Kubuntu 11.04 sucks

[gjartin]

Re: Kubuntu 11.04 sucks

Btw, someone said that it's stupid to update so soon as we did. Maybe - but if so, aren't the daily update naggers just as stupid?
[/rant]

Not stupid, rash, or naive, or sth. The naggers are there to get as many people to upgrade as possible, because that is how the system gets tested for the LTS releases, which are what it's all about, given that it's the only strategy Canonical has for making money. We're pretty much all beta testers. If you want a stable system, wait two months after a new release, or stick to the LTS's.

So, it's obviously not stupid to try the update, either. But denying that there are problems - THAT maybe considered as stupid, since problems actually are to be expected
There should, btw, be an easy way to turn off the naggers. Also, btw, I thought that 11.04 was supposed to be an LTS - that doesn't seem to be correct.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Kubuntu 11.04 sucks

Btw, someone said that it's stupid to update so soon as we did. Maybe - but if so, aren't the daily update naggers just as stupid?
[/rant]

Not stupid, rash, or naive, or sth. The naggers are there to get as many people to upgrade as possible, because that is how the system gets tested for the LTS releases, which are what it's all about, given that it's the only strategy Canonical has for making money. We're pretty much all beta testers. If you want a stable system, wait two months after a new release, or stick to the LTS's.

Three computer generations ago (circa 2000 and before) the meaning of "release early, release often" was well known mantra among members of the Linux community. In a quid quo pro for free software community members gladly accepted early release software, knowing that for some of them the earlier the version number the more likely it would break their system, and they did their part by posting bug reports.

As time passed more and more people, unaware of the mantra or its meaning, came into the Linux community and rather than posting bug reports at the appropriate websites they often would post increasingly shrill rants at forums like this. The amazing thing is that many of those complaining came from Microsoft platforms, where they paid good money, and many times a large amount of it, for software that was no better than early version Linux software.

To counter the "release early, release often" component of the Bazaar Development Model, Microsoft introduced the idea of releasing software as "beta" releases, except that customers still had to pay for it. It reduced Microsoft's accountability while still generating revenue. That people would pay for "beta" software still amazes me.

Raymond's central proposition is

that "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" (which he terms Linus' Law): the more widely available the source code is for public testing, scrutiny, and experimentation, the more rapidly all forms of bugs will be discovered. In contrast, Raymond claims that an inordinate amount of time and energy must be spent hunting for bugs in the Cathedral model, since the working version of the code is available only to a few developers.

Since that thesis was written developers in both camps have devised unit testing procedures and applications that significantly reduce the number of program defects, BUT, and it is a big BUT, the code has to be tested against a HUGE variety of hardware versions. A version of Kubuntu may work great on a particular HP model but the next release of Kubuntu may have problems because of a variety of reasons. The biggest reason is the there is a sliding window of compatibility in which most computers will run well with a version. Computer models released after a distro is released may not work as well as previous models. And, as computers age they may slide out of the compatibility window. The Intel Mobil 4 Serious Express chipset in this 2008 Sony Notebook did not work well with Mandriva 2009 PP release. By February of 2009, the fix had filtered down to the distro developers and Kubuntu 9.04 Alpha gave this notebook excellent acceleration. Since Feb of 2009 Kubuntu has worked flawlessly on this box, as does Natty work on my relative's 2008 HP dv5. However, I harbor no illusions. Sometime in the future one of two things will happen, either this notebook will have a hardware failure which will be cheaper to fix by replacing it, or, its components compatibility will slide out of the compatibility windows.

