Is Ubuntu Heading Down the Microsoft Release Path?
This thought hit home when I was working to fix a sound issue on my computer, although the seeds had been sown quite some time ago with my upgrade to Ubuntu 7.04. My concern is not about FOSS philosophy, but rather about updates and version releases.
Alas, there are updates that break simple things. About two weeks ago Kubuntu (Ubuntu with the K Desktop Environment) popped-up and told me that new updates were available. As usual, I clicked on the icon, ran the updates, and didn’t give a second thought. At least not until my audio was not coming out clearly as it had before.
A similar problem (no audio) had reared its ugly head before on another machine, but only in Windows. Ironically, this audio issue was what pushed me over the top in my migration to Kubuntu 5.04. After trying and trying, my audio would just not return on that old desktop inside XP, so I moved from dual-booting to only Linux.
Unlike with XP, I was able to play with ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) for this time and finally get my audio working properly on my laptop again. Two days later, an ALSA update was released that probably replaced the offending update. Unfortunately though, this breakage was enough to water a small seed of concern that things might be changing. For me, the damage has been done.
New Releases: Not Ready for Prime Time
Previous Ubuntu upgrades had been smooth and without incident, but changing from Ubuntu 6.10 to 7.04 caused major breakage. There was so much damage in fact, that I backed up everything to my external drive from /home and did a clean installation. Next up, Uubntu 7.10 did not cause nearly the headache, but there were still some bruises. Moving to Ubuntu 8.10 was not super smooth with the KDE change, but was to be expected.
I am very excited at the prospect of Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) debuting in April, but leery at the same time. When 9.04 is released, I will probably wait until the middle of May before I even think of upgrading the OS — unless there is some super-awesome improvement that I must have. Heck, the change may even wait until June.
As an administrator, I know to avoid Microsoft releases until at least Service Pack 1, and sometimes even later. With Ubuntu there had never been an issue until 7.04, but that debacle caused me to rethink my lead time after a release. Since then I have been waiting at least a month for the last bugs to be squashed after a release. I will wait until the first batch of updates after 9.04 formally releases, just to be safe.
So, Where Are We Headed?
In reality, I am far from ready to leave Kubuntu, however these issues have given me pause for thought. Is Ubuntu breaking a system with updates, and then going ‘oops’ a day or two later? Is Canonical putting out a release that really isn’t ready for prime time?
I realize that ‘oops’ will happen, and that some bugs make it through until a release is in the wild with a bigger audience. What frightens me though is that Ubuntu may be pushing updates and releases out the door just like that Redmond company we see bashed repeatedly for the same issues.
Personally I am more than happy to wait longer than the established 6 month cycle if it means there will be a more polished product. Kubuntu is a great product with the Ubuntu family behind it, but putting out products just to make a date will only demean the brand to Windows levels.
Contributing blogger Dan Voyles is a junior network admin for a small environmental company based in Mount Vernon, IL. He has used Kubuntu since 2005. Follow Dan on Twitter, or his personal blog: blog.danvoyles.us
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The attitude I have taken about updates is that if it has to work, I only use the LTS releases. So even though I have 8.10 working perfectly on a machine or two if it is for someone else or a machine that has to go I still go with 8.04. This is something that has served me well at least. I have thought that maybe the LTS releases should be officially called ’stable’ releases and the releases in between be called ‘testing’ releases, just a thought.
I have experienced both the upgrade and update problems you talk about and have become increasingly suspicious of both (especially kernel updates). But I’m not convinced that “sticking” with LTS releases is the way to go – 8.04 was the worst release ever for me. By the time it got to 8.04.1, things had settled and 8.10 was just fine – although I did wait a few weeks after the release date before I installed it.
I now tend to dual boot a new release with the old one and give it a thorough work out before I switch.
That said, I have been running 9.10 since alpha 2 (in a virtual machine) and it has so far given me no cause for concern. At least with Ubuntu the released version is usually more stable, fully featured and quicker than the beta which is better than the alpha. I find that Windows tends to go the other way.
I used to use ubuntu and was happy until the updates started breaking my system. I discovered that ubuntu basically ‘makes’ a new distro every 6 months, so the updates are more likely to break the system. Now I use debian lenny for system sensitive use and fedora 10 for an up-to-date system. I suggest fedora or debian to my friends depending on their experience with linux.
