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Ubuntu wants you to buy more crap from Amazon


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Ubuntu might be free, but Canonical is hoping to generate more revenue (all to improve the product, of course) by introducing Amazon shopping suggestions into the world's most popular desktop Linux.

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, advertisements are staples of the internet. It just doesn’t work without ads. But do they belong on your operating system? Canonical seems to think so, and they’re putting their money where their mouth is by shoving advertisements into Ubuntu 12’s Unity Dashboard.

For starters, try searching for an app on your system. Normally you’d expect to find apps and files, but now you’ll also be getting lots of other ‘helpful’ hits, namely shopping suggestions from Amazon. Good stuff, huh?

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What about places where Amazon suggestions might actually be useful, like in Music Lens? No dice. Even though it’s highly unlikely that anyone is going to go buy something from Amazon when they really just want to check their mail, that’s the approach being taken here. Although suggestions in Music Lens have been improved from previous versions of Ubuntu, you won’t find any Amazon results here. That’s a shame, since they might’ve actually been, you know, useful.

The good news is that it’s a snap to get rid of the advertisements. Just open the terminal and run ‘sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping,’ and you should be good to go. The real question to ask yourself is should you do it. Canonical says that including advertisements in Ubuntu will help them build a better OS by giving them more revenue to work with. What’s your take?

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This is a tough one.... I do Love Ubuntu - and I understand that it is free and they need to make some extra money, but I don't really want to be face with adverts when I'm searching for an application - The thing is, advertising starts off like this, then all of a sudden, it'll happen like in Windows Live messenger - Small harmless advert at the bottom, then BOOM! It has taken up the whole screen because you accidently rolled over it....

Back to the point, the adverts will be small and harmless like this at first, but when they start making money, they'll go 'you know what? Lets add some more adverts in xyz application it wont hurt' I know it's an extreme, but it's how things progress.....

If I see this on my system, I will disable it, because if I want to go online shopping (which i never do) I will go onto amazon, or ebay of my own accord, I dont want to be bombarded by ads while going to play that Penguins lemming spin off

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I will never install another Linux Distro again.

I am convinced by trial and error, that Windows 7 is a superb OS, while I have never used a MAC, I don't see a need for it either and my friend bought a MAC and he complains so much about how he does not understand it and how he has to learn new programs etc. I enjoyed Linux for a minute but it's not a keeper. I am tired of hearing, you wont get viruses, well guess what, thanks to NOD32, I have very little concern about viruses :) just my 2 cents.

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I will never install another Linux Distro again.

I am convinced by trial and error, that Windows 7 is a superb OS, while I have never used a MAC, I don't see a need for it either and my friend bought a MAC and he complains so much about how he does not understand it and how he has to learn new programs etc. I enjoyed Linux for a minute but it's not a keeper. I am tired of hearing, you wont get viruses, well guess what, thanks to NOD32, I have very little concern about viruses :) just my 2 cents.

I agree somewhat. Windows 7 is and will remain the best OS ever made. However, I won't write off Linux anyway. Those who say Linux don't get viruses are either fools or fanboys. Does that mean it's less secure? Nope. It's totally open source, with great security measures and plus, it's not targeted like Windows. To add to that, it has a great kernel and free/open minded approach. On the downside, MS is MS, in front of any Linux distro, you have MS, with enormous amount of money heavily paid devs, and a great market position, which, in the end, come with more support, more apps, and easier/better OS. So why use something less better when you can have the best?

Again, I won't write off linux, but it can never be, atleast as of now, a primary PC OS. I always prefer it as a second opinion.

As for MAC, this says it all:

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