What causes the compatibility window? Frankly, it is a direct result of Microsoft's still functioning monopoly tilting the playing field. (As long as Microsoft can dictate to PC OEMs what OS they can install on their products an illegal monopoly exists, even if that dictation is powered by ad rebates.) There was a time when chip and peripheral makers products were OS neutral. The specs were public and any OS could write drivers to run them. That was pretty much the situation when I began using Linux in May of 1998. By the time Win95 came out Microsoft had convinced peripheral makers to remove their onboard CPUs (and pocket the savings as profit without reducing price) and rely on the computer's motherboard CPU, which they controlled access to because they had also convinced ($$$) PC OEMs to pre-install Win95 on many (and later ALL) of their computers. These devices became known as WinModems, WinPrinters, etc. because they only worked "out of the box" with Windows. To make matters WORSE, Microsoft also convinced ($$$) them to NOT publish the specifications to their devices, even though Microsoft was given the complete specifications. Linux, BEOS, Unix and other OS makers had to reverse engineer the software to run against the hardware, which took time. So, while Win98 or Win2K or Win7 can run a peripheral "out of the box", Linux users of computers and peripherals sometimes have to wait a bit longer before their favorite distro works well. Sometimes, some features never work as well on Linux as they do on Windows. This is especially true of niche products like my Watcom tablet, because demand is not great and the number of developers and users for such products is low. Go to Watcom's website and search for Linux and you will get no replies. SourceForge has a Linux driver for the Watcom Bamboo tablet. Installing it involves doing about 5 steps each time your kernel is upgraded, and requires you have some developer tools installed on your distro.

To make matters even more difficult for Linux developers and users, PC OEMs often change the chip specifications within a given model as new machines are produced. My relative purchased a Gateway m675prr laptop. A year (2005) later I purchased the SAME model laptop. However, many of his chip drivers had "VER 1.0A" but mine showed "VER 1.1B" or some similar change. There was only a short period of about a year in which both of our laptops could run the same distro "out of the box". Mine was picky at first, and his became picky later. One example of why it was picky is the wireless chip, a Broadcom 4306. At first his wouldn't run, but by the time I got my laptop both would configure without problems, using ndiswrapper and the bcm5wl.sys and cat files. Later, bcm43-fwcutter was included in most distros and automatically picked the firmware out of the chip and created a driver, which installed automatically. Time moved on. Other wireless chips were released, reverse engineered, and added to the distros CDs to enable wireless chips on newer PCs. But, there is a limit to how much can go on a 700 MB CD. To make room for newer chip drivers older chip drivers were moved to the legacy archives. Some of the less common 43** Broadcom chips never had their drivers included on a CD and owners of those chips have always had to obtain their drivers from sources like SourceForge or the best source of all: http://linuxwireless.org/

Microsoft continued to throw roadblocks at Linux. When it became obvious that keeping specification sheets out of the hands of Linux developers didn't have the desired affect Microsoft and its proprietary allies lobbied ($$$) for DRM and other Constitution busting laws to prevent even reverse engineering. Those laws haven't had the effect they'd hoped for because Linux users in the US represent only a small fraction of the total number of Linux users in countries around the world, most of which have no obligation to enforce US laws. Then Microsoft tried a direct frontal attack, funding SCO to sue Linux by using IBM as a proxy. The goal was to hijack ownership of Linux by claiming that Linux was due almost in total to theft of SCO's Unix code. The judge didn't buy it and SCO lost. At about the same time Microsoft made vague threats about 235 patents which Linux supposedly "infringed". It proceeded to "negotiate" IP licenses with small fry corporations whose products incorporated Linux and used some old MS technology, like FAT. In 2006 Novell added smoke and mirrors to the issue by "admitting" (in exchange for $340M US upfront and installments of several tens of millions in subsequent years) that Linux uses MS proprietary IP and Novell agreed to pay Microsoft a ROYALTY for each SUSE Enterprise Linux Server CD it sold. (That's like me "admitting" that you are guilty of murder.) They then agreed to bifurcate the GPL by claiming that those who submitted GPL code to openSUSE and that code was included in SELS were "free" from threat of a Microsoft lawsuit but ALL other GPL developers contributing to openSUSE and ANY OTHER distro were under threat of Microsoft lawsuit for "IP infringement". That claim is a violation of the terms of the GPL and made distributing openSUSE or SUSE illegal, but no one who could afford to take them to court pushed it. The Novell agreement was to last 5 years. Both it and Novell's existence ended. Attachemate purchased Novell and laid off hundreds of developers, including de Icaza's MONO team. Attempts by Attachemate to transfer certain IP to Microsoft was blocked by the courts.

I've given only a brief history of the difficulties of development of software under the GPL, the ONLY reason why free and open software exists at all. And, I have mentioned only a few of the things Microsoft has done to try and kill the Linux and the GPL.

