Ubuntu proves Shuttleworth wrong

Story: Joint releases to jolt open source: ShuttleworthTotal Replies: 2
Author Content
azerthoth

Jul 04, 2007
10:47 AM EDT
The fact that he is saying that other major players should set a solid release cycle is a load of bunk. The illogic in this is proven by Ubuntu itself with its get it out the door on time regardless philosophy.

I had previously been using Ubuntu 6.10 as one of the distros installed on my desktop, as well as Debian Etch. I was forced into doing a motherboard transplant so I wiped the drives and started fresh as well. I didn't have the time to go into beating Debian into submission so I decided to use Ubuntu 7.04 just to get things up and running, its halfway through its release cycle so I thought that it should have a majority of its issues dealt with by now.

WRONG

I habitually use fluxbox even on machines that are well and above meeting the requirements for M$'s latest load. Even so, something in Ubuntu was causing hard locks of the system where I couldnt even ctrl alt f1 over to a terminal to find and kill the offending culprit. A check of log files turned up nothing at all. A quick bit of research showed that I am not the only person who is having major stability issues with this release either.

So tell me Mark, how is it that you can seriously suggest that others follow your example of releasing on a schedule when that same forced schedule kicks shoddy and unstable work out the door. Your suggestion and guidance on this matter if followed would be as big a detriment to desktop Linux as Vista has been a god send.

just my .02
tuxchick

Jul 04, 2007
11:02 AM EDT
Quality issues aside, what would be gained from a common release cycle for all these big, complicated applications? Mr. Shuttleworth says "publicity." Ok, so what else? That's a dumb reason. The ease of 'aptitude install foo', or whatever installation and upgrading tool the user prefers, renders application release cycles irrevelant.

Now getting back to quality- I too would like to see more emphasis on making sure things work right instead of kicking them out the door just because of some schedule. Feisty has the exact same defects and problems with ALSA that Dapper did, for one example- WTF is the point of shoving the same bugs out the door on a schedule? udev, HAL, and hotplug are still usability nightmares. Network Manager is now part of Feisty, and Avahi is the unwanted pest at the picnic. They're meant to work automatically, without user intervention, but they're nowhere near reliable yet, and debugging problems or customizing their behavior is incredibly difficult, because none of these are documented worth a darn.

So what you said, azerzoth. How about making a big splash by releasing polished, reliable, user-friendly software instead of beating a six-month drum like it's some sort of magic voodoo.
jezuch

Jul 04, 2007
2:47 PM EDT
Quoting:How about making a big splash by releasing polished, reliable, user-friendly software instead of beating a six-month drum like it's some sort of magic voodoo.


You seem to be describing Debian :)

Those forced, static releases are more publicity... for Ubuntu. Imagine: now we have "Ubuntu Oval Ox was released *without KDE 5.13*! OMG, it was released just two days earlier, they had plenty of time!!". No wonder Mark wants to shift the blame ;)

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