evilghost
Premium
join:2003-11-22
Springville, AL
 ·Windstream
1 edit | Rant; Ubuntu
Evidently my understanding of an LTS differs from Ubuntu's. I would imagine an LTS to be stable, long term supported, and not on the cutting edge forcing it's using to engage in a daily blood-letting.
First, why the inclusion of a BETA browser? Seriously?
Secondly, glad to see the blatant gnome-keyring failure that was fixed in backports-proposed finally made it in what appears to be a daily outpouring of updates. Nothing like two days ago having 0 packages to install and 48 hours later being greeted with 49. I look forward to future updates and regressions with more updates.
I've lived through borked Xorg pushes that shattered the desktops of all Ubuntu users who installed it, repositories running at dial-up speed, arbitrary updates, regressions, and now an LTS that should be called the "Vista" of the Linux world.
Perhaps Ubuntu should concentrate less on their release cycle and more on stability, there's only so much breakage a user-base can stand. Dapper Drake, 6.06 LTS works great, but I question the future of the LTS releases and usefulness on the desktop and server. |
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deblin
Dark Side of the Moon
Premium,MVM
join:2001-09-01
Middletown, DE
| There has to be a happy medium between Debian and Ubuntu. Debian (stable) is rock solid, but of course it does this at the cost of a slower release cycle and dated software.
Ubuntu on the other hand, I guess due mostly to its targeted audience, seems to sacrifice quality for more frequent releases or to provide newer versions of included packages.
Back when I ran Debian, I ran unstable because I wanted more up-to-date software, knowing full well the risks of doing so. I had very view catastrophic failures that I couldn't quickly revert or fix, but I don't see how Ubuntu (without a massive QA team) can hope to improve stability/quality while still making newer versions of software available.
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»hillaryis404.org/ |
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firephoto
KDE
Premium
join:2003-03-18
·Verizon west (ex G..
| reply to evilghost
You choices are living with what's broken or accepting updates to fix them. Consider it lucky actually to be even getting updates to a released Ubuntu in these sort of quantities because it hasn't happened in the past unless you accept "fix we'll be out in 6 months".
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pablo2525
join:2003-06-23
·TekSavvy Solutions..
| reply to evilghost
Hi EG,
I'm a big openSUSE fan but I thought I'd try the latest ubuntu release on a couple of other PC's (non-critical).
What I didn't appreciate about ubuntu's `su' is the non-inheritance of $DISPLAY. This mean I had to do quirky things to set DISPLAY properly when su'ing. A few other ubuntu quirks caused me to overlay with openSUSE.
I'm also not a gnome fan and I could have tried kbuntu but decided not.
I did leave my 11 year old's machine on ubuntu. He needs a basic machine and it does the job for him.
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pablo
openSUSE 10.3 & 11.0;KDE
ISP: TekSavvy DSL; backhauled via a 6KM wireless link |
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Psicop
More human than human
Premium
join:2005-12-21
| reply to evilghost
1. They are not SMART.
2. By releasing this last version so quickly the ended up shooting their own feet.
3. Now I got here a product that is constantly updating. I am getting tired of it.
4. Firefox 3 BETA ended up being uninstalled because it was a piece of junk.
5. I can't listen to YouTube staff. Need to switch back to Windows to do that.
6. I am about to erase this distro from my machine.
7. I need an OS that is stable with hardware and reliable.
8. Macintosh is going to be my next OS, for sure. |
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deblin
Dark Side of the Moon
Premium,MVM
join:2001-09-01
Middletown, DE | If you want something more stable, but potentially with a little more legwork to get where you want to be as far as desktop usability goes, try debian.
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»hillaryis404.org/ |
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Hayward
K A R - 1 2 0 C
Premium
join:2000-07-13
Key West, FL
3 edits | reply to Psicop
said by Psicop  :8. Macintosh is going to be my next OS, for sure. Fine I guess if you want to pay twice or more what something is worth vs something free....
And did someone hold a gun to your head to upgrade from rather stable U 7.10... I think not you chose to... and unless first day knee jerk there were all kinds of problem reports out there in 48 hours... but you still chose to do it... oh well
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»haywardm.com (Hayward's Key West)
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bgrundy
join:2002-01-25
Sykesville, MD
| reply to evilghost
said by evilghost :Perhaps Ubuntu should concentrate less on their release cycle and more on stability Sounds like you need to upgrade.
Seriously, it sounds like Ubuntu is starting to suffer some of the same update issues that started to drive Gentoo users away (libexpat, anyone?). I may be wrong here, but I see running Ubuntu over Debian almost the same as running a ~x86 (unstable) Gentoo box (an adventure in itself).
I have a couple of Debian boxes at work running "testing" and they are still damned stable. It sounds like the Ubuntu devs are starting to step too far in the balance between cutting edge software and stability.