So, as a retired software developer I want to thank everyone who has become part of the Linux community and contributed to its ongoing existence and welfare by contributing bug reports to the appropriate websites. (If you think you've found a bug and don't know where to report it ask here!), and encouragement to those who have experienced problems, for what ever reason. This is what builds Linux up and guarantees its continued existence. Childish ranting and overblown accusations or conclusions (if it doesn't work for you it must not work for anyone else) do not contribute to the GPL community. The pun "The beatings will continue until morale improves" makes a joke of the obvious, but the lesson should still be obvious.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Kubuntu 11.04 sucks

.... it's obviously not stupid to try the update, either. But denying that there are problems - THAT maybe considered as stupid, since problems actually are to be expected
There should, btw, be an easy way to turn off the naggers. Also, btw, I thought that 11.04 was supposed to be an LTS - that doesn't seem to be correct.

Don't confuse denying a rant with denying that problems exist. Blanket claims are always wrong. Kubuntu won't work on ALL machines, nor will it fail on ALL machines. It's a question of percentages. Will it work on 95% of all machines? My guess is that at the minimum it will work on 98 out of 100 machines. IF there are 100 million users of Kubuntu then there are 2 million Kubuntu users who are disappointed. Since most disappointed users come to either the Ubuntu or Kubuntu forums having even a small percentage of 2 million users come with problems may leave the impression that "everyone" is having problems and Kubuntu doesn't work at all. (Disclaimer: obviously I don't know how many people are actually using or trying to use Kubuntu. The numbers are merely figurative.)

Kubuntu Lucid Lynx 10.4 was the last LTS. Add three years and you'll get Kubuntu 13.4 as the next LTS. I have been running 10.4 since it was alpha. I will switch to 13..4 when it goes alpha. Meanwhile, the others hold brief appearances as a guest OS so I can familiarize myself with them.

[el_koraco]

Re: Kubuntu 11.04 sucks

Three computer generations ago (circa 2000 and before) the meaning of "release early, release often" was well known mantra among members of the Linux community. In a quid quo pro for free software community members gladly accepted early release software, knowing that for some of them the earlier the version number the more likely it would break their system, and they did their part by posting bug reports.

Agreed, with this and the rest of the stuff you wrote, but some people just don't have the stomach to troubleshoot and fix things that aren't working for them. I would stop short of calling them stupid for upgrading when the notification comes. It's more like they don't know what they're getting into. I the whole *ubuntu community it has kinda become customary to rant on about Canonical for everything that goes wrong, when they're mostly just following the basic tenants of OSS development (granted, Canonical does label *buntu releases as "stable", but so does the fedora project ).

If you're using a newer version of Linux, you're a beta tester. If you can't stomach that, you either shouldn't be using Linux, or you should be using older versions (i.e. versions with older, but more reliable software). For *buntu, there's LTS, for the Debian world, there's Squeeze, for RPM, there's Scientific Linux. All rock solid distros, all well supported.

@ gjartin
KpackageKit (USC), Software origins, Updates, in the "notify about releases" choose never, or only Long Term Support.

[el_koraco]

Re: Kubuntu 11.04 sucks

Kubuntu Lucid Lynx 10.4 was the last LTS. Add three years and you'll get Kubuntu 13.4 as the next LTS. I have been running 10.4 since it was alpha. I will switch to 13..4 when it goes alpha. Meanwhile, the others hold brief appearances as a guest OS so I can familiarize myself with them.

12.04 will be the next LTS, you won't have to wait that long

[woodsmoke]

Re: Kubuntu 11.04 sucks

GG your summary was a very good one, I watched some of what you outlined from the periphery.

woodsmoke

[ardvark71]

Re: Kubuntu 11.04 sucks

So, as a retired software developer I want to thank everyone who has become part of the Linux community and contributed to its ongoing existence and welfare by contributing bug reports to the appropriate websites. (If you think you've found a bug and don't know where to report it ask here!), and encouragement to those who have experienced problems, for what ever reason.

Your welcome, and thank you for your willingness to offer your expertise and experience as well.

Regards...

[GreyGeek]

Re: Kubuntu 11.04 sucks

.....
If you're using a newer version of Linux, you're a beta tester.
...

