January 20, 2010 3 months later, where Ubuntu 9.10 fails miserably
If you were on the internet around august-september last year, you might have heard some of the buzz surrounding Ubuntu 9.10 “Karmic “Koala”. Since ubuntu and windows 7 came out on more or less the same time, comparing both operating systems was quite fashionable. And, wow, what do you know, ubuntu always won. If you ask me, linux fanboys have used linux for so long they must’ve forgot what a fully working operating system looks like.
Well, you know what they say, the higher you fly the bigger the fall, or something of the like, and the fall of Karmic Koala was quite severe. Here’s a couple of notes of some the worst of Ubuntu’s latest edition.
1- PulseAudio is still broken
The PulseAudio rush started in late 2007. If I remember correctly, it was Fedora that first shipped with it. Then all the major distros rushed in as well and Ubuntu 8.04 LTS was the first release to include it. And that was the end of linux audio being close to working.
Since then, every ubuntu version suffers from some audio problem or another. In 8.04, flash didn’t work. In 8.10, sound clipped. In 9.04, skype broke. In 9.10 it’s just a mess. Audio in all the emulators don’t work properly: GensGS, PSCX-R, Mupen64, and even Dosbox . Audio in wine will desynchronize periodically, click, hiss etc. Sound clipping in banshee was solved by defaulting the volume to 80% instead of 100% like it should be. etc etc ad absurdum.
2- The radeon driver is broken
I had posted before that ATI dropped support for RV300 chips. I was happy that linux enabled me to use the latest software with my aging hardware. But that’s not really the case. The radeon driver suffers from an infinite number of regressions, bugs, performance issues that make Ubuntu 9.10 unusable with these cards. I’m not even talking about compositing performance, or the 3D acceleration that can’t really be called acceleration, it’s with video, 2D desktop performance and, of course, flash and scrolling performance.
I remember a somewhat old interview of Mark Shuttleworth that finished with mark saying to the interviewer “If you have an old laptop around the house, try the ubuntu live cd”. If this was ever true, it definitely is not true anymore.
3- The update-apt-xapian-index bug
Synaptic Package Manager has a quick search function that works very nicely. It has an optimized database of some sort, and it is populated by this process called update-apt-xapian-index which is scheduled to run weekly. Now, everytime this process decides to run, which obeying the fundamentals of moore’s laws is always on the worst possible time, the OS just freezes. If you have a recent computer, this is barely noticeable. If you have an older computer or say a netbook, this is unbelievably annoying. Some people don’t think it’s a bug, these people are wrong. It is a bug.
4- The system log bug
I only noticed this with my netbook, but I’m willing to infer that it happens on all computers that use the Intel Atom processor or one a line of motherboards that support it. On a completely random basis, the system will start logging hundreds of time per second the reported temperature of operation of the processor. In a couple of minutes your log files can shoot up to the GB numbers, which depending on your machine can be either an enormous disaster, or a gigantic disaster. Take your pick.
5- Probably the most unreliable release ever
There are so many little bugs and issues that this release of Ubuntu is just unreliable. It’s the gnome-do package that provides a broken gnome-do. It’s the doubt that any packaged program that uses audio will work at all. It’s the gnome keyring that requires authentication on every operation if you choose to enable automatic login. It’s the new boot process that hides some messages, but doesn’t hide others. It’s the two finger scrolling emulation that the driver supports, but the ubuntu menu to activate it doesn’t work. It’s firefox 3.5 that doesn’t scroll properly in google reader, and still has that bug that if some element has absolute positioning scrolling is horribly slow. I say no more.
In conclusion
More and more ubuntu has converged into this notion: everything kind of works, but at the same time, it doesn’t. A few years back, installing ubuntu was a pain in the ass but in the end you had a reliable system. Today, the installation procedure is easier, but the bar has been raised. Even if your hardware is 100% supported with the best drivers, the system will not be 100% reliable. Be it the bad packaging or the pulseaudio mess, ubuntu has reached a point where it can’t be trusted. So the obvious question is: why use it at all?
All eyes on lucid lynx.
