Bugs in Dapper, should stick with Breezy ?

[Matthew Kuiken]

Thiers Botelho wrote:
> On 5/31/06, Matthew Kuiken <matt.kuiken at verizon.net> wrote:
>> Thiers Botelho wrote:
>> > <snip>
>>
>> > Is my reasoning reasonable ? I'd appreciate any comments on my plans,
>> > thnx everybody.
>> >
>>
>> Just want to throw in my $0.02.
>
> I found your comments much more valuable than that !

I'm glad you found my comments useful.
>
>>
>> I have a laptop that now hibernates reliably, auto-sets my display
>> resolution properly, and runs my wireless cards flawlessly without
>> having to figure out the guts of my OS.
>
> Very nice to know. BTW, which laptop is yours ? Could there be any
> change on mileage when comparing to a Dell laptop ?

Sony Vaio TX650P.  You can find it in the LaptopTestingTeam wiki page.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LaptopTestingTeam/SonyVaioVGN-TX650P

I've been a bit remiss in updating the page since flight 4.  I really 
should update with the current state of everything, including the work I 
did to figure out multi-monitor support.  I have not really looked at 
Dell laptops for comparison.  I got this one mainly for the fact that it 
had all the features I wanted in a 3 pound package.  It's actually small 
enough for me to take places!

>
>> I know how to fix all of these
>> things, but the main reason I know is because I tried Breezy first.
>
> Now let's see: you fixed this stuff on Breezy. But did you:
>   - have to re-fix any of them on Dapper ?
>   - or did you found that your fixes remained untouched after upgrading ?
>   - or did you do a clean install of Dapper with or without re-fixing ?

I never tried the upgrade path.  I always re-installed from scratch.  
That is part of the reason I haven't been so quick to try anything out 
since flight 4.  It takes a bit of time to try everything out again, and 
ensure that it is working.
>
>> I installed Dapper for the first time at flight 3, and haven't looked
>> back.  Personally, despite the bugs, and Dapper being a development
>> branch, it still had less problems than running Breezy.
>
> You didn't say if your Breezy install (plus bugs plus fixes) happened
> with a freshly released Breezy. I mean, considering the updates
> available for Breezy right now, could you say if the same bugs you
> found still remain there ?

I installed Breezy, and downloaded all the updates.  It didn't detect my 
monitor correctly, nor did the wireless run reliably.  It took days of 
research to get the networking up properly.  The sound somewhat worked, 
but there were a lot of dropouts.  I screwed up one install while trying 
to fix the sound.  Had to re-install Breezy to get the sound back that 
time.  That was when I learned you need to be really careful about where 
you take advice from.  There is a lot of stuff out there about certain 
hardware, but advice about how to 'emerge' something is not going to 
help on Ubuntu!  The last time I installed Breezy was in January.

>
>> Just because Dapper currently has more open bugs does not mean that the
>> open bugs will necessarily effect you.  Also, given the numbers that you
>> quoted above, you must be talking about the bugs on the distro itself.
>> Each package has a list of bugs, and the list is much more impressive if
>> you look at each thing you use individually.
>
> Well, I didn't check that. And it sounds like a loooong research work 
> . . .
It is.
>
>> Also, there are several things in Breezy that are not considered bugs
>> that will keep you from using your laptop.  In particular, wireless
>> networking, while it can be made to work in Breezy, has received much
>> needed feature additions that make it useful in Dapper.
>
> Should I understand - "wireless is still troublesome in Breezy" ?

Yes, there are several wireless features that I consider to be necessary:
    WPA
    roaming
    IPW2200 support
    signal strength indicators

which are all difficult to set up under Breezy that worked out of the 
box for me on Dapper.  Network-Manager is a great thing.  It can be made 
to work in Breezy, but it is easy in Dapper.
>
>> My advice:  Install Dapper first.  If it works, great.
>
> I'm almost convinced. Might try it. And . . .

It's all about what you are comfortable with.

>
>> If it doesn't,
>> go back and install Breezy until the bugs with your uses get worked
>> out.
>
> Or maybe add to Dapper a dual-boot with Breezy, keeping a common /home
> partition, while gradually ironing out Dapper's bugs and Breezy
> non-features. Makes sense to you ?

If you are familiar with dual boots, and don't mind the disk space hit, 
this sounds like a fine idea.  I guess you can always re-claim the other 
partition later.  Just one word of warning, though.  There are some user 
configuration files in you home directory.  There may be conflicts 
between how Dapper and Breezy want them set up. 

I do not know of any real issues, but I will probably re-install Dapper 
from scratch one more time in order to make sure there is nothing odd 
about my configuration which has been fixed by new defaults in a later 
package.  I am not running a server, and so I see no reason to worry 
about keeping my system up for months on end.  As a programmer myself, I 
understand that even the simplest changes can result in strange 
interactions with older configurations.  In a system as complicated as 
this, it's almost impossible to avoid.  It is easier to debug when there 
is a known starting point.

>
>> On average, I think Dapper bugs are less fatal to laptops than the
>> features that never made it into Breezy.
>>
>> Good luck,
>> -Matt
>
> Thnks a lot !
>
> Thiers
>

You are welcome, and again, good luck,
-Matt