Is Hardy Heron a bit too buggy?

[Luke Seubert]

I have run Ubuntu based systems since back in the days of 5.04 - Hoary Hedgehog. The past few releases, Gutsy and Feisty, have been a little too buggy for my tastes, and so I switched over to Linux Mint. I have read a variety of reports on the net about regular Ubuntu users disillusioned with the stability and reliability of recent Ubuntu releases.

And now I read in Linux Weekly News in the Comments section of an article about the Ubuntu Hardy Heron release, that there are a lot of bugs and regressions in Heron. LWN subscribers and commenters are quite a step above the usual SlashDot crowd, and they usually make insightful comments. Note how many of them list specific links to unfixed Heron bugs.

Is Hardy Heron a bit too buggy? And what does this mean for Linux Mint? Might Mint have to wait until the Hardy Heron 8.04.1 release in early July for a truly stable base to build upon?

One can see the long term wisdom of the Mint developers in their experiments with building Mint upon a Fedora or Debian base. Always good to have a backup plan.

[belovedmonster]

You are always going to take a risk using as soon as it comes out, whether it be Ubuntu, any other Linux distro or something like OSX. If stability is something you care about this strongly then you could always wait a while before you migrate to the newest version. Yes in an ideal world Ubuntu would ship bug free but I'm sure the developers arent leaving bugs unfixed because they are taking it easy and taking holidays.

[Husse]

Well, Mint is less buggy than Ubuntu (at least to a degree)
The main version was forked off Ubuntu with Barbara based on Edgy and so the main version is still based on Edgy, but of course upgraded
The KDE version is based on Gutsy Kubuntu and I think it will remain so

[linuxviolin]

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...

Mint is 'a better Ubuntu' but it could do better by going with another base, e.g Slackware (very stable, very little buggy etc)

[67GTA]

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. Just from my experience using the RC now, Nvidia cards that were supported in previous releases aren't now. FF 3 crashes every few minutes. I have problems with USB sticks and other removable drives changing permissions, so only root can unmount or write to them. Pulseaudio keeps throwing fits. A lot of users/devs are saying "so what, it will never be perfect". "It works for me, so you must be in the minority". "If we delay the release to fix bugs, it will never get released". It wasn't like this with Dapper. I think they have dropped the ball...

[exploder]

I agree, Ubuntu has dropped the ball. The developer's have not even fixed the floppy drive problem! It is sad when a simple, basic piece of hardware will not even work. Just today, it was finally acknowledged as a bug! (I reported the bug in detail in beta 5.)

Another very disturbing bug is if you close Evolution and shut down or restart you will get a screen full of Network Manager errors. The screen full of errors will appear every single time you shut down or restart!

The non usable floppy drive has a huge icon in the file browser! ( I guess this is there to remind the user that the drive will never be used again...}

There was more concern over Compiz than the base system itself!

I am ranting a bit but I had much higher expectations from an LTS Release. I am extremely disappointed in the Ubuntu Developer's and the poor quality of their release.

[lakehousetech]

It's too bad we couldn't make Mint even better by bringing the Debian CE to reality. Too bad not enough people want to group up to work on the project. At least Mint in it's present state is quite reliable, aside from the usual issues with wifi.

[madjr]

I agree, Ubuntu has dropped the ball. The developer's have not even fixed the floppy drive problem! It is sad when a simple, basic piece of hardware will not even work. Just today, it was finally acknowledged as a bug! (I reported the bug in detail in beta 5.)

Another very disturbing bug is if you close Evolution and shut down or restart you will get a screen full of Network Manager errors. The screen full of errors will appear every single time you shut down or restart!

The non usable floppy drive has a huge icon in the file browser! ( I guess this is there to remind the user that the drive will never be used again...}

There was more concern over Compiz than the base system itself!

I am ranting a bit but I had much higher expectations from an LTS Release. I am extremely disappointed in the Ubuntu Developer's and the poor quality of their release.

yea they focused too much on unnecessary stuff, which could had waited for next Ubuntu release 8.10

-Pulseaudio
-FF3 beta with no plugin compatibility

i agree they left many bugs unfixed.

