Blogsphere and forums are full of post saying that hardy is much more buggy than Gutsy or any other previous release. Come on this is a LTS release, how can this be so buggy ? Lets take a look at some of the posts
We begin with the comments section on LWN. Lwn reported the release of Ubuntu 8.04 and starting from first comment its all bug reports. The first comment reports three major bugs
- The ubuntu kernel should use CONFIG_FAIR_CGROUP_SCHED, same as Completely fair scheduler; instead of CONFIG_FAIR_GROUP_SCHED/CONFIG_FAIR_USER_SCHED. This bug is now fix both in Hardy as well as coming Intrepid.
- Default ALSA device must use PulseAudio, otherwise ALSA applications may fail. This bug is fixed in Hardy.
- Manually Configuring Network Causes Massive, Unreversable, Failure. This bug is comfirmed, but not yet fixed.
Its heartening to see that Ubuntu developers are taking the pain to fix the bugs, but I think that such serious bugs should not be part of a LTS release.
Also there is a very nice thread on Mint Forums about Hardy bugs. Some users comment like
Ubuntu is not the least buggy distro available, quite the contrary... e.g you can find bugs reports never fixed, never resolved, although marked for certain importance: "high", "critical" and "confirmed"...
Probably the developers are not interested in fixing bugs, they prefer without doubt add new 'features' which themselves come with other bugs...
There are several threads going on on the Ubuntu forums right now about Hardy being too buggy. It is very buggy. Ubuntu has gotten progressively worse since Feisty. I was hoping Hardy would stabilize this trend, but it has just gotten worse.
Interesting haan.. This made me think how can a distribution that is on the most popular list of almst every Linux site, that has tie-ups with the likes of Dell and is the primary distribution responsible to take Linux to desktop; be so buggy. A distribution like Ubuntu, which is fast becoming the default face of Linux for average computer users, need to be extra cautious about its releases and doubly more when the release is a LTS.
I tried doing a reality check and personally asked my colleagues and friends about how they felt about Linux. Now I am a C++/Unix dev, so is most of my friend circle. I believe that most of us are above average Linux users due to our default familiarity with command line Unix. However, to my astonishment, most of people I asked have never used Linux at home. A few (around 50) , specially from US and India have taken the plunge and became the target of my questionnaire. Here are the most common replies.
- I ordered a free Linux CD ( read Ubuntu) and am happy using it as LiveCD with no danger of Linux corrupting ( Corrupting Uh!) my hard disk.
- I shifted to 8.04 only after 8.04.1 was released.
- I use Ubuntu to showoff the cool Fire effect (compiz) to my friends.
- I dual boot Ubuntu and XP ( For games only) as Ubutnu is much more safer.
- I like Ubuntu as it detects all my hardware and puts a popup for installing drivers ( for Nvidia cards) or other software ( media codecs). It detects the correct software and installs it. In effect Ubuntu does all the work for me.
- I like Ubuntu as for most of the problems, there are already posts in the Support Forum. Even if I ask a question, I get many relevant instant replies and mostly the problem is sorted out.
- I love Synaptic, it has never failed me.
- I think it is slow than PCLOS and OpenSUSE.
- Ubuntu is a parasite on Debian.
Few of my friends work at Novell and are hardcore OpenSUSE fans; can't blame them OpenSUSE is a really good and polished distribution. Some others hate Novell for their pact with MS and are Mandriva/PCLOS converts. OK Coming back to replies regarding Ubuntu, hardly anyone replied in negative. Small problems like speed and theme were common.
I came to the conclusion that Ubuntu supports all common hardware, presents a very nice Package management, Ships a free CD, has excellent Forums and above all is used by majority of the people I asked. No one reported problems with ASLA, Kernel configuration or the likes. Is this just because all the people I asked are techies ? They all can search for bugs and its resolution ? They can easily apply workarounds ? and if required, they can easily patch and compile a newer version of software?
Not sure what is the reason, but from this small exercise I came to conclusion that Ubuntu is good for people who do not mind a little effort to setup their system and more importantly believe in not jumping to the latest release. Most software product have a little bugs when released, they all take some time to mature. A bleeding edge software is not necessarily better than the previous version. For instance, KDE 4.1 is great but still not as user friendly as KDE 3.5X is. Its better to wait for KDE 4.2 than cry about bugs in KDE 4.1. As they say, bugs needs to be ironed out :)
11 comments:
1. they should have not do this in a LTS release
2. Ubuntu sell itself as the best distro, and many users switched from distribution X to Ubuntu because they feel that Ubuntu was less buggy ( my hardware X work out of the box with Ubuntu contrary to distro Y, beautiful desktop, no pain to configure my computer, ... ). So users had high expectations : but this was wrong ! Most of the time hardware support in Ubuntu was better because they had newer kernels release, or more bleeding edge software/kernel/drivers. However when you put too much bleeding edge stuff without proper regression testing ...
LTG, yes Heron IS that buggy. Even the 8.0.4.1 release. On a ASUS M2V-M Mobo, 2Gb memory, SATA drive and CD/DVD, touching nothing but the default install the following are broken --
* USB does not work.
