Aaron W. Hsu
--On Friday, November 13, 2009 02:58:50 PM -0500 Joe Auty
<joe@netmusician.org> wrote:
> I'm at the point in my IT career that fiddling with my Desktop is just
> not that fun anymore when I'm cleaning up stuff that one would think
> shouldn't be broken in the first place.
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GRUB>
gonna have to google that one!
ah, the adventures of noobiness...
----- Original Message -----
From: "Barry Schatz" <sorbetninja@gmail.com>
To: "Bloomington LINUX Users Group" <blug@cs.indiana.edu>
Sent: Friday, November 13, 2009 3:21:36 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Re: [BLUG] My Ubuntu/Linux bitch
Joe Auty wrote:
> I'm not here to ruffle feathers or troll or anything like that. I
> realize that nobody is putting a gun to my head forcing me to upgrade,
> and my machine isn't really that important so I don't mind the
> adventures, up to a certain point. I'm sure that one could pick apart
> each of these following points, suggest a fix, call me an idiot, more
> things to try, blame something, whatever... I'm sure that many of these
> arguments would be sane and reasonable to some extent. There is no
> particular castle I want to storm, and I'm not advocating one OS over
> another or trying to attack. With this disclaimer, read on... :)
>
In other words "Incoming flamebait." No worries. My counter-flame
follows. :)
> I like Ubuntu, and I like Linux (especially on the server end of
> things), but we are so incredibly far away from the "year of Linux on
> the Desktop" it's sort of laughable.
>
There will never be a "year of Linux on the
{desktop,server,netbook,toaster,etc}." The process is way too gradual to
fit in a year. Best-case is "decade of Linux on the $whatever". Even
century is optimistic.
> I realize that every OS has its strengths and weaknesses,
Stability would be Ubuntu's kryptonite in this case. It's the yellow to
Ubuntu's Green Lantern.
> Again, I know that my problems here are pretty vague and sketchy...
>
> My main point is more of a question. Why doesn't the Ubuntu team put a
> hold on adding new features and just work their butts off getting the
> mundane unsexy stuff to work, and in improving performance overall?
>
>
Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and
nobody wants to do maintenance. -- Kurt Vonnegut
New features are sexy. Fixing bugs means admitting you were wrong. To
keep gaining mindshare, Ubuntu needs to keep adding the sexy and never
look back. It's great that they've come this far, but I really don't
like to get onboard with fast-growing projects because of situations
like this.
If you still want to use a bleeding-edge distro, I hear good things
about Arch. That said, I've been a happy Debian user since 2004.
-Barry
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> Again, I know that my problems here are pretty vague and sketchy...
>
> My main point is more of a question. Why doesn't the Ubuntu team put a
> hold on adding new features and just work their butts off getting the
> mundane unsexy stuff to work, and in improving performance overall?
>
>
Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and
nobody wants to do maintenance. -- Kurt Vonnegut
New features are sexy. Fixing bugs means admitting you were wrong. To
keep gaining mindshare, Ubuntu needs to keep adding the sexy and never
look back. It's great that they've come this far, but I really don't
like to get onboard with fast-growing projects because of situations
like this.
If you still want to use a bleeding-edge distro, I hear good things
about Arch. That said, I've been a happy Debian user since 2004.
-Barry
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[snipperoo]
> My main point is more of a question. Why doesn't the Ubuntu team put a
> hold on adding new features and just work their butts off getting the
> mundane unsexy stuff to work, and in improving performance overall?
[....]
> I realize that Ubuntu may not be the most conservative choice for this
> criteria, but it is also the first Desktop Linux OS that comes to mind
> for most people. They have a unique opportunity to deliver something of
> this nature and for it to be noticed. As it stands, there were a few
> past Ubuntu releases that seemed to work well enough to perhaps
> recommend, but right now the OS just seems like a big mess, and this is
> not even getting into GUI/usability issues which have always been a
> problem too, which is another story altogether...
You might want to take a look at
http://www.linux-mag.com/cache/7450/1.html
It installed pretty readily on an EeePC701, which is far
from the easiest hardware to install on; but I haven't gotten a
sufficiently spherical tuit yet to try putting it through its
paces....
--
Beartooth Staffwright, Erstwhile Historian of Tongues
Sclerotic Squirreler, Double Retiree, Linux Evangelist
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I like Ubuntu, and I like Linux (especially on the server end of
things), but we are so incredibly far away from the "year of Linux on
the Desktop" it's sort of laughable.
The upgrade to Ubuntu 9.10 has been a disaster for many, this has been
widely documented online. The new kernel version crashes with my
Ethernet controller randomly, I lost the ability to interact with Flash
movies (I've since fixed this), and I was disappointed to find that
shared printing no longer works (this was an area I felt that Ubuntu was
pretty strong in prior). I can't prove ext4 to be the culprit yet, but
it seems like I'm having to unmount and fsck my ext4 so much more
frequently now, and this is with a new disk that checks out fine with
the long Smart Monitor self test (I'm not blaming ext4 just yet, just
adding this to my list of woes). Some applications monopolize my sound
(I have to quit them if I want to play sound in another app). Sound has
always been pretty temperamental, as has CD/DVD burning and other
related stuff. It's great that the team is working on features like
Ubuntu One, but it would be the highly mundane sorts of fixes and
features that would make my life so much better and allow me to consider
switching to it full time, features like the ability to easily control
the behavior and interaction between multiple monitors, etc.
