[ubuntu-uk] Best way to contribute to Ubuntu? - was Re: 12.04 has locked me out of my account

[Tony Pursell]

On 4 May 2012 07:59, Alan Pope <alan.pope at canonical.com> wrote:

> <snip/>

Things break and when
> they do we should help people to fix them or file bugs so developers
> can fix the issue.
>
> If we don't then we're doing a disservice to the next person who has
> the issue.
>

I agree with this wholeheartedly and I have often posted bugs in the hope
that something will come out of it that will help make Ubuntu better.  I
particularly feel for people less tech savvy than me who I know would be
totally turned off by some of the problems I have had.  I particular, these
have been:

- Upgrade to 10.04 LTS was completely borked for no reason that I, or
anyone else, could find.  I had to re-install (with the /home retained)
- Computer constantly crashing from 11.04 onwards, which now seems to be
cured by 12.04
- UVC webcam constantly disconnecting, making Skype calls a pain.  Also
appears to be cured by 12.04 - possibly by the new kernel.

However, I'm not sure if the developer's particularly want bugs of this
sort reported.  The problem being that they are upstream issues and it
seems that Ubuntu developers cannot do much about them until the fix
trickles down, if it ever does.  The best they can do, it seems, is to keep
marking them as Incomplete with a request to try the latest Main Line
Kernel, something that I might be able to do, but I would need a bit of
hand-holding.

Another thing that makes me wonder about reporting bugs is some of the
remarks in this page

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Apport

about enabling automatic notifications from Apport seem to suggest that
they are not worth doing, especially once a then new release is done (see
para 2 under "How to enable Apport").

And finally, there seems to be an attempt to discourage bug reports, in the
first instance, with a set of options which suggest you really need support
(and none which say you really do know what you are doing and just want to
report a bug) and then a request that you include the advice you have been
given that a bug report is needed.  I'm wondering if it is these dialogues
that have resulted in the massive increase reported in requests to
Launchpad Answers.  That aside, these dialogues do give the impression, to
me at least, that my bug reports are not wanted unless I have been given
'permission' the submit them.  If the motive here is to make sure that
reports really are bugs and not mis-operating, before they are submitted, I
quite happy with that.  However, I would like this to be a bit more user
friendly with more explanation to the user as to what it is trying to
achieve.

Well that's my mini-rant for today.  May I say, Alan, that it's a good
thing that we have a Canonical employee on the list as you can give us a
better insight into what is going on.  So many thanks for that.


Tony
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