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"If you continue to use Windows, your system may become unstable" --BSOD |
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evilghost
Premium
join:2003-11-22
Springville, AL
·Windstream
2 edits | reply to Hayward
said by Hayward :And did someone hold a gun to your head to upgrade from rather stable U 7.10... I think not you chose to... and unless first day knee jerk there were all kinds of problem reports out there in 48 hours... but you still chose to do it... oh well With errata support on 7.10 ending April 2009 and the LTS designed to be a long-term supported release I would say that yes, a 'gun' was held to ones head.
I'm glad to see I'm not alone in my gripes. I simply cannot understand why more effort would not be placed on LTS releases with regard to stability, especially if they are to be considered for server installation. The whole Firefox 3 BETA inclusion cements my perception that the Ubuntu dev/leadership team may need to refocus on what an LTS release actually is and why uses select these releases over the more frequent release.
I'm actually going to give Slackware a good look. I tried CentOS for my server but failed miserable when things like ecasound (used for commercial volume normalization), mod_chroot, syslog-ng, and other critical packages were missing from the repos. If I'm going to be forced to compile from source (I prefer not to use 3rd party repos) then I'll run Gentoo.
I distanced myself from Debian a bit after the OpenSSL entropy fiasco which is equally as heinous as the inclusion of Firefox 3 Beta in an LTS release.
Compare Dapper 6.06 to Hardy 8.04 and look at differences in mentality. |
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JohnInSJ
Premium
join:2003-09-22
San Jose, CA
 ·Comcast
| said by evilghost :With errata support on 7.10 ending April 2009 and the LTS designed to be a long-term supported release I would say that yes, a 'gun' was held to ones head. You've got nearly a whole year on 7.10 left.
7.10 is pretty darn solid. My ubuntu machines are staying there for many more months. Within 6 months, 8.x will be stable. That's when I'll move over to it.
That's the "happy medium between Debian and Ubuntu" - always go with whatever Ubuntu version that's been in release state for at least half a year, never with the newest release right when it comes out. Works for me. |
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Matt
Take me down to the paradise city
Premium
join:2003-07-20
Jamestown, NC
·North State Commun..
| reply to evilghost
I think Ubuntu overall has been a disaster and shows that Linux still has a long way to go in the desktop market.
When you have to go to ubuntuguide.org to get 1/2 the functionality that Windows or OSX provide out of the box, you're not helping your cause. Yet, instead of fixing those problems, you include a beta browser, a new clock applet, and change yet again a ton of backend stuff and applications to further confuse people who may have gotten used to the programs in 7.10 or spent hours tweaking to get something as simple as audio working.
While I WANT Linux to succeed on the desktop it can't seem to escape the stigma as a "tinker's platform." There are a lot of people who are simply tired of tinkering and Just Want it to Work™ |
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Derspankster
Premium
join:2003-02-12
Marion, OH
·RoadRunner Cable
·RoadRunner Cable
| reply to evilghost
I did a fresh install of Hardy on my desktop, I had already built a Hardy server without issue and upgraded my laptop to Hardy without problems.
Imagine my surprise and consternation when I could not get a screen on my desktop after the fresh install of Hardy. After a lot of muttering and cursing I discovered that my DVI video card connection was causing the problem. I could reconfigure xorg to use either vesa or nv but when I enabled nvidia-glx-new I couldn't get a screen.
I ended up changing to VGA and doing a reinstall and everything works now. After all of that I haven't explored reconnecting DVI as yet. (For my old eyes there is little difference)
For a LTS things like this are a bit befuddling. I too am mystified at the inclusion of a beta browser but FF3 works fine on my systems. I miss some of my old extensions to some degree though.
Generally, I do like hardy better than Gutsy. I don't think it was quite ready for release though. At least it's still FREE!
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I thought I made a mistake once but I was wrong |
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antiserious
The Future ain't what it used to be
Premium
join:2001-12-12
Scranton, PA
| reply to evilghost
said by evilghost :Perhaps Ubuntu should concentrate less on their release cycle and more on stability, there's only so much breakage a user-base can stand.
I think that was their biggest mistake. Predictable upgrades are swell, but at some point flexibility is needed. By including newer versions of programs that just weren't Ready For Prime Time, they neutered the advantages of LTS in the here and now. I bet most, if not all of their user base would have gladly waited a month or three for this release in order for them to get it right the first time.
On the whole I've been very happy with UbuntuStudio, but I retreated from 8.04 almost immediately (even after waiting a few weeks to upgrade) because it just didn't work well enough for me to use daily. I'm Back with 7.10 and everything has been great, but I know that I'll need to think about a replacement soon. Perhaps 8.04 will stabilize in time.
said by deblin :There has to be a happy medium between Debian and Ubuntu.