P.S. I haven’t written anything on this blog for quite some time. I’ve just been busy, and honestly, my motto for creating this blog was “because it’s relevant”. With every ubuntu release, I feel like it’s becoming progressively less true. And I still use ubuntu on all my computers. Go figure.
Tags: 10, 9, 9.10, bug, bugs, fail, issue, issues, karmic, koala, problem, problems, review, ubuntu, unbiased
- 4 comments
- Posted under software
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Grizzly907
said
The problem with linux period is its user unfriendly system. Ubuntu was supposed to correct that, however its just a annoying as any other distro of linux. I am using because I am a masochist and I like working with computers.
Most enduser just want to push the button on their machine and have it work as well as being able to install programs and drivers without having to go through a 1001 hoops to get it down. A big part of the blame goes to pin head companies like Logitech because they don’t provide any linux drivers for their keyboards or webcams. The people who put Ubuntu together bear the other part, because they make things so damn hard to do as far as getting stuff up and running and on par with MS windows. I’ve met a lot of dev’s, and computer geeks that have the attitude “If you can’t make linux work you shouldn’t be using a computer.”
That mentality needs to stop and Linux needs to become user friend enough so people can just click a device driver file or piece of software and have it work. I know thats out there. Its just up to the people creating this stuff to implement it.
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anonymousbloke
said
Hi.
I agree with you, but at the same time I disagree.
You are right in saying hardware support is the number one problem in linux today. This is mostly because of hardware vendors not making drivers, like the Logitech example you gave. The only way to overcome this is if there is enough demand for linux drivers, meaning people using it.
Now, you cannot attack the developers by saying that they aren’t trying to implement a user friendly system. The twisted mentality of which you speak does exist among some people, but that is not the direction the development of the linux desktop is going. If your hardware is properly supported, you have no worries on the kernel side. It is actually the most user friendly model. I bought a creative webcam recently, and it because it’s standards compliant the only thing I had to do was plug it in. Everything was working, even the webcam mic.
This is the way it should be, virtually every piece of hardware in linux is intended to be “plug and play”.
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Ronald Khoo
said
well its the classic issue of if the chicken or the egg coming first. Firstly both comments have got their merits but in tend I tend to agree with Grizzly907 in that linux is just never friendly. it has to first become friendly before its use can spread. Windows underwent the same evolution before, whilst all the arrogant computer geeks entrenched in their own world, believing that they were demi gods, microsoft saw the possibility of turning a “not particularly” good product into something for the masses….the assumption here being that they assumed that the everyday joe to be completely incompetent (which most of us are more or less) and made the use of widows intuitive and easy to get things off the ground. I for one never attended formal training for Windows but can claim today that I know enough to work it…all this from being self thought, although I cannot claim the same for Ubuntu despite using it for over a year now…… Bearing in mind that there were only windows then and nothing else other than the OS for gods which us mere mortals will never have access to or understand…. The game is different today, whilst I commend Ubuntu / Linux and others for making an effort to offer an alternative OS vs that of windows but the fact remains that there is still an alternative in the incumbent Windows…and if it really becomes too difficult , one might just likely to throw everything out and start fresh with windows….
I like Grizzly am also a machoist, and do not like to admit defeat when using Ubuntu…but let me be the first to also admit that there were times (and still ) where I regretted ever going the path of Linux …I still feel that there is a air of arrogance in Linux community in that you expect only certain types of people to use it, and if I am right perhaps Ubuntu as it is is some kind of filter………Please make it more user friendly it has to start from there before you can expect the masses to embrace linux with both arms open…..
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anonymousbloke
said
Hi Ronald.
I understand where you’re coming from. If you have a particular piece of hardware that is poorly supported, then I can understand why you’d have an opinion like this. My opinion differs from yours though, but more than that I don’t really understand what you mean by user-friendly. Certainly it’s not the desktop experience that is lacking in “user-friendliness”. What is?
But I do have a corollary for my position that linux, not linux really but Ubuntu is user friendly. My mother uses it, after I properly installed and tested every single thing.