What is the 'canonical-census' package?
It's for counting the number of installs of Ubuntu in the wild, put there by OEMs. OEMs (in this case) are companies selling computers with Ubuntu pre-installed. Like Dell, System76, etc.
It connects to a Canonical server on a daily basis and tells it the following:
- How many times it has connected in the past (
/var/lib/send-install-count/counter)
- The OEM's ID (stored in
/var/lib/ubuntu_dist_channel)
- The hardware product (
/sys/class/dmi/id/product_name)
- Which release of Ubuntu it's using (
/etc/lsb-release's $DISTRIB_RELEASE)
Implicitly it also tells Canonical which IP the computer is using and from that they could work out the country, sometimes company it's being used from. If they're doing this is another question.
Why is (was) there so much fuss about it?
Some people see this as an attempt to track users. In a way it does. But how much of that information is helpful to actually work out who a user is?
Well I'm a cynic. With the IP, Canonical could look at the other services they provide (Ubuntu One, Launchpad, etc). If the users uses another service, they could perhaps work out who has done business with Dell (et al)...
But even cynical as I am, what does that really give them? Not much. Its only real value is working out how many OEM computers are get used with their default install of Ubuntu.
I'm not going to get bogged down in the paranoia of some people but it's fair to say, all but the most cut-off hermits give out more personal, traceable and potentially harmful data to much bigger and uglier companies on a daily basis.
Why is it under the 'Canonical Partners' section in the Software Center?
I don't know.
It doesn't really matter where it sits but the partner repo is as good as any other place, I guess. It's open source but it's not really something for all users.
Should I install it?
No. You could but it won't do anything meaningful unless you bought the machine with that copy of Ubuntu pre-installed by a Canonical-registered OEM.
This is because it checks for the existence of /var/lib/ubuntu_dist_channel before submitting any data. Normal installs won't have this file.
To address your main question directly, yes, a later version in that release should remain supported. Now, for a bit of background, support for displaying the information to which you refer was added in:
synaptic (0.63ubuntu3) lucid; urgency=low
[..]
* debian/patches/10_ubuntu_maintenance_gui.dpatch:
- updated to support LTS and new "Supported" flags
-- Michael Vogt <michael.vogt@ubuntu.com> Mon, 25 Jan 2010 09:58:35 +0100
This seems to be a server override issue instead of a Synaptic issue.
Let's look at the override information for linux-headers-2.6.32-21-generic and linux-headers-2.6.32-24-generic at http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/indices/override.lucid-proposed.extra.main.
The former is:
linux-headers-2.6.32-21-generic/amd64 Supported 5y
and the latter is:
linux-headers-2.6.32-24-generic/amd64 Supported 18m
For what it's worth, this inconsistency is resolved for subsequent Ubuntu releases.
Best Answer
Canonical Support and Services will support you to some extent on all of these questions through our Ubuntu Advantage program, but there are some caveats:
A1. Wine is in the Universe repository, not Main, and is therefore technically "unsupported". What that really means is that there are no guarantees that we can solve the problem or provide a patch. We will, however, give it a good effort and assist in configuration questions and triaging the problem. We have some really great support engineers but if it's not in Main, there are limits.
A2. Similarly, by definition PPAs are not part of the Main repository. In some of the examples you've cited, there are suported packages for those apps in Main (e.g. libreoffice, openshot) so in such cases we would like to see if the same problem can be reproduced in the mainline Ubuntu version of the package. You might use the PPA version of openshot, but if the same crash/bug exists in the mainline Ubuntu version, then there's no problem. It will be supported. However, if it results in a patch, we're going to push that fix into our packages in Main. Getting the same patch into the PPA which you use would take some coordination with the PPA maintainer and is not guaranteed at all. If that PPA is maintained by a Canonical employee, an Ubuntu member, or the package's upstream maintainter, then there is a decent chance, but again, no guarantee as these are not the offical Ubuntu archives or our Canonical Support PPAs.
A3. That's a broad question. There are server-side email migrations and then there are client-side migrations. Either way, it seems to me that this type of issue would not fall under Support but Services (i.e. consulting). I would contact Canonical Sales and ask for an evaluation.
Since you asked for details, let me add that there are several different types of Ubuntu Advantage subscription: desktop, 3 levels of server support (essential, standard, advanced), cloud guest, and cloud infrastructure. Each choice comes with a client subscription for Landscape, our system management console.
And you're only obligated to subscribe the systems that you think require support. Every other system (test, dev, uat, etc.) can run the exact same distribution as your supported systems.
Good luck, I hope we can help!