I realize that every OS has its strengths and weaknesses, and I realize
that Ubuntu is not designed to be a more conservative sort of Linux OS
like Debian. I don't mind being on the bleeding edge with getting some
new stuff to work. I also understand the difference between the two
kinds of Ubuntu releases. However, what is incredibly frustrating is all
of this regression - no matter what kind of release. I'm sick of
fiddling with my sound, and I'm sick of features like Compiz that are
available but seem to cause all sorts of problems when enabled (e.g.
compatibility with MythTV, Flash, etc.) Like I said, Compiz is great,
but I would gladly trade off these sorts of features to get the more
mundane stuff working consistently and reliably. It's odd to me that Mac
OS has had far better monitor management for a countless number of years
so far, one would think that this would be a priority to match in Linux?
Again, I know that my problems here are pretty vague and sketchy...
My main point is more of a question. Why doesn't the Ubuntu team put a
hold on adding new features and just work their butts off getting the
mundane unsexy stuff to work, and in improving performance overall?
There is no point in trying to keep up with the pace of Apple or
Microsoft in terms of adding new features, but I would bet that most
people don't need half of those features anyway and would gladly trade
off these sorts of things for stability, reliability, and performance.
I'm at the point in my IT career that fiddling with my Desktop is just
not that fun anymore when I'm cleaning up stuff that one would think
shouldn't be broken in the first place.
I realize that Ubuntu may not be the most conservative choice for this
criteria, but it is also the first Desktop Linux OS that comes to mind
for most people. They have a unique opportunity to deliver something of
this nature and for it to be noticed. As it stands, there were a few
past Ubuntu releases that seemed to work well enough to perhaps
recommend, but right now the OS just seems like a big mess, and this is
not even getting into GUI/usability issues which have always been a
problem too, which is another story altogether...
--
Joe Auty
NetMusician: web publishing software for musicians
http://www.netmusician.org
joe@netmusician.org
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Steven Black wrote:
> I'm forwarding this as some on the list may be interested in the
> recordings and may be unaware of the Ohio LinuxFest.
>
> Cheers,
> Steven Black
>
> On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 09:03:07PM -0500, Ohio LinuxFest 2009 wrote:
>
> ------------OLF AUDIO NOW AVAILABLE------------
>
> Complete audio from Ohio LinuxFest 2009
> [http://www.archive.org/details/OhioLinuxfest2009] is now available on the
> Internet Archive. This includes the Friday Early Penguin track talks as well
> as those from the main event on Saturday. Files are provided in FLAC, Ogg
> Vorbis, MP3, and Speex formats.
>
> We are sad to announce that a technical problem in Ballroom 2 (the Sourceforge
> room) resulted in those recordings being so noisy as to be unlistenable. We
> apologize to the affected speakers and all those who wanted to hear their talks
> but didn't get there in person.
>
> For completeness' sake, the bad recordings have also been posted, though only
> in FLAC format. If you are an audio guru who is capable of cleaning them up,
> or have your own bootleg recording of these talks, please notify Vance
> Kochenderfer at vance@happylemur.com!
>
> You may be interested as well in video of Shawn Powers's opening keynote
> [http://www.archive.org/details/OhioLinuxfest2009-MorningKeynote-ShawnPowerslinuxJournal]
> also on the Internet Archive.
>
> Happy listening!
>
>
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>
Thanks! I missed OLF this year and I wondered what I missed. Looks like
there were a lot of talks I would have enjoyed.
-Barry
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Cheers,
Steven Black
On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 09:03:07PM -0500, Ohio LinuxFest 2009 wrote:
------------OLF AUDIO NOW AVAILABLE------------
Complete audio from Ohio LinuxFest 2009
[http://www.archive.org/details/OhioLinuxfest2009] is now available on the
Internet Archive. This includes the Friday Early Penguin track talks as well
as those from the main event on Saturday. Files are provided in FLAC, Ogg
Vorbis, MP3, and Speex formats.
We are sad to announce that a technical problem in Ballroom 2 (the Sourceforge
room) resulted in those recordings being so noisy as to be unlistenable. We
apologize to the affected speakers and all those who wanted to hear their talks
but didn't get there in person.
For completeness' sake, the bad recordings have also been posted, though only
in FLAC format. If you are an audio guru who is capable of cleaning them up,
or have your own bootleg recording of these talks, please notify Vance
Kochenderfer at vance@happylemur.com!
You may be interested as well in video of Shawn Powers's opening keynote
[http://www.archive.org/details/OhioLinuxfest2009-MorningKeynote-ShawnPowerslinuxJournal]
also on the Internet Archive.
Happy listening!
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