

Ubuntu Is A Poor Standard Bearer For Linux - ukdm
http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2010/04/ubuntu-is-a-poor-standard-bear.html

======
tumult
I have actually become stupider after reading this article. Her cheap laser
printer stopped being recognized after a full distribution upgrade, which
makes Ubuntu's developers out of touch, its policies unfitting for mom and pop
who want things to "just work" (thanks, never heard that one before!) and the
contributers to open source software meanies for breaking people's stuff.

Jesus Fucking Christ.

I could go on, but how about some choice quotes? Keep in mind this is a fluff
article that's only 7 paragraphs long, and sticks to the idiotic grade school
"introductory paragraph, supporting paragraphs, concluding paragraph" nonsense
formula, so it's more like 4 paragraphs long.

 _No wonder CrunchBang Linux is moving to a Debian as a base instead of
Ubuntu. Linux Mint may be moving in the same direction._

Man, at this rate, Ubuntu might as well move to using Debian as a base, too.

 _It seems I haven't printed from the netbook, only the desktop running
SalixOS, since I upgraded from Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron) to 9.10 (Karmic
Koala). .... We can't have hardware magically stop working after a routine
upgrade."_

Yeah, they should put in a giant locked button and several warning signs that
say you are about to replace almost every software component on your computer,
with repeated warnings, explanations of what it means, and instructions. Well,
I guess that's something you'd only do on a non-routine upgrade. Wait, oh.

 _The one conclusion I have reached is that Ubuntu is a very poor standard
bearer for Linux. It isn't what I want Linux judged by. Other distributions
have problematic releases but other major distributions do not have
significant problems in nearly every release. Ubuntu does. So how do we, in
the Linux press make people outside of the Linux community aware that Linux
does not equate to Ubuntu? That is the real challenge we now face if we want
Linux to be more widely accepted._

I had to stop to vomit between each sentence in the paragraph. It may be the
most contrived thing I've ever read, and I've read Sonic the Hedgehog fan-
fiction.

The best part about her article (3rd grade essay?) is the solution to her
problem, which she did not include: unplug the printer and plug it back in.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
What's your point? Are you a school teacher or something?

------
archgrove
The specifics of the post may be written in a troll-like style, but the key
points are quite valid - I've had very similar experiences with Ubuntu.
Running an "apt-get dist-upgrade" update last October entirely hosed support
for my (pretty damn common) network card - transferring at anything above
about 5Mb/s would lock the network driver. I had to manually discover this,
and hand-correct the hosing until they finally shipped a kernel > 2.6.30.

The machine is an entirely standard, off the shelf, Atom based PC. Taking the
"Could I give this to a non-IT expert" test, it failed entirely. I'm not
saying that this couldn't happen on a non-Linux system, but a) I've never had
it happen to Mac or Windows b) Trawling support forums and kernel bug lists to
discover the cause isn't good enough for end users and c) Waiting 4 months for
a non-hacky fix sucks. As it stands, I could never seriously recommend Ubuntu
to a non-tech savvy friend.

I suppose this is just anecdata, but I'm certainly not alone (another friend
can tell you a similar story about sound cards, for example).

~~~
natrius
Users who aren't tech savvy don't install their own operating systems. Unless
you're going to set everything up for them, you shouldn't be recommending
Ubuntu to people who aren't tech savvy in the first place.

~~~
archgrove
Well, even if I _did_ set it all up for them, the point is that it will
happily break itself without doing anything other than the recommended
updates.

------
hga
I started to switch from Windows (which I got stuck on when SCO Unix on a 386
was worse than Win 3.1) _right_ at the time Ubuntu "lost it" with Hardy Heron
(8.04) two years ago to the month. From the notes I took at the time:

From the moment they released the first version of the kernel, it had broken
error reporting (would just crash without reporting) _and_ had bad lockup
problems. This was reported early and ignored through the alpha, beta and
release cycles. The obviously unreportable and undiagnosable lockup problem
was "patched" by users (for the most part) by switching to the RT kernel.

Various serious problems were reported and closed out without being fixed and
reopening them was not allowed, e.g. breaking Broadcom 43xx wireless cards.

The analysis at the time that made the most sense to me was that taking a
Debian unstable snapshot every 6 months and then furiously trying to make it
stable enough was impractical. My interpretation of the above development
management problems was that shipping on schedule took absolute priority, and
the whole process reached a tipping point with this release.

Me, I eventually went to Fedora, then to Debian stable lenny because I needed
Xen _and_ stability ... and by then the hardware I had bought for this was old
enough that Debian lenny supported everything ^_^.

(I can supply plenty of URLs or my entire set of notes if desired.)

~~~
mitchellhislop
I feel like a lot of people take the Ubuntu->Debian path. Its not unlike how
people start playing with HTML, and end up coding in PHP a year later-you hit
the limit of what it can do for you, what it can handle, and then you go for
the full model

------
alexandros
Summary: "Other distributions have problematic releases but other major
distributions do not have significant problems in nearly every release. Ubuntu
does."

To what extent this is true is unknown as the author only gives anecdotes.

