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5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica)
ars technica celebrates Ubuntu's fifth anniversary with a list of positive changes the distribution has made to the Linux landscape. "The Ubuntu Linux distribution is named after an African philosophical principle which holds that the betterment of the individual and community are interconnected. This philosophy is at the core of Ubuntu development and is formalized in the Ubuntu code of conduct, a simple set of rules that Ubuntu members commit to follow. Although the contents of the code of conduct are well within the boundaries of common sense, having a codified standard encourages respectful and considerate collaboration, making Ubuntu more inclusive and welcoming to new contributors."
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5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 21, 2009 18:44 UTC (Wed) by divide_by_zero (guest, #60957) [Link]
Inclusive, welcoming, and of course, derogatory of the other "inhuman" Linux users.
So that is what being "human" is all about: putting release date over quality, selling OSes in large cereal boxes, and gape the gates to proprietary drivers etc.
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 21, 2009 19:15 UTC (Wed) by maney (subscriber, #12630) [Link]
I'm sorry, you seem to have mistaken this for a Slashdot comment thread.
BTW, I think you're confusing Ubuntu with Red Hat, Suse, and others who have sold their distributions in "cereal boxes" at one time or another. The only physical form of Ubuntu I've ever heard of are the CDs they'll send you for free. Have to admit I've never felt the need - faster to download it.
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 21, 2009 19:33 UTC (Wed) by divide_by_zero (guest, #60957) [Link]
I am sorry, that comment does sound like a flame bait indeed... I just wanted to point out some people might think the article is a bit partial. I also wanted to raise the awareness of the absurd it is for Ubuntu to hijack the concept that they are the ones representing "humans", while other distros are for "non-humans". I use Debian, but I am a human, and I never liked to be considered anything else.
The Ubuntu box I know is this one:
http://www.amazon.com/Ubuntu-Linux-Complete-Edition-8-04/...
That is really the only place I've ever seen it, so it's probably not that usual. It seems it's not even a canonical Canonical product... This link got famous because Amazon advertises it like it were some usual Windows or OSX program!... "Platform: Windows Vista / XP, Mac OS X Intel"
If I really thought we were at Slashdot I would have just written "First post!" :]
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 21, 2009 20:33 UTC (Wed) by sharms (subscriber, #57357) [Link]
By your logic:
"Have a lot of fun" is SuSE's tagline. I guess it is derogatory to every
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 21, 2009 22:55 UTC (Wed) by divide_by_zero (guest, #60957) [Link]
Hmmm if you want to have fun I can answer that, hopefully not yet falling down to the level of just lame and random trolling. "The fun Linux distro" could imply that, or "Linux for fun people". But just "Have fun" is more of a positive and generic message, like "Think different", "Where do you want to go today?" or "Just do it". I would not have a problem with "Ubuntu, the fun and humane Linux". But "Linux for humans beings" is more like "This is the fun half of the island".
OpenBSD's "Redundancy must be free" or "Because security matters" are kind of strong, but not that much bully-ish. Even if they were, these are just technical arguments. "Ubuntu, the Linux that has periodic releases" is great. "Ubuntu, the Linux that is more suited for Joe-the-user than Debian", perfect. Hey, even "Xoxoxux, the holier-than-thou distro" _is not that bad_. At least I'm still _human_!... See my point?
I'm sorry if I seem grumpy or intolerant or aggressive somehow. I'm not even preaching something like "I demand they stop saying that", I don't care. I just want to shaking things up a bit. :]
The first three steps of Gregory Stanton's famous Eight Stages of Genocide are classification, symbolization and dehumanization. I'm pretty sure no movement inside the Linux users community will ever advance more stages than that, and the first two are kind of mundane. But the playing with the third makes me uncomfortable. I can even bear it if someone makes this "joke" in a speech or something. But a slogan?... Not appropriate. But of course, it can be me just looking for silly reasons to criticize Ubuntu because of envy or whatever. After all, I'm human you know... (*dramaqueen!*)
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 22, 2009 8:08 UTC (Thu) by Hanno (guest, #41730) [Link]
"hopefully not yet falling down to the level of just lame and random trolling"
You are already way beyond that. Sorry.
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 22, 2009 12:34 UTC (Thu) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
I disagree. Let's not try to silence people just because we don't like their opinions.
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 22, 2009 12:42 UTC (Thu) by Hanno (guest, #41730) [Link]
I didn't try to silence him. But my opinion is that his article is lame and random trolling.
