Saturday, June 12, 2010

Trolling Mikey

Cory Doctorow posts an enthusiastic endorsement of the latest Ubuntu release using the "just works" tagline. There follows a comments thread full of Linux enthusiasts disagreeing.
Posted by Substance McGravitas at 1:32 PM

4 comments:

Andrew said...

I use Linux, but I don't really like Ubuntu. They favor dodgy hacks over making technically-valid choices (Linux is supposed to be about being architecturally correct, not expedience), and they tend not to play nice with the developers of the software they use—leading to situations where bugs exist in an Ubuntu version of a program and nowhere else. They don't collaborate with the Linux community as much as they should, instead, they tend to work behind closed doors, although they do (usually) publish their work. They should send their bug fixes back to the creators of the software—this is an important role that distributors (Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora) have typically played that they don't seem to care about as much as they should.

I personally think that sooner or later their penchant for hacking things together to create the "just works" impression for users will catch up with them, and maybe this is their day of reckoning. I've heard others complain about the 10.04 release as well. It's nice to give the users what they want when they want it but long-term you have to maintain that code and live with that decision. History has shown us time and time again that making technically correct decisions leads to a better product in the long run. For examples of how favoring expedience and always trying to please your users (and developers!) can go wrong, see Windows, Microsoft.

June 12, 2010 at 2:22 PM
Andrew said...

Oh and requisite of any Linux discussion thread there's several in there who clearly haven't used Linux since 2005 but neglect to mention that. The guy who says custom mice buttons don't work is dead wrong, for example.

June 12, 2010 at 2:32 PM
mikey said...

The last place I worked built their systems on top of Suse. I liked it just fine. But, since I prefer Gnome to KDE, it was very a very similar experience to Ubuntu. As a user, I like the Canonical people, and the way they do things. I'm sure Andrew's right, but as a sophisticated user I don't see any of his complaints as problematic to me. I'm still on 9.04, I've been meaning to go to the LTS release but nothing's pushed me in that direction. Maybe tomorrow I'll to a test install on one of the dual boot machines for fun...

June 12, 2010 at 2:55 PM
Substance McGravitas said...

Having a system work to the point where you really have to work hard to think of a good reason to change things is as close to heaven in the computing experience as anything can be.

June 12, 2010 at 5:01 PM

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