Haven't been hit by this one, but...
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| claudecat Jun 06, 2012 1:36 AM EDT |
I'm in almost the exact same situation as the writer - multiple machines with openSUSE's legacy grub (I despise grub2) handling the booting of several distros including 'buntus and even the dreaded Windows 7. I keep 'em all updated religiously and so far haven't been hit by this - and yes, I've updated since he posted this article. Just goes to show how unique each person's setup can be. What's really appalling is the number of commenters that just plain didn't understand the issue the writer experienced. It really is a PITA when an install tromps all over your nice neat MBR, but for a mere update to have done that is beyond the pale and deserves mention, even if he's the only one it affects (which I doubt). |
| caitlyn Jun 06, 2012 10:12 AM EDT |
What bothers me is this didn't happen in previous Ubuntu releases. It's yet another regression, one of several I can point to in Ubuntu 12.04. The reasons I don't like Ubuntu at all always come down to regressions and lots of really significant bugs when compared to other major distros. Once upon a time (as in Dapper Drake or Edgy Eft) I though Ubuntu was fantastic and deserved to be the standard by which the Linux desktop is judged. Now, with one crappy release after another, I wish people would just ignore the Canonical hype machine and I wish something else would come to the forefront. It's clear now that Ubuntu won't really improve until it is threatened with real competition from something else. |
| JohnPhys Jun 06, 2012 11:09 AM EDT |
One of the reasons I rarely post in the forums here is the *extreme* amount of negativity towards Ubuntu. It's staggering. That being said, I wanted to point out that I have a *somewhat* similar install on both my laptop and desktop, where Ubuntu 12.04 is on a "non-production" partition for testing the new release, and Ubuntu 10.04 is the main release that I use. I have not run into a case of 12.04 overwriting the boot menu, though both of the 12.04 installs were upgraded from previous releases. Which brings me to my point: It's been a month and a half (roughly) since 12.04 was released. If this was a frequent bug, I would think it would have come up before now, given that it involves something as important as the boot sector. When is a bug small enough / not frequent enough to fall into the "cr@p, another bug, but it happens" category as opposed to the "Ubuntu always has regressions and puts out one cr@ppy release after another" category? I rarely see posts like that about fedora/openSUSE/Mint/Slackware/etc., but they're distros, so they *have* to have some of those corner-case bugs. That being said, my 12.04 install (upgraded from 11.10) seems to run much slower on my 5-year-old Core-2-Duo laptop (1.6 GHz) than 11.10 did, so I'm not thrilled with 12.04 performance. I just don't see a credible case being made to blame that particular bug on Canonical/Ubuntu. |
| claudecat Jun 06, 2012 11:10 AM EDT |
I don't dislike 'buntu, mainly because it seems to like my hardware. Never had a regression issue here, but that said, I much prefer other distros (right now it's Arch - but changes frequently). |
| tuxchick Jun 06, 2012 11:17 AM EDT |
It's not extreme negativity towards Ubuntu, it's refusing to be mindless cheerleaders for Ubuntu. It has its strengths and weaknesses, like any distro. Unlike any other distro, it also has legions of uncriitical hypersters who are never silent, and its own non-stop hype machine. It's fair to compare the reality to the hype. |
| caitlyn Jun 06, 2012 11:23 AM EDT |
@johnPhys: Sorry, I have to disagree with you. Just because you haven't run into a bug doesn't mean it's not common. Also, this isn't just one bug. Ubuntu suffered a regression with many (not all) Broadcom wifi chipsets in version 12.04. These chipsets were correctly detected and configured in 11.10 but are not in 12.04. The printer driver issue I wrote about more than two years ago at: http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2010/04/ubuntu-is-a-poor-standa... is still not fixed. It works perfectly well in Fedora and, indeed, in all the other major distros. This bug effects an entire family of printers by several different manufacturers. The problem is severe enough that the driver developer warns not to use the Ubuntu packages on the project web page and directs Ubuntu users to compile from source. If other distros can get these drivers right why can't Ubuntu? Sorry, I am harshly critical of Ubuntu because I haven't seen a version work correctly on my hardware since Edgy Eft. Every other major distro and many smaller distros have had releases that work correctly on whatever hardware I throw at them. This is NEVER true of Ubuntu. So, yes, I am extremely negative with very good reason. I wrote glowing reviews of Dapper Drake and Edgy Eft. I wrote a more mixed but still generally positive review of Feisty Fawn. If Canonical ever releases a version of Ubuntu that isn't a steaming pile of cr@p I would be very happy to write a positive review again and sing it's praises. I try each release dutifully hoping to do just that. I never get the chance. |
| jdixon Jun 06, 2012 12:35 PM EDT |
> If this was a frequent bug, I would think it would have come up before now, How many people who run Ubuntu also run grub1 in their MBR? I doubt it's a significant percentage. And unless grub gets updated frequently, it's not going to be a frequent bug. |
| Steven_Rosenber Jun 06, 2012 2:54 PM EDT |
When you're on top of the hill, people are going to try to knock you down. |
| caitlyn Jun 06, 2012 4:29 PM EDT |
I don't think Ubuntu is "on the top of the hill" in any meaningful way. While I don't put much stock in the page hit rankings at DistroWatch I think they do show that Ubuntu has lost mindshare to Linux Mint and perhaps others. They never really had any market share that could be measured as significant. That pretty much belongs to Red Hat, Android, SUSE and perhaps Debian and CentOS. |
| claudecat Jun 06, 2012 5:19 PM EDT |
I don't know how to define "top of the hill", but I do think it's true that Ubuntu has (had?) a unique and important place in the linux landscape. Has any distro done more to attract users from the non-geek frustrated-with-MS populace? It may be marketing more than quality that has done the job, but let's face it: Ubuntu has worked well enough for many many of the curious acolytes that have tried it. Some have moved on to other distros, but still, because of the hype, these folks were willing to at least try linux for the first time via Ubuntu. I myself became a full time linux user this way, though I had dabbled years before with Red Hat and SUSE - back when fvwm was still the default desktop. Ubuntu is (or at least was) an important distro for this reason alone, regardless of "market share". |
| tracyanne Jun 06, 2012 6:20 PM EDT |
JohnPhys wrote:When is a bug small enough / not frequent enough to fall into the "cr@p, another bug, but it happens" category as opposed to the "Ubuntu always has regressions and puts out one cr@ppy release after another" category? I rarely see posts like that about fedora/openSUSE/Mint/Slackware/etc., but they're distros, so they *have* to have some of those corner-case bugs. Well I for one currently only use Ubuntu and Mint, as a consequence I have nothing to say about the others. Of the two Ubuntu is the only one I've ever complained about. Mint seems rock solid for my purposes. On the other hand, because Unity is such a POS, I don't use Ubuntu at all now, but I do use XUbuntu, and tested KUbuntu 12.04, I had problems with KUbuntu, which I wrote about here. Xubuntu seems fine. In the end, one can only complain about, or as you put it, be negative about, the software one uses or tests. |
| djohnston Jun 06, 2012 6:44 PM EDT |
JohnPhys wrote: That being said, I wanted to point out that I have a *somewhat* similar install on both my laptop and desktop, where Ubuntu 12.04 is on a "non-production" partition for testing the new release, and Ubuntu 10.04 is the main release that I use. I have not run into a case of 12.04 overwriting the boot menu, though both of the 12.04 installs were upgraded from previous releases. jdixon wrote wrote: How many people who run Ubuntu also run grub1 in their MBR? Bingo! Both 10.04 and 12.04 use the grub2 bootloader. |
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