Red Hat developers have announced the readiness of the gnome-info-collect tool for collecting telemetry from systems running the GNOME environment. Users who wish to participate in the data collection are provided with ready-made packages for Ubuntu, openSUSE, Arch Linux, and Fedora.
The information gathered will allow an analysis of GNOME users' preferences and take them into account when making decisions related to improving usability and the development of the shell. With the obtained data, developers will be able to better understand user needs and identify priority areas of focus.
Gnome-info-collect is a simple client-server application that collects system data and sends it to the GNOME server. The data is processed anonymously, without retaining information about specific users and hosts, but to avoid duplicates, the data is linked to a salted hash created from the computer identifier (/etc/machine-id) and the username. Before sending, the prepared data is presented to the user for operation confirmation. Data that could be used to identify the system, such as the IP address and exact time on the user's side, is filtered out and does not appear in the log. server.
The collected information includes: the distribution used, hardware specifications (including manufacturer and model information), a list of installed applications, a list of favorite applications (pinned to the panel), support for Flatpak and access to Flathub in GNOME Software, types of accounts used in GNOME online, enabled file-sharing services (DAV, VNC, RDP, SSH), settings virtual desktops, number of users in the system, the web browser in use, and enabled GNOME extensions.
Source: opennet.ru
