Keep "Hype" Alive...
|
| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| garymax Nov 19, 2008 11:50 PM EDT |
Geez!! 8.10 hasn't been out a month and here is an article about the next release. This is the problem with the *buntus. Have you ever noticed that the "greatest features" are never included with the latest release? They're always coming in the next release...and people buy into it. The latest release is falling short of expectations--some calling Kubuntu 8.10 the "Vista" of Linux. If Canonical would release when the product was ready instead of on a set six month schedule, it would be better received. Canonical can only continue this release/hype machine for so long. After a while, people will get wise to what is going on and will see that Canonical is running out of things to hype about. When will people realize that a stable distro is better to be desired than the latest hyped widgets--released "ready or not" every six months? I guess we'll never know... |
| jdixon Nov 20, 2008 12:58 AM EDT |
> I guess we'll never know... Apologies in advance... :) How many releases does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of Ubuntu? The world may never know. |
| herzeleid Nov 20, 2008 1:23 AM EDT |
> If Canonical would release when the product was ready instead of on a set six month schedule, it would be better received. LOL yeah, ubuntu is the least known and least popular distro... oh, wait... damn... |
| garymax Nov 20, 2008 5:20 AM EDT |
herzeleid I am well aware of *buntus popularity. That isn't the point. Even with it's standing as the #1 distro, there are many who complain and file bug reports--every time the distro is released. It's one thing to be received. Tis another to be WELL received. Abd Canonical still has a lot of work to do--especially when it still isn't profitable after four years. |
| r_a_trip Nov 20, 2008 8:32 AM EDT |
Geez!! 8.10 hasn't been out a month and here is an article about the next release. This is the problem with the *buntus. What is it with you people? (Nothing personal Garymax). When Debian would release "done" versions past the end of time, people complained that Debian took to long. Everybody cheered when Canonical started making 6 month snapshots of Sid. Now 6 months is too quick? Have you ever noticed that the "greatest features" are never included with the latest release? They're always coming in the next release...and people buy into it. No, I didn't. Then again I'm not sitting outside of Canonical's headquarters with a development blueprint and a bazooka on my shoulder to shoot them down when a feature needs to be bumped to the next development cycle. A deferred feature is a pity, but at least Canonical and the Ubuntu team develop faster than the company trying to create new vista's. Since when did we start to evaluate the usefulness of a Distro on features that aren't included? The latest release is falling short of expectations--some calling Kubuntu 8.10 the "Vista" of Linux. Don't know about Kubuntu 8.10, but the Gnome branch has been rock solid for me, very nicely polished. Then again, the KDE project got third degree burns over KDE 4.x themselves. So what do you expect from a distro built on that experimental code? If Canonical would release when the product was ready instead of on a set six month schedule, it would be better received. No, it would receive the same ire Debian did if they keep postponing releases until it's "ready". Canonical can only continue this release/hype machine for so long. After a while, people will get wise to what is going on and will see that Canonical is running out of things to hype about. Is Canonical hyping or is it the crowd that sees Ubuntu as the Second coming? AFAICT, Canonical doesn't write these gushing "The next version will be Shangrilah!" articles. When will people realize that a stable distro is better to be desired than the latest hyped widgets--released "ready or not" every six months? I've had only minor niggles with Ubuntu going from Warty all the way to Intrepid. (Switched to Ubuntu from SuSE when Novell got their grubby paws on it. Novell consistently turns gold to lead and I thought it was best to bail out before anything bad happened.) Every Ubuntu release has brought something nice to the table. I'm one of those old schoolers who still check hardware compatibility and build machines with components known to work with GNU/Linux. So my machines are not whizzbang, state of the art, but they do perform beautifully under a Linux OS. I guess we'll never know... Don't know much about other peoples experiences, but Ubuntu is a good performer on my machines. |
| rijelkentaurus Nov 20, 2008 11:01 AM EDT |
I'm not known as an Ubuntu fan......but..... I am leaning towards Ubuntu for my lady's new Toshiba, so I installed it on my Vostro to try it out. WOW. Quite a bit faster than Mandriva 2009 (or 08), everything works perfectly, including suspend, etc.....just perfect. Right, my hardware doesn't represent all hardware, and they still have problems. But, crap, when it works, it works perfectly. Mandriva was never so speedy as Ubuntu is on my laptop. I am currently roasting a little crow for lunch.... |
| theboomboomcars Nov 20, 2008 11:02 AM EDT |
Quoting:If Canonical would release when the product was ready instead of on a set six month schedule, it would be better received. Canonical did that with Dapper Drake. It was scheduled for release in April as 6.04 but it wasn't ready so they pushed it back to months to June as 6.06 and there was much complaining. I am guessing that is why they released 8.04 on time rather than putting the extra polish on before letting it go. |
