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LXer Feature: 12-May-2012
I had written an article in beta days. I want to revisit the topic. No operating system is perfect, so to consider Ubuntu to be bug free is just like saying software does not have bugs. The reality is software always has bugs. Its the amount and severity of bugs that gives a good metrics of how usable a system is.
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Things that did not work
1. Close button on top left (maximized window) sometimes closes application underneath the active window (if done fast).
2. On a dual graphics computer (in my case ati) discrete graphics card's fan ran as loud as in previous version. Which could be fixed only after installing catalyst driver.
3. Brightness settings does not work for dell laptop. Every time I have to adjust it before login in.
4. Sound menu gets cluttered with different music players you opened previously. Dconf-editor does help solve this issue, but we were talking about seamless experience for users.
5. While switching between discrete and integrated drivers (using catalyst drivers) pulse audio stops to work, and only can be enabled by closing and starting it again.
6. There is no switch like in wireless to get back Wired Network if it accidentally gets lost. E.g My pppoe does not restart until I run "sudo network-manager restart" if it sometimes gets disconnected from network provider.
7. If you have installed some plugins in chrome it creates that many processes and gets started every time you start your computer, and even if you don't start chrome at all. As a result it takes lots of processing power and battery. It was similar in previous version too.
8. There is still no easy way to add application icons to top panel, unless you add them to wish list using dconf-editor. E.g skype, artha. Sometimes if you install new application that depends on such feature you get completely lost.
9. If I have installed catalyst driver, sometimes login screen simply fails and I have to run "sudo lightdm" to get to login screen.
10. File open dialog, firefox save to directory and other dialog boxes gets so big that save icon gets below normal window. Every time I have to maximize it to click the save button. Since that dialog box immediately closes there is no way to make it adapt my intent of showing small window.
11. If I have half maximized window using snapping feature and if I press maximize window again, the title bar gets hidden above top panel and only way to get it back to visible part is to press Alt + F7 and drag back.
12. On Ubuntu software center if I keep on clicking addons to get installed on a software it gets really slow.
13. Touchpad's mouse sometimes fails to start until I trigger the mouse movement using an external mouse.
14. Totem fails to start some video.
15. Minitube fails miserably.
16. Even if the application failed to install launcher icon gets added.
17. The command "sudo apt-get update" always downloads every metadata.
18. Even if I have selected for weekly update, the updater loads annoyingly.
Things that works or are better.
1. It is absolutely fast and fun to work with.
2. Open source graphics drivers for intel has improved a lot
3. ATI card has finally and finally started to work (wow) on a hybrid graphics system.
4. Battery life for open source drivers have improved a lot.
5. First time a projector started to work on my old office laptop (wow).
6. Even if my wired network fails, it gets started eventually after a time span.
7. Due to good graphics applications are much more responsive now.
Even the list of my does not work seems 4 times longer than that of works, but list of what works are much more than these specified. These bugs are not show stopper bugs. It is absolutely joyful to use Ubuntu. Specially the application history on dash, lens, privacy settings, height of readable area and number of applications you can download from software center are just amazing.
What I would like for next release?
1. New icon set
2. Dual graphics support
3. Brightness support
4. Still better and wide variety of software for Ubuntu.
What process needs to be maintained?
Even if Ubuntu has started to record bugs from users in wide variety of applications, Ubuntu community should maintain a governance where applications gets discouraged for uploading buggy software and expect users to test their buggy programs (which was introduced due to their laziness).
Software writers should not be encouraged to add new features in the cost of stability. Otherwise silly bugs gets users much more annoyed. If that continues users will ultimately stop using Ubuntu, because its gives the impression that Ubuntu is always unstable and is not worth using for production. Since I use lots of unstable ppas its natural for users like me to live with such thing, but for greater community of users it should not be the case. Anyways Ubuntu has done good work in this release.
For next release Ubuntu should consider aestheticism. As much as it is stable and usable it must also be pleasing to most eyes. Not only we want new icons, but also the alignment and proportion of those icons to the screen. If it does not increase the overall beauty of Ubuntu even a new icon set is not much useful. Two icon set I currently like are Oxygen-refit and fs-icons (I still don't like orange). However this is a very subjective thing, because what I like might not be liked by others.
As far I know lot of things (almost all) I have discussed here has been raised and discussed for upcoming releases. E.g Better binary support and improvement in dual graphics situations, Concerns about brightness in dell laptops, new icons, theme and sounds, variety of software ranging from movie production to gaming. Some of the things I have mentioned are improving with every new releases. Some of the things I have mentioned are problems generated because of my tweaks. E.g I have set my fonts to 1.2 which brings all kind of problems of windows going off screen.
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