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Mark Shuttleworth Proposes Delaying next Ubuntu
Beuno writes "Mark Shuttleworth has proposed on the ubuntu-art mailing list to postpone the 'Dapper Drake' release by 6 weeks. He lays out the reasons pretty clearly: the delay should make the release a more user-friendly distro. He has also called up a community meeting in April 14th on IRC for community input. Is it really worth delaying the release for more then a month just to polish it out a little bit?" Commentary on this also available from the Tectonic site.
What can be done with Ubuntu that I can't do with Debian?
Is it really worth delaying the release for more then a month just to polish it out a little bit?"
Yes, it's worth it. FTA, this isn't a release aimed at the "average Linux user." It's meant for enterprises, and it's important to get it right. It's something that can be a big point for the adoption of Linux in the desktop workspace, that this is a distro which looks good, has a wide range of language options, and has support. Spending a rather trivial amount of time getting it fully ready is what should be done, rather than try to hit an arbitrary "release date", only to, a few weeks later, do the MS routine of "here's the update package, Service Pack X".
Is it particularly newsworthy that it's Shuttleworth proposing this rather than anybody else? The reason I ask is that he was singled out as the person responsible over at Digg as well, and I see no point to saying that it was Shuttleworth rather than simply "Ubuntu release delay proposed". I know he's the founder of Ubuntu, but does everything have to go through a hero-worship filter before making it onto sites like Slashdot and Digg? It's pretty embarrassing to see tech-oriented sites act like teenage girls fawning over their latest pop singer pin-ups.
Maybe smaller distros can get away with providing it, but that's just because they are flying under the radar. Larger distros would get caught. As far as I know, none of the larger distros include dvd or mp3 by default.
The necessity of hand-editing xorg.conf or frankly any .conf file keeps Ubuntu and Linux in general out of the mainstream. Joe Sixpack isn't going to do it. Fundamental things such as video, keyboard, and mouse should work immediately, with sane and functional fallbacks.
I don't know what applies here, but there you go: 1. There might not be licenses for unlimited redistribution; in other words, you can't distribute the software the license covers under the GPL. 2. It might not actually be illegal for the end-user to download the software -- downloading it for your own usage might be all right, redistribution not.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
Well, one one hand, this didn't stop Windows 3.x or Windows 95 from becoming ubiquitous (autoexec.bat and config.sys anyone?). But in fairness, that was 10-15 years ago.
I could imagine they would rush the next release, because dapper will be more than just an ordinary half-yearly ubuntu release. They plan to have enterprise-grade releases every other year (or so), with very long (5 years) support. If you want someone to stick with a distribution for 2 years or more, you better deliver something that's as good as it can get (within a reasonable delay from the originally foressen release date, where reasonable obviously still needs to be defined but may be six weeks). For the release following dapper, they can probably simply switch back to ${gnome-release-date}+1month.
I believe it is, however, legal to distribute the sources. At least Gentoo does, without getting into trouble. So one theoretical way to do it is to distribute the sources, and at some point during the install ask the user if they want DVD/MP3 capabilities, and if they do, do the compilation then and there. And provide a menu item somewhere if they want to do it later (just get it installed first, compile it later, for example).
Of course, it would take some extra time, but if you explained to the user the reasons behind it, it may open some eyes to the problems with DRM-like things (for the DVD - encryption), and certain types of patents (for the MP3).
"Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you."
I have never had problems using GRUB to boot various flavors of Linux, as well as dual-booting them with Windows (XP). The difference in my case is that I always searched or asked someone "does this installer set up dual-booting correctly?". When the answer was no, I tried something else.
On the other hand, bugs happen. But saying that it is the fault of GRUB, LILO, or whatever program happened to fail on you is not fair. It creates the impression that certain programs are inferior when the reality is that all programs have problems.
I think that's great. Just a while ago Dapper got a new urine-colored Human theme, and - all due respect to the people who put their efforts into making Ubuntu better - frankly, it's just horrible. If the release is delayed, they have a lot better change to fix the theme.
Another thing i'd really like to see in dapper is the new NetworkManager 0.6 with its WPA and OpenVPN goodness. "Automatic network detection and configuration management" is high-priority target for dapper, and the new features in n-m 0.6 are needed by many users.
See slow firefox problem in Dapper and the un-upgrade-able firefox 1.0.7 still vulnerable to security issues in Breezy. They also need to fix the fact that they cannot update firefox because everything else in the distro depends on it...
