Regarding (X)Ubuntu 12.10 & Lens/amazon

Hi all, and thanks in advance for your comments:



I'm currently using Ubuntu 12.04, and quite happy with it. I'm using the Unity desktop, and I've got no major complaints.

My problem/question is:

I've been reading on the news, forums, and different websites that the new version in 12.10, which i'll eventually have to upgrade to if I plan on using Ubuntu, has a lens/amazon function on the dash that sends queries to amazon. Now, this disturbs me a bit, since I don't want to see "shopping recommendations" everytime I look for something, be they from amazon or from "future partners".

Does this new "function" only apply to the Unity desktop? If I switch to the Xfce desktop, will I be able to "save myself" from sending search data to amazon and/or shopping recommendations from them? Or will I have to entirely switch distributions, in order to evade this?

Again, many thanks in advance for your comments and/or help.

Regards,
Miguel.

It's very easy to turn off the shopping lenses, just go to Settings > Privacy and switch them off.

You can uninstall the shopping lenses packages as well if you wish.

Thanks! Good to know. I'll still wait to upgrade because the version is quite unstable, but as soon as it goes LTS, i'll be upgrading.

Thanks again.

12.10 is perfectly stable for me. Also you seem to be confused about LTS releases, 12.10 will never be LTS.

LTS releases come out every 2 years, the next one will be 14.04 which is scheduled for release in April 2014 (2014.04).

Oh yeh... Yup, I'm pretty confused about the subject. I should read up on that... I'm accostumed to Debian, where the "Testing" edition eventually becomes "Stable".

Thanks for pointing that one out.

Here's some reading then...
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS