"What I like least in Ubuntu"

David Henningsson david.henningsson at canonical.com
Sun Jul 24 04:21:11 UTC 2011


On 2011-07-22 10:41, Daniel Holbach wrote:
> Hello everybody,
>
> for a while we've had a section in Ubuntu developer applications [1]
> which was named "what I like least in Ubuntu". This is very valuable
> feedback, since it comes from (relatively) new contributors who don't
> have gotten used to warts and shortcomings in the development world yet.
>
> David Henningson asked me what was being done to this feedback in
> general. Members of the DMB told me that they regularly ask questions
> about the raised items in the application meetings and try to encourage
> the applicant to start a conversation about the problems or get involved
> in fixing them.
>
> I thought it was a good idea to summarise the items the applicants
> mentioned in the last 6 months (source: [2]) and start a discussion
> around them here.
>
> Grouped by category, numbers in parentheses are the number of mentions.
>
>
> = Development Processes =
>   (4) review process:
>       - too slow (2)
>       - reviewers should go the extra mile (be more humane)
>       - there should be more peer review
>   (2) developer application docs:
>       - too complicated,
>       - unclear expectations
>   (1) SRU process
>   (1) missing mentoring programme
>   (1) top-down decisions
>   (1) bureaucracy
>
>
> = QA =
>   (3) release cycle:
>       - short release cycle brings in many regressions/bugs often, (2)
>       - changes in LTS cycle too agressive
>   (2) bug triage:
>       - too hasty
>       - so many bugs, can't give bugs the attention they deserve
>   (1) poorly tested software is in the archive
>
>
> = Development Workflow =
>   (3) peers not trying to get stuff into Debian
>   (1) shortcomings of UDD
>
>
> = Software =
>   (1) Qt translations not in LP(?)
>   (1) U-boot binaries for each supported OMAP3 board
>   (1) shortcomings of Java in Debian/Ubuntu
>   (1) can't use Magic Mouse fully
>   (1) the lack or backwardness of C# bindings
>   (1) PulseAudio problems (in the process of being fixed)
>   (1) package maintenance of claws
>
>
> = Other =
>   (1) Virtually no community involvement or development into Ubuntu
>       backend infrastructure(?)
>
>
> Feel free to discuss the details on this mailing list, but please
> consider renaming the subject of the mail.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Have a great day,
>   Daniel
>
> [1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DeveloperMembershipBoard/ApplicationProcess
> [2] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/devel-permissions
>

Excellent, this was just the kind of aggregation I was looking for! Thanks!

Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a separate cause that stands 
out from the crowd, and that we could focus on addressing. One could 
possibly note that the software itself is a clear minority compared to 
development and QA, i e it's more about "how we do it" than "what we do".

-- 
David Henningsson, Canonical Ltd.
http://launchpad.net/~diwic



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