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Hardy Heron Alpha 4 Released
LarryBoy writes "Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) alpha 4 was released Friday and Ars Technica has a look at what's new in the latest builds of Hardy Heron. 'Although many of the significant architectural features like PulseAudio and GIO are still in transitional stages and aren't fully functional yet, Ubuntu 8.04 alpha 4 is still very impressive. I'm a big fan of D-Bus and I'm very pleased to see it being adopted throughout the entire desktop stack in core components.'"
Well, yeah, I agree that it's marketing. My objection is that it's verging on the dishonest and that seems to permeate much of the enthusiasm behind Ubuntu. For instance their parent company Canonical still has not released the sourcecode to Launchpad! How absolutely hypocritical is that? A company which makes free use (as they should be able to) of FL/OSS software and then sits on top of the one thing which their developers did apparently create on their own. Do Ubuntu developers do anything besides tweak color palettes and write bullshit press releases which fail to give credit to the actual producers of the software which they parasitize? Other stuff not-coded-by-the-Canonical-parasites: NetworkManager, PolicyKit, the kernel, Nautilus, drivers, aptitude ...
I think that is the point. Debian and the other releases build on what is out there, incorporate other work into their own and release what they make themselves. The GPs objection to Ubuntu is that while they build on what other people have done, they don't release their own contributions back tot he community. No one is sugesting that they are violating the GPL or any other license, but they are perhaps violating the spirit of the community that they depend on for their own wellbeing.
Yeah, but you're just one guy. If it works for the vast majority, then that *does* cut it.
Only maybe within the slashdot crowd. The fact is that for the majority of people it does not cut it, Microsoft Windows or Apple OSX achieve what GP poster is saying.
There are two problems I see with Linux now, one is this late-drivers issue (it happened with modems, cameras, usb and now wireless) that prevents users from being able to use their hardware in their computer. The second problem is what someone called "incomplete drivers", and it refers to the fact that because of the nature of "scratch an itch" of open source, developers sometimes create a driver that "just works" in the sense that the developer stops programming the driver when it achieves a specific functionality. The result is that you can not do in Linux everything you can do in Windows with your hardware.
I too have the same philosophy as GP, I do not care who people blame (it is easy to play the blame game and throw the ball to another person), the hard fact is that Linux does not cut it in some conditions, and I use whatever solves my problems. Past are my University days of being idealist and having time to hack and crack (as disassembling and removing the protection of programs). Now I just want computers to work and work fine.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
You sound as bad a Apple fanboys. A gift? Oh please. There you go with that "buy more shit" bullshit. I got a free OS so I wouldn't have to spend money, dumbass. What good would it do to whine to the manufacturers? They won't listen, they already have my money. Why should they spend their money to give me free drivers for an OS that few people use?
I want to use Ubuntu but it is too much of a hassle. I put in my time, which is not free, and for all that I have an OS that only mostly works. At this point, Vista is more economical, at least it just works and I don't have to cobble together solutions that may or may not work.