It’s not rigorously scientific, but if you look at the experience polls on Ubuntu Forums, the typical user experience has gone down with the last few releases.
http://www.endolith.com/wordpress/2008/11/19/ubuntu-release-quality/
The experience for upgraders and new installers is very similar for each release, so I think the results are pretty accurate, and the LTS was only marginally better.
I suspect this is because of things like PulseAudio being pushed out before they’re really ready, which implies to me that the release cycle isn’t working.
I don’t understand why the Ubuntu release cycle must be so predictable. Doesn’t it make sense to release updates when they are ready, rather than when the calendar hits a specific date?
These early releases are eroding Ubuntu’s reputation as a solid operating system. There’s no excuse for it.
Ubuntu’s update breakages were what forced me to stop using it (and recommending it). As a consumer, I love new releases of anything and I typically want them as soon as they’re available. But with Ubuntu, each new release is a landmine, particularly for those users who are not adept at troubleshooting Linux installs. When I see a popup telling me that a new release is available, I should be able to install it with confidence that it’s been thoroughly tested. I’m not a beta tester and I don’t want to become one.
They need to make it clear that only LTS releases are recommended for use. The other releases are not stable enough for the average user to even test. They are development releases, plain and simple. I only ever recommend LTS to anyone.
It’s a huge complicated mess unfortunately with audio, because some releases work/break on various machines. So you can’t necessarily recommend the LTS to someone with new hardware. I wish the audio in Linux wasn’t so messed up and frustrating.
They have already broken it again with Jaunty. I’m crossing my fingers that… in maybe 2 or 3 years we will have a sensible audio system in place.
That said I think the Ubuntu team is doing an amazing job.
Synaptic’s history will show you what was upgraded. You might be able to roll it back manually (remove the bad version and install the older version).
Aptitude also has the ability to refuse updates by version number so you might also be able to tell the system not to upgrade it to the version that seems broken.
Nice to know I’m not the only one with these experiences.
Josh – I agree 100%. Releasing to me to be a beta tester is what M$ does, we are better than that (or should be).
Good article! I have similar concerns. I have been using Ubuntu with Gnome since version 6.06 LTS. I actually had great success and enjoyed version 7.04 and stayed with that. 7.10 was ok and gave very little problems. Now 8.04 was an absolute disaster for me. Every time I would get kernel updates my sound would break, and the whole system would act weird at times. I would get lots of freeze ups and it just did not seem snappy like 7.04 or 6.04.
I gave up on Ubuntu 8.04 and I installed Kubuntu 8.04 and on the 1st update my sound broke LOL! So here I am back to Gnome using 8.10 and so far so good for now. My sound has only broken once with a recent kerlnel update. But I was able to fix this quickly. Simple solution!! I got rid of pulseaudio. That pulseaudio is so full of bugs I swear it’s infested with maggots.
Don’t let us down Ubuntu. I have not used MS-Windows for many yrs now and I don’t want to go back to the MS-Windows nonsense.
I have been so disapointed with Ubuntu I am now taking a real good look at other distros such as PC-BSD and just plain old Debian.
Folks, use Debian instead of Ubuntu. If you want something more uptodate, use Debian Testing. (That’s what Ubuntu is made from). If you require the most stable packages, then use Debian Stable instead.
How Canonical makes Ubuntu is to download Debian Testing, run it through of bunch of customized scripts that break a whole bunch of things (in order to tweak the UI a little in ways that you can do with Debian anyway), and then put out that broken and poorly tested version of Debian testing. (Note that a lot of Ubuntu’s software comes directly from the Debian repositories, and Canonical doesn’t test all of that stuff).
There’s a reason why Debian doesn’t stick to a release schedule every 6 months, and that’s because unlike Canonical, the Debian community _really_ does test its stuff before each release. They don’t release buggy crap just to get it out there, and feed the overhyped Ubuntu PR machine.
Debian does it right. Canonical does it wrong.
I don’t believe Debian does it right, sorry. There’s a reason why it’s not receiving the same fanfare as Ubuntu on the desktop.
That said – while I personally have not experienced the upgrade woes – I do believe Ubuntu could spend some time polishing things.
