check list of annoyances

Wed Apr 5 11:21:36 UTC 2006

Nice list of non-features, I've been using kubuntu for about 3 months now and 
didn't realize how many of my problems were bugs other people have. 
Particularly annoying to me is Konserve crashing, firefox, konqueror probs 
with printing, adept crashing and most annoying is the supreme difficulting 
in laying video, sometime kaffeine works, sometimes another, but I have to 
say xine gui is by far the most reliable. However with xine gui having played 
a couple of videos the colours go wonky and I get all kinds of weird 
artifacts, this doesn't ocur in mplyare, but then mplayer is unusable since 
every 1 second the video/sound glitches. I have to logout and login again. 
Like you said somehow some faults that should be eliminated by logging in 
again aren't. Oh how much I wish this to be fixed.

On Wednesday 05 April 2006 10:24, Albert wrote:
> This mail is intended for k/ubuntu GNU/Linux developers.
>
> I have been using kubuntu 5.4 and then 5.10 in a production environment
> since July 2005. Congratulations, the system holds very well compared to
> every other GNU/Linux distribution I've tried. Although most of what I'm
> listing below belongs to bug reports already, I would like to bag it all in
> a check list form in which, I hope, every element can be slashed in Dapper,
> if anyone has information on any of the issues listed.
>
> System: PowerBook version 3.5, 1GHz processor, 512 MB SDRAM.
> I have the system up to date with apt-get dist-upgrade.
>
>
> 1) - konqueror crashes when closing the last tab.
>
> 2) - konqueror erases my writing in the URL field when opening a new tab,
> so I end up with half-written URLs or a locate: that tries to find whatever
> was typed after the erasing. Very annoying. (bug #35495)
>
> 2) - Adept crashes when listing again, after finishing an apt-get install
> or an apt-get update. This behavior started after a kernel update.
>
> 3) - After locking the system with control+alt+l, I get 2 login windows:
> one disappears quickly and catches me at half typing the password, the
> other one that follows doesn't have any of the chars I typed in it. Very
> annoying. (Bug #36938)
>
> 4) - One cannot run OpenGL applications over an ssh -X session, if the
> server machine is not a powerpc as well. This issue may have to do with
> Xorg itself. The issue is, to me, a serious limitation, because Blender
> renderings are computationally very expensive and are most conveniently
> done in a remote powerful headless machine. Also a point in favor of other
> distributions that use XFree such as yellowdoglinux which do not have this
> limitation. Happens on Dapper as well, at least in the flight-5 (bug
> #27459)
>
> 5) Xorg grows in memory usage (at least as reported in a top command), and
> so do many other KDE-related applications (gam_server, kded, kwin, kicker,
> ...), with the end result that one needs to reboot the machine once a week.
> I am used to never reboot my machine.
>
> 6) Some web pages in konqueror print an infinite number of pages when
> printing to a PDF file. One such pages was wikipedia's
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bezier_curve as of 2006-01-08 at 11:36 Los
> Angeles time. (bug #28218)
>
> 7) The updatedb runs without checking whether the laptop is on battery.
> Considering it consumes a good deal of the battery, updatedb should never
> run while on battery. (bug #28918)
>
> 8) Konserve crashes when the target backup directory is a USB pen accessed
> through the media protocol. Very bad news that a backup tool is not
> reliable. (bug #35252)
>
> 9) The screen resolutions listed in the System Settings are not in
> agreement with the ones listed in the xorg.conf, and when adjusted, the
> resolution cannot be setup to the proper one specified in the xorg.conf
> unless one manually erases proper configuration files in the ~/.kde/
> folder. (bug #34383)
>
> 10) There is no easy way to plug in an external monitor. I had to battle
> with xorg.conf to figure it out myself, with the help of the webpage
> http://vuxml.FreeBSD.org/83421018-b3ef-11da-a32d-000c6ec775d9.html . Still
> the system is less than ideal, since one has to have booted with the
> external monitor plugged in. Then the desktop does not resize back, unless
> one opens a new session. Logout/login doesn't work, because the session
> settings are somehow preserved in the login splash screen.
>
> 11) There is no clear, integrated way of visualizing videos. Some videos
> work with VLC, some with kaffeine, some with mplayer. It's a time consuming
> and annoying experience to figure out which application will not crash or
> hang with a given video.
>
> 12) The image preview in Konqueror, through gwenview, shows yellow-tinted
> images when zoomed out, and blue-tinted images when zoomed in. Very
> annoying and deterring for newcomers.
>
> 13) Firefox is at version 1.0.7, which barely holds together. I'd rather
> use konqueror, but Firefox has very interesting plugins (mostly for version
> 1.5) which I believe are of general interest to Ubuntu users.
>
>
> Then my personal wishlist, in fact limitations that keep me binded, today,
> to non-free operating systems:
>
>
> 1) - GCC java (gcj) 4.0.2 and 4.1 don't run properly non-leading edge,
> AWT-targeted java applications such as the Image analysis program ImageJ,
> even after removing code related to the tools.jar and JPEG. The application
> seg faults at the simplest command.
>
> 2) - There is no graphics application that can use CMYK as easy and
> integrated as Adobe Photoshop does. Considering in developmental biology
> research every piece of data is an image that has to be printed in a
> journal, CMYK is a requirement. Good enough mac-on-linux works very well,
> and provides a temporary fix.
>
> 3) - There is no easy way to manage wireless connections. The System
> Settings don't do what one understands from the Network panel. Plus one can
> only access 'keymode open' networks, no WPA.
>
>
> Finally, just a remark: Ubuntu is a GNU/Linux system, not a Linux system.
> What makes Ubuntu a fantastic operating system has way more to do with GNU
> than with Linux. Why this subtlety is important has been stated over and
> over by Richard Stallman from the FSF, and has to do with the long-term
> implications of the freedom and power the user has over the system.
>
> I can only wish Dapper will address the highest possible number of the
> issues above. From here I would like to thank the developers, bug
> reporters, testers and the Ubuntu people in general for all the time they
> have dedicated to the system.
>
> Albert
>
>
> --
> Albert Cardona
> Molecular Cell Developmental Biology
> University of California Los Angeles
> Tel +1 310 2067376
> Programming: http://www.pensament.net/java/
> Research: http://www.mcdb.ucla.edu/Research/Hartenstein/
> Web design: http://www.pixelets.com