back to Ubuntu 8.04

[C M Reinehr]

On Wed 14 January 2009 13:43, Lonni J Friedman wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 11:27 AM, Michael Hipp <Michael at hipp.com> wrote:
> > Lonni J Friedman wrote:
> >> On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 10:49 AM, Michael Hipp <Michael at hipp.com> wrote:
> >>> Lonni J Friedman wrote:
> >>>> In my experience, Ubuntu's focus has
> >>>> never been quality.  They push out the shiniest object possible, in an
> >>>> effort to attract Windows users, and if they happen to get some
> >>>> quality from upstream Debian, so be it.
> >>>
> >>> I doubt there's any real data to establish this (remembering that the
> >>> plural
> >>> of anecdote is not data). In my experience I install it, run it, and it
> >>> works. It doesn't particularly have any more or less issues than any
> >>> other
> >>> distro I've ever tried.
> >>
> >> I have lots of data.  At $DAYJOB, I install Ubuntu via kickstart
> >> _hundreds_ of times every month, and then run stress tests.  I do the
> >> same with OpenSUSE, Fedora & RHEL.  Ubuntu, by far, fails in the
> >> following areas more frequently than the others (often by an order of
> >> magnitude):
> >> 0) kickstart support 100% broken in 8.10.  Bug filed over 2 months
> >> ago, and remains unfixed to this day.  All requests for a rough
> >> estimate on when it might be fixed have been completely ignored (and
> >> I'm not the only person complaining in that Launchpad bug).  Best as
> >> we can guess is that there is no intent to fix it for 8.10, and it
> >> might be fixed for 9.04.
> >> 1) Installer failures.  At random, the OS installer fails to find its
> >> own packages, and just crashes/dies.  It somehow manages to munge the
> >> MBR before this, rendering the system unbootable without manual
> >> intervention.  None of this behavior has ever happened with SUSE or
> >> Redhat products.
> >> 2) kernel panics/Oops.  As I mentioned above, I run the same exact
> >> stress tests on all the distros, using the same exact hardware.
> >> Ubuntu manages to experience kernel panics/Oops much more often than
> >> the others.  And there's rarely any clear pattern.  I've seen them all
> >> over the place, from filesystems, to device drivers, to memory mgmt to
> >> IO schedulers.  SuSE & Fedora come in second, with RHEL a very very
> >> distant third (as in just about never).
> >> 3) random package bugs.  The gcc shipping in 8.10 has a severe flaw,
> >> against which a Launchpad bug has been opened since well before 8.10
> >> was released, and remains unfixed to this day.  Fedora10 &
> >> OpenSUSE-11.1 both ship the same 'version' of gcc, yet both of them
> >> managed to patch their gcc packages prior to release to fix this flaw.
> >>  Ubuntu just shipped the brokeness and has ignored numerous complaints
> >> about it.  There have been many other buggy packages, but this gcc
> >> issue is yet the latest.
> >
> > Interesting stuff. Do you mind if I share it with some Ubuntu-ers that
> > might be interested? Is your install and stress test duplicatable (sp?)
> > and would you share it in sufficient detail to allow others to attempt to
> > duplicate your results? Otherwise, it's still just anecdotes rather than
> > science and doesn't count.
>
> The stress test that I'm referring to (outside of installing the OS
> repeatedly) is for NVIDIA CUDA QA work, and is therefore not something
> that is publicly available.
>
> However, here are the relevant 8.10 kickstart & gcc bugs that I
> referenced which are both unfixed for 8.10 (both are seemingly fixed
> for 9.04 which does no one any good right now):
> https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gccxml/+bug/293807
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/busybox/+bug/293586
>
> > I'll keep your name out of it for now, if you'd prefer.
> >
> >> So contrary to popular opinion, I'm not just making this stuff up
> >> based on an irrational hatred of Ubuntu.
> >
> > Ok, fair enough. But your *mannerism* regarding this subject makes you
> > come off exactly as such. About all you ever bring up is some grievance
> > from 4 years ago about being ignored by some developers. That's the only
> > "data" I was aware of.
>
> That was the beginning of the miserable experience attempting to work
> with Ubuntu.  Its just gotten worse from there.
>
> >> yet Mark Shuttlesworth
> >> doesn't seem to care, because his well stated opinion is that their
> >> competition is Windows, and we all know how the quality is in that
> >> camp.
> >
> > Can you attribute a quote somewhere to this effect? I'd be surprised if
> > that's really their position since quality is actually the thing that
> > would cause Windows users to switch IMHO.
>
> See this past sunday's NY Times article on Ubuntu where Mark is quoted:
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/business/11ubuntu.html

I saw nothing in the article to justify that statement. I did see: "The 
company’s model centers on outpacing Microsoft on both price and features 
aimed at new markets."

As a user of Debian Stable my conclusion is that in their haste to bring out a 
version every six months with the latest & greatest features, they do 
insufficient testing which results in the problems you describe.

> >>> If some newbie (or intermediate, or advanced) Linux user came to me and
> >>> asked for a distro recommendation I wouldn't hesitate to recommend
> >>> Ubuntu.
> >>> Likely they'll be happy, if their needs can at all be met by Linux.
> >>
> >> That's unfortunate.
> >
> > What? That they'll be happy. ;-)
>
> Hopefully they will, but anyone who actually puts any stress of stress
> on the OS environment will see Ubuntu fall apart around them.

I would never consider Ubuntu for a critical system, but for their target, 
non-technical desktop, market it's probably "good enough".

cmr
-- 
Debian 'Etch' - Registered Linux User #241964
--------
"More laws, less justice." -- Marcus Tullius Ciceroca, 42 BC