Linux Magazine Criticizes Karmic

[Florian Diesch]

"Samuel Thurston, III" <sam.thurston at gmail.com> writes:

> On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 11:01 PM, Florian Diesch <diesch at spamfence.net> wrote:
>> Michael Haney <thezorch at gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> 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.
>>
>> In <http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1316155> aysiu compares
>> forum polls about the last five releases and concludes:
>>
>> "So actually if you do take these polls at face value, they show Karmic
>> to be the best (at least out of the last five) Ubuntu release, not the
>> worst."
>>
>
> That's funny since his first two sentances are "Everyone knows polls
> have flaws. That doesn't mean they're totally useless, but they can't
> just be taken at face value."

To goal is to compare different versions of Ubuntu, not to get absolute
numbers. And I think it would be at least surprising if 9.10 was the
worst release so far but the polls show it as the one with the least
problems.


> He says you have to look at the polls in context.  Here's a context
> for you.  For new installations, on a self-selected survey (meaning
> people who obviously got involved on the forums rather than just
> giving up in frustration) 

In a support forum I'd expect to find more people with problems they can't
solve themselves than people who don't have any problem.


> there is only a 28% success rate, and that presumably includes some
> experienced users coming in from previous releases.  That's abysmal.

Well, if you want to take the raw numbers serious:

That's about 58% of the people who did a new install. Updating worked
for about 46% of those who tried it. 

About 66% of all did successfully get 9.10 (either by a new install or
by upgrading).


>  Less than a third of people trying Ubuntu
> for the first time are able to successfully install it?  

No. 100% are all the answers, not all the people who tried a new install.



   Florian
-- 
<http://www.florian-diesch.de/software/pdfrecycle/>