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 23, 2009 14:37 UTC (Fri) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
Calling people a troll is a convenient way to say that one can't be bothered to read their arguments, but sometimes those arguments have merit.
The "Linux for human beings" slogan (really it's GNU/Linux, of course, or actually Debian GNU/Linux, given the heritage of the product, but let's not get started on that) just reinforces the perception that "Linux isn't ready for Joe User/mom/pop" that lazy columnists put out when they can't be bothered to report on anything. (Remember that there's no such thing as a slow news day.) So, it actually undermines the message that the project is trying to send, especially since many people are now familiar with the "For Dummies" series of books, so the whole thing comes across as self-deprecating, too: maybe Linux in most forms isn't ready for random people (despite it being in their phone, television, router, car, whatever); maybe Ubuntu Linux is actually still difficult but they'll hold your hand while you try it out.
Ubuntu has done some good stuff, and it arrived at a time when Red Hat was busy putting out some pretty abysmal Fedora releases (at least if you're a KDE user), while Debian's installation process wasn't quite optimal. I wonder whether I'll not just switch to Debian in future, though, given the less than impressive furniture rearrangement in recent releases of Ubuntu.
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 23, 2009 15:00 UTC (Fri) by Hanno (guest, #41730) [Link]
I fail to see the connection of Ubuntu and Genocide, which the original commenter made. I do however see a connection between trollish behaviour and using "Genocide" as an argument.
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 22, 2009 8:31 UTC (Thu) by alankila (subscriber, #47141) [Link]
I can just about see it... Troops coming for all who use Fedora Core, Gentoo or SuSE. What a glorious day that will be!
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Nov 7, 2009 18:18 UTC (Sat) by maco (guest, #53641) [Link]
I think we need to look at sets. Many Linuxes are only for the proper subset of human beings known as "geeks." Ubuntu is saying, however, that instead of being just for geeks, it is for the superset: human beings.
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 25, 2009 22:16 UTC (Sun) by SEJeff (subscriber, #51588) [Link]
Ever hear the saying, "Don't feed the trolls"? He is an angry Debian user
with an obvious bias against something Debian-based without the Debian name.
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 21, 2009 20:53 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
If Debian moved to a time-based release instead of a feature-based release
then it would improve the utility of it massively.
I like Debian a lot, but that is certainly it's biggest failing compared to
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 21, 2009 20:55 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
Oh, if Debian kept to a proper timeline instead of "its finished when its
finished" then there would of never been any reason to fork Ubuntu off in the first place...
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 21, 2009 23:32 UTC (Wed) by dkite (guest, #4577) [Link]
Does anyone who uses Debian (or any of the constant update distros) care
about releases?
Releases are marketing claptrap. The 6 month release schedule is an attempt
Ubuntu in my experience is the closest I've used in free software that equals
No thanks.
Derek
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 21, 2009 23:51 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
Yes, even with 'constant update distros like Debian' people care about releases.
debian and ubuntu make moving from one release to another very easy, but within one release they are only 'constant update' in that they get updates to existing versions. these updates normally do not introduce a new version of a package.
_true_ 'constant update' distributions are almost impossible to use for anyone other than hpbbiests, because you don't know what is going to work togeather until you try it, and once you update it's hard to go back (because something else may have been updated as well)
a large part of the time between ubuntu and fedora releases (to name two on 6-month cycles) is not spent introducing new features, it's in testing, stabilizing, and sometimes removing features that were added early in the release cycle.
on the linux kernel (with a 3-month release cycle), new stuff is only added for the first two weeks, the next month and a half is spent testing and fixing issues that are found in testing.
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 22, 2009 0:08 UTC (Thu) by ewan (subscriber, #5533) [Link]
I suspect the categorisation of Debian as a 'constant update' distribution is not because of the ease of upgrading between releases, but because a large fraction of the userbase seem to run unstable or testing, which really are constant update systems.
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 22, 2009 0:08 UTC (Thu) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link]
Hear, hear. Other distributions can keep their time-based releases. I am perfectly happy with Debian's quality-based releases! :)
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 24, 2009 11:18 UTC (Sat) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]
About releases:
"The OpenBSD Release Process: A Success Story"
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 21, 2009 23:41 UTC (Wed) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link]
It would had been easier if key Debian developers had not been hired by Canonical to work on Ubuntu instead...
