Linux Magazine Criticizes Karmic

[Samuel Thurston, III]

On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 4:13 PM, Michael Haney <thezorch at gmail.com> wrote:
> I read a Linux Magazine article @
> http://www.linux-mag.com/cache/7600/1.html called "Hey Ubuntu, Stop
> Making Linux Look Bad".  Has anyone else seen this article?  I've
> heard through other sources that Karmic has a lot of technical issues,
> most new Ubuntu releases do have a few, but nothing on this scale.
> Also, I've noticed the number of emails on the Ubuntu Support list
> have doubled recently.
>
> What do you think?  Lets share out thoughts on this.
>

While karmic hasn't been the spottiest upgrade I've done, it's also
not without its problems.  I have to admit that the bugs labeled "File
system corruption with so called “large files” over 512MB" and "System
won’t boot with converted ext4 file system" have prevented me from
doing the full switcheroo.  I also run custom kernels so a lot of the
kernel/driver related bugs don't show up for me.

This article has a few valid points, but it's also a long way from
anything I'd call journalism.  "A friend of mine has unspecified USB
devices which may no longer be working", "I had three different
installs go splat.  out of how many? Which versions did I use? well
I'm not going to say." "Other people experience things."  No time was
taken to actually document anything here and I find that disturbing.
That puts this article squarely into the "opinion" category.

That said, the known bug list is freaky bad. I agree that there's
something wrong with the ubuntu release cycle. Exactly what, I don't
know.  But for there to be show stoppers like the large files bug and
hotkey segfaults hanging out is decidedly not good.