| TxtEdMacs Nov 20, 2008 2:58 PM EDT |
Counter to your perfectly reasonable presumption based upon past behaviour, the content of this message contains only serious tags. The comments too are factual. Moreover, much of it pertains to Ubuntu, Windows and to a lesser extent Debian and RedHat. Steel yourselves for a lecture: My son has been a Windows type person for an extended period after leaving Linux. Moreover, he actually preferred Vista over XP, because in his hands many things worked better and were more logical than in XP [however, even he reverted due to performance]. Furthermore, he is still enamored with the power of MS's Office 2007 over any of the competitors. In addition, he mentioned another Windows product he considers superior that I had not heard of previously. It's use is note taking in class and its abilities to find pertinent sections of the notes, links, etc. is a tool he values. All of this is meant to show this person is pretty hard core Windows type now. Finally, I think we have to thank the a**hole on the Debian help section that could only give "RTFM" for every question* that helped push him to prefer Windows. Last night he called and was raving about the latest Ubuntu desktop 8.04**, which installed wireless, Bluetooth and other applications "right out of the box", he remarked it was far easier than XP. The latter requires much more effort finding drivers and configuration, etc. in unobvious locations. Despite this, he is sticking with Windows for his real desktop because of MS Office 2007, but he sees real promise in the Linux desktop. He marveled at the advances, from his last use. I think his comments reflect very favorably upon Ubuntu, in this case specifically and Linux in general. His intended use will be to run a server off this desktop, whereupon I mentioned the server version. However, he knew of it but for his use the lack of X made it an inappropriate choice. This is not a novice and he sees value and notices the betterment in Linux. The real point is that nothing constructive is accomplished by attacking the current leader of Linux distributions***. It is both too predictable and off target. If your goal is to support Linux, be assured that the current verities will change radically (and we can only hope for the better). Thus, cool down before writing the screed, because too soon this too will pass. Your uncharacteristically serious buddy Txt. * I remember him remarking about this person when he was building a MythTV, back when it was really hard (about four or more years ago). At that time he was moving away from Windows, because he thought Linux was superior OS. ** I informed him that the latest version of Ubuntu was really 8.10 (the one I thought was the first to have wireless working as he described). But that did not matter to him. *** Years ago I saw similar sentiment when RedHat was the target. On slashdot a few had the temidity to call RH the next MS, long before it has a profitable server based business. Premature and not even needing hindsight to know it was wrong. |
| Steven_Rosenber Nov 20, 2008 3:07 PM EDT |
Quoting:I am leaning towards Ubuntu for my lady's new Toshiba, so I installed it on my Vostro to try it out. WOW. Quite a bit faster than Mandriva 2009 (or 08), everything works perfectly, including suspend, etc.....just perfect. I just pulled a Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101 laptop from the boneyard. The CD/DVD drive will read 1 disc out of 10, so I started out with OpenBSD booting with a floppy and installing over the network. One of my CDs that did work, for some reason unknown to me, was Debian Etch and a Half, but I couldn't get the network properly configured, so that sent me to OpenBSD. When it comes to hardware detection and automatic setup, I've never had such a good experience putting a Unix-like OS on a laptop. I have another one of these in my pile, and if the optical drive cooperates, I'll throw a GNU/Linux on it and see how it does. |
| Steven_Rosenber Nov 20, 2008 3:15 PM EDT |
Regarding Ubuntu's six-month release cycle, I'd rather they stuck to the release schedule but didn't feel the need to have tons of new stuff every six months. The way Debian has Sid/Testing/Stable going is another good model of how to do this. It looks like Ubuntu is under-delivering on purpose so they don't cause as much breakage. They seem to announce what will be in the next release way before they know whether or not those features will actually make it. What surprised me a lot wasn't Fedora's six-month cycle. Instead, it was the suggestion that you keep /home on its own partition and reinstall every six months instead of doing a Debian-style dist-upgrade. Re: RTFM: I'd like to err on the side of being helpful. The Debian users mailing list seems unusually helpful. From what I've seen on the list, the questioners are more often than not at the same level as those in the Ubuntu forums. Pointing the person to the relevant resources (man pages, FAQ's, etc.) is a very legitimate thing to do. Not just "RTFM," but "go to this link and all will become clear." That's what happens on the OpenBSD mailing lists. If the question isn't totally inane, as in "I need this very specific feature -- can you code if for me," there's a huge smackdown, but if it's "how do I get Flash to work," there's usually a link to the relevant section of the FAQ. |
