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.
You're mostly correct about it being a fluff piece, but:
> I had to stop to vomit between each sentence in the paragraph.
You may want to avoid the internet if even sort of silly articles like this make you throw up. You'll likely start losing weight in short order as you fail to keep any food down. That, or you could tone down the hyperbole and swearing some.
Last week I inserted my USB key and it didn't mount automatically as it used to on previous Ubuntu release.
I spend an hour to find out what could cause this and found that the automount was not checked in the gnome desktop config. It was checked in nautilus. After I checked it the USB key was automatically mounted. This might be the cause of here printer problem.
It is frustrating. I feel her pain, but dislike her way to handle it.
Maybe it's a silly example, but I have found there have been various hardware integration problems with my x61 various ubuntu installs. Every new release broke something. The first release I installed allowed me to put my compy to sleep but not wake it up. The most annoying release bug was an issue with my wireless card in which it would only stay connected for a few second. The latest release was actually the best I've experienced so far because the only thing that happened is that flash became fucked up, which is pretty standard for flash.
A friend of mine, observing my various struggles with ubuntu (I'm a n00b; he's been running linux since the dark ages, so he was my go-to guy- jedliu on here) was traumatized by my various problems. When he decided to move away from compiling his own updates (Gentoo), he opted for Arch Linux. Instead of having monolithic updates, Arch Linux just updates everything gradually, so you don't have the problems of updates breaking things that worked before as much.
I had the same problem as the author with my HP 1020 LaserJet, except it was using it with a Mac ;)
First I upgraded my AirPort Express and I lost the ability to print via WiFi.
Then I upgraded to Leopard/i386 and making the printer work was akin to voodoo — I had to go through some tedious process of first installing the PPC drivers, setup the printer, and then overwrite the drivers with i386 versions. This got weirder and weirder, and eventually I gave the printer away and bought a Canon.
I was thinking about the arrests, charges and probation for scamming ham radio users out of electronics equipment and [redacted], but I agree, that resume is definitely more ridiculous.
Edit: probably not appropriate, didn't want to make a big deal about it.
I don't see how this is relevant, I could care less about someone's past.
Uh, I didn't say it was relevant either, dude. You're the one implying her history has a bearing on a shitty Linux critique.
I've done stupid shit that I'm glad happened before search engines and Facebook.
I once heard that search engines can let you search for things that existed before they were indexed, but that may just have been a rumor, or a tautology.
My advisor for my M.Sc had a sex change, didn't stop her from being an excellent advisor.
Apparently it didn't stop this person from being a shitty writer and an idiot.
So, not the greatest article, but does that mean break out the character assassination Google-fu?
I don't need Google to assassinate someone's character, I'm perfectly capable of doing that with some stupid crap they cough up onto the webbernets.
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).
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.
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.)
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
I think that you are 100% correct about the importance of a universal packaging system and its importance to Linux's wide spread adoption for desktop PCs. I think that you are wrong on the being "too late now" part, but perhaps this is only wishful thinking on my behalf.
I do also think that you are likely correct in part on your 'too late' aregument, as the Linux community did miss a big opportunity while Vista was flopping... But just remember: there will be another Millennium Edition or Vista... Plus, there is always hope that innovation alone can serve as a big enough to draw for that next big Linux conversion-inspiring movement - think Beryl/Compiz as I do recall a huge surge of interest in Linux during its initial release into the wild!
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.
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.
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.
"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).
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.
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.
I do know of many upgrading and downgrading from Vista to get ethernet drivers working as expected.
I agree, they do have "pretty good" third party driver support. But a non-intel mac from 4 years ago will not likely run a new printer, nor would an intel mac likely have a driver for printer 5 years old. A huge effort has been made for backwards compatibility, and driver support from commercial products, and that doesn't make driver support or bug-fix responsiveness inherently better.
The author could have not upgraded the OS and her printer would still work fine. I don't like that solution - but the Ubuntu bashing in the article seems contrived. Maybe Ubuntu LTS can be improved. But I don't see the article expressing this concern adequately .
Well I'm on my Mac right now and I can't get my Epson printer to work. Last time I wasted 30 minutes on it, so ever since that time I boot up Linux every time I want to print something.
Ditto for scanning. I can't find good scanning software for OS X that doesn't suck or costs a lot of money. (Image Capture is too primitive, I want something like XSane) So I boot Linux every time I want to scan something.
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.
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.
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.
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)).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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..
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.