Unusability of bluetooth is one of the worst plagues in Ubuntu

[Gabor Toth]

Hi Matteo,

You see several points correctly as far as I can see.  There is a point
though that I think your point is missing reality. As you know Ubuntu is
for a big part a community project or at least community of volunteers
pitch in with quite some work including the bug squad that works on getting
more data on certain bugs and also on testing.  Of course you are totally
correct when you say that an average user won't have the knowledge, time or
resources to gather all the data on a certain bug thus bugs can and do go
expired - probably often.  I must say that without knowing the details one
could safely assume that MS could put more full time programmers onto a
certain bug or problem and thus it can be better addressed at times.
Despite that they do a really bad job of it too many times for me or anyone
knowing some about computers to call Wi***ws a stable and very useful
operating system.  I work with installing computer systems and it is a bit
user dependent if I put windows or Ubuntu on their hardware. Most of the
time I convince them to do use Ubuntu even though most of them have never
heard of it.
I can make you a list of issues I run into making Ubuntu stable enough to
give it out to a total newbie, however I can make you a list why I still
advise it over windows.  And believe it or not surprisingly few people come
back to me for fixing problems and practicality none wants windows back
instead.
That certainly tell the story on why I use and work with Ubuntu for over
almost a decade.  I'm not a programmer but I trust more Ubuntu than windows
based on experience.
Is Ubuntu perfect?  No!  Is it the way I want exactly?  Hell now!  There is
a lot of room for improvement and of course the things you have pointed out
are definitely part of it.  Sometimes I also get frustrated over stupid
issues.
The way I think about it is that I'd like to be able to direct resources
toward making it better.  Sometimes I help on testing, bug reporting and
the like and would like to step it up.

If you want to join in and help make Ubuntu better we might get faster to
where you and me and many others to be.

Best Regards,

Gabor Toth

Sent from Nexus 7
On Dec 27, 2013 12:32 PM, "Matteo Sisti Sette" <matteosistisette at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On 26/12/13 19:14, Gabor Toth wrote:
> > I would question though if bluetooth would be the most major issue.
>
> Obviously not the most major issue in Ubuntu. There are bigger issues,
> like those that completely freeze the whole system obliging you to do a
> hard reboot and loose all unsaved data, or sudden xorg crashes/logouts
> (which also wipe out all your unsaved data) or not being able to hibernate
> (and if you do, take the risk you may not be able to resume).
>
> But bluetooth and wifi connectivity (oh!! and mobile broadband! what a
> nightmare too) are the kind of things that one expects to be completely
> painless, as you won't easily find a smartphone that has the smallest
> wifi/bluetooth issue, so in comparison it's a little embarassing and
> irritating to find yourself unable to use bluetooth on a laptop.
>
> > I personally did not have much problem with that for what
> > I was using it
> > for - sending music over to a bluetooth device.  Worked with a
> > few click
> > no manual setting or scripting at all.
>
> I personally use it mainly for transferring files (primarily pictures)
> from my android smartphone to the computer (which is only a small fraction
> of its uses, I realise), and it also used to work without and manual
> setting or scripting at all... not even a click! (except clicking on "OK"
> when you had received a file), on previous versions of Ubuntu. It
> occasionally would start to systematically reject all transfers, which used
> to be fixed by turning bluetooth off and on. Now on 13.04 and on my new
> computer, sending a file from the phone is completely impossible, so I've
> started browsing files on the phone from the computer, which works like 15%
> of the times.
>
> > I do think that a team to look into bluetooth would be helpful.
> > However,
>
>> as there are few people who can work on sections such as the drivers
>> for, e.g. nvidia, In the mean time, go complain to companies who do not
>> have linux drivers for their hardware :)
>>
>
> Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm under the impression everybody here is
> assuming all or most bluetooth issues are related to drivers. The fact is
> most of the bug reports have not even been looked at, and I suspect a few
> of them are not even related to drivers, being either in the tray-icon
> applet or in Nautilus. In many cases the hcidump is completely empty while
> experiencing the issue.
>
>
>
> By the way, I got the impression there is a kind of more general issue in
> the way bugs are managed, please take it into consideration, I may be
> completely mistaken of course. It looks to me like there's a gap that needs
> to be filled between users reporting bugs and developers working on fixing
> triaged and confirmed bugs.
>
> That is, the typical lifecycle of a lot of bug reports (of course I see
> this mainly on bugs I report myself, so I don't claim this is statistically
> significant) is:
> - a user files a bug report
> - then either:
> -- A: nobody (capable of fixing, investigating, triaging or digging into
> it) even looks at it until it's confirmed, which may be in ages or just
> never
> or
> -- B: - somebody (or a bot) asks for more infomration, like "please test
> upstream kernels", or whatever.
>       - The OP simply can't, or doesn't want to, or hasn't the skills or
> the time to, or just WON'T, do that. Most of the time the required work of
> collecting additional information must be done by somebody with more
> experience and knowledge than you can expect by the original reporter.
>       - so the bug expires.
>
>
> Most of the bugs I report end like that, and many that I didn't report
> myself but I found out describing the issues I was experimenting, had the
> exact same fate.
>
> If the strategy used to tackle bugs is:
> - developers only look at/for confirmed, perfectly triaged bug reports
> with already enough information to start fixing them
> - expect users who encounter the issues to file complete, perfect, already
> workable bug reports
> - then have some people dedicated to testing who, of course, will file
> complete, perfect, already workable bug reports (and expect this to be
> enough to find and report most relevant issues)
>
> then sorry but that's a wrong strategy and is not going to work. Those
> trained people dedicated to testing will only find a ridiculously small
> percentage of bugs affecting end users (I'm not saying there's anything
> wrong in that, that's certainly a necessary and invaluable work).
> But bug reports filed by end users, finding bugs that have eluded
> "dedicated" testing, will either starve or expire.
>
> Either developers who work at fixing bugs or testers who usually do
> thorough testing, should also look at unconfirmed, need-info, etc. bug
> reports where the OP hasn't provided (and will never provide) all the
> needed information, because often the bug report, whether or not the issue
> is easily reproducible, does contain enough information for somebody to
> investigate and test it further and take it to the next step.
>
>
> As a user, like me, who uses some amazing software that has been created
> by the huge effort of thousands of generous people, when I find an issue
> and take the time to report it, of course I don't feel like I'm doing much
> to help. I do see I'm doing very, very little. But it's just as much as I
> can do and it is frustrating to see that even that "very little" gets
> wasted and turns into nothing when it could actually be used.
>
>
>
>
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