| Laika Nov 20, 2008 5:50 PM EDT |
Does Ubuntu release new "server editions" every six months? That seems like a rather short release cycle for server software. For desktops six months is a good enough cycle, though. Too bad Ubuntu doesn't offer application updates between releases, like Debian "testing" does. Debian has longer release cycles, but it's worth remembering that Debian stable is mainly used on servers. For servers it doesn't matter that much if a release is postponed for a couple of months. What matters more is that the quality of releases stays good. Debian users usually prefer to track the "testing" branch on desktops, because it offers newer versions of applications. There are usually automatically built weekly snapshots of Debian's "testing" archive available, but Debian doesn't advertise these snapshots at all, and the "testing" installation is hidden under the "expert" option in the installer. It is pretty clear that Ubuntu knows how to advertise their distribution, while Debian does a poor job there. But I still kind of prefer Debian's way of releasing to Ubuntu's. IMHO, server software should be stable and well-tested -- desktops are more suitable for the "rolling release" daily-updates model (with maybe a new installer release every now and then to support installing the distro on new hardware). |
| herzeleid Nov 20, 2008 6:02 PM EDT |
> Does Ubuntu release new "server editions" every six months? Yes, ubuntu has a 6 month release cycle, as mentioned. However, the LTS server release comes much less often, and is supported for 5 years. |
| DiBosco Nov 21, 2008 3:23 AM EDT |
Quoting: What surprised me a lot wasn't Fedora's six-month cycle. Instead, it was the suggestion that you keep /home on its own partition and reinstall every six months instead of doing a Debian-style dist-upgrade. This is what I aways do with Mandriva. I have tried the upgrade method a few times but it's so slow and flaky that now I just do an install. So many programs are installed by default and installing the few others I use is no big deal. I love the way Linux works with a separate /home partition. Things like Thunderbird data is always just picked up and always just works with each fresh install. |
| TxtEdMacs Nov 21, 2008 2:38 PM EDT |
Steven, To clarify, the "RTFM" savant was a one note idiot. My son mentioned, he always got help from other individuals. Nonetheless, I cannot lose the sense that this Debian guardian has chased many potentially valuable people from Linux. Who needs such mindless abuse? |
| bigg Nov 21, 2008 3:24 PM EDT |
RTFM is an arrogant response from someone with way too much time on his/her hands. There seemed to be an RTFM fad back in 2000 when I first tried and failed with Linux. As opposed to doing something helpful, or nothing at all, just respond "RTFM". Nevermind that TFM was usually written in geekspeak by individuals who hadn't talked with a human in at least six months. |
| jdixon Nov 21, 2008 3:56 PM EDT |
> There seemed to be an RTFM fad back in 2000 when I first tried and failed with Linux. The same thing was true when I started in 1994. |
| bigg Nov 21, 2008 4:01 PM EDT |
> The same thing was true when I started in 1994. Did they have manuals for Linux back in 1994? Didn't you have to write your own hardware drivers back then? One of the things that I liked about Ubuntu was that there was an explicit ban on the use of RTFM in their forums. |
| herzeleid Nov 21, 2008 4:07 PM EDT |
Quoting:Did they have manuals for Linux back in 1994?Sure the man pages were there, but I supplemented them with usenet and oreilly books. Quoting:Didn't you have to write your own hardware drivers back then?I never wrote a device driver in my life. But you certainly could back then, if you had the talent and the inclination, as is still the case today. |
| TxtEdMacs Nov 21, 2008 7:59 PM EDT |
Another report: my son just installed 8.10 on another machine* and remarked how much easier Linux is and how improved. For example, he wanted to play a video file and he got a message that he was lacking some needed components. He took the machine's offer to find the needed packages. All he had to do was to allow their installation, then it played. Again Windows came out poorly in comparison, since he said the user would only be informed of an error with no clue what could be done. Again the wireless (and i assume Bluetooth), networking, file serving and printer control went in easily. [I know it's a longer list with new items, but he talks in bursts and it is difficult to retain it all.] We talked a bit about 8.04, where I confirmed I heard him correctly on the wireless, etc. He noted that 8.04 seemed to be the more polished version (came up in my discussion about my odd experiences with 7.10) and the need to upgrade a bit more often than I would prefer. He mentioned that sees the rough edges on 8.10, but overall he is struck by the major advances in these newer Linux distributions. Really this is quite a compliment. * Home assembled tower unit, with the guts about two or more years old. Wireless seems to be Intel based. I think this unit never had Linux on it and was meant to run XP. |
Posting in this forum is limited to members of the group: [ForumMods, SITEADMINS, MEMBERS.]
Becoming a member of LXer is easy and free. Join Us!