On 11/11/2008 Felipe Figueiredo wrote:
> The kind of rant that started this thread
> is not only uncalled for, but in fact counterproductive. Not to
> mention
> these particular ones are unfair, incorrect and (as noted by several
> others) exaggerated. He was not asking if he was the one of many, he
> basically assumed it affected everyone. Also, he wrongly assumed the
> distribution is responsible for all the QA released, likely ignoring
> that are distribution bugs and upstream bugs.
>
> There, I did it, I bit the bait. Now can we please move on?
No we can't. We could if you had not pointed your finger directly to me,
now you have called me in cause and I have to reply, sorry if this will
augment noise (like your comment above, indeed). I pointed my finger
in the past, too, and learned that it is almost always a bad idea.
I would like to point out to you that I have made many people switch to
ubuntu in a professional environment (an academic department, by the
way), and other had to come, that I report every bug I find, and
encourage others to do so, trying to be as precise as my 22 years of
experience with computers can help me to be, and occasionally I wasted
working days (yes I am paid to do a real job like all the others here)
to learn to package fixes to stuff that maybe you even use or used
("left as an exercise" what stuff), just because "somebody should do the
dirty job sometimes".
I have spent much time, and I have sometimes had to quarrel with other
persons in my academic department, in various attempts to introduce and
defend the principles of free software and open formats in our official
regulations.
But I can't continue publicizing ubuntu if I can't rely on it - because
people will come back to me and I will pass for a liar and completely
ruin my public image.
So if, as you say, you CARE for ubuntu, you should be sorry that
experienced people that actually does some "door to door" assistance for
ubuntu, and helps the community (and I know we are many, I am not
claiming any particular personal merit) gets so p**sed off with the
current situation that they might want to stop doing this unpaid job.
If you really care for ubuntu, you probably will appreciate that its
huge success is also due to this network of users that really "believe"
in an independent distribution that is striving to change the world. Of
which you probably are a part.
In the current situation - keep in mind I can be considered a very
experienced user (for me, being asked to compile a driver on X is a
matter of wasting a quarter of hour, for example) - I had the unpleasant
experience to realise that I can rely on ubuntu _much less_ than on
windows on various machines that I had _carefully_ chosen because their
hardware is ADVERTIZED as SUPPORTING UBUNTU. Sometimes, all my experties
is not sufficient: it just can not do the job it is supposed to do. And
this happens also on the machines of other people in my department who I
was helping to SWITCH TO ubuntu (from windows, from fedora, and even
from OSX). This is very frustrating and surely not what ubuntu is aiming to.
This is why, in my first e-mail, I asked for _good documentation_ on
what hardware REALLY works. Which implies that, as soon as you have a
regression, you have to check if it is true (that is, to urgently triage
the bug) and eventually ADVERTIZE the regression on the SAME PAGE where
you ADVERTIZE THE HARDWARE. This is always done, the point is that you
have to do in weeks, not years. I am not in the position to impose
anything, though, if ubuntu has other priorities I can't change the reality.
The rest of the thread was an unuseful hurricane of repeated rants,
likely due to my frustration in being constrained to use windows, that
has been dealt with with __great kindness__ by other people, and frankly
"a posteriori" the fact that nobody flamed me (I don't consider yours
a flame yet) is surprising, given the tone of my subsequent e-mails.
Vincenzo
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