But there's where Mint shines.

Mint always turns out less buggy, more polished and stable. Oh and even easier on the novice user and the "minority".

Well atleast i didn't experience showstoppers with Hardy.

and kudos to the dev team for making it so much easier to install (many more options now)

Even if it's kind of buggy u gotta admit it's pretty good upgrade.

But i'll wait for mint 5 to compare

[belovedmonster]

Everyone gives them hassle of over including the yet unfinished Firefox, but it makes way more sense to me to have a slightly buggy version for a few weeks vs having to support an out dated version for 3 and 5 years.

[Husse]

There's a good chance that Mint wont be buggy - see my first post in this topic

[67GTA]

Does anyone know what version of xorg Elyssa will ship with? Will it use Hardy as the base? If it does, then FF 3/flash, and xserver-xorg-video-nv will be the biggest problems to iron out. Also when the new xorg came in, the dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg tool went out the window. If someone has graphics trouble, it has to be manually fixed.

[linuxviolin]

it makes way more sense to me to have a slightly buggy version for a few weeks

hmm not for me. I'm sorry but I prefer a good, stable, well tested app even if this app is a little outdated... Why absolutely want the latest version, though not finished and buggy? e.g 2.0.0.13 works correctly and it is not so old...

For users it is more important to have stable applications, even a little outdated, (idem for a distribution) than having the latest "non-stable and buggy" versions.

Stability and system availability are of the utmost importance. "Only security patches and bug fixes will be applied. When deemed necessary, selected new features are backported to older releases, but the general rule is: make as much as possible to prevent the breakage of what is already working." And with a supported lifetime for several years.

This business definition is despised by the regular Linux user but it is essential for the survival of Linux! ("using Linux does not mean doesn't only mean browsing the Internet, listening MP3s and watching DVDs, and writing CDs/DVDs"...)

[exploder]

I have no problem with Ubuntu's decision to use Firefox 3 beta 5. My complaint is with the floppy drive issues and the screen full of errors at shut down. Even Microsoft would not release a piece of crap like this! I mean come on, these bugs were reported some time ago. They are still shuffling the floppy drive bug report around! The bug has been confirmed and moved numerous times.

I have already read two unfavourable reviews on Hardy already and I agree with the reviewer's. Meeting a deadline is more important than producing a quality product?

I hope Clem can overcome the new bugs Ubuntu has introduced and that Mint 5 will be a quality release.

As you can tell, I followed the development of Hardy and reported bugs, so I am especially disappointed about the condition of Hardy....

[GrayWizardLinux]

a very serious question here. a bit off topic and also related with an underlying structure here re: ubuntu and mint.

I am getting a brand new Thinkpad. last one pooped out - I should have it next week. I was going to load daryna on it since the last one I used before it pooped out was celena and i loved it/her. At the time the HD winding up and down was wearing the hell out of the HD's and some people had command line fixes that i could not follow and some said it won't work and some said don't worry about the HD issue. It pooped out and i have been away. I am rescanning certain situations re: the new Daryna and Ubuntu versions and this HD thing and I have read that this is a Gutsy problem - and that I believe is where daryna is from as such. so does Daryna have this problem? also - if Celena was prior to Gutsy was celena clean/free of this issue? I may have to install Celena then instead. I could afford the new thinkpad and I'd hate to wear out the HD in a year as many people have said or even 2 years. I have seen articles about this HD problem not being solved in hardy heron and so maybe you can see this interconnectdness to this thread.

I really want and need the truth. not opinions. I am a neophyte linux dude but i am serious about running linux - the laptop as the last was 100% pure mint linux - no windoze. I use macs other than linux.

thank you in advance!

I would be happy to rn celena, no big deal - I want stability not a bunch of eye candy that drains my system or doesn't work or a version that has bugs and crashes, etc. So I am interested in all of these various permutations to my questions re: HD issues and celena vs. Daryna.


and serious step by step fixes if there is such a thing since I know squat about command line unix code stuff.

Best wishes,

An old Gray Wizard of a man.

