What Do You Dislike or Hate About Ubuntu?

[crazycheese]

I laughed, see Linux has over 9000 'sorts of linuxes' all compiled with 'various versions of various compilers' using 'various ABI's' and all are incompatible with one another.

They are *not designed* to be compatible at ABI, just for the sake binary compatibility is reason for the mess we have in windows.
Linux implemented much more elegant solution, cutting the problem in the root.

Windows has 3 versions, three compilers, and well documented stable ABIs.

No, windows has much more versions, but they happen to break when running pre-pre-version and happen to need 9000 versions of older libraries, incl. bugs, incl. building functionality based on erratic behavior.

Else, why would someone even think of need of "compability" box?

Yes, windows is huge mess by design. You can't avoid this mess if you plan to run proprietary applications which will never be supported at some point of time, which very probably will never have bugs fixed.
They are soo greedy, that the only point of connection they agreed was lowest binary level and API entry points. You can probably make best OS for this kind of applications by freezing features at sharp versions and then running every application in own virtual machine to bind on the actual version. This is exactly what windows is doing and planning to do.

It is like having 9000 people each assigned own translator, which makes overall errata rate (plus those of translators) to whole new level.

The system where everyone explicitly declares his needs and communicates directly (which is package management in essence) is actually the best solution. And for those, who don't like to assemble things together manually, there are binary packages.

Do the math as to which one is easier to support, cheesey.

Linux, of course. The OS that does it right.

[crazycheese]

In response to several posts about my post about -dev versions: It was just a rant, I am aware that my opinion about the GPL is not mainstream. And, yes, the command for installing the required packages is not a big deal.

On another point, the way I see it, it is upstream's job to supply a good package to the distro packager. Then, releases get packaged and users install with their package manager (or PlayDeb), and all is well. I did not intend to imply that everyone should be installing from svn. But, for us, and I expect for many small projects, having a group of users who test the latest development is essential.

Did not really expect to get responses. Some good points to ponder. Thanks.

You should use Gentoo or similar distro with source-friendly package management. Separation into -dev version is more a feature of binary distributions, meaning they actually normally don't fetch any development versions, they rather *use* the release-type software. This cuts on drive space and network bandwidth.

Or you could have your own PPA with periodically automated built development releases. Similar to what Michael did with linux kernel and atom machine.

[deanjo]

You can't avoid this mess if you plan to run proprietary applications which will never be supported at some point of time, which very probably will never have bugs fixed.

BS, there are plenty of applications out there that still run fine even on Win 7 64 despite being decades old. It all depends on the application and how it was built and how many external libraries it relies on.

[crazycheese]

BS, there are plenty of applications out there that still run fine even on Win 7 64 despite being decades old. It all depends on the application and how it was built and how many external libraries it relies on.

Rethink your answer please.
The application will work as you suggest, only if
- it is rather very very primitive(even drawing hello world msgbox is too complex) or
- it is already using a outdated library already present in the system or/and
- most of application function calls are transparently emulated internally by remaps, this includes outdated libraries, but might not always work(crashes and conflicts)
- application uses whole lot of local dynamic or statically-linked libraries, but the endpoints are "emulated" via previous step

Why would windows weight so much else?

Regarding emulation, look for xp mode in 7ista, it is exact case what I was talking about.

[deanjo]

Rethink your answer please.
The application will work as you suggest, only if
- it is rather very very primitive(even drawing hello world msgbox is too complex) or
- it is already using a outdated library already present in the system or/and
- most of application function calls are transparently emulated internally by remaps, this includes outdated libraries, but might not always work(crashes and conflicts)
- application uses whole lot of local dynamic or statically-linked libraries, but the endpoints are "emulated" via previous step

Why would windows weight so much else?

Regarding emulation, look for xp mode in 7ista, it is exact case what I was talking about.

I don't have to rethink at all. Not every application out there relies on ms libraries believe it or not. And libraries are never outdated if they still serve the function.

[smickson]

I like Unity -- I don't understand why people complain about it

I like Unity a lot. If you don't like Unity, why not just use a different shell? I don't understand what there is to complain about. It's not like your stuck with one shell to use (like with Windows or Mac). I certainly like Unity a lot more than gnome3-shell. I am real thankful that I could choose Unity over that.

If filling out the Developer questionnaire, I would concur with the excessive amount of bugs and too aggressive in LTS. I think LTS releases should in essence take the xx.10 release and just bug fix not only the OS but the MAIN repo applications as much as possible. If possible, bug fix the most used UNIVERSE apps as well.

[RealNC]

Yes, windows is huge mess by design. You can't avoid this mess if you plan to run proprietary applications which will never be supported at some point of time, which very probably will never have bugs fixed.

How is this different from open source applications that are not supported and never have bugs fixed?

When an application dies and doesn't get support, you switch to another one. And it doesn't matter if it's an open source one or not.

[bwat47]

I like Unity a lot. If you don't like Unity, why not just use a different shell? I don't understand what there is to complain about. It's not like your stuck with one shell to use (like with Windows or Mac). I certainly like Unity a lot more than gnome3-shell. I am real thankful that I could choose Unity over that.

If filling out the Developer questionnaire, I would concur with the excessive amount of bugs and too aggressive in LTS. I think LTS releases should in essence take the xx.10 release and just bug fix not only the OS but the MAIN repo applications as much as possible. If possible, bug fix the most used UNIVERSE apps as well.

I think unity has some good ideas, I just don't think it was ready for release. It is quite unpolished in natty, and the bleeding edge version of compiz it runs on is slow.

[kayosiii]

While at some point this annoyed me and forced me to install the development versions of some libraries (not that hard in any case), I don't see how this is a violation of the GPL in any way.
Yes, and like many other open source projects yours seems to fall in the same kind of disconnection with final users, if not reality. What on earth do you want me to do with your svn repository? I don't want to have anything to do with it, at all. I just want to play your game, not looking up how to fetch source code, how to build it, witness errors running down a terminal and chase libraries, only to find out that sound doesn't work or that it crashes at the menu screen.
You are making a game, you are the main stakeholder, it's your responsibility to distribute it in a working state so that users can try it in the easiest way possible. Whatever your software is about, and except for the simplest projects out there, I find it hard to believe that building a couple of binaries represents a significant amount of work compared to what it takes to actually coding it.
No, the GPL is not about me, a user, building your code in order to use it. It's about you distributing it in certain way, and about certain rights and obligations connected to it. I am grateful that you decided to use a free license to distribute your software, and I, or somebody else might at some point benefit from your choice. But if you want your game to be played by as many people as possible, you should put a bit of effort towards making it as easy as you can.

I am not sure who has the disconnect with reality here. A project offering a svn repository but not binaries is very clearly signalling that - "Our project is not yet ready for end users. But if you are really keen and might want to help out with development you can get the code here". Setting the bar high weeds out people who are likely to want to help and contribute to people who will not. Svn etc are important because you want people to have very quick turn around time for fixing issues. The area where this falls down is when the project has a significant number of non technical contributors In which case you may wish to set up some sort of nightly build service.

[energyman]

Tell the Debian developers this.

I guess some automated install of missing -dev files may fix it.

But it is also a matter of size for a default installation.

du -h /usr/include
372M /usr/include

and I have a lot of packages installed. Kernel sources are bigger.