Popular Apps Surveys (was Re: cross-platform virus )

[Peter Garrett]

On Wed, 12 Apr 2006 13:13:35 +0200
"Carsten Lange" <milkthemilk at redmilk.de> wrote:

> I don't know if it has been mentioned in this long and multi-topic thread  
> with a now very confusing name but there is a Debian package which reports  
> installed and recently used programs back to the maintainers. Can't  
> remember it's name so someone else should step in. This is a valid method  
> to plan future distributions. The package is not installed by a base  
> install but must be chosen on your own.

"popularity-contest" ?

>From apt-cache show popularity-contest:
 When you install this package, it sets up a cron job that will anonymously
 e-mail the Debian developers periodically with statistics about your
 most used Debian packages.
 .
 This information helps us make decisions such as which packages should go
 on the first Debian CD.  Also, we can improve future versions of Debian
 so that the most popular packages are the ones which are installed
 automatically for new users.

I believe it is installed by default, but only activated if you run 

sudo dpkg-reconfigure popularity-contest

and agree to be spied upon *grin* -

... or something like that. Not exactly intuitive ;-)

Peter

-- 

Linux User #343161