I thought that was supposed to be the role of the LTS, but it seems not to be the case in this instance. Maybe the 'Buntu's got caught up in their own success.
I really don't think I need a new O/S every 6 months, nor do I really want one.
fwiw
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"My goal in life is to become the kind of problem that people throw money at".
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vukodlak75
Nisam Ti Dude
Premium,MVM
join:2001-10-27
Beachwood, OH
clubs: 
| Well, you guys got me scared. Will it explode on me? I just installed 8.04 for the first time (never used prior versions). Haven't had much time to play around with it.
What I see so far I like
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One day older, one step closer. |
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evilghost
Premium
join:2003-11-22
Springville, AL
·Windstream
1 edit | reply to evilghost
I did a 6.06 LTS to 8.04 LTS dist-upgrade using Synaptic (as they suggest, as opposed to apt-get dist-upgrade like I normally do).
gnome-keyring was completely borked. This was fixed in proposed-backports and evidently released yeterday.
apache2 logrotate fails to correctly restart apache2.
There are concurrency/timing issues with startup introducing HAL errors upon the Gnome session startup. I had to disable gdm auto-start and invoke it from rc.local
ntp spawns twice, once as root and once as the user ntp. This causes excessive failure to bind socket errors in syslog. This has been a known issue since 7.10
I am running 8.04 on an AMD64 laptop and it works decent, it was an update from 7.10. Firefox 3 Beta fails to correctly render some JavaScript like that from the GNU/Linux tomato bandwidth line and QoS pie charts. There are other issues.
Oddly, people who updated from 7.10 to 8.04 and were shoved Firefox 3 Beta will find that some of their more favorite extensions don't work. An LTS shouldn't introduce breakage as a result of BETA applications. |
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antiserious
The Future ain't what it used to be
Premium
join:2001-12-12
Scranton, PA
| reply to vukodlak75
said by vukodlak75 :Will it explode on me?
I haven't seen any reports of explosions - yet. You do have a fire extinguisher though, right?
Seriously, I didn't have any dramatic failures, just enough small annoyances to make me retreat. I do have an 8.04 image, which I'll continue to restore/update/tweak until such time as I feel comfortable using it every day. But until that time, I'm back with 7.10 when I need everything to work correctly.
I don't want to dissuade anyone from using Ubuntu, btw. I just think they should get all the feedback they need to make an educated decision, especially on which version might be best for their needs.
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"My goal in life is to become the kind of problem that people throw money at".
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vukodlak75
Nisam Ti Dude
Premium,MVM
join:2001-10-27
Beachwood, OH
clubs: | I guess since I haven't used it prior to 8.04 that I have no minor annoyances or bugs with it yet.
Thanks for the clarification. |
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antiserious
The Future ain't what it used to be
Premium
join:2001-12-12
Scranton, PA
| You're welcome. Don't let any comments or rants dissuade you from trying it yourself. One person's histrionics are another's ho-hums, and some people just like to spout off.
Nobody here at DSLR, of course. Just sayin', is all.
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"My goal in life is to become the kind of problem that people throw money at".
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yock
TFTC
Premium
join:2000-11-21
Fairfield, OH
| reply to evilghost
I agree that choosing Firefox 3 was a poor decision on Ubuntu's part. Methinks it was an early decision made on bad assumptions or promises of progress on Mozilla's part.
The rest of this is better suited to a cost/benefit analysis of the LTS model. Keep in mind that as open source software ages the cost of maintaining it will shift away from the original developer and onto the people still using it. That means all of the aging components of Dapper Drake were growing more and more expensive to patch for Canonical. I'm sure cost weighed heavily in the decision to get their LTS customers onto a younger platform. A little instability up front probably pays for itself in off-loading the cost to fix bugs onto the originating developers.
That being said, it certainly doesn't do them any favors to ship inherently broken software. As you've noted, folks will be gun shy in future if they don't trust that their software will work. |
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RX9735
Premium
join:2002-09-06
Oklahoma City, OK
| reply to evilghost
I believe Ubuntu's problems are deeper then having a beta browser. RHEL 5.2 stable was shipped with Firefox 3 Beta 5 and I have only found one annoying bug that has to do with bookmarks. Other then the Firefox bug this system is super stable. I have no problems using this as a work or research computer.
I am no expert but I would go as far to say that if you want stability go with Debian, Red Hat, Gentoo, CentOS and maybe Slax and Scientific Linux.
Sorry if I forgot another stable distro. If you want flashy lights and stuff that doesn't work all that great go with Ubuntu, Fedora, or any other distro that uses bleeding edge software.
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RX9735
"If everyone is thinking alike, someone isn't thinking."
- General George Patton Jr |
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