* CD/DVD not recognized even though command line tools like cdrecord work perfect.
* Network Manager not configured correctly to work.
* ALSA only work intermittently.
Now before you go off and say its my hardware, if I reload feisty fawn on this very same system ALL of the problems just listed disappear TOTALLY. Another words Fawn works out of the box, Heron does not.
Canonical complains that they are not getting enough traction in the server space. Well I'll tell you why --
[Mgr] Here load this Ubuntu CD on the test server.
[Tech] Right.
[Sometime later...]
[Mgr] Well?
[Tech] I spent 3 hours and some things still don't work...
[Mgr] Ok, no prolblem. Go put our std Centos5 load on. I have another project....
Commerical entities will not put up with this level of quality when there are other. less problematic alternatives.
I agree in LTS there should not be so many bugs. Specially not the one where Kernel is compiled with wrong parameters or Alsa is not working. I think Ubuntu guys have testers like the testing team I have at office -- Almost all major bugs are reported when Live at Customer site :).
Corporates do not belive in using any distribution where there can be any error, like my comapny still uses RHEL 4, they have plans to migrate to RHEL 5 which was released way back in March 2007. So even if big companies want to try Ubuntu they will test with the previous version of Ubuntu LTS and then decide. I think that companies do not want bleeding edge software and are more than happy with a previous but stable system. You can imagine that we still use 2.95 gcc compiler.
I moved from Debian to Ubuntu in 2004. Hardy finally drove me from it. They shipped "on time" without F-Spot being able to run on the 64-bit version. That was absurd. It was their default photo app.
They care more about timelines than quality.
Hmm, I dont think its buggy at all. ITs sure a WHOLE lot better than Windoze Vista! But then again, anything is better than Vista.
RD
http://useurl.us/12m
Interesting article/study. I personally find Hardy much buggier than Feisty ever was. It took me MONTHS to get Pulse working properly. I had either no sound, no Flash, or app crashes. Very frustrating. But I'm still here to tell the tale...
I had a similar situation as JohnMc. I have a home server running Gutsy. When Hardy came out, I tested the upgrade on a couple of laptops first, so I would know what to expect. No problems came up, so I upgraded my server.
Upon reboot, I got the busybox. I poked around, saw nothing out of the ordinary, so I rebooted thinking it was a fluke. I got busybox again.
After an hour of that I decided to just install Hardy from scratch. My first reboot from scratch, I got the login, but at 640x480. Fine, I'll log in and change the resolution, right? The login hung with the spinning globe. This happened a couple of times, over a couple of fresh installs, using a couple of burned DVDs.
Finally, defeated, I re-installed Gutsy from scratch, and all is right with the world.
On my laptops, I love hardy, especially the interface tweaks when transferring several files at once. That was a godsend for me. Unfortunately, it's looking like Hardy isn't compatible with (or has trouble detecting) all the hardware of its predecessors. Sacrificing backward compatibility to gain Long Term Supportability isn't a good move.
I've not looked at bug reports, I have no clue what the numbers are of new Linux users, I just have a speculation..
I speculate that a lot more people are using Linux than before Feisty. Cue Hardy; hyped up and feature rich. Gobs of people decide to upgrade to procure the latest & greatest awesomeness available, only to find that it's got some quirks. Being that they are newish users, they are most likely not going to try and correct their own problem as so many of us have for so many years with F/OSS.
It's the nature of the beast! It's the way F/OSS works! Unfortuanley F/OSS developers don't typically have a large QA department to help keep bugs from slipping through. Your job as a F/OSS software user is not only to use the software, but to test it :) Find a bug, report it and/or try and correct it yourself. While moaning and groaning en masse may help with some things, I feel it's more productive to help out. Bug reports are fine, when done correctly (e.g. More than "ZOMG IT DON'T WERK, HALP"), even better than that is doing a little research and seeing if you can figure it out on your own. not only is it helpful/productive, it's also fun (albeit, frustrating at times).
Strap on your waders, get knee deep and help out!
Even the big guys have problems and I'm sure they have bug lists/reports a mile long, we're just not as privy to that information...
I've been using Ubuntu since 2006, and I've never had problems before no.
I can just say that all problems I had with Ubuntu Hardy - apart from some PULSE/ALSA pains - are more Linux than Ubuntu problems. I knew what I did when I decided to run a 64 bit Ubuntu and it works quite okay - with the usual hickups of course.
Of course most of the problems I have still seem to occur with propietary software like flash and skype.
So Gutsy was my first distro and I was pleasantly surprised how easily things worked and how user friendly things were.
I ended up installing Kubuntu because I preferred it to gnome. KDE had options that I really preferred.
I switched to Hardy once it became LTS and it was the worst decision ever. I found myself using Windows more and more.
The constant sound issues with Pulse/ALSA audio are an embarrassing nuisance. For example I am unable to listen to an audio stream on any application with the exception of Flash due to a xine bug. When I search for a solution I simply find more people with the same bug being told it's a hardware issue or to reinstall. A reinstall is not an option for me. Kopete is also buggy.
All these bugs make it difficult to convert other users as they see the problems I have and say "thank goodness for Vista".
How is the Intrepid version in comparison?
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