Part of them problem, I think (and this only my theory based off of what I can get my hands on), is that Canonical is not growing fast enough to stabilize all of the official variants AND do the regular business of the company (specialized coding and tech support). Once they start being cash flow positive and start hiring more employees, things will probably get better.
I have multiple partitions. Since Fedora Core 4 I’ve had multiple Linux Distros on my PC and my wife’s laptop. I hope after this you keep a “sudo cp -a” copy of your Distro/Version of choice on a second partition or external hard drive. I make my backup once a month. If you keep data and OS separate then your OS will be about 3-6 GB. I give the OS a 10 GB partition. Since this is a home PC I’ve used the backup to recover from upgrade disasters but also from packages with bad side effects.
I’m currently running Ubuntu 8.10 but I have two partitions with Ubuntu 7.04. On another partition I’m fighting sound problems with Debian-Lenny-rc2, but I still have my main distro while I try to get Debian to behave.
When will sound return to Kubuntu? I was a fan. WAS. My old laptop never lost sound but my brand spanking new laptop has been mute since birth. No one has been able to help me change that. Because of having a mute Kubuntu laptop, I’m searching for a new OS and will probably ditch Canonical for good. I guess you really do get what you pay for. Vista is slow, but at least I can HEAR. If I have to choose between slow and sloppy or slick and mute, I’m going to choose slow and sloppy. No sound is a deal breaker for me.
Frankly, i think, much of it comes from PulseAudio, which means that same thing also happens to other distros.
agree with you about the release cycle. Why does it have to be every 6 months? i just dont see the point to have new version in routine 6 months only to accommodate minor improvement? make a stable release, maybe not quite there, but at least not a deal breaker. 1 or 2 year i think is OK, only promise us that it will hit in full blast in positive manner. Have you tried to write ubuntu book? by the time you have finished and want to get it published, a new version is coming out. I hate to hear those wacky names every 6 month. Next we will have Jaunty Jackalope. Jackalope?? i think i will just call it Jolly Jumper instead. Wanna bet? we will still have that brown and disappointing theme.
Stuff like this is why I started using Linux Mint and still if the update is anything Nvidia I can’t take it. Ubuntu is more or less as cutting edge as Fedora and you pay for that.
The big feature push in Foss has been cool. I would not trade the features for a bit more stability. If I wanted I could use Debian stable or old stable.
@jg – you could not be more incorrect. Debian contributes a lot of packages and patches to Ubuntu, but Ubuntu does not rely completely on “Debian testing” if there was such a thing.
@wesley nailed it.
If you want everything to work relatively flawlessly, use LTS releases. If you want bleeding edge (and possibly buggy) use the releases in between. With the exception of Pulseaudio (audio has been a tough one in ALL linux distros), 8.04 LTS is extremely stable.
Also – does complaining do any good? No. Enter a bug. Make it better. Fix what you find broken. That is what COMMUNITY is all about. Do your part for using a FREE system. If you want and expect everything to work, pay for what you get, but in the case of MS you don’t get what you pay for no matter what you pay.
Hi gave up using Kubuntu because of the annoying updates. Everytime I would update it would end up breaking something.
So instead I moved to a rolling-distro. I am now happy to use ARCH LINUX (with KDE from the CHAKRA Project). It is slightly harder to setup but with the beginners guide and installation guide there were no problems. Once things were setup I never have to upgrade again. Instead I do small incremental updates to all the programmes that have an update available for example daily or monthly (or whenever I want). Also the updates are first tested before they are released to the normal repositories. That way it is quite rare to have the updates break a system. Additionally if you want you can be on the cutting edge. Probably I have the latest kernel on my system before any other distro.
After course you also have the option to just update every 6 months. You have the freedom to choose.
Forget about Ubuntu. Its too predictable. Let me get this straight. Theres some update or patch you want but its in the kernel and you dont know whow to compile, so what do you do? Are you going to wait 6 months to get it?
THE WHOLE IDEA IS STUPID. why wait 6 months when others already have it. And rolling release distros are said to be unstable. Yeah maybe a little but at least they get what they want, when they want it.
Dont get me wrong, i like Ubuntu. Its doing some good and that is appreciated but their way of releasing updates to their OS is WRONG. PERIOD..
And btw i also had the same problem in Kubuntu. I got fed up and moved to Arch Linux. 2 years later im fu**ing loving it. Give it a try, you wont be dissapointed.
