Comments on: Ubuntu release quality

By: Andrew Szeto

Andrew Szeto — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 03:40:02 +0000

Wait, I thought the LTS releases were meant to be the ones that were rock solid, and the regular six month releases were for trying out the newest and coolest things.

By: Ubuntu isn’t getting any better

Ubuntu isn’t getting any better — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 02:22:31 +0000

[...] the same Ubuntu Forums experience polls charts as in Ubuntu release quality, but [...]

By: Endolith

Endolith — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 15:27:55 +0000

Wouldn’t it be great if everyone had equally good experiences? We need to identify the biggest problem areas and fix them.

By: Steve

Steve — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 01:29:02 +0000

Sorry to sound a discordant note, but I haven’t had any problems at all.

I switched from Vista to Ubuntu about 11 months ago (Gutsy). It worked great. When Hardy came out, I read so much whining on the forums that I held off installing it until August. At that point I did a clean install of Hardy and have found it to be an appreciable improvement and just as stable as Gutsy was.

Computer is a Toshiba Satellite laptop.

By: Anthony

Anthony — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 02:10:54 +0000

Excellent post.

Ubuntu’s release policy has shown a fundamental unwillingness to make shipping a workable release the goal, and as I’ve got more involved in filing bugs etc, I’ve been very disappointed at how they simply blow them off, fixing them late or never.

I’m definitely going to be looking at going back to Debian if this isn’t addressed in the next few releases.

By: AaA

AaA — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 07:56:15 +0000

Good post. Even though the quality measurement is not exactly scientific you have generally hit the truth. Ubuntu sounds and looks like a really nice Linux distribution. Sometimes it even works nicely. If you are lucky you can even work with Ubuntu. Nevertheless, this doesn't change the fact that Ubuntu is fundamentally broken by its release policy. That policy provides releases which don't work by design, only by chance. It's gambling, not serious software business. Well OK, hobbyists may like to gamble and Ubuntu may have a place among hobbyists. For serious work people need a system which is stable and reliable and not only by luck. This is why I gave up Ubuntu over two years ago and it seems that Ubuntu wasn't even that bad at those times as it is today. I'm really happy that there is not just one Linux distribution. I'd buy a Mac immediately if we had only Ubuntu.

By: JD Evora

JD Evora — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 09:22:27 +0000

I agree 100% with you, I had major problems with my last upgrades as well.

There are 2 brainstorm ideas that are aimed to improve that.
#15228: Avoiding feature regressions should be more important than (exact) time based release http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/15228/

For try to have more stable releases.

#15834: Have a fallback repository for avoid having a faulty system after upgrade. http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/15834/

For less important stuff or when you are hit by a bug anyway.

Cheers