If they just want to count unique installs, then the comment on that thread I believe partially works:
set -x
stat / | grep -i "birth:" | awk '{print $2}'
Then use the output piped to md5sum to make a user-id.
And then finally use an opt-in on demand ephemeral instantiation of Tor to submit the results so they can not get the real IP if they wanted to. In my opinion all telemetry should be opt-in and provide a text/plain preview of what is going to be submitted ahead of time. This gives the system owner a chance to back out of posting the telemetry should they see something sensitive. set -x to show an audit trail for what commands were executed in plain text.
might be viable too, for GPT systems that contain randomised volume IDs (don't think mine's changed since install). Although then there's a chance it could persist between installs if someone decides to re-use their existing partitions, which would be creepy.
And then finally use an opt-in on demand ephemeral instantiation of Tor to submit the results so they can not get the real IP if they wanted to. In my opinion all telemetry should be opt-in and provide a text/plain preview of what is going to be submitted ahead of time. This gives the system owner a chance to back out of posting the telemetry should they see something sensitive. set -x to show an audit trail for what commands were executed in plain text.