Oh, please, please, COME ON Ubuntu development people!

Fri Apr 15 09:10:49 UTC 2011

What I want to add to the debate is that this is a "BETA" version. We
are talking about a product not yet finished. Not yet ready for
mission-critical use.

I understand Basil being upset. But in a way, he "asked for it". When
one downloads a beta, one does so expecting to get into trouble, and to
report these bugs. And complaining strongly that a beta is buggy is,
well, to say the least, not what is expected of a user of a beta.

That kind of complaining *MIGHT* be justified *ONLY* once the product is
final... :)

Gilles.

On 15/04/2011 10:58, Alan Pope wrote:
> Hi Basil,
>
> Hope this mail reaches you in the way it was intended, informative and helpful.
>
> On 15 April 2011 09:07, Basil Chupin <blchupin at iinet.net.au> wrote:
>> I installed Ubuntu Beta #1 a day ago or so.
>>
>> This morning Ms Kate Stewart informed me that Beta #2 was released. Fine -
>> been waiting for it; so I go and download the CD.
> Ok, first question. Why do this?
>
> If you install Ubuntu Beta 1, and keep up to date with update manager
> (or sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade, whatever you're
> more familiar with) you _will_ be on Beta 2. There is no need to
> reinstall to go from Beta 1 to Beta 2, or from Beta 2 to final
> release.
>
> The only exception to that is if you're doing this as an exercise to
> test the Beta 2 installer / upgrade process with a view to giving the
> team some feedback (in the form of bug reports or testing reports).
>
>> Then I started the installation of Beta #2 and was asked if this was a new
>> installation or simply an upgrade to the earlier version (Beta #1).
>>
>> I chose the latter: the upgrade to an existing installation of Natty.
>>
>> And then the wheels fell off...... :'( .
>>
> Ok, worth pointing out a few things. This is a new feature in the
> Natty version of Ubiquity (the installer). I haven't tested this in
> Natty but the way I understand it works is as follows:-
>
> {Here begins my understanding of the new natty installer that I
> learned whilst drinking cocktails in a noodle bar with the lovely guy
> who maintains Ubiquity. So my understanding may be slightly broken}
> You have a version of ubuntu that you want to upgrade, and you have a
> CD containing Natty. You don't want to run the "upgrade" process using
> update manager for whatever reason (e.g. you already have a CD, why
> download all over again, or maybe you are running a very old version
> of Ubuntu (such as 9.04) which has no direct upgrade path to Natty).
>
> As I understand it the installer will look for any 'non-standard'
> packages (ones that don't ship on the CD) and makes a list of those.
> It also figures out what 3rd party apps (like skype for example) that
> you had installed on the 'old release' and repackage those up (as
> installable debs) and put them to one side. The installer then wipes
> out your entire install except the /home directory, so that means it
> deletes the contents of /bin /etc /usr and so on, but again,
> crucially, not /home.
>
> It then does an install (which is essentially copying the contents of
> the live environment from the CD to the hard disk) giving you a new
> set of packages (in /bin /usr etc). At this point you have a clean
> Natty install with your existing /home directory. Next it installs the
> packages that were listed as non-standard in the paragraph above, and
> download/installs those. It also takes the packages that were
> repackaged (e.g. Skype) and installs those over the top. The goal of
> this is to get you upgraded from "old ubuntu" to "latest ubuntu"
> without losing your home directory data, and trying to reinstall any
> old non-standard apps that may have been installed previously.
>
> This is _great_ if you are running anything older than 10.10. 10.10
> has a direct upgrade path to 11.04 via update manager. All releases
> older than 10.10 do not. Therefore if you have been running Ubuntu
> older than 10.10 this is a great way to get to the latest release in
> one go, without losing your home directory, and without losing all the
> apps you had installed.
> {end of my understanding}
>
> So in a nutshell "Upgrade" in update manager means "upgrade each
> individual package", "upgrade" in ubiquity means "make a list of
> everything, wipe everything except home, blat a new image on the disk
> and re-add missing packages".
>
>> Well, 5 hours of sitting here and looking at the screen with Ubuntu's Natty
>> Beta #2 showing me that it is, firstly, "Installing" files - fine, no
>> problem with this, but.. - and then "Restoring previously installed
>> packages" (if they are already installed why the f**** then DOWNLOAD the
>> damn things!?)
> See above explanation - this would be it re-adding all the apps you
> had on beta 1.
>
>> at a download rate which makes a drunk snail high on
>> snail-killer bait look positively faster then a speeding bullet! I just had
>> to hit the computer's SHUTDOWN button.
>>
> Had to? Do you have another computer? Might be worth in the future, if
> you get into this kind of "omg, I'm gonna kill it" position, to jump
> on #ubuntu IRC channel and ask for some pointers there, rather than
> resort to the power button.
>
>> A few days ago I downloaded and installed another distro (openSUSE if you
>> are interested). The whole operation took a frection of the time I just
>> spent with Beta #2. Why? Because that distro is using a "something-Brain"
>> which selects the most efficient local to you mirror to grab all the
>> necessary files.
>>
> Sounds like we have a bug in Ubiquity which doesn't select the nearest
> mirror. Perhaps look for a bug or file it here:-
>
> http://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bugs
>
>> While this may be "rant" to many people, this really is NOT a laughing
>> matter.
>>
> Indeed it isn't a laughing matter. It's an issue that may bite lots of
> other people too. The community spirited thing to do would be to let
> the developers know about this issue, and the best way to do that is
> file a bug, see link above. I'll also point the Ubiquity developer at
> this thread to see if there's anything he can learn from it.
>
> Cheers,
> Al.
>