[ctsdownloads]

I so saw this happening with the final release, even after the bug was falsely said to be fixed - select Ubuntu devs have honesty issues IMO.
viewtopic.php?f=151&t=10525&p=64602&hilit=ctsdownloads#p64602


So yes, the totally avoidable b43-phy0 ERROR Loop is left untouched and cannot be bypassed that I am aware of.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... bug/188282

And after watching in amazement as the latest b43 module is worse than the previous one, showing nearly zero in success for anyone, I would ask that it not be included in future releases of LinuxMint that happen to be based on Heron. Because this is a flat out show stopper - the distro cannot be installed when seeing that loop error. Not from alternate Cds, no boot option is going to help and even getting to a CLI is a no go. I sure hope Clem is reading this, Heron is going to be messy for awhile.

[Dutchmaster]

I got lucky.

I did a fresh Hardy install with no problems - at least that I've found yet.

After reading this and many other posts, I completely removed Firefox 3 and installed Firefox 2 before I ever opened the browser. Worked fine that way.

I found the process of fine tuning more user friendly than Gutsy. More work to install than Mint, but I knew that going in.

Once Hardy is given the Mint treatment in a month or so I'll be back with Mint for sure. Hardy - when it works - is faster for me and works much better with video.

[madjr]

I have no problem with Ubuntu's decision to use Firefox 3 beta 5. My complaint is with the floppy drive issues and the screen full of errors at shut down. Even Microsoft would not release a piece of crap like this! I mean come on, these bugs were reported some time ago. They are still shuffling the floppy drive bug report around! The bug has been confirmed and moved numerous times.

I have already read two unfavourable reviews on Hardy already and I agree with the reviewer's. Meeting a deadline is more important than producing a quality product?

I hope Clem can overcome the new bugs Ubuntu has introduced and that Mint 5 will be a quality release.

As you can tell, I followed the development of Hardy and reported bugs, so I am especially disappointed about the condition of Hardy....

exact same here...

however even if hardy turned out perfect (which it did not), i would still prefer mint.

[bagano]

well i dont know about anyone else, but has installed and run perfectly bug free for me.

the alpha's and beta's WERE very buggy, for me unuseable as it ran extremely slowly for 10 minutes after startup,

but the full release has fixed all these bugs for me.

will linux mint not be using hardy as a base in the next version as its lts?

[Husse]

The main edition is based on Barbara which was forked off Edgy, then updated and upgraded

[linuxviolin]

Here are some other examples of 'problems' with Hardy:

"Ubuntu 8.04 is definitely not suitable for an enterprise use, as it still presents the unfixed bug 209520, which means GNOME 2.22's new virtual filing system fails to establish authentication properly under various conditions (when not using Kerberos, I guess):
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gvfs/+bug/209520
http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/software/os/0,1000001099,39405248,00.htm"

After upgrading, we discovered that we couldn't connect to our corporate servers with 8.04, despite having no problems with 7.10 and previous versions. Upon investigation, this proved due to a known and unfixed bug related to GNOME 2.22's new virtual filing system and Active Directory, which fails to establish authentication properly under various conditions. While this bug is extant, Hardy Heron cannot be recommended for enterprise use.

it is a showstopper, which should not have been left unfixed

Hardy is not "for those reliant on Windows shares", not for those "expects to connect to a Windows/SMB/CIFS share"!

Here on the Ubuntu's forums you can read a pretty much correct post about regressions, stability, LTS...

You can also read here, a interesting aricle about Hardy with useful information and some links...

Also a "surprising crappy security": "try to select the "recovery mode" on a Ubuntu box, then select "root" to get the root shell. Guess what, you get the root shell, WITHOUT password!!! Maybe this is a feature, but its a crappy one." See here for example:

During the hardy development cycle I discovered this horrible "feature"; While booting up choose a "recovery mode" item from the grub menu, and ubuntu boots into single mode. So far so good. Now at the end of the boot process it will present you with a nice ncurses menu to "fix xorg" , "root shell" and something else. Choose "root shell" and you get one without even being asked for a password!