Some say they’re considering giving up on Ubuntu

Jun 26, 2020 04:58 GMT  ·  By

Ubuntu is often considered one of the best Linux distros for Windows users who are planning to make the switch, more or less because it offers a straightforward experience out of the box.

But as it turns out, users moving from Windows to Ubuntu might have another thing to deal with (and which they’re already familiar with): ads in the operating system.

A reddit thread that has already received more than a thousand of votes condemns Canonical for putting what are described as “ads” in the motd. A screenshot confirms that Ubuntu indeed tries to send users to a link, which is displayed alongside the following message:

“If you’ve been waiting for the perfect Kubernetes dev solution for macOS, the wait is over. Learn how to install Microk8s on macOS. [link].”

And while users getting ads in the motd is something many didn’t see coming from a company like Canonical and an operating system like Ubuntu, everybody must know this isn’t something entirely new.

Old problem actually

Ubuntu has been doing this for quite a while now, and this post on Ubuntu’s bug tracking platform shows that the first time users came across a link in the motd was in June 2017 in Ubuntu 17.04.

“Currently, https://motd.ubuntu.com shows a news item about HBO's Silicon Valley which has a reference to Ubuntu. Instead, https://motd.ubuntu.com should show relevant items to those that use Ubuntu Server (relevant security issues, etc), instead of items for desktop users,” the report read.

On the other hand, users can deal with the whole thing on their own, as reddit user mralanorth explains in a post. All they need to do is disable the motd-news.service and motd-news.timer systemd units and then delete these files, depending on the version of Ubuntu that you are running:

/etc/update-motd.d/99-esm # Ubuntu 14.04
/etc/update-motd.d/10-help-text # Ubuntu 14.04+
/etc/update-motd.d/50-motd-news # Ubuntu 16.04+
/etc/update-motd.d/80-esm # Ubuntu 16.04+
/etc/update-motd.d/80-livepatch # Ubuntu 18.04+
Canonical has remained tight-lipped on the links included in the motd, so it’s not known if an update in this regard to deal with the criticism is really coming.