~~~
nailer
There were some well known major regressions with Intel drivers in Ubuntu
(which are more popular amongst Linux users as they have OSS drivers) that
didn't affect other distributions. The scope of those affected - nearly
everyone with an Intel card - meant it seemed that there was no systematic
testing of known-good hardware prior to declaring a release stable.

~~~
elblanco
I wonder what the hardware testing lab at Microsoft looks like? It seems like
Ubuntu really needs to beef their testing up. In reality Ubuntu and MS have
the same problem, an infinite number of possible system configurations to
release against.

------
cosmok
I know it can be frustrating to have a software not work as expected but, I
don't think Ubuntu is doing too bad in this respect (I have been using Kubuntu
@ work and Fedora at home for the past 2-3 years). The author IMO is a bit too
harsh on Ubuntu. On a somewhat related note, I think people should also read
this while passing judgement on another OSS (esp bug fixes):
<http://ryanbigg.com/2010/04/want-it-give/>
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1255905>

~~~
sandGorgon
seconded - please file bugs atleast. Or help in debugging. A lot of bugs, by a
lot of people, are about their particular hardware not working.

Please atleast install debugging symbols/packages and submit better bug
reports. Ubuntu developers dont have access to _all_ varieties of hardware.

Yes, delays do happen - but help the developers in helping you.

Better stacktraces, log files, even debugging-enabled-but-slow-Ubuntu helps in
fixing issues.

~~~
sesqu
I think the biggest problem here is the barriers that exist to reporting bugs.
Often you have to start the program in a terminal for stderr output or look
for logfiles, isolate relevant error messages and figure out what hardware or
software components are relevant, then track down the developer's bugtracker,
register to their platform, maybe wait a day for the registration to be
processed, and then open a ticket consistent with their conventions, and hope
your problem is something they actually care about.

That's a lot of work for users who only see something no longer working after
an upgrade. It's tolerable for people who expect to be doing QA in exchange
for getting to use cutting edge releases, but if your users aren't
programmers, which is the case with ubuntu, they'll just cuss and delete.

~~~
elblanco
Thank goodness I have more than one computer so I can report bugs on my
working one while trying to keep the Linux box running.

------
f33l
The things that really broke Desktop linux' back was that there was never a
cross-distro way of installing things (rpm vs apt, package managers changing
all the time). If Fedora, Ubuntu and openSuse had worked together when the
world was watching Vista fail, linux could have grabbed a significant market
share. It's sad to say this, but I think it's too late now. Linux might
succeed on severs, smartphones and cloud os devices, but it has lost the war
for the desktop to Windows and Mac Os X.

~~~
FooBarWidget
I am a developer who had been working on such a cross-distro installation
system. www.autopackage.org. You wouldn't believe the issues we had
encountered. There were technical challenges but they pale in comparison to
the resistance we got from distro makers and veteran users. The resistance
arguments boil down to (from what I can remember):

\- Cross-distro installation is only useful for closed source software.

\- apt/yum/$DISTRO_SPECIFIC_PACKAGING_TOOL is the ultimate packaging tool,
everything else is evil and can break the system.

\- Different distros should be regarded as entirely different operating
systems and hence shouldn't need to be compatible.

Until the community accepts the notion of a cross-distro installation system,
things look very bleak indeed.

~~~
sandGorgon
the autopackage site has no (easily) locatable links that compare it with new
installation systems like 0-install, Nix.

Can you comment on what advantages does autopackage have over other package
managers. Correct me if I'm wrong, but all package managers are essentially
cross distro - I can run rpm/yum on my Ubuntu machine.

And a google search turns up .... umm.. this -
[http://kitenet.net/~joey/blog/entry/autopackage_designed_by_...](http://kitenet.net/~joey/blog/entry/autopackage_designed_by_monkeys/)

------
gamble
Desktop Linux is worlds better than it was when I last used it seriously ten
years ago, but it still has plenty of issues. I'd be reluctant to recommend it
to anyone non-technical.

Case in point: I recently bought an EeePC 1005PE and installed Ubuntu Netbook
Remix on it. This is probably the most popular netbook sold today, but
networking and power management were completely borked under a fresh install.
Figuring out what was wrong and fixing it was a distinctly non-trivial process
that took hours and a couple of reinstalls. Even then, battery life under
Ubuntu is drastically worse than the same hardware running Windows 7.

------
hendler
Provocative at best.

"We FOSS supporters get all on our high horses about proprietary software
while we keep offering up "Linux for humans" that, in reality, is an oft
broken mess, at least in the case of Ubuntu. I am back to believing Andrew
Wyatt was right when he called the distro "garbage salad." This is a perfect
example of what he was describing. No wonder CrunchBang Linux is moving to a
Debian as a base instead of Ubuntu. Linux Mint may be moving in the same
direction."

