[Bug 291797] Re: VLC crashes when trying to open JPEGs

[Marco Gonçalves]

Still, VLC still segfaults. Should a program be expected to behave like
this when opening media it doesn't support? Or even, although I don't
think it is the case, invalid or corrupted files?

While it may be of low importance, it still shows VLC has a problem that
could be affecting its stability on other tasks.

Meaning no disrespect towards you, Magnus, you say this bug "should
probably be closed" based on various assertions you are not even sure
are valid. You "think" that there's something strange with my files, you
"think" that VLC closing after flashing the image for a very short
moment is the intended behaviour. Yet, if it is, how come it even tries
to show the files at all?

In my honest opinion, this attitude shows what is wrong with Ubuntu and
the linux community in what they declare is user friendly or stable.
This program is segfaulting because it _may_ not be able to fail
elegantly when handling _possibly_ invalid media. Isn't this worth a
look, or, at the very least, filing it so as to help anyone that could
be looking at a different problem with VLC that could be related?

But no, it seems that Ubuntu's programmers should look at more important
problems and just throw this one on the bin. And this, of course, leads
to the state of the linux desktop today: It solves the most basic
problems users face while failing to be polished and well documented.

Linux's wireless command-line configuration tools are also another exhausted example of this problem. There are several command line tools to find and configure a wireless connection, like iwlist, iwconfig, ifconfig and wpasupplicant, and it seems almost no driver comes with official documentation describing shortfalls and possible bugs. My wireless network card, an Intel 3945abg, behaves differently depending on the driver (both of them very popular and present on main, supposedly "stable" linux distributions) and requires different interaction with the tools described to achieve, to the end user, the same result depending on the driver used. When I manifested myself about this problem in the Ubuntu IRC chat, I was said that "open source wireless drivers for linux are relatively new, so we should be happy that they work at all".
I recently installed OpenBSD on one computer, and it surprised me that they have only one tool responsible to configure the network, and that is "ifconfig". And the card driver had it's own man page, describing any possible problem --this comes from a free operating system that faced the same problems of lack of manufacturers' lack of documentation and source code, and yet they came with an implementation that was much more stable, user friendly and reliable. Meanwhile, there was no "official" documentation available on my ubuntu installation describing the problem I was having or any possible solution, so I did what many people do, and resorted to Google --hardly an ideal solution. Had I relied exclusively on my wireless connection to access the internet, I would be much more upset.

And why is this marked as incomplete? Didn't I supply enough information
to reproduce the bug?

Or maybe I should just give up on believing that polish on the linux
desktop is important and just basic functionality and behaviours based
on what is"supposed" or "intended" are supposed to matter? Where's the
documentation to put a final answer to what VLC is and what it should
actually do with JPEG files?

Meaning no personal offence,
Marco.

-- 
VLC crashes when trying to open JPEGs
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/291797
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