@Linux Loner
Have you seen the gigantic and quickly growing bugs list on launchpad? Canonical doesn’t pay much attention to them at all. Matter of fact there are a large number of bugs where bickering has occurred instead of just doing the simple fix.
Ubuntu’s approach to bugs is the very reason I stopped using it. I stopped using Mandriva for the same reason. Everything works great except that one thing that is hopelessly broken. Unfortunately Ubuntu isn’t all that concerned with stability. Yeah, Yeah, LTS blah blah…. LTS should be nothing but a bug release. The only thing that should have happened between Gutsy Gibbon and Hardy Heron is bugs. However, Hardy Heron was massively broken for many people.
I don’t recommend Ubuntu anymore. Especially for new users.
Ubuntu started going down the drain from 6.10 onwards. My lappy enjoyed great solidity and functionality under breezy and dapper, but I found later releases to be buggy and half baked.
I’m using 8.04.2 at the moment and had the most horrible issues, including system freezes only curable with sysrq-b and shutdown lock-ups. I had to setup fedora 10 on my spare/test partition just to get work done until the new kernel came out (not sure if the kernel fixed the bugs or switching fromthe distro’s ati driver to the vendors’), and the shutdown issue still isn’t fixed.
I’ve been complaining about ubuntu quality control for a few years now and the more it diverges from debian the worse it gets.
The 6 months release schedule is not a bad idea, it’s the main reason I moved from debian unstable to ubuntu.
BTW I thought ubuntu was a snapshot of unstable not testing?
In all this my point is I’m seeing issues multiply in all distros and I think that the truth of the matter is that complexity up means quality down unless substantial resources are poured into QC, which nobody is doing.
Just my 2c.
Matt
Similar experience here. Well maybe not to the extent some are talking about… The 7.04 to 7.10 upgrade went well for me even on a system that I had toyed with and broken myself (was just learning on 7.04). 8.04 brought quirks and sluggishness for the first month or two and 8.10 was worse. Pulse is a great idea but it just doesn’t seem ready and was the source of my sound problems.
I think my biggest problem has been config files that the update wants to change that I have tweaked for myself to get something running. I’m never sure if I should take the update because it will introduce functionality and add the tweaks back myself or what. The last time I lost my “ugly” hard drive fix for the load cycle problem and the Lenovo Y510 sound fixes that I had applied.
I’m thinking about going the LTS only update route. I don’t think it has come to the point where I’d leave Ubuntu yet but I may start looking at alternatives.
Funny you would ask this question as I just submitted an idea about this to brainstorm just yesterday. Please take a look here. http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/17939/
And that was prompted by this thread on launchpad see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/vino/+bug/299112
Basically there seems to be hardly anyone to fix the bugs at Canonical. The people that do are volunteers and they are totally slammed. This is a HUGE problem. Mark Shuttleworth needs to start hiring a quality control department immediately.
When I upgraded from 8.04 to 8.10, I began to experience several problems I was unable to remedy. Problems with sound topped my list, followed by the replacement of the X windows configuration file. On that one, I was unable to get my extra mouse buttons working again, and web searches for a solution only turned up questions from people like myself who couldn’t figure out the new system.
I ended up going back to 8.04 — I now keep my /home on a separate partition. I have learned to wait at least 6 months before moving to new versions of the OS, because apparently nobody cares about the problems these “public betas” create with the non-technical user community. We saw this attitude with KDE 4.0, and we see it again with the X-Windows change.
As an aside, before I switched to Ubuntu full-time, I would always wait 6 months before applying a new Windows service pack. Hmmm. As Yogi Berra once said, “It’s Deja Vu all over again”.
The great thing about Linux is choice. For most configurations Ubuntu works flawlessly. I have 8.10 running on my PC and haven’t had any problems at all even when upgrading. On my Compaq Presario it does not seem to run as well and thus I am currently running Fedora 10 without any hickups.
This is the big difference to Microsoft – Linux has many flavours. Some are super stable (eg. debian) others are more cutting edge and thus more instable. Ubuntu is closer to the cutting edge which most users want.
For the user with sability needs I can recommand SimplyMepis – I have had a look at version 8 which is out as RC3 at the moment and it looks great with a KDE3 environment. It’s like running Debian with everything running straight out of the box.
