Ubuntu is NOT a part of community

[movieman]

if it does not work you are in deep troubles because all is hidden how the system works so you dont learn anything. that is the ms windows way... and you get such users...

Yeah, that's a problem with Ubuntu: they seem to like putting things in non-standard places and you don't notice so long as everything works, but once something breaks you find that few of the things you might need to fix it are in the places where you expect to find them.

Took me about an hour last night to discover where it had hidden the incorrect SQL admin password that was preventing MythTV from updating its database, for example... and when the upgrade program tried to use that password and was rejected, it didn't actually bother to ask for the correct one but just aborted with an error telling me to run the program again, which would never work because the password was wrong.

[HokTar]

Dear deanjo and others!

Let's start with this, I use Ubuntu for just over a year now, and I'm usually satisfied with. That said, I try to remain objective, you can believe it or not.

While you are certainly right that Ubuntu is not perfect, nor is any other distro anyway, but you are bashing it for what?
I can even believe that they are lazy to send upstream patches. A point to improve. But give me anything else! OK, pulseaudio was never configured properly and pretty much that's it.

The main reason I don't really get is why you flame it so badly? I can understand that you don't like. Don't use it. I checked KDE versions, Fedora, etc. I didn't like them and I don't use them. But I don't start flaming about them and praising Ubuntu everywhere. Furthermore, Linux is said to be about choices. So why does it hurt you so much that some (or many, as you like) use it?

On the other hand, to exaggerate a bit, kernel devs could be even "flattered" if the U guys can't find many bugs in it. This means that the kernel is awesome.
Plus, you should realize that Ubuntu is for *average* human beings. To be honest I don't want to spend all my time upgrading and fixing my system. I need to be able to use it, I need certain mechanical engineering apps to run seamlessly and they pretty much do it. Even the installation is not that horrible.

As I said before, I'm not saying that keeping the patches is nice, but you should also realize the difficulties from their point of view. There's still room to improve, but in my opinion Ubuntu is currently the most user-friendly distro. Of course only for those who don't want to modify its parts every day.

This was only my 2 cents, even if it became much longer than I originally wanted.

[some-guy]

Dear deanjo and others!

Let's start with this, I use Ubuntu for just over a year now, and I'm usually satisfied with. That said, I try to remain objective, you can believe it or not.

While you are certainly right that Ubuntu is not perfect, nor is any other distro anyway, but you are bashing it for what?
I can even believe that they are lazy to send upstream patches. A point to improve. But give me anything else! OK, pulseaudio was never configured properly and pretty much that's it.

Distros should only patch things by either changing default preferences/configuration, and backporting fixes. Ubuntu adds their own patches which change the behavior of the software, so if a feature they added disappears, then upstream gets complaints, if they break something with one of their patches, upstream gets complaints.

Eg. with compiz, ubuntu added support for gnome mouse themes, but never sent it upstream. Once it was removed (it was never pored to newer versions), many users came asking how to get that behavior back.

The main reason I don't really get is why you flame it so badly? I can understand that you don't like. Don't use it. I checked KDE versions, Fedora, etc. I didn't like them and I don't use them. But I don't start flaming about them and praising Ubuntu everywhere. Furthermore, Linux is said to be about choices. So why does it hurt you so much that some (or many, as you like) use it?

Ubuntu has resources, but they only use that for helping themselves. Nobody is telling them not to help themselves, but that they need to help others too.

Eg. Ubuntu made notify-osd, however they never tried pushing it upstream or tried making it a standard.

On the other hand, to exaggerate a bit, kernel devs could be even "flattered" if the U guys can't find many bugs in it. This means that the kernel is awesome.
Plus, you should realize that Ubuntu is for *average* human beings. To be honest I don't want to spend all my time upgrading and fixing my system. I need to be able to use it, I need certain mechanical engineering apps to run seamlessly and they pretty much do it. Even the installation is not that horrible.

As I said before, I'm not saying that keeping the patches is nice, but you should also realize the difficulties from their point of view. There's still room to improve, but in my opinion Ubuntu is currently the most user-friendly distro. Of course only for those who don't want to modify its parts every day.

This was only my 2 cents, even if it became much longer than I originally wanted.

No one is saying ubuntu doesn't have its place, each distro is tailored for a different audience, but ubuntu is in its own secluded community which is blind to the rest of Linux/GNU distributions.

(Anyone else think writing Linux/GNU might start more flamewars? )

[movieman]

BTW, I note that Ubuntu now keeps trying to run files from /tmp during upgrades, so the upgrade silently fails if you have /tmp mounted noexec.

Great.

[mugginz]

4) The scary amount of large projects that are saying "If it builds on ubuntu, then that's all we care about and users of other distro's can go fsck themselves."

I'm not sure if it's great that only one distro is in this position, but we certainly need to get it down to only a few.

This hundreds and thousands of possible targets problem is finally being addressed by the "market place" moving to a small sub-set of distros and in my opinion this is an excellent turn of events. Now a dev doesn't have to take into consideration a thousand different configuration possibilities like they used to. They can now cover most users with Ubuntu/Debian, Fedora, Suse and Android packages.

