making a workaround web page for bugs, in LTS release, not fixed

[John Moser]

On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 6:53 AM, Marco Pallotta <marco.pallotta at gmail.com> wrote:
> Often Ubuntu users (expecially new users or user that doesn't know
> much of Ubuntu bug fixing procedure) are disoriented by the fact that
> bugs, in LTS releases, aren't fixed (or they are marked as "fix
> released" if they aren't present anymore in next Ubuntu releases)  if

I'm still surprised that supposedly supported versions don't have bug fixes.

You get these kinds of reports:

 - 7.10 is a great release
 - 8.04 is the worst crap I've ever seen, everything is broken
 - 8.10 is an amazing release, with all the broken crap in 8.04 fixed

And you get a point in time where this becomes true:

 - 7.10 has mostly working software.
 - 8.04 has about half its software still broken
 - 8.10 has all those bugs from 8.04 AND 7.10 fixed, and all its software works
 - To get any of 2 or 3 dozen apps in 8.04 to work, you should upgrade to 8.10
 - To get any of 1 or 2 apps in 7.10 to work, upgrade to 8.10

Ubuntu has had at least one release that was hailed as the biggest
mistake in history, where the entire system seemed duct taped together
and very basic functionality was largely broken.  Python errors got
spit out by things like Serpentine.  Some apps crashed.  The MP3
encoder crashed immediately if you fed it output from oggdec (gtkpod
thus didn't function).  The kernel wasn't even stable on some systems,
due to a scheduler bug or something non-trivial along those lines.  I
think that was 8.10?

When I finally upgraded, everything was still broken in the old
version, and everything was working in the new version.  Last I
looked, everything was still broken in that version.

My question is:  do such versions of Ubuntu remain broken and
dysfunctional until they're no longer supported?  Is this proper?  Or
should fixes get backported to all supported releases AND LTS such
that the oldest version always has the fewest problems, but also fewer
features?