So, if Ubuntu doesn’t work for you anymore dare the step out and give another distro a spin. There are plenty of people out there thinking that Ubuntu has far too many users anyway…
Fixing Ubuntu involves instlalling Debian. You can try to keep defending the “robustness” of Ubuntu until you’re blue in the face but in reality you’d be some dumb kid defending a thing unrelated and unknown to you. Before computers were commonplace and so many excuses for bad-behavior, our communities were better off.
Ubuntu is popular not based upon its merit. You might think I’m no fan – and I’m not. But it’s not spite or ignorance or anything anti-ubuntu or anti-linux. I fell for that “a Debian version with current software” BS and have been hoping to like Ubuntu ever since. Since ‘04.
But it’s just not worthy of any loyalty or devotion for 2 reasons:
1 – it’s a friggen operating system people — why not meet your neighbors or learn a useful thing about the real-world instead of camping out in your momma’s basement glued to the psycho-radiant drama? Can you handle real life?
2 – Ubuntu is held together with duct tape and paper clips. It’s a damn shame that it is the representative of Linux to most people. A damn shame.
Linux users traditionally have been savy computer users that have chosen to install and run Linux for whatever reason. Nowadays we have so many loudmouth and ignorant pre-pubescent fad-users spouting off at the mouth deflating the value and the merit of Linux. All because of Ubuntu.
It’s too bad, too. Linux has it all over Windows and mac on commpdity hardware. Just that, as is the typical fashion of the ignorant Human, people seem to care about a pretty shade of blue more than something important.
Then there are those that say — can’t we just let users use whatever they want. The answer to that is: No!
Look at how ignorant Windows users have turned the web into crap. Look how ignorant computer users (Windows users) continually operate their computer with wreckless abandon and allow maladies to continually run amok. Everyone suffers for this. So, I say, no — If I am aware of a better solution for that (adjective) running and suffering from Windows than I will tell her/him about it. If they don’t want to use it – for whatever reason – that’s their business. I just don’t support their Windows any longer.
And that always pisses them off.
Windows is a dead-stick. It will just take a lot of people a long time to realize it. Much to their expense.
Ubuntu, as a choice of Linux flavor to run, is less than optimal. It does introduce some neat concepts (or, rather, alters them in such a way as to be n00b-friendly) and it has reached accross communities and done some good in the overall scheme of things. However, this limited good can be mitigated by the colossal amount of bad.
I wish Ubuntu didn’t suck as much as it does — it’s the Linux distro to be in a position of leverage – but it keeps fumbling the ball.
For better results try any one of the following:
Super easy -
Mandriva
Debian
Mepis
A Little Harder -
Gentoo
Arch
Slackware
Any one of the above Linux distributions is far more deserving to be the one Linux distro that takes Linux into mainstream usage.
I totally agree with you, I am against the 6 months release cycle. Its also headache to format your PC every 6 months
Two things.
First of all, Kubuntu is more a semi-official community project than anything else. Ubuntu is the main distro that receives all the love. If you want polish, Ubuntu is your pick.
Secondly, KDE 4.x has been a real headache for most distros. It might finally be fixed with KDE 4.2, but the problems with KDE 4.x have been big enough to get Linus to jump to GNOME, even though he hates GNOME.
So of course you’ve had trouble with Intrepid Kubuntu, it’s a common KDE issue. In theory, things should be better now.
WRT the 6 month update, it’s a feature not a bug. If you want stability at the expense of staleness, you pick an LTS distro (or Debian) and not have to worry about upgrade for a few years. You might even be able to get a bit of freshness via the backports repository if you desire.
If you want things to be more cutting edge, you use the 6 month upgrade (no need to reformat), or even a 1 year update if you’re okay with a bit of staleness. I’m currently on Intrepid but my wife is on Hardy. Her needs are simpler, so she doesn’t have the need to go through the fuss of upgrading. But when she does, it’s a simple process.
No-one is forcing anyone to upgrade if they aren’t ready, other than the “ooooooh shiney” habit that compels many people to think that they need the new simply because it’s new.
KDE 4.x was so bad Linus Torvalds who hates Gnome, moved over to Gnome.
When updates are made, sometimes they don’t go to plan. But the “oops” are normally fixed within a few days. Which is a lot better service than waiting a month until the next Microsoft bug release. Compared with the stability issues Windows still faces, broken sound that you got fixed just isn’t that big a deal.