Just think, soon a user might actually be able install a program they find and might like, and be able to use it. Instead of the situation we had for years were we had the "this package builds on 'some particular random target distro' and if that's not what you're using, then tough" problem. If the majority are using one or two distros, then I guess that will solve the same problem that the LSB was trying to solve, a known target to develop for.

[mugginz]

So Canonical only develops for paying customers instead of sending items upstream for the good of all.

Depending on the nature of the patch, the Ubuntu guys will actually direct you to send the patch upstream instead of sending it to themselves.

[mugginz]

Yeah, that's a problem with Ubuntu: they seem to like putting things in non-standard places and you don't notice so long as everything works, but once something breaks you find that few of the things you might need to fix it are in the places where you expect to find them.

Took me about an hour last night to discover where it had hidden the incorrect SQL admin password that was preventing MythTV from updating its database, for example... and when the upgrade program tried to use that password and was rejected, it didn't actually bother to ask for the correct one but just aborted with an error telling me to run the program again, which would never work because the password was wrong.

I've found that all distros have their own favorite little hidey holes for various things, not just debian based ones such as Ubuntu.

But, thankfully, with the majority of users moving to one platform I guess we'll see the defacto standard be defined by what-ever Ubuntu do. In the long run, I don't care which of the hundreds of distros is anointed the numero uno, just as long as one is, and we can all get on with writing code with one (or maybe just a few) targets in mind.

[mugginz]

Ubuntu has resources, but they only use that for helping themselves. Nobody is telling them not to help themselves, but that they need to help others too.

I cant find any evidince for your position that Cannonnical does nothing for the greater Linux community.

Eg. Ubuntu made notify-osd, however they never tried pushing it upstream or tried making it a standard.

To quote from Mark Shuttleworth's blog:

# anonim says: (permalink)
February 21st, 2009 at 12:49 pm

Hi

Will canonical/ubuntu help on the new gnome-shell proyect?

Mark Shuttleworth says: Yes, we helped by sending most of our user experience team to the user experience sprints, and have folks at the UI hackfests. We?re working on notifications in a way that will fit with both GNOME and KDE, and will contribute that at freedesktop.org. And we?re working on the panel and other pieces. We?ll package up the new gnome-shell in due course, but will wait to see what the best defaults for Ubuntu are.

(Anyone else think writing Linux/GNU might start more flamewars? )

I'd say the act of anyone writing any software will somehow magically start flamewars.

It's just human nature it would seem.

[squirrl]

Patches the Clown

Consider that Canonical has sent the patches but they were rejected by the individual developers.

If you work in a software development shop then you know how personal projects become to certain types of developers.

Con Kolivas - Developed the Staircase Scheduler (Rejected)
Rik Van Riel - Developed 2.4's memory manager (Rejected)

Even Red Hat wouldn't acknowledge the change in the 2.4 kernel. They maintained Rik's memory manager by back porting it for a while.
So Torvaulds pulled it and used another guy's design which was seen as a step back. FreeBSD developers.

Canonical wants to keep binary compatibility with Debian because many of the packages they offer can benefit users of Ubuntu. Therefore they are right to send their patches first to the Mother distribution.
Now if they don't accept the patches then there is a problem.

Try sending patches or innovative design changes to other distributions:
Slackware, you're lucky to get acknowledgement from other users. You have to flame linuxquestions for change. KDE 3.5 was a hot topic. Also search for post about the Intel Graphics drivers. You'll probably see this guy gripping that they need to upgrade the kernel past 2.6.29 for the intel graphics problems. I won't name names.

Fedora, Read the docs for 11, it states that the reason you can't boot a ext4 only system is because they didn't have time to include the patch into grub. Wow, just download Ubuntu's grub source and bingo.

Sounds like OpenSUSE you have to pass the committee decision. I suspect Debian is the same way.

But see with Ubuntu there's that voting system at Ubuntu Brianstorm. Enough users vote and change happens, patches and etc.

Finally who had the best 3D Intel Graphics stack?
PPA/Ubuntu

--
.,_and you can make money with Linux. I have.

.-0-0-. <-- its the money you could be saving with ubuntu.

[next9]

ubuntu is no more a debian based distro it is a deb based distro! as opensuse and fedora are rpm based distros.

You should learn about Ubuntu a little bit more. Opensuse an Fedora build their package from source individually. Ubuntu adapts Debian packages. They are strongly Dabian based.

I cant find any evidince for your position that Cannonnical does nothing for the greater Linux community.

So. Thus It would be easy to find evidence that Cannonical does a lot.

Sounds like OpenSUSE you have to pass the committee decision. I suspect Debian is the same way.

But see with Ubuntu there's that voting system at Ubuntu Brianstorm. Enough users vote and change happens, patches and etc.

No. In Opensuse, there is Openfate and as a user you can propose things there and vote. In contrast of Ubuntu Brainstrom, it does really work. You have the power tho change something, in Ubuntu, important decissions are made by Shuttlewoth exclusivelly, no matter what the ubuntu "community" thinks.

Finally who had the best 3D Intel Graphics stack?
PPA/Ubuntu

Maybe you should see Opensuse Build Service. Wiht all X.org drivers build in stable and development versions.

PPA for Ubuntu is not comparable with OBS. Have you ever tried to find package in PPA? It is non conceptional mess with no usable searhing tool.