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 22, 2009 5:05 UTC (Thu) by daniels (subscriber, #16193) [Link]
So? I know key Debian developers who are unable to work on Debian because of their commitment to medical schools, who now have a job in the field which also takes all their time. Do you think it's fair to blame the medical schools for destroying Debian, then? If not, why?
Hint: peoples' choice of employment and hobbies are theirs and theirs alone.
(Note: I was hired by Canonical in early 2004, and ceased most Debian activity around then, mainly because Debian _at the time_ was an infinitely less fun and productive project to work on than Ubuntu. I haven't been involved with either project for quite some time, however.)
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 22, 2009 5:17 UTC (Thu) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link]
Luckily there are also us who wouldn't have become Debian Developers if it wasn't for Ubuntu.
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 22, 2009 12:39 UTC (Thu) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
Oh God, no thank you. Time-based releases seems to be the biggest stupid idea to catch on in a while. I have yet to see even the slightest hint of evidence that it helps anything, but it noticeably degrades quality.
(Actually I think one of Debian's biggest problems is that they have the world's worst bugtracking system.)
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Nov 7, 2009 18:16 UTC (Sat) by maco (guest, #53641) [Link]
ValuSoft was selling that in Best Buy for a few months last year.
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 21, 2009 20:31 UTC (Wed) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]
By the time Ubuntu started, RedHat no longer sold CDs. They have switched to RHEL. They already had a time-based Fedora project. SUSE has switched license to GPL at around the same time frame: it was purchaced by Novell in early 2004, YaST was relicensed a few monthes later. IIRC they were also using time-based releases at the time. But then again they were still "selling boxes" at the time.
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 21, 2009 21:29 UTC (Wed) by maney (subscriber, #12630) [Link] Which is technically true but misses the point - he's accusing a distribution which has never sold a boxed product (the Ubuntu box he had in mind is made by someone else? ROFL!) of selling boxed product. RH and Suse - pardon me, that was back when it was spelled SuSE, wasn't it? - as well as many others, have done so. RH built it business on box sales in the early days, or so I recall. Perhaps I could have explained this more fully, but I was too busy laughing at the total bassackwardness of this characterization.
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 21, 2009 22:11 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Uhm... Ubuntu did have official retail boxes at one point.
http://blog.canonical.com/?p=18
Canonical has dabbled in a lot of different potential revenue streams over the years...it can be difficult to keep up which the amount of business failure they are amassing.
-jef
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 22, 2009 5:08 UTC (Thu) by daniels (subscriber, #16193) [Link]
I assume you would describe Red Hat's old business model of selling and supporting RHL to desktop customers as a raging success?
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 21, 2009 22:45 UTC (Wed) by foom (subscriber, #14868) [Link]
> he's accusing a distribution which has never sold a boxed product of selling boxed product
.....................
http://www.ubuntu.com/GetUbuntu/purchase
To claim, in an argument, that they don't sell a product when a trivial google search tells
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 22, 2009 8:48 UTC (Thu) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]
This is not what RedHat did. This is what LSL and CheaBytes did. RedHat sold a supported operating system. CheapBytes sold "Pink Tie Linux" which has the same software but is completely unsupported.
Mandriva still sells supported CDs. It's not a great hit.
BTW: SuSE was renamed to SUSE at around the time it was purchased by Novell.
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 21, 2009 20:50 UTC (Wed) by Thue (subscriber, #14277) [Link] putting release date over qualityExcept that part of Ubuntu's appeal is that it usually just works for end users. That is a pretty good definition of quality.
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 21, 2009 21:04 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Subjective perception about quality is a very interesting thing. Is that perception of quality borne out by launchpad bug reporting or the forum help threads? I'm not really that sure it is. I haven't seen anyone make a stab at doing any sort of large scale quantifiable analysis to trend release quality from release to release for a given distribution or the more difficult tasks of measuring relative quality across distributions.
-jef
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 21, 2009 22:15 UTC (Wed) by jmm82 (guest, #59425) [Link]
"Just Works" is about as subjective a measurement possible. What I think most people mean is "How many changes do I have to make to the base install before it fits my needs?"
To qualitatively measure "Just works" one could measure statistics such as How many different labtops have working wifi cards, video cards, sound cards, ect. out of the box.
And yes Ubuntu's short release cycle and inclusion of "devil ether" proprietary drivers improve their perception of "Just works." If you look at Ubuntu Sauce kernel patches they are normally esoteric quarks to make faulty hardware function.
