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Mark Shuttleworth Proposes Delaying next Ubuntu

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the waiting-on-the-duck dept.

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.

9 of 382 comments (clear)

  1. What does Ubuntu offer that Debian doesn't? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What can be done with Ubuntu that I can't do with Debian?

    1. Re:What does Ubuntu offer that Debian doesn't? by andersbergh · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I used to use Debian on my laptop, but later switched to Ubuntu. Why?

      It supports more hardware out-of-the-box, and it has newer GNOME packages than Debian. Things that I had to install in Debian (the touchpad, etc) were already installed.

      I wouldn't use Ubuntu on a server though, everything I can do in Ubuntu I can do in Debian. Installing a Debian desktop is just more hassle than installing Ubuntu.

  2. Re:Question? Answer. by jdhutchins · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  3. Re:"Linux for human beings" by Urusai · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  4. Re:"Linux for human beings" by theurge14 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  5. Give them more time; they've earned it by happymedium · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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:

    https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/dapper/+specs

    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.

  6. Re:Really... by arrrrg · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  7. Re:Well, looking at Vista by ClamIAm · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  8. Re:Question? Answer. by ianezz · · Score: 3, Interesting
    So tell them the truth: the technology exists, but U.S. law makes it risky to distribute it.

    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.