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

[Basil Chupin]

On 15/04/2011 19:24, Ric Moore wrote:
> On Fri, 2011-04-15 at 11:10 +0200, Gilles Gravier wrote:
>> 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... :)
> Basil has been around enough to know about Beta's. Now that he's got
> some good information, he can make better choices. It just didn't act as
> he thought it would/should. Stuff is changing! Heck, I still miss line
> numbered BASIC. But, if the installer can check for the fastest mirror,
> which there is an option for with RPM, if I recall correctly, it would
> be better. I've seen some less than modem speeds recently during
> updates. Me, I decided after doing the Fedora thing for some time, that
> I don't make a good beta tester. I'm getting too long in the tooth. But,
> Basil's thing wasn't that it was a Beta, but that he couldn't get
> installed. At that point, it appears more an Alpha than a Beta. :) Ric


I came to the following conclusion last night - and your comments 
contain some of those conclusions in one way or another.

The only people who do any 'testing' of these Linux distros, or even try 
and use them, are old farts who have nothing better to do other than 
waste whatever remaining time they have on this earth in trying to 
appear useful for some cause - in this case pretending they have a great 
big interest in trying to convert the world to use a Linux distro of 
their "choice" when they perfectly well know, but still delude 
themselves that this is not the case, that 99.9% of the world is not 
going to stop using Windows or Apple MAC but change over to some Linux 
distro.

The only interest the old farts seem to have in this whole affair is 
having some sort of social life by belonging to the mail lists and where 
they can parry and trust with words and put down people at the first 
opportunity.

They even go around organising "Release Parties" - such as is currently 
being done here in Australia - to "celebrate" the release of Natty in a 
couple of weeks!

The only comments the old farts can contribute to some adverse remark 
about something such as what is being talked about here is, "But its 
ONLY a Beta, HA, HA, HA, and EVERYBODY knows you pay no attention to 
what a Beta doesn't do! and so don't complain but help to propagate this 
delusion that your "testing" is important and submit a BUG report 
(woohoo! a BUG report - that magical expression, "BUG report", which 
suddenly is intended to confer on you membership of the inner circle of 
a special corp of Boy Scouts whose members are most likely to have an 
average age of 75 years!).

How many young people have been converted to using Linux - but let's 
say, Ubuntu?

Bugger all I would say.

The only people talking about Linux are old farts - not young people. 
The young ones go for the latest version of Firefox and Chrome - but 
even these are not available to them in a released version of a distro 
because such things are not backported.

And when some young person comes along and starts to ask questions, what 
do the old farts say to him/her? "Don't expect us to do your 
homework/assignment for you! Go and google for the information you free 
loader!".

About 4 years ago in another distro I suggested to the 'boss' of the 
project to give a copy of the distro to all the kids in his street and 
ask them to tear the system apart and find all the faults in it so that 
the faults can be rectified before it is finally released. Yeah, 
right..... The only people still doing any testing are old 
farts......and young kids don't get to know Linux.

And speaking of which..... and I will not make any further 
comment/observation on this matter.... some parts of Natty crashed on me 
today. When the crashes occurred I was asked if I want to submit a 
report to help the developers solve the crashes - I answered YES and 
reports were generated; but then I was asked to provide my name, e-mail 
address, a password for some account, the size of my shoes, religious 
inclinations, my inside leg measurement - which I refused to do and so 
the developers got zilch to help them solve the crashes. If the system 
generates the damn crash report why the heck should I provide all such 
unnecessary details? Is someone afraid that I could waste my time coming 
up with a bogus report just to get my jollies off?

Anyway, complaining or pointing out some problems is not what using an 
operating system is about. I want to use it to do things and not spend 
time reporting on hassles. So, from now on just reading what is written 
by people and keeping up with the people I got to know here.

When you think about it, many, many people have spent time and effort in 
coding, looking for hassles, reporting the hassles only to find now that 
whatever they have been doing for a long time has been for nought and 
now they - if they consider that there is no other life for them outside 
of reporting 'bugs' - have to start all over again because Unity is 
here! "Sorry, but stuff this for a joke", is what I expect some people 
to conclude.

BC

-- 
Great Man reaches complete understanding of the main issues; Petty Man reaches complete understanding of the minute details."

                                              Confucius