cycle. Problems with Fedora too. I have not had a single update issue with Manjaro. I often have different distros running in VM’s and whilst Arch has been the most reliable, most are not.
I also setup loads of Linux servers in my I.T. job that I used to have, so I have plenty experience.
The bottom line is Manjaro desktop has been ridiculously reliable for me. Therefore other peoples hate of it washes over me and is meaningless.
That list about which data they’re collecting is longer than my highschool essay
Opt-out? I see it’s time for the seasonal Manjaro fuck up.
They’ll find some way to make this change break the AUR again
Why on earth do they need to know hostname? MAC addresses?
And disk serial numbers 😟
Opt-out? Seriously? What are the Manjaro devs smoking?
Ad firm money.
Maybe I’m just cynical, but my first instinct when I see stuff like this is they have a secret contract with an advertiser and are selling this information.
Whatever they can get their hands on, including your unique hardware identifiers
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Manjaro is already less stable than arch, now it collects your data involuntarily? Fucking wild how anyone can use it.
clown distro makes clown decision
With archinstall, anybody can install Arch in 10 minutes nowadays. Why use Manjaro ?
To many options? A new user might be confused, by for example choosing a the correct disk layout.
NGL on pretty much any install, I’d end up looking up pros and cons of every filesystem AGAIN…
… It’s BTRFS now. Simple. Easy. Lol
But it was a lotta research to reach that conclusion. So yeah I get that newbie apprehension!
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?
Edit: I misread, though it said “trust” instead of “distrust”
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.
One of their developers temporarily broke Asahi Linux.
Wait, how??
He’s also a contributor to Asahi Linux. One of his MRs changed the build options that somehow caused it to (IIRC) use mainline Mesa instead of the branch that is specifically modified to work on ARM.
(edit) Aussie linux man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDRiBbzzREw
It’s not only his fault, but mostly.
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.
They’ve done it more than once now
wait, is that name “manjarno” like when brad pitt says bonjorno in inglorious basterds??
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
endeavor keeps pushing updates with cringe AI desktop backgrounds and its making me want to install vanilla arch
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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I get the usefulness of technical telemetry such as kernel version, RAM, disk space, processor type, etc… but NIC MAC? HDD serial? WTF?
Those are absolutely ways of covertly identifying your device while technically not counting as “personal information” under privacy laws.
Serial numbers are hardly covert though… but yeah.
The point is that it’s a loophole in privacy laws so they don’t have to outright tell people that they collect personal or identifying information. So they can legally mislead people by claiming it’s anonymous telemetry in hopes that users don’t actually look into it or understand the implications.
Yeah that makes no sense lol. Who needs MAC addresses to debug and fix bugs? No one.
I said elsewhere, I hope this is just some way to track changes over time per user.
But they need to take an anonymous hash of some non changing data or create an install id that is used for this and nothing else (e.g it identifies a unique user but not the person or hardware behind the user).
Too much identifying info is just pushed around like we shouldn’t care, it’s become a real problem.
The first three octets of a MAC specify the manufacturer of a NIC chipset. That could come in handy for driver debugging.
Manufacturers and firmware versions of storage devices? You can make the argument; perhaps it would have helped figure out the SSD firmware bugs years ago.
But stuff like whether or not you have video capture card or your current system temperature stats? Nah… that’s getting into “identifiable information as toxic waste” territory.
hostname? MAC address? serial numbers? does "partitionx data also include names and GUIDs?
why would they need these? what is wrong with them??
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.
we seriously need to get the reporting domain added to popular blocklists
What?
the program uploads the information to somewhere, right? just like the telemetry functions in windows. adding the domain they use to popular blocklists would help those who use pihole or something similar to that.
Oh I thought you had something against the OP or their source and wanted their domain blocked.
The MAC address is anonymized with sha256, and IP adresses aren’t stored.
So this seems to me to be perfectly anonymous.MAC addresses are 48 bit, and half of that is just the manufacturer. So 24 bits really, and those bits aren’t random, I think manufacturers just assign these based on some scheme, like a serial number. Point is you could easily reverse the SHA by brute force.
You can’t calculate any useful statistic from a hash so literally the only use this would have is some sort of tracking.
Edit: I just looked up some data and I found someone using hashcat on an RTX 3090, which looks like it can do almost 10000 million SHA256 hashes per second of salted passwords (which are longer than 48 bit MACs, so MACs should be faster). 2²⁴ is 16.8 million, so it’ll take about 1.7 ms per vendor. I found a database with (all?) 53011 vendor ids:
>>> 2**24 * 53011 / 10000 / 1000 / 1000 88.93769973759998Yup, 89 seconds. You can calculate the SHA256 of every single MAC ever potentially issued in 89 seconds on a bog-standard 3090.
this would have is some sort of tracking.
It’s right at the top of the announcement, that it’s mainly for more accurate stats on unique users.
It’s not that I think this is a good idea, because I don’t, but some people are blowing it out of proportions. Especially since this isn’t at all decided. Which I seriously doubt it will.You don’t need this to count unique users. You could just assign a random number on install or whatever. Or even more simply, just run the thing once per month, should be accurate enough. Do they expect the software to just randomly spam duplicate reports? Don’t write it that way.
Best case they don’t care about collecting minimal data and don’t understand that hashed MACs are easily reversible. So incompetent fools with no sensitivity to privacy.
Maybe this should be Manjaro’s tagline: Not purposely malicious, just grossly negligent and ignorant.
You could just assign a random number on install or whatever.
Funny, I thought the exact same thing.
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.
