

I Have Never Seen Ubuntu Get Updates Right - twampss
http://teddziuba.com/2008/11/i-have-never-seen-ubuntu-get-u.html

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etal
_I figured out how to get my wireless connection back, but the NVidia drivers
are still a mystery. I don't care about free software idealism, I care that my
shit works._

Are we not seeing the connection here? This is _why_ anyone bothers to write
drivers for devices that already have binary-only drivers. It may work _right
now_ , but if something changes in the future, someone needs the source code
to fix it. Free software is pragmatic in the long run.

(Disclaimer: I spent way too much time a little while ago getting some random
binary executables from the Linux 2.0 days -- dynamically linked, 32-bit -- to
run on a fresh Ubuntu 8.4.1 installation. The source code had been lost.)

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davidw
I would be willing to bet that you'll also never see Ted trying out the betas
and giving back some useful feedback other than "OMG! FAIL!!!".

~~~
orib
To be fair, the Ubuntu quality assurance process seems somewhat shoddy. On
stable releases, I've seen 2 rather serious issues with minor updates.

In one update, Ubuntu pretty much broke the PCI detection code in X, so that X
always thought that there were no cards. Luckily, it was only a matter of
waiting several hours for a fix, and updating from a text console.

In another update, the Canadian english localization completely broke KDE,
making it segfault on startup. Again, wait a day or two and update from a text
console.

Right now I'm on vanilla Debian (unstable branch) and I find that it has had
less critical breakage than Ubuntu's mainline branch. I'm not sure how Ubuntu
should update their QA process, though.

~~~
davidw
Sure, there are some issues with it - I think a 6 month release cycle is
difficult. I tend to wait a few weeks before grabbing Ubuntu updates for that
reason.

But Ted's attitude is lame - open source software doesn't really need
poisonous people like that.

~~~
orib
Yep, Ted is a bad writer with very few points to make, so he fills in the gaps
with anger and poison. Some people can pull off the angry rant in a a
worthwhile way. He can't, and I generally despise his writing.

As far as Ubuntu's update process, these updates were small point updates in
the middle of the release cycle, which is why they were so disturbing; it
seems that Debian's "constantly up-to-date" system works better for me, at
least so far.

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kingmaker
Envy was painless for me (if you need to get an nVidia card working):
<http://albertomilone.com/nvidia_scripts1.html>

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icco
Maybe I just have had good luck with it, but I have never had problems like
this with any version of Ubuntu since 6.04, but I'm also not running intrepid
yet.

~~~
unalone
I have. Up until this last summer, when I got a new computer, I'd either have
problems with my video drivers or with my sound card. It was an absolute pain.

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shadytrees
And, according to his update, he could've found the answer and saved up some
of the hot air in his colon by Googling.

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liamQ
driver update don't do shit either in VISTA