Look at it this way. You can have problems you can fix. Like reconfiguring ALSA. Or you can have problems you can’t fix. Like Explorer.exe causing a page fault exception in it’s own memory space.
Microsoft and Windows get the heat they do because it’s not one problem you’re dealing with. It’s multiple problems all piling up one on top of the other. And you also pay for the privilege. Windows 7 “ultimate” owners will have paid $300 for the privilege.
Move long, there’s nothing to see here. I think you’re all just a bunch of whining panzies. Every distro has it’s issues. I run Ubuntu, Fedora & SuSE and at 1 time or another an update or new release has fouled something up. Backup your machine before doing an update and restore if something goes wrong!
Never realised how much negative vibe is around Ubuntu. Sometimes I think some people do not dislike MS because it sucks, but because it is so successful. It seems that these people are now develop the same feelings for Ubuntu. That is a shame.
In Ubuntu you can restrict your update to only essential security updates. I have currently set that up on my in-laws’ PC and it works fine.
I thought I should mention a common mis-understanding in your post: Ubuntu not equal Canonical. Ubuntu is a community distro. Granted, Canonical has a big voice in Ubuntu development, but ultimately, it the people in the community who decide. That means you can be an active voice, if you so choose.
People tend to become cautious when discussing Ubuntu flaws. The problem is that Ubuntu is the starting point of many potential users and critisim may reduce the number of Microsoft abandonees. Many of these confuses Ubuntu with GNU/Linux.
Ubuntu is not perfect. Far from it. When stating it IS, and fresh users rapidly figures that they’ve been had, Gnu/Linux gets the blame. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Even though many Gnu/Linux-users may have considered Ubuntu to be so, the price to pay is lower regard for Linux.
I abandoned Ubuntu when both 8.04.2 LTS and 8.10 turned out badly for my HW. Interestingly all my troubles went away when using a Debian kernel with Ubuntu, but I simply had it. Rather than abandoning bugfixes and rushing to the next new thing, they should make their distro work.
There is no way that I would recommend Ubuntu for Corporations. GNU/Linux – I recommend with no hesitation whatsoever – but not Ubuntu.
Recently KDE 4 have received quite a bashing due to poor implementations, and *buntu has more than it’s fair share of the responsibility.
It’s my believe that Ubuntu has become a liability rather than an asset to Gnu/Linux
The answer is quite simple: Install Debian. As a system administrator, you’d be glad you did. Seriously.
Ubuntu (incluiding LTS) is a modified snapshot of Debian Unstable/Testing. It will/might be stable over time but the fact that they commit to those packages for various years doesn’t make them stable when they’re released. Debian Stable on the other hand is heavily tested BEFORE it’s released. There’s a huge difference between those approaches.
Debian Testing (and even Unstable) is more stable than any popular distribution.
I’m also one of these people who decided to do away with ubuntu because of the time-based release system and lack of upgradability from one version to the next.
If Ubuntu did away managed to solve these two items, they would be in a much better position!
Now not all distros are that way, where you wonder if everything on your computer is going to break after an dist-update. I use archlinux these days which has a rolling release cycle. This is the best option for an up to date desktop in my opinion.
Mepis 7 has been the best one of my tests conducted 10 months ago. Fedora 9 was second and all others including Ubuntu 8.04 failed. I had a look at 8 live CDs then.
I get the impression that the stream of consciousness here is heavily dominated by people who of course have a problem. Those of us who do not have a problem … are probably neither reading or posting in this discussion.
Myself being an exception of course:)
I am running Ubuntu 8.04 on my laptop at home, and 8.10 on my desktop at work. Everything works beautifully, and has been for some time. I am reminded every day how wonderful it is to go from work to home, and back to work the next day – moving from one stable Ubuntu machine to the other day after day, month after month – God I love it. I remember when I was shackled to Windows on both machines: the viruses, the crashing, … the crap. Then the sun came out.
I really like PulseAudio – it works for me. Yes, Audacity doesn’t seem to like it, but Audacity doesn’t want to support Pulse. I like Pulse. It drives my USB headphones nicely. I don’t need or use Audacity. I know Linux audio is a mess, but my own experience with Pulse has been quite positive.
