Ubuntu 8.04 and Firefox 3 Beta 5

[Christoph Bier]

Avi Greenbury schrieb am 25.04.2008 19:20:

> On Fri, 25 Apr 2008 18:13:42 +0200 Christoph Bier
> <christoph.bier at web.de> wrote:

[...]

>> At the moment I don't want to believe that it's really
>> impossible to have recent and stable software (I used Debian
>> for about six years---with many backports ...). Maybe you have
>> more experiences in different OS than me.
>> 
> 
> It is, and I'd call FF3b stable in every sense of the word except
> as a release identifier. It is stable in terms of functionality
> and look and feel - it's not going to look or work any different
> by the time it hits release. It is stable in terms of usability -
> it is far less prone to crashes than much else that is available
> (including its predecessor)
> 
> I really don't see how Ubuntu could have done it any other way.
> To include FF2.x now and at some point spring FF3.x on
> unsuspecting users goes completely against any notion of common
> sense, and to include FF2.x now and not upgrade until long after
> the end of support for FF2.x is also a pretty stupid idea.
> 
> It's not a _good_ decision, but it's the best they could manage,
> so far as I can see. It's just an unfortunate mis-scheduling of
> software releases...

Again, nobody needs to stand up for Ubuntu. I know, at least I am of
the opinion that one should not make demands to FOSS. It's the work
of volunteers that I really appreciate.

>>> There is _never_ 'no chance for any trouble' in a software 
>>> upgrade.
>> 
>> Maybe. But then there should be a notice before upgrading what
>> kind of data loss can happen. If it was there I've overlooked
>> it.
>> 
> 
> I think it's taken as a given that people know this. Personally,
> I'd be hacked off if every time I tried to upgrade anything my
> computer warned me that things might break. I _know_ this, and
> imagine (possibly incorrectly) that most other people do. It also

Oh, yes, incorrectly. Sorry, but this is the Linux attidue[tm]
that's far from reality and for many years I was of your opinion.
But reality is quite different. Independent from profession (except
IT specialists) and education most of the people I know never take
any backup. Even when they upgrade their $WHATEVER_OS machine they
accept to loose most of their data. Some things get burned to a CD.
People laugh at me when they hear that I take daily backups.

That's what I meant in my other message: In the Linux/FOSS world
there's more computational knowledge than e. g. in the MacOS X
world. And this more of knowledge is in return presumed. None of my
Mac using friends has any book about MacOS but they don't have to
fight with their WLAN, bluetooth, resume, suspend etc. ... Most of
them don't even know that their data is encrypted by default
(something that's not that easy with Linux). This is no negative
criticism on Linux it's a general statement. But my needs changed
over the years. I don't need anymore a fully configurable FOSS
system even if I liked to have one! First of all I need a system
that works out of the box with all of my peripheral equipment and
most of the utilities I know from the FOSS world (bash and many CLI
tools, Emacs, TeX, GNU R, gnuplot ...) and a professional PDF
workflow (Acrobat Pro).

[...]

>> But again: It was just the last straw. Only this FF problem
>> wouldn't be enough for me to think about a different OS. But
>> all of this hardware and driver issues drive me crazy. For
>> weeks I want to buy a webcam but I don't have the time to
>> search for a good cam that's supported by Linux. The same for a
>> scanner.
> 
> Please, it's not that Linux doesn't support it. It's that it
> doesn't support Linux. The model applied for all other OSs is
> that it is the responsibility of the hardware manufacturer to
> supply the drivers, not of the OS vendor to figure out how the
> hardware works. Why should this be different for Linux?

Did I say this should be different for Linux? I know the problems
very well. Years ago I wrote so many letters and e-mails to
manufacturers that they should improve their Linux support! But from
a user's point of view it just makes no difference who's to blame
for the bad hardware support under Linux/FOSS. Especially new
hardware doesn't work well under Linux and other free OS, my five
year old laptop never suspended successfully with Ubuntu. I'm
willing to pay for a system that works out of the box with nearly
every hardware. If it was a Linux/FOSS system I'd be *very* happy!

> <snip>
> 
>> On my wife's new ThinkPad with a Core 2 Duo Ubuntu runs soo
>> slow that I can't believe it (not to mention the special keys
>> ...).
> 
> Really? I've never had an issue with any of my ThinkPads. This
> R61 did everything correctly out of the box, which is more than I
> can say for the Windows install it came with... Which ones are
> they? I am sure you've come across it already, but thinkwiki[1]
> is a great resource for info about Linux on Thinkpads.
> 
> [1]http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkWiki

Yes, I know this page. Thanks! And as I already wrote I don't have
the time to always investigate things on my own anymore. My rare
spare time is to precious for getting my computers to work even if I
like to fine tune my system. On my five year old laptop and my
wife's ThinkPad WLAN doesn't work yet and I already spent days with
the help of the Debian and Ubuntu community (not to mention my
Nvidia graphics card). Getting basic things to work doesn't mean
fine tuning.

Best
Christoph
-- 
+++ Typografie-Regeln: http://zvisionwelt.de/downloads.html (1.6)