More breakage in Ubuntu??

[psycosmyth]

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Newly-Di ... 8864.shtml

I have had crash after crash in the last few weeks and today I get another kernel update.
Now I know why. There have been so many posts lately downing Ubuntu's stability but now I feel it and this distro is in trouble. I want to know how this will effect Mint. I have other distros I like in case I feel the need to change but they are slowly loosing my faith as well, PCLinuxOS lost me as a supportive user from it's communities' poor attitude.
Mint lost me at some hardware support but now seems to work. Here goes another reformat.

[GrayWizardLinux]

even though Mint is based on Ubuntu, I too am not a fan of Ubuntu for a myriad of reasons. I also am curious to see how far Mint goes before it gets contaminated by Ubuntu's glitches. I am hoping not and I mean it in a positive view for Mint; but relying on Ubuntu
s underlying structure or repositories, or whatever else seems like it could indirectly harm Mint. Just my naive thoughts.

[exploder]

I think most of the problems we see are because development of different parts of the system are at different levels of development when the OS is built. What I mean by that is that Ubuntu Developer's include packages that have not yet reached maturity and never update them. For example, Brasero does not work right with DVDs in Hardy and Intrepid. Will it ever get fixed? No. Maybe somewhere down the road Brasero will work right again but not in Hardy or Intrepid.

The version of xorg in Intrepid is terrible! While you are able to change the screen resolution for the desktop there is no known way to change it for the GDM. The default resolution for my 17" CRT is so bad I would need a magnifying glass to be able to read any text! Ok, I will settle down on this one. The point is that the problem will never be fixed.

Until development is on an even plain there will continue to be breakage and regressions. My way of dealing with problems has been to try and refine what works with my hardware. I am still using Elyssa Main Edition with some fixes and updated packages from removed. I have a nearly perfect working system other than Brasero, (I use the built in Gnome burning app to work around the problems with Brasero). My hardware for the most part has native support so the Hardy based Elyssa release is a good choice for me. I know I do at least 400 or so updates to have things working well and to have all of the memory leaks taken care of.

Ubuntu development seems to be a roll of the dice. Everything is an "upstream" issue as far as Ubuntu development goes. Ubuntu development seems to be, throw it all together and hope for the best. Did you notice the new features that were added to Intrepid that did not even work? Can someone tell me what Ubuntu developer's actually develop? Fred compared Ubuntu to a "House of cards", and it is the best illustration of how things are right now.

Distributions like Debian, sidux and Mepis to name a few seem to do more actual development than Ubuntu does and they have very few developer's in comparison to Ubuntu. In my opinion, if Ubuntu did not get their packages from Debian the OS would be a complete failure. Have you ever reported a bug in Launchpad? What a joke! The bug report is shuffled around and usually added to a completely unrelated bug. The only way to get any action on a bug report is to get others to help you to flood the report with responses! If you can get a lot of people involved you might see a fix but most likely you will see "upstream" bug throughout the bug report. Maybe I am confused by what the term "development" actually means? To me development means to work on something to reach a level of functionality and quality.

I will stop my ranting and get off my soap box now. I just get frustrated by all of the bugs and regressions I see.

[Old Marcus]

Hear, Hear! Totally agree, Intrepid and hardy came out with more bugs and non functioning packages than you could shake a stick at.

[exploder]

Hear, Hear! Totally agree, Intrepid and hardy came out with more bugs and non functioning packages than you could shake a stick at.

What is so funny is that most of the reviews for Intrepid describe it as a bug fix release! Gee, Evolution doesn't remember your settings if you are using auto logon, floppy drives are not supported, some graphics cards no longer work right, eject was broken, screensaver will not turn off from moving the mouse, GDM will not change resolution, Brasero is too full of bugs to list, Compiz causes issues with maximizing windows for Firefox, Synaptic, etc, trash will not empty when closing Evolution and the list goes on and on. What a piece of crap!

I can understand some of the bugs in Hardy. GVFS was new along with Pulse Audio. I do not expect flawless perfection but look at the bugs I listed in the Intrepid final release. Intrepid's final release is more like a beta than a final product. Ubuntu is damn lucky I do not write reviews! My evaluation of Intrepid is very unfavorable.