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 22, 2009 5:08 UTC (Thu) by daniels (subscriber, #16193) [Link]
I'm looking forward to your analysis, on the assumption that it also takes into account the growth or otherwise of the userbase, as well as the effect that the encouragement of bug reporting (e.g. the Launchpad bug reporter being directly integrated into applications) has had. Just counting numbers is pointless: I'm sure F11 has received a lot more bug reports than RHL5.1.
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 22, 2009 15:47 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Yes such analysis effort would be difficult.. maybe that's why no one has made the effort to do it. It's much easier to just repeat things you believe to be true as an article of faith than it is to do the hard work to show it really is true.
I'm not going to make the analysis effort.... and because I'm not going to make that effort.. I will refrain from making statements about which distribution or even which release is better quality relative to another. I'm not going to add additional anecdotal noise. But every time someone makes a claim about relative quality.. I expect it to be backed up with objective analysis that can be repeated and verified.
-jef
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 25, 2009 22:25 UTC (Sun) by SEJeff (subscriber, #51588) [Link]
But in the end, it is all just Linux with a modern userspace. Sure the Fedora
stock kernel has the kickass utrace patches and bleeding edge open source video drivers (ie: nouveau). Sure Ubuntu has the really pretty notify-osd notifications and couchdb for personal information sync. Sure Suse has the very windows-ey main menu by default and a well integrated search interface. In the end, they all ship (just about) the exact same software.
It is like fighting over which color of eye shadow makes the ugly girl
Difference is good. It is the single biggest strength in Linux vs proprietary
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 21, 2009 23:11 UTC (Wed) by divide_by_zero (guest, #60957) [Link]
That is a good point indeed. I've heard people complaining about certain aspects of Ubuntu in certain situations, but the truth is that they were pushing it to a direction it is not supposed to go. And don't get me wrong, I have recommended Ubuntu to interested friends, and I don't regret having done so.
Now, if where Ubuntu really shines is at Joe-the-user's laptop that needs non-free drivers pre-installed "from the factory", maybe Ubuntu's contributions were not silver "changing the Linux landscape", but were good strategies just to accomplish this task of becoming "the star of the Linux desktop". The article might have made that a little bit more clear... Humans should always try to recognize their limitations! ;)
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 22, 2009 12:47 UTC (Thu) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
My definition of quality would include 'able to go 18 months without breaking X, audio, *or* networking'. It would also include 'not summarily closing bugs in the name of triage, just because the original submitter, having provided detailed steps for duplication, doesn't resubmit the bug every 6 months'.
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 22, 2009 17:30 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Even Ubuntu has problems living up to the regression-free 18 month standard you have set.
Example of an Intrepid kernel update breaking networking:
A (misfiled) example of Jaunty updates breaking Xwindows and subsequently being fixed with further updates:
It's very easy to make sweeping generalizations about quality...that don't hold up to scrutiny on close inspection.
-jef
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 25, 2009 22:32 UTC (Sun) by SEJeff (subscriber, #51588) [Link]
Fedora Core 2 with SELinux or Fedora 10 released with an X server unsupported
by any available (at the time) nvidia driver release. As an avid Fedora enthusiast, it was very disheartening to see Fedora not think of users who use "evil" proprietary drivers. It isn't that I didn't want to use open source drivers... It was because nv and nouveau would simply not support the 2 30" monitors sitting vertically on my desk.
All large projects have regressions. Pointing out a few just brings the mark
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 25, 2009 23:09 UTC (Sun) by michich (subscriber, #17902) [Link]
As a user of only free drivers, I would find it very disappointing if Fedora developers delayed the release or reverted to an old Xorg version just to make the release compatible with available proprietary drivers. Development must not be held hostage by proprietary software. Fedora X maintainers made the right decisions in both cases.
You are not forced to upgrade to the latest Fedora immediately on the release day. If you depend on proprietary drivers, check for their compatibility before the upgrade.
Also note that a new release of an important distro like Fedora is a very good reason for Nvidia to finally publish an updated driver compatible with the current kernel and Xorg.
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2009 22:30 UTC (Mon) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
Yes, in fact, a new upstream Xorg release by itself won't be enough of a incentive for any vendor to update their driver. They need a major distribution to ship the new Xorg first. Fedora often does that. So even if you are relying on a proprietary driver, Fedora actually does indirectly help you push things forward.
