I still don't understand Debian bug reports
|
| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| Steven_Rosenber Apr 16, 2008 10:42 PM EDT |
These Debian bug reports ... they never seem to say "we're fixing this." It's always people chiming in with fixes users can do on an individual basis. I wonder if "my" two Lenny bugs -- sound not being supported for my chipset in the latest Lenny kernel, and Epiphany automatically starting in "work offline" mode -- will actually be fixed. I like figuring out arcane fixes as much as the next person ... but enough already! |
| bigg Apr 17, 2008 5:40 AM EDT |
In my opinion, you either run Debian Stable or you don't run Debian at all. The answer is always the same, "If you want a system that works, run stable. If you run testing or unstable, you take what we give you." That's fine. It doesn't work for me because like 99.9% of the desktop computing world I like software written in the last couple of years. But they are under no obligation to produce a distribution that meets my needs. They make no claims that unstable or testing will ever work for any purpose, and they don't care if your system does work and then stops working. |
| Sander_Marechal Apr 17, 2008 6:03 AM EDT |
@bigg: That's not the answer you get when reporting bugs. The first question usually is "Try testing/sid and see if it's still a bug". |
| bigg Apr 17, 2008 6:15 AM EDT |
I'm not really talking about reporting bugs so much as waiting for them to be fixed. I'll give you an example. Until recently I had been using Lenny on my laptop. Then I updated and wireless disappeared. With Debian it could take six months for the developer that broke my wireless to be in the mood to fix the problem. Or the developer might have decided that something violated his ethics and therefore my wireless will never work again. They're free to do what they want. I fixed the bug by installing Xubuntu. |
| tuxchick Apr 17, 2008 7:21 AM EDT |
Quoting: "Try testing/sid and see if it's still a bug". What a helpful response! :P I blogged sometime back on the silly Aumix bug in Ubuntu- the binary was compiled incorrectly, and the bug reports were being ignored. So after whining about it publicly, some of the Ubuntu devs joined the discussion with all the usual developer excuses- there is no such thing as an easy fix, it takes months and years and decades of skill and patience, and then the fix is applied to the next release, not the current one, because that's more convenient for the developers, and yadda yadda yadda. A pox on them all, it's amazing that anything works with that kind of attitude. ps- how did a binary blob get into Debian in the first place? It's a stretch to call this a bug. |
| Steven_Rosenber Apr 17, 2008 11:46 AM EDT |
Quoting:In my opinion, you either run Debian Stable or you don't run Debian at all. The answer is always the same, "If you want a system that works, run stable. If you run testing or unstable, you take what we give you." I'd love to still be running Stable, but Lenny -- at this point in its life -- runs a lot better on my boxes. A lot of that is due to work done in GNOME. On my Gateway laptop, the touchpad runs way better on GNOME 2.22 that it ever did in the Etch version of GNOME (2.18??). And from a purely aesthetic perspective, everything just looks better. For my really old boxes, one of my favorite apps -- the Ted word processor -- never worked in Etch. There's a bug report out there, I'm sure, but the fact is that Ted has never been fixed in Etch. Like the things I've done in Lenny, I'm sure there IS a fix, but I have no idea what it entails. But since Ted runs fine in Lenny, I'm happy to upgrade and enjoy a pretty stable installation -- not as stable as Stable, but with enough things that work better for me than Stable to balance it out. I know that Lenny is "scheduled" to go stable later this year; who knows if it'll make it, but I'll probably stick with it when it does and ride it out as the Stable distribution for quite awhile. I know that Linux -- especially the kernel -- is ever so slowly leaving old hardware behind. So sticking with "older" kernels gives my old boxes a longer life. In other words, I won't be running Testing again until it has quite a bit of time to "mature," or until I need a feature that Stable doesn't have. Quoting:ps- how did a binary blob get into Debian in the first place? It's a stretch to call this a bug. I think the binary blob for the ESS Allegro sound is already in the kernel, and the Debian team decided to strip it out. It's great ... unless you want sound. I just installed OpenBSD on this laptop, and I haven't tested the sound yet, but if OpenBSD supports this chip -- and they're very much anti-blob -- I'll be scratching my head even harder. I haven't tried Ubuntu 8.04 on this laptop yet, but on my circa 2002 Via C3 test box, it runs worse than 6.06 in terms of hardware detection and power management. Luckily I'm not having the same problems with Lenny. |
Posting in this forum is limited to members of the group: [ForumMods, SITEADMINS, MEMBERS.]
Becoming a member of LXer is easy and free. Join Us!