The original post: /r/ubuntu by /u/NASAfan89 on 2025-01-21 23:23:55.

I’m quite interested in finding easy ways to upgrade my privacy, and that was one of my largest motivations in switching from Windows to Ubuntu because I’ve heard Windows is a privacy nightmare, even if you turn a lot of the tracking software off on it.

I’ve heard some say that one advantage of free and open source software (such as Ubuntu) has that proprietary software (such as Windows) lacks is that free and open source software has the code of the program publicly available, so if there is any surveillance software concealed inside a program, it is presumably more likely to be discovered by the open source community than it would be with a smaller number of eyes on the code as tends to exist with proprietary software.

So this brings me to the topic of various snaps in the Ubuntu App Center, many of which are proprietary… such as Slack, Skype, or Spotify.

I notice the App Center informs you of the “Confinement” status of the Snap you’re looking at, and read some summary info about this suggesting it is indeed a feature designed to keep potentially malicious software under control. Does this mean, basically, that some proprietary software can be installed without worrying about surveillance software that might be hidden inside it because Ubuntu “confines” the program in some way?

So I’m thinking maybe I should try and work toward upgrading my privacy further by trying to reduce my use of proprietary Snaps and make more of an effort to find free and open source alternatives, or maybe I should just use the proprietary Snaps without worrying since Ubuntu says it’s confined?

What do you think?