A specific complaint I could find from the author is about a printer driver.
While I haven't used another distro for quite some years now besides Ubuntu
and RHEL, third-party drivers often fail to work on every platform - Mac and
Windows included.

While the user does represent a common user, and usability and reliability
could be improved in Ubuntu - I find the article a bit too "garbage-salad" (to
quote the author).

~~~
nailer
Really? Mac and Windows have pretty good third party driver support the last
time I checked. I've never had to upgrade my entire OS to get a new piece of
hardware working either

RHEL backports a lot of driver updates to its stable releases. Ubuntu LTS
doesn't seem to do this.

~~~
blasdel
Mac OS X has good driver support only because Apple implements their own
drivers for every device, and bundles them with the OS. Leopard had ~5gb of
printer drivers alone in the default install! In 10.6 they moved to a system
that installs drivers for stuff on-demand, automatically downloaded from
Apple.

~~~
Someone
"because Apple implements their own drivers"?

AFAIK, Mac OS X and Linux share a lot here. Both use (Apple-owned, and
GPL/LGPL) CUPS.

------
hussong
I have to agree with the author about the lack of backports and the time it
takes for some bugs to be fixed. Examples:

\- Backports: No Thunderbird 3.0 on Karmic 64-Bit ("we'll get it in the next
release"). Good luck with the daily builds.

\- Bugfixes: Yesterday, I got locked out of my account after enabling auto-
login with an encrypted home-directory. I consider this a showstopper for end
users. The bug was fixed after twelve months, and only for Lucid.

------
beilabs
Just because a single printer does not work out of the box does not a garbage
OS make.

I wonder if the author tested every single other Linux OS with the same
printer!

Instead of complaining regarding a free product I prefer if they submitted a
bug report to ensure a better experience for everyone else and avoid this
situation from happening again.

~~~
kiiski
The bug report was already submitted, and it is classified as "high priority".
The author wasn't complaining about the printer not working; he was
complaining that the bug wasn't fixed (and that it shouldn't have been let to
the system in the first place (the printer worked on previous version)).

<https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/491133>

~~~
beilabs
From what I can see with the bug report is that it is still active (Triage),
awaiting someone to deal with it.

That does not mean it will not get fixed in the future, I'm fairly certain
with the high exposure of this article will get it done more rapidly.

Once fixed can the author come up with something else that supports their
argument?

~~~
kiiski
I would assume that the printer was meant just as an example of the problem
(which is that new releases may break things that used to work).

That said, I've been using Ubuntu as my main OS for about 2 years and I've
never had any real problems (that I didn't cause myself...) with it, so I
don't quite agree with the author.

~~~
sandee
Moved to ubuntu as my main workstation since past 6 months. No problems as
yet. And its fun to tinker around the system. Finally librated !

------
cageface
Support for proprietary hardware is a Linux problem, not a Ubuntu problem. In
my experience Ubuntu is better than most distros at making things "just work".
No Linux distro is ever going to be as turnkey on any random gadget you just
bought at Best Buy as Windows/OSX until the manufacturers start writing and
open-sourcing their own drivers.

------
hendler
Ubuntu reluctantly decided to support proprietary drivers in 2006
<http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS7895189911.html>

------
Tichy
I don't care that much if printer x doesn't work on netbook x, because I don't
own a netbook. Just saying, maybe the bug is not that high priority after all.

If she really wants to support oss, perhaps she could pay a developer to fix
the bug?

Also, a new printer probably costs less than the dev time to fix the bug, and
less than her time for writing the rant is worth.

Edit: i've also had an old scanner stop working. Os x doesn't support it
anymore either. Inconvenient, but it is old, after al. No biggie.

------
mtarnovan
From her bio: _She is currently heavily involved in the Linux Yarok project as
a developer._

So that might explain the biased flamebait.

------
known
Linux is a _superior_ OS. Windows is a _popular_ OS.

------
trezor
This article may be provocative or even flamebait but the author still has a
point.

I'm constantly bombarded with things working in a previous release no longer
working in a new release. This involves everything from video-drivers, GDM,
wifi, powermanagement etc etc ad infinitum.

And yes. Constantly breaking things which used to work is not what I call
progress. See fewt's take on this for a more technical breakdown on how
Ubuntu's internal workings can be (1).

It's become so extremely annoying that for me, that right now the only thing
I'm using Ubuntu for are shell-VMs with a fairly predictable "hardware" config
and for my netbook for lack of better choice.

(1) <http://www.fewt.com/2009/10/i-give-up.html>

~~~
lwhi
It's frustrating that progress sometimes seems to move in both directions with
Ubuntu, but I wouldn't imagine that Ubuntu is the only distribution where this
occurs.

------
dnsworks
This article is one that makes me wish I could downvote. "My crappy printer
doesn't work with my free operation system. Therefore that operating system
should be scrapped, it's community is a failure!$@!!@$"

Or maybe printers are all cheap pieces of garbage, somehow worth less than the
toner inside of them, so full into the idea of planned obsolescence you just
buy a new one when it's time to replace the ink..

