Hardy is a hard time…
by Ploum on 2008-07-30
I’m tired of Hardy. Tired of the bugs, tired of this Operating System. Yes, for the first time, I really regret to use Ubuntu.
Network-manager need 10 times more Wifi power to detect a Wifi and asks you your WEP key again and again, at least, when it works. But it’s not a real problem because, anyway, Firefox and Epiphany are crashing on nearly half of the pages you browse daily. And, as usual, Evolution is frozen and requires a kill. So, why would you want to use a network ?
Sound is shaggy so you fallback on VLC but, in Hardy, even VLC crashes and/or mess up your video. Want to cry and talk with someone ? Launch the Psi Jabber client and try to register a Jabber account. Just try. You believe you can only work ? At least if you don’t need too much SMB shares on your desktop. Even using Nautilus is now impossible in spatial mode ! And I hope you don’t have some disabilities.
Just before the Hardy release, I decided to change my good old Debian server for an Ubuntu one. In order to be 100% Ubuntu, you know. Sigh… Since I upgraded to Hardy, suphp isn’t working anymore. I spent countless hours on it but, no matter what, it doesn’t work. The exact same files work fine under Debian with exactly the same configuration. In Hardy, well, if you have mod_php, suphp will be ignored. It you don’t, suphp will simply fail with an Error 500 and a log full of « SecurityException in Application.cpp:440: Handler not found in configuration, Caused by KeyNotFoundException in Configuration.cpp:234: Handler « application/x-httpd-php » not found, Premature end of script headers ». In normal times, I would say that I’m missing something, that I did a mistake. But I do not trust my system anymore. Why spending tireless night only to discover that, oops, this is a bug in some package because it was patched for some reason ? All my work is stalled like it never was. I tried to report as many bug as I can but 99% are already reported and, honnestly, in Hardy it would be a full-time job to just report all the bugs I see everyday.
In the past years, I’ve converted countless people to Ubuntu. Nearly all of them are the most basic computer users you could imagine. I converted them because Windows was too complicated for them. They were all happy. All of them were completely astonished. Until they upgraded to Hardy.
Today, each time I see one of those people, they talk to me about their computer problem. I wish we could sometime talk about the weather :
– Hello, I have a problem on my comp…
Then, they see the sadness in my eyes. I don’t move a finger but they understand immediatly. Slowly, like an old tired man, I reply :
– I know…
Just wait until october…
PS : I know that some answers will be « report the bugs ». I did, but reporting doesn’t solve. Some will say « send your patches ». I did. Well, nearly nothing but I believe that all the people who don’t contribute can also have a good Ubuntu experience. The goal is to have users. Last but not least; some will say that they don’t experience all those bugs. I did. Some of my friends are even less lucky than me. Some have a few bugs only. But we all agree that we have ten times more problem than in Gutsy. I do not need to be convinced. I love Ubuntu and I will continue to love it because I’m sure that Hardy is an accident. Only an accident and that we, the community, will learn from this big mistake.
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