Since all of Linux and its software is GPL and under constant development, and the "beta testers" are not hired employees but the users of Linux and its applications, ALL of Linux is "beta" software. Even LTS versions, although there may be less "testing" on them than interim releases.

However, exactly the same thing can be said about Win7 and Mac!

IF this were not the case there wouldn't be automatic updates by any of them. It's that when the software passes through PAID professional testers you'd expect the software to be better. That it isn't always so should tell you something.

And, el_koraco , thanks for catching that 12.04 LTS typo!

[el_koraco]

Re: Kubuntu 11.04 sucks

I didn't say being a beta tester is bad. It's like when people say Linux is chaotic. It's something to be proud about. You're beta testing a mish-mash of free software, so millions of people can benefit from the bugs you happen to catch and help straighten out.

[wizard10000]

Re: Kubuntu 11.04 sucks

...Neither my bil or me is a young, energetic, coder with 36 extra hours a day - I'm 62, he's 54 - we're just computer users who loved 10.10 since it was so good. 11.04 isn't that good - for us, and obviously, for several others.

I left Natty but chose Debian Stable, as some of the binaries are newer than Maverick but not nearly as bleeding edge as Debian Testing.

I had a couple of things that didn't work in Natty - one was emerald, and fortunately one of the folks here created a kwin theme called smaragd that allowed me to run my favorite emerald theme but emerald doesn't care for the version of compiz that shipped with Natty and I don't see that getting any better unless some other developers take an interest.

Switching distros didn't solve this problem as emerald isn't available in Debian at all (at least not in stable or testing) so, like it or not I'm gonna have to find a new theme

The bigger problem for me was devede, which sorta works in Natty but works not at all in Debian Testing (Wheezy). The problem in Natty was that dvdauthor now requires an environment variable that devede doesn't supply (the developer's been aware for four months now and hasn't fixed his binaries - which actually looks like about 15 minutes' work).

The problem in Wheezy is significantly worse. Unless your video has AC3 audio, sound in devede is pretty severely broken. You can work around the problem by using avidemux to recode the audio in your file before you run devede but that's a bit more work than I'd like to put into things, especially considering you *still* have to add the environment variable that first showed up as a problem in Natty.

My solution was to slide over to Debian for the time being because as I mentioned some of the binaries were newer but not so new as to be broken. I haven't turned my back on Kubuntu - mainly because this forum is so great and I'm kinda thinking about going back to Maverick myself. Then I can have emerald *and* an unbroken devede

One thing that's broken in Squeeze and later is ftp - or anyway, the version of pure-ftpd on my leased VPS doesn't like the version of ftp that's in Squeeze and later - it refuses to do mget, and I need that function as I have a cron job that pulls down a daily database backup from the VPS. That's broken in Debian but works fine in Natty and earlier.

One thing I did learn in this go-around with Debian is how to assign priority to repositories, so that I can have stable, testing, unstable and backports repos available but not goober up my system with bleeding-edge packages unless I force the system to do so

Anyway, I think where I'm gonna end up is with Natty - once I figure out how to export that pesky dvdauthor environment variable as everything else works including emerald.

I like Debian just fine, but I've gotten too used to the pointy-clicky installing non-free drivers thing, and compiling drivers for my netbook's wireless card and my desktop PC's video card didn't do a whole lot for me.

I think Canonical needs to quit tying releases to dates and start releasing when things are ready, but that's one of the prices you get to pay for running on the bleeding edge. I also think Canonical needs to freeze their feature set earlier and spend more time testing

But - I've rambled a bit. I was a little disappointed with Natty as well, but with one exception it works better for me than just about anything else - and the one exception really isn't a showstopper.

Also, for me, the community is about as important as the distribution and this is a nice place to hang out

[gjartin]

Re: Kubuntu 11.04 sucks

@ gjartin
KpackageKit (USC), Software origins, Updates, in the "notify about releases" choose never, or only Long Term Support.

Wow - a person who actually READS, and, on top of that actually answers a question! I'm forever in your debt, my dear el_koraco

[gjartin]

Re: Kubuntu 11.04 sucks

Just for the record: I've been using Linux of various kinds for more than 10 years. For the last 6-7 years Linux only. Until a few months ago, I ran Mandrake - Mandriva, until Mandriva went haywire for real. Kubuntu 10.10 saved my sanity

At the moment we have 3 computers at home - I have 2, my wife 1. Only Kubuntu, no Windows or Mac in our house. I know the importance of filing bugs, and I've done so a number of times (although not during the last year or so).