If you are expecting Fedora to hold back from a new Xorg release because Nvidia didn't update it's proprietary driver and Nvidia is waiting for a major distribution to include the new Xorg or kernel first, then someone has to break that vicious cycle.
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2009 22:38 UTC (Mon) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
distros (and I believe including Fedora) have delayed using a new X.org release in the past because a vendor had not yet released a new binary-only driver for it
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2009 23:09 UTC (Mon) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
Fedora hasn't. Fedora has however avoiding a new Xorg release as an update to an existing Fedora release for avoiding regressions and concerns from users that it would break drivers as well.
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2009 13:33 UTC (Mon) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
>Even Ubuntu has problems living up to the regression-free 18 month standard you have set.
I was actually talking about Ubuntu, which I gave up trying to use after 3 consecutive upgrades caused problems which required considerable effort to fix. I *might* have stuck with it a bit longer if their approach to bugtracking wasn't "let's try to keep the bug count as low as possible by closing bugs whenever we feel like".
That said, although I wouldn't want to use Ubuntu myself, my partner still uses it without too many problems, and the six-monthly breakage seems to get slightly more minor each time (only current unresolved issue: network manager permanently complains that it can't find a connection, even though everything is actually working fine). I think I probably spend about the same amount of time - maybe less - supporting it now than I did when she was using Windows, only now it comes in lumps on every upgrade, rather than constant smaller issues. This at least means that it's possible to pick a moment when I have some free time.
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2009 15:46 UTC (Mon) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link] I *might* have stuck with it a bit longer if their approach to bugtracking wasn't "let's try to keep the bug count as low as possible by closing bugs whenever we feel like". I particularly like the bug-tracker messages asking me whether the bug in question is fixed in the upcoming unreleased version. When I've gone to the trouble of saying exactly what the bug is and how to reproduce it, and when the bug isn't dependent on any specific hardware configuration, you'd think someone would be bothered enough to just look and see if it's still there. I suppose it would be understandable if the bugs remained dormant in some kind of "not sure" state, awaiting some kind of confirmation from someone who might check and then act to prevent the bug from occurring in future, but there is this tendency to close bugs in many projects if those who experienced them first aren't still holding down the panic button, or if the package the bug was in has been moved across the room and given a new name, fabric and set of cushions.
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2009 22:32 UTC (Mon) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
It is very likely that such kind of responses are from automated scripts trying to catch up on the huge load of pending unresponded possibly stale bug reports. It is not a distribution specific problem.
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 27, 2009 10:18 UTC (Tue) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
Unfortunately, you are mistaken on all counts.
One of the ways in which Ubuntu encourages non-technical users to contribute is by 'triaging' bugs. The idea is to look at all bugs in the current release which haven't seen much activity, ask the original reporter if the bug has somehow evaporated, and close the bug if, in two weeks, there has not been a response along the lines of 'I downloaded and installed the latest alpha and the bug is still exactly as described'.
This is such a useless way to run a bugtracker that I believe there is literally no point in ever reporting bugs to Ubuntu; certainly there's no point in taking the time to write a *decent* bug report, because nobody will even *read* the 'expected outcome', 'actual outcome', or 'steps to reproduce'.
Just thinking about trying to interact with Launchpad again is making my blood boil.
(Maybe I should write a bot that automatically reconfirms bug reports every few months, without bothering to test...)
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Oct 27, 2009 11:11 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
What you are describing is a bit confusing to me. If your description of the process is correct, why not just use scripts to do that instead of ask volunteers to do it manually? I am aware that as part of Fedora QA process, there is some very limited amount of triaging that is scripted. For example, a bug report still open on a EOL'ed release but I am curious as to the advantage if any of doing it manually if it done just mechanically.
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Nov 7, 2009 18:24 UTC (Sat) by maco (guest, #53641) [Link]
s/two weeks/two months/
And triaging is supposed to include attempts at reproducing the bug, narrowing down *why* the bug is happening, etc.
5 years later, 5 ways that Ubuntu has made Linux more human (ars technica) Posted Nov 7, 2009 18:22 UTC (Sat) by maco (guest, #53641) [Link]
You are asked often whether your bug is fixed in the devel release because IF it is, we can start bisecting it to find the commit that fixed it. If it's not, we know a new fix has to be rolled from scratch. If you do not reply within a couple months (which is a bit of time...) when asked if your bug is fixed, it is assumed you must not give a shit about the bug.
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