Meeting this week

[Gema Gomez]

Hi,

so many things going on in this email, I think I am going to answer one
by one.

First an executive summary: I disagree with Alex and Javier perception
of the importance of this issue at the moment (prioritization). Answers
to Javier and Alex below.

Gema

On 09/01/2012 19:51, Javier Domingo wrote:
> In my opinion, he is quite clear about the problem with ubuntu. For me for
> example, its horrible to work with Ubuntu's Unity (for example), there are
> lots of things that need to be much more tested, and with bugs they have
> fixed.
> 

I read the bug and it is a rant, no specifics about what is wrong nor
pointers on how to reproduce, no nothing. In my opinion, this is a blog
post, not a bug report. It is an opinion, not an objective problem with
the system.

> Its true that it is new, etc. But for example the gnome-core package comes
> with a vino (VNC server) that is just crashing for one of the 5 (!!)
> options it has due to a preference of the packager to not to use a miniupnp
> lib included. And it has been included in last releases (at least). I know
> Ubuntu is quite dependant on GNOME, but because GNOME changes
> so drastically, quality of Ubuntu for changing to a new desktop enviroment
> with not enought testing can't go so down.

Ok, so maybe we need to add some automated testing to validate that
gnome components are not broken on the latest versions. This has been
added to our strategy  and will be dealt with during next UDS.

> What ubuntu did with the upgrade to unity, was to completely break with the
> desktop in a very hard way. I think I have read enough about PERL 5 and 6
> and about Ubuntu and GNOME to compare this desktop environment upgrade.
> 

We are doing daily testing and the Unity teams are also putting in place
automated testing to correct this. Corrective measures are on their way
and this is not our responsibility but a collective effort.

> An example, would be as if now PERL guys decided to stop supporting Perl5
> and migrated everything with the actual state of things to Perl6. Though it
> can be worked over Perl6, it is not enough for an environment where the
> system can't have that many bugs.
> 
> I don't really know if there has been a bug report increase, but I am
> nearly sure that now bugs are more in general things than specific things
> that just few people can bring up with them. Things like the one I reported
> about vino server, included in the gnome-core (!!).
> 
> That was my opinion, and though I don't know how to express it as I would
> do in my native language, I think the idea is there.

Thanks for your email, I think you expressed the ideas well and clearly.
Take it from a fellow Spanish QA peer :)

> 
> By the way, I am thinking seriously if we should be releasing so many
> versions that fast, 6 months for a stable product if there are that big
> changes, it is very difficult to be,

This is out of question and out of our hands. We do not decide how often
Ubuntu gets released nor we are going to be making this kind of decision
in the future, the only thing we can try to influence is raising
awareness of the quality of Ubuntu. So helping assess the quality of the
product will help the release management team make informed decisions.

In my experience, it is possible to release a version of an OS every 6
months, we used to do that with Symbian. The only thing you need is a
very solid automated testing capability and good interoperability
testing coverage (which in our case is achieved by manual community
testing), so getting organized and working smoother together will help
Ubuntu a great deal.

> 
> Regards,
> 
> Javier Domingo
> 

(... I cut bits of the email that I don't think need answering ...)

Alex's email:
>>>
>>> Hi Gema, and welcome back!
>>>
>>>  I'm not sure that I'll make the meeting this week, so I only wanted to
>>> raise one issue: there's a bug on launchpad,
>>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/886931.

>>>  The person is complaining about the overall quality of Ubuntu (and
>>> probably his specific own problems), but nevertheless, there's one point
>>> that he raises that is quite important. I think that breaking commercial
>>> software from working is a big problem for Ubuntu, and we should do
>>> something about it.

I agree with you that commercial software breaking is an issue, but I
don't think that is only Ubuntu's fault. It is a shared responsibility,
the commercial software vendors need to make sure their software works
with Ubuntu too.

Also, the user seems to behave quite recklessly, if you depend on some
software for your work, you do not go and update to an intermediate
version of Ubuntu that is not even guaranteed to be stable, you rely on
LTSs and only upgrade to the next LTS. Also, you do not upgrade all your
machines at once, you probably upgrade a non-critical one, make sure all
the software you need to function works and then update the rest. So
most of the problems he is complaining about are due to his own
behavior. As I said before, this bug makes a good blog post, it makes a
useless bug.

>>>  I'd love to participate in a discussion on this topic, but generally
>>> the idea I had is somewhat reminiscent of Friendly - to have a list of
>>> various commercial software applications tested for each new release, to
>>> know where we could have a problem.

I don't think there is anything to discuss on this topic at the moment.
Compatibility testing is at the very bottom of the todo list, since we
don't have enough fundamental and basic functional testing in place.
Once we have them, the compatibility breaks will be less frequent due to
the stability increase, and we will be able to think about this problem.

Regards,
Gema


>>>  So, if you decide to talk about it while I'm absent, fine, I'll read
>>> logs later. If I'm present - then we could have a discussion, or just start
>>> to think about it.
>>>
>>>  Cheers.
>>>
>>>  --
>>> Alex Lourie
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Ubuntu-qa mailing list
>>> Ubuntu-qa at lists.ubuntu.com
>>> Modify settings or unsubscribe at:
>>> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-qa
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Alex Lourie
>>
>> --
>> Ubuntu-qa mailing list
>> Ubuntu-qa at lists.ubuntu.com
>> Modify settings or unsubscribe at:
>> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-qa
>>
>>
> 
> 
>