[ Ubuntu-BD ] Hardy bitterness

[Nasimul Haque]

KDE3 was a stable release. Any software should be released after it is
feature complete and stable. There will be bugs. The update or patches
will fix those. But half-done software must not be tagged as a
release. When KDE4 is arrived it should not have missing icons, it
should not have unstable plasma. Everything should be usable in a
release. Then if a bug has been found, patches can be released. The
point releases are also for added features not only bug-fixes.  Every
development has at least three branches, viz., trunk, experimental,
release. A trunk is a current development, experimental is where wild
imaginations take place and the stable release.

PulseAudio is THE future for Linux audio backend. But since it is not
properly integrated it must not be bundled in a 'production' release.
It is possible to continue the integration development without pushing
it in a 'production' release.

For a normal user, a solid GUI and Audio backend is must for a
'production' release. I don't care if Firefox/OpenOffice is beta or
not. But the Xorg and PulseAudio cannot be half-done for a
'production' release. Also almost everyday gnome gets fixes which
sometimes freezes X. Even Ctrl+Alt+Backspace does not work, which must
fire Bulletproof X, right? Bulletproof X has everything to do with
hardware detection. It checks for the faulty configuration which in
first place is auto-configured by X itself. If it does not let me
configure manually by myself, it must work like a breeze.

A distro is made for integration of the available software. We use
ubuntu because it works out of the box. Anyone willing to spend time
can build a complete Linux OS using all the technologies and software
out there. When someone clicks in a mailto link in Firefox, Evolution
opens. This kind of integration is done by the distro developers.
Before they include any software to the distribution, they should
check it thoroughly whether it works or not. If PolicyKit is not done,
then leave it, don't push it to the users.

Right now, there are 11 updates are waiting on my Hardy. I am at home
on my iMac G5. I am using VNC to access the Hardy at my office. It has
linux kernel update, which may require a restart (this is another
problem, it does not tell you whether the update requires a restart).
If I restart the machine now I cannot access it from home via VNC. Now
tell me, shouldn't I be pissed of?

Nasim
-- 
M. Nasimul Haque, M.Sc.(SUST)
Wessex Institute of Technology
Southampton, UK