One of the things I love about Facebook is that not only can I find some great articles but it gives me more information than Twitter does to help me decide if I actually want to click the link and read the article. Today I saw a link to an article on OMG! Ubuntu! written by Benjamin Humphrey. It was actually posted to Facebook twice, and the first time it gave me just enough info to make me want to read the article.
OMG! Ubuntu! writer Benjamin Humphrey shares his thoughts on Ubuntu’s standard of quality: http://goo.gl/fb/FeGmu
Since I’ve been less than wholly pleased with the upgrade to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx I was definitely curious to see what Benjamin has to say. His first paragraph was definitely written to grab the reader’s attention.
Ubuntu lives in a special place between Windows and Mac OS X reserved only for Linux: more shine than Windows, less than OS X, resulting in a steaming pile of mediocrity.
While I loved the Ubuntu experience with version 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon I can’t help noticing that the upgrades have left me less satisfied with each new release. It seems the last two upgrade cycles have been especially aggravating, with applications that I use on a regular basis breaking to the point where I have to find some hoops to jump through to get even a good measure of the function that I used before the upgrade. With the upgrade from 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope to 9.10 Karmic Koala I found that iriverter, an app I use every day to convert video files to take on my iriver E100 digital media player, can no longer read files from my DVDs to convert them to the AVI format that my E100 can play. And now that I’ve upgraded to 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx my beloved Webilder was borked and I’m having problems just booting my system thanks to changes in how the boot screens are rendered on my Nvidia GeForce 6200 video card. (I just realized I haven’t written a report on my upgrade to lucid yet. I think I was trying to chase down bugs first and I’ve been getting some new bugs in the past week that have taken my attention. I’ll try to write my report this week for those who are still looking for it.)
If you think Benjamin’s article is simply the whining of a user who is being asked to take some extra steps to figure out how to do things you’d be wrong. Benjamin does take Ubuntu devs to task on what I think are some pretty boneheaded errors, including the fact that some of the newer “features” don’t work nearly as easily as advertised and the lack of documentation on how to use one of the features that are supposedly a big selling point for this new release.
If you are one of the programmers that help develop software for Ubuntu you should consider Benjamin’s article, Many hands make the light work; few make it shine, a Must Read. If you don’t develop code but help in the Ubuntu Forums you should consider the article as strongly recommended. In other words, if you come under either of those two groups go read the article now. If you’re someone who is simply a user of Ubuntu you may want to read it as well, if only to make yourself aware of what Benjamin has to say.
If you’re simply considering trying Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx you may want to read it as well. And then find either an Ubuntu 9.10 Jaunty Jackalope Karmic Joala LiveCD or grab the disk image and burn it yourself. It’s not the newest and “best” release but you will find it supported for longer than any of the older Ubuntu releases. That’s right, I’m not recommending Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx to new users. If those of us who have used Ubuntu for several years are having big problems with it, it would be a mistake to use it as your introduction to the operating system.
Like this:
Be the first to like this post.