[exploder]

timmyw29, let me know what you think about Mint 6. I am still using Elyssa and have the new Mint tools installed, upgraded Pidgin to 2.5.2, Gimp 2.6.2, Transmission 1.22 (less bugs than 1.34), kernel 2.6.24-22, all security updates and a few done by hand fixes and I am perfectly happy with the end result.

My Wife says that I am a perfectionist when it comes to operating systems. I do have high expectations! Don't get me wrong, I like all of the new features in Mint 6, they work! I am not happy with the Ubuntu base this time. I submitted and added to bug reports for Intrepid and I must say that it was a wasted effort.Ubuntu Developer's care more about releasing on time than weather their releases are of good quality. How Ubuntu ever made it to number one on Distrowatch is beyond me and I can see why that other OS still holds most of the market share. Debian is known for quality not for releasing by a schedule, they chose to wait and fix bugs. I have to admire Debian's choice. Ubuntu is not doing themselves or us any favors by releasing on schedule.

[rivenought]

Exploder,
I for one am glad you are a perfectionist. Even with the Ubuntu Intrepid flaws, it seems Clem and the rest of you guys have repaired and polished most of them with Mint 6 RC1. I am having great success with Mint 6 thus far. Having to use compatibility mode to start the Live CD and having unusually fuzzy screen fonts in OpenOffice were odd, I must note. Though, those are not Mint-related. Everything else is smooth surfing. If anyone can beat the bugs out, I know Exploder can do it.

[exploder]

I just find the bugs, Clem and the rest of the team fix what can be fixed. We are fortunate to have talented, quality minded developers here. We all care how your system runs. Lets not forget Husse, he finds fixes for some pretty complicated problems.

[Steely]

Ditto on what Exploder and others have said in their posts.

There is a post on Ubuntu forums that sums it up well

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=998546

In particular how the person ends the post... Right now, the toilet's working great, but you've got no running water.

Besides the stability of their releases what really sets Mint apart from so many other distributions is that they genuinely care about their user base. They accept and often implement suggestions and feedback from their users. They will do their best to release with as few bugs as possible and will let the user know about those bugs and possible workarounds. When they do make mistakes they are open and honest about what happened.

Ubuntu does have it's good and bad points but I really do think that they need to slow down and get the basics right. As more and more of their user base attains enough knowledge they will venture out and try other distributions only to find that all of those annoying bugs they have wrestled with in Ubuntu are not present in those distrubtions. There is a reason that there are distributions that only release every year or two. They don't want their users leaving feeling that they have been, for the lack of a better term, guinea pigs in their development cycle.

[Old Marcus]

Is it just me or are the ubuntu forums being particularly unstable today?

[psycosmyth]

Nice replies!
I have yet to change anything but Fedora10 in sitting in my desktop in live mode and I am Loving Mint's Flux CE.
I just feel let down, Hardy ran perfectly and I could install, clean-up, personalise. and tweak it in less than an hour.
Intrepid feels like Windows.

[Katzedecimal]

Ugh, what a gong show. This is why I was apprehensive when I read that Felicia was going to be built directly on Intrepid instead of on the previous release, like previous Mints were. The number of happy Felicia reports (and the fact that it's running stable on my 'new' playbox, squeeee ) are reassuring, especially compared to the fiasco happening over at Ubuntu. I feel sorry for those guys

[psycosmyth]

I'm happy to say that I have Elyssa nicely configured on my main box, the trusty old Dell laptop.
I am toying with my desktop as I write. It crashed FFox twice just now.

OK now FluxboxCE is on the desktop. I had trouble before but now it's flawless.
My off-line desktop was already running Mint, my first love Bianca KDE.

[marcus0263]

I never liked Ubuntu, Mint does it right though. Even though I've an advocate and have been recommending Mint to others Elyssa 64 has been the first move me off my beloved Gentoo.

It'll be nice to see Mint move off of the Ubuntu base and rebase itself on Debian.

[MALsPa]

It'll be nice to see Mint move off of the Ubuntu base and rebase itself on Debian.

Is that going to happen?

[marcus0263]

It'll be nice to see Mint move off of the Ubuntu base and rebase itself on Debian.

Is that going to happen?

There was talk about it some time ago, I hope it happens.