But I also know that there comes a time when it's no longer worth the trouble to spend all my time with the computer, trying to install a new OS, when the old one worked better. Had there been an easy solution for the network problem (which has been discussed repeatedly in other forums), I probably would have gone that way - but there wasn't.

It may well be that only 6 out of 300 computers won't work with 11.04. But that's not much comfort, when all 6 are within my family...

Btw, Greygeek - I think you're using Microsoft as a bit of a strawman in your argumentation. The problems with FOSS are older than that (even though, of course, they have been accentuated since FOSS has become much more important).

The part about the "compatibility window" was very good, though!

[el_koraco]

Re: Kubuntu 11.04 sucks

I like Debian just fine, but I've gotten too used to the pointy-clicky installing non-free drivers thing, and compiling drivers for my netbook's wireless card and my desktop PC's video card didn't do a whole lot for me.

Dunno about the wireless card, but my experience with the Ubuntu family and my GPU has been... interesting, to say the least. I've tried to use jockey for my Mobility Radeon card, but ended up not too happy. First of all, *buntu ships with a version of Catalyst that ATI publishes for the latest version of X just before a next release. When you install, it's usually not the stablest thing in the world. By the time things get cleared up, ATI has published two new versions of the GPU, which both work much better, only jockey doesn't get updated (there are plans to change this), so you're stuck with an inferior driver. Everybody's experience has been that it's much better to go with the ATI variant, which is really easy to install (it even has a GUI now), but the downside is that you need to uninstall it on every kernel upgrade and reinstall it later. You can lock the kernel, but that's not advisable to do early in the release process. I do know that you can build the driver so that it isn't affected by the kernel upgrades in Fedora, haven't seen it for *buntu.

So the best that I've come up with has been to go back to Maverick after the Natty release, get the latest driver from ATI, install it, and lock the kernel, which hasn't been changed in a while, and is on patch 28 or sth, so working very good. I finally have a priprietary driver that works as well as the open source one, and does the acpi temperature management right.

I suspect it's different with Nvidia, but I have seen people having problems with those cards in Natty as well. Once again, it's a price of going on the bleeding edge. Canonical ain't gonna change the release model, because they need as many people as possible to run the latest releases so they can fix the worst bugs before the LTS releases. Which is fine, but they would need to find a way to address the issues with some basic things, like the drivers. openSUSE has Nvidia and ATI repos, which constantly get updated with the latest versions of the drivers. You can install them via Yast, with mind-numbing ease, and the whole KMS thing gets preserved.

of course, all the Kubuntu users can be happy that they're running KDE at the moment, because the rewrite of Compiz has been making for some general mayhem on the GUnity side

[GreyGeek]

Re: Kubuntu 11.04 sucks

...
until Mandriva went haywire for real
....

I used Mandriva 2009 PP on this notebook from September of 2008 till February of 2009, when I moved to Kubuntu 9.04 Alpha.

What happened to Mandriva?

[gjartin]

Re: Kubuntu 11.04 sucks

...
until Mandriva went haywire for real
....

I used Mandriva 2009 PP on this notebook from September of 2008 till February of 2009, when I moved to Kubuntu 9.04 Alpha.

What happened to Mandriva?

You probably know that Mandriva's had financial problems for several years. During the last couple of years, there's been one reduction after the other, when key people, like Adam Williamson, were let go.
Adam was lucky enough to find a new job (with Fedora) almost immediately, but other people who were very important to the community weren't so lucky.

Earlier this year, the crap really hit the fan. A lot of people in development were fired, along with the rest of the community people. The money was instead to come from some Russian developer...
So basically everyone still in development decided to leave, before getting fired. Most old-time users (and subscribers, like myself) changed to other distros - most, I think, to Ubuntu or Kubuntu.

The staff that had been let go (or had left on their own accord) started a "fork" called Mageia. Sadly, I don't think there's much hope for it. The only result so far is a beta, which basically is the same as Mandriva 2010.1.
I don't know what has happened to Mandriva as such, since I dropped it. It's all very sad, though.