One very nice thing about Ubuntu is that they do host these decoders in their Multiverse repository. You have to edit your sources.lst to add a Canonical run repository (packages are signed), apt-get install the codecs, and you're done.
On distributions like Fedora Core, you have to add a Russian warez site ("livna") to your yum configuration to be able to get MP3 support. These packages may be unsigned and full of root kits. It's a risky proposition.
I'm not even an Ubuntu user, but I think the whole community would benefit if some major distro said "Okay, stop everything, we're going to spend six weeks on making the distro usable by normal people." Thanks and Kudos to Ubuntu if they lead the way on this.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
I remember keeping track of the Breezy Badger planning wiki before that version was released, and it seemed to me that the team deferred many of their major goals... on the other hand, it looks like most improvements planned for Dapper have been implemented already, as Shuttleworth notes in his message:
s
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/dapper/+spec
I'll refrain from Debian comparisons, as they're not needed to communicate what stellar work the team has done here. Point is, Ubuntu users and admins ought to support this delay, for the same reason I support Ubuntu... the Ubuntu team simply has its shit together, moreso than that of any other freely available distribution.
Let Shuttleworth strategize to take on Red Hat, SuSE, and Vista--because Ubuntu actually has a fighting chance. That prospect ought to excite Ubuntu partisans (like me) and fence-sitters alike.
I'm a fifth/sixth grade teacher who still uses floppy drives and floppy disks with my students. It would be great if they could implement floppy behavior to be similar to what windows does. SUSE comes pretty close, actually, but I'm always afraid to try other Linux distros to avoid the hassle of floppy drives, since some seem to want to mount the drives, and mounting the drives (and unmounting them), while not impossible for a fifth grader to do, is next to impossible for 32 fifth graders to do and remember to do.
Anyway, I hope when they think usability, they also consider usability for kids.
There are certain things that simply do not work on Dapper at the moment. Most important for me, I haven't found a single Lisp compiler that works. CLisp, CMUCL, and SBCL all worked fine on breezy; as soon as I upgraded to dapper, they started segfaulting on startup... I know very little about the internals of Linux, but I think its something to do with changes in the memory model that are messing with the garbage collectors.
It's essentially an unavoidable issue for any alternative OS. Few vendors certify their products on Linux (they sell the PCs with Windows, after all), and the Linux developers can only test on a fraction of the possible combinations of hardware.
Your best if you're serious about running Linux is usually to get a Dell system. Their hardware is extremely vanilla --- basically Intel CPU and motherboard + a NVIDIA graphics card.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
The comparison is even better when looking at features. Ubuntu's current release already has most of the cool new goodies available (GNOME 2.12, Beagle, etc), and the next release will be out before Vista. On the other hand, Vista keeps cutting features (no EFI booting, no super-duper WinFS, etc), and it will likely take the next one or two releases AFTER Vista to get all that stuff.
Even if he had all the money in South Africa Shuttleworth couldn't get a DVD/CSS license or an MP3 patent license that he could apply to open-source software. He could get a license for a closed-source player and distribute that; it probably could not be redistributable because such licenses surely would not allow that. Linspire has a closed-source DVD player (http://www.linspire.com/lindows_products_details. php?product_id=11804) that Linspire users can buy for forty bucks. Of course if Linspire *could* make an open and legal DVD player they probably wouldn't.
Fluendo has released a licensed MP3 plugin for the GStreamer framework. It's already in Debian unstable, and I'd say Ubuntu probably will include it.
Thank you for saying that. I'm more or less a noob, and recently tried to install Badger on my fairly new Toshiba laptop. I figured it was safe since it has an Nvidia card, and I'd tried the Live CD first - wrong!
.. not important - I'll eventually get it figured out ... then
.....
This is not for noobs - hopefully Dapper will be.
First, the instructions with respect to paritioning, were misleading. I don't recall where exactly, but the wording certainly left me with the impression that I was going to fry my windows parition.
Second - I couldn't get root. Ohh yes, I could use Sudo (after I learned about it) but I wanted to edit the Grub menu. How to do that? Okay
Third - I couldn't get my Intel 2915 ABG wireless connection to work. I tried multiple things, tried reading how-tos on NDS wrapper, downloading drivers, copying drivers until
I gave up!
A system without connection is pretty much useless. Trying to get information by booting up Windows - then going back to Linux, was hopeless. So I hope that they polish a bit more and make it easier for us noobs.
Just my $0.02 worth.