Re: [BLUG] My Ubuntu/Linux bitch

Mark Krenz wrote:

On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 07:02:29PM GMT, Joe Auty [joe@netmusician.org] said the following:   

 My real gripe here is the regression.     

   Regression happens in software.  Linux and Ubuntu didn't invent the word regression. That word was used in medicine and probably even applied to computers long before Linus was even born.    Again, all OSes and Applications are victims of this.  Some more than others. Sometimes a development process is flawed and you get regression every other version.  For instance, I remember the original version of RedHat we would see a bug come up every other version and our theory at Kiva on it was that they had two development teams at Redhat working on two different major versions.    And there have been several instances of OSes that were major mistakes.    Windows Vista   Windows ME   RedHat 8   Maybe Ubuntu 9.10 falls into this category.   I know there are more but can't think of them right now.    It happens.  Its unfortunate when people jump into an operating system at one of these points and get the wrong impression of it. Its equally unfortunate when someone gets an OS that turns out to be great (Windows 7), but don't know what hell they are in for in the next version    

It definitely happens, but it's simultaneously frustrating when the issues are this major and fundamental and not something obscure that would only affect a small population of users.

It is satisfying feeling a sense of progress and improvement being made when one upgrades from one OS to a newer version of that OS. It is deflating when one feels that they have actually made their system worse by the upgrade.

I guess my experience is unique though because I've never suffered through any of the OS upgrades you have listed above :)  This is uncharted territory for me!

On a completely personal note, as much as I have a serious love/hate relationship with Apple, I've come to realize that I'd much rather spend my time working on my servers or programming than messing around with my desktop. I truly appreciate Apple for delivering a desktop environment I can be productive on as per this criteria.

Not with these sorts of problems, no. Grandma and Grandpa might be able to use KDE or Gnome if everything was setup for them already and working beautifully and they learned things by rote, but troubleshooting these sorts of problems? No chance in hell...They'll probably have to live with some minor annoyances as well. Understanding the GUI? It depends on what they do with their computers, I guess.     

  I often here this argument about learning things by rote and its funny because things have been more consistent on open source desktops and have lasted longer than on Windows. Almost every version of Windows looks different and puts icons in different places.    Sometimes after I upgrade to a new version of Gnome, I login thinking "Wow, this is gonna be cool, I can't wait to see how different it looks" and then I login and think, hmmmm, it looks about the same. ;-)    

--
Joe Auty
NetMusician: web publishing software for musicians
http://www.netmusician.org
joe@netmusician.org