Now excuse while I get back to work … and loving it.
-Ron
Ron F: I see both sides of the story here.
You are correct: The most vocal readers are usually readers who have a problem. The silent, happy majority typically remain silent.
However, this IS an Ubuntu-focused site where visitors typically have reasonably good experiences with Ubuntu and want to help push the operating system forward. For that reason, I am concerned by all the reader concerns about Ubuntu’s development schedule, bugs, etc.
I second the Mepis recommendations. It is Debian polished to a gem !
Warren Woodford does not release on a schedule. The betas and RCs keep coming until it is solid.
The newest Mepis 8.0 is already very solid in the RC stage, and will go final when Lenny is released.
A very new kernel, the solid KDE 3.5.10 (no new features, only a bug fix release) leads to a very nice stable system.
-Jay
I upgraded without problems from 8.04 to 8.10.
I have a Dell laptop D610 and had no problems with NEWER ubuntu releases.
Having a separate home is a needed thing to be able to install new releases (or new distros) with confidence.
bye
a satisfied Ubuntu user
This is quite in touch: http://punditkitchen.com/2009/02/10/politicial-pictures-bill-gates-list-bugs/
I have had the same experience as well. I tried upgrading to 8.10 late in the cicle and it went really bad…
I’m also frustrated. To me it seems like there’s something wrong in the quality control / service department at Ubuntu.
I’m not currently having any problems. Like most people I get annoyed when problems crop up. But I always manage to find a fix.
The most recent problem was with X server when I upgraded from 8.04.1 to 8.10. The new version of X server doesn’t automatically select a default graphics card if you have more than one. This means you end up back at the command line and you need to manually alter the configuration file.
But this is a change the folks in the X server project made. Not Canonical and not the Ubuntu development team.
Now while people are harping on about the development cycles and how stable Debian is. Remember the “oh we didn’t know what that code did so we just commented it out” gaffe which basically made all debian based distros as secure as your pockets in a flea market? That particular simple error went unnoticed for years.
People make mistakes. Every Linux distro will have bugs just like every other OS has bugs. The important thing is they get fixed quickly.
Since 2003 I’m SWITCHING on my production system 3-4 month after the official release date… doesn’t meter its is ubuntu, fedora or suse… First time I did upgrade (after checking it on test system) was Centos 5.0 to 5.1… never even try to do that on fedora… doing so its just looking for serious problems
Well, I do have impression that since ubuntu 6.06 (then… they had guts to make a delay) and fedora core 6, the quality of releases is lower however:
1. making code stable and bugs free through out community is one of fundamentals of open source model
2. my impression is only a tiny part of whole ecosystem an heavily depends on hardware I use…
P.S maybe its not related to your post but instead screaming about KDE4 pure quality I switched main system from fedora 6/7 to centos5 and welcomed a valley of stability with KDE3.5.10… probably after KDE4.4 release I will give it a tray…
I have had very few problems and Ubuntu works well for me.
I do have a separate /home drive and do a clean system install for each new release which may be something you wish to consider.
I always back up /home to a usb drive just to be on the safe side but that is just common sense.
The worst that can happen is that I would need to reinstall the old Ubuntu cd and a few apps.
If you are risk averse use the LTS, that’s what its for.
Or wait a month before updating.
Ubuntu is a community project and costs you nothing, no one is putting a gun to your head forcing you to use it.
Concerning the 6 month update schedule, my view is that I think it strikes the right balance between getting new features and stability.
Pulse audio is a case in point, it was a hard call but the right one, to push ahead even if it wasn’t 100% stable. Audio needed sorting out and this is the way forward.
If you are just looking for a free ride and are not prepared to help yourself then perhaps you should look elsewhere.
In fact I would encourage all the people who have put up whinging posts here to to just that and not to let the door hit you on the way out.
I would also like to thank everyone contributing to the Ubuntu project for their time and effort, it is very much appreciated.
What a bunch of whining whingers. Yes, I am one of those happy silent majority types, but also recognise there are problems that needs to be fixed. I have had problems with opensuse and fedora, actually more, I don’t bag them.
Linux is still very much a work in progress and needs to advance as quick as possible and with that comes problems and bugs, one forward two steps back, if you like. Abandoning a ‘half-built’ ship to another may satisfy you now but it is no solution for the long term.