IS Ubuntu Hardy really THAT buggy ?
Submitted by srlinuxx on Sun, 08/24/2008 - 02:57.
Blogsphere and forums are full of post saying that hardy is much more buggy than Gutsy or any other previous release. Come on this is a LTS release, how can this be so buggy ? Lets take a look at some of the posts
We begin with the comments section on LWN. Lwn reported the release of Ubuntu 8.04 and starting from first comment its all bug reports. The first comment reports three major bugs
The ubuntu kernel should use CONFIG_FAIR_CGROUP_SCHED, same as Completely fair scheduler; instead of CONFIG_FAIR_GROUP_SCHED/CONFIG_FAIR_USER_SCHED. This bug is now fix both in Hardy as well as coming Intrepid.
Default ALSA device must use PulseAudio, otherwise ALSA applications may fail. This bug is fixed in Hardy.
Manually Configuring Network Causes Massive, Unreversable, Failure. This bug is comfirmed, but not yet fixed.
Its heartening to see that Ubuntu developers are taking the pain to fix the bugs, but I think that such serious bugs should not be part of a LTS release.
Also there is a very nice thread on Mint Forums about Hardy bugs. Some users comment like
Ubuntu has sweetspots ? Not backward compatible enough ?
The Linux kernel people had always moved ahead without sufficient backward compatibility safeguards. Sometimes some kernel developers keep on putting back their own pet preference in the new kernel. Then there might be compiler errors too on new source codes. Problems of reusing files with the old but wrong bindings. No symlinks for backward compatibilty?
But the new kernels may have sweetspots. If your hardware is turned on during boot? If you don't change any config files. If you are lucky enough never to try all the functionalities in all the apps.
So, Hardy has moved on. Next version will be obsoleted soon enough too. Why fix bugs, except for DELL customers who pays. Let the users fix free bugs for free.
The bad habits of Linux developers. is saved by Linus and Andrew, who kept on adding kernel versions. No Linux version can be used for long. the older ones are too buggy. And the newer versions are worse. None of the versions are ever usable for any length of time. While users can config to each one's own delight; the webpages moved on too. Browsers are another moving target, having to catch up with gears(webpage trailer codes) for reduced bandwidth of data transmission.
Linux is never dull, whine and rant then move on to more whine and rant. Linus favoured open source community, but never knew quality control. He thinks free is everything can be worthless if it is free.