How about stability this time?

[joepotter]

I was with Hoary the whole development time, and then with the Breezy development cycle. I must say that Breezy is just wonderful, but it has holes --- bugs, flaws.

How about this time we strive for the most bug free release in Linux history?

[poofyhairguy]

I was with Hoary the whole development time, and then with the Breezy development cycle. I must say that Breezy is just wonderful, but it has holes --- bugs, flaws.

How about this time we strive for the most bug free release in Linux history?

Its funny you ask for that. Unlike many of the suggestion threads here you will get your wish- its being planned.

Dapper is seen as the first "milestone" release. Thats why it will be supported longer. Its seen as the end of the first phase of Ubuntu. For Dapper there will be a longer freeze period, and less exciting changes. Breezy was by far the most exciting with huge changes uner the hood. Dapper will play it safe more, to me more stable.

So be happy. You will get what you want. People like myself who love the bleeding edge might have complaints, but your wish will be granted.

[dannotdan]

I would prefer that it be both bleeding edge AND incredibly stable. But I also want world peace and an Internet connection that never goes down....

In any case, I have been using Ubuntu since the Warty preview and I have been consistently impressed by the balance this distro is able to keep between bleeding edge and stability (at least while not using KDE, but that is a story for a different forum).

My vote is to keep close to the balance you've already achieved.

[Goober]

I would prefer that it be both bleeding edge AND incredibly stable. But I also want world peace and an Internet connection that never goes down....

In any case, I have been using Ubuntu since the Warty preview and I have been consistently impressed by the balance this distro is able to keep between bleeding edge and stability (at least while not using KDE, but that is a story for a different forum).

My vote is to keep close to the balance you've already achieved.

Well, ideally, if its incredibly stable, then you can safely DL the apps and such to make it Bleeding Edge, and get the latest Kernel and all that. That would be the ideal way to go for me, at least.

[musicman2059]

But in all due honesty, though, stability isn't much a problem. I never had any big beefs with the general stability of Hoary, and so far Breezy is just as good.

Either that, or I've accepted the fact I'm running Ubuntu on a dinosaur and expect it to be slow.

[poofyhairguy]

Well, ideally, if its incredibly stable, then you can safely DL the apps and such to make it Bleeding Edge, and get the latest Kernel and all that. That would be the ideal way to go for me, at least.

Why not just let Ubuntu do all that hard work for you? Changing a kernel is a big job in any OS.

[joepotter]

I would prefer that it be both bleeding edge AND incredibly stable. But I also want world peace and an Internet connection that never goes down....

In any case, I have been using Ubuntu since the Warty preview and I have been consistently impressed by the balance this distro is able to keep between bleeding edge and stability (at least while not using KDE, but that is a story for a different forum).

My vote is to keep close to the balance you've already achieved.
Balance?

One example. Just days before breezy went finale an update stopped thirty machines of mine from using the floppy drive. This is *not* stability.

I also see various other issues discussed that lead me to think working on a "very stable bug free" Dapper would be a good thing for the users. Plus, a good thing for Ubuntu's reputation.

[Teroedni]

I must say that i am very pleased with Brezzy. The only problem i have had is Firefox,but other than that it works great.


I think the developers have done a great job, and i can assure you that they probably want brezzy to be stable to;)

[az]

All but one bug was fixed for breezy. The only outstanding bug is an upstream problem with a wireless usb device.

Everything else works. The only problem I had with Hoary was sound and now that works.

[Lovechild]

long freeze.. hopefully this won't mean that Dapper won't ship GNOME 2.14 that would be horrible news.

[RawMustard]

All but one bug was fixed for breezy. The only outstanding bug is an upstream problem with a wireless usb device.

Everything else works. The only problem I had with Hoary was sound and now that works.

Ah - So my hard drive light constantly lit is a figment of my imagination then?

And I actually do get sound when I play quake3, it's just that I've become deaf since installing Breezy ](*,)

[joepotter]

All but one bug was fixed for breezy. The only outstanding bug is an upstream problem with a wireless usb device.

Everything else works. The only problem I had with Hoary was sound and now that works.


There was no time to file a bug on the floppy issue. It took time to discover it, and there were so many updates happening that I thought is would be fixed before release. I still do not know what happened and am a little hesitant about filling a bug.

I have read that others are having issues with programs and hardware. I like Ubuntu and I like what they did with breezy, but the next one targeting "fixing all bugs" would be welcome at this site.

[erikpiper]

File a bug- anything that stops working, even if it can be fixed by the user, is bad for the OS.

I have had one problem- My almost unused exept for backups USB Zip drive. Everything else is perfect! :) Even firefox is fast! Could be because I am on an older IBM Thinkpad, T23, with no floppy drive :rolleyes:

[teevee]

Only minor problem I discovered so far is that artsd segfaults after a few hours -- I have to start it to get sound in Enemy Territory (not Ubuntu's fault, ET's).

But since I rarely play for hours, thats nothing too serious. Just wondering if it's just me or if Kubuntu users experience that too. Then that would be a bit more serious. ;-) Most important is that all my hardware and hardware devices work flawlessly. Plug in my pen drive or MP3 player, Nautilus opens, plug SD card into card reader, Nautilus opens, insert blank CD, dialog pops up giving me a choice to burn an audio, photo, data CD. Plug in digicam, an application to import photos onto HD pops up. PSC, Nvidia, Soundblaster, all working, zero problems. Wonderful!

[ember]

I second the idea of striving for better stability - but I guess, it's an advantage for Dapper that there is quite a while for apps to stabilize that come out soom (Open Office 2 final, Firefox+Thunderbird 1.5, PHP 5.1).

I do not really care much about questionable things like w32codecs or libdvdcss - I have a working windows partition and a comfortable standalone player for that, but all in all, when I installed breezy this weekend, I got the feeling it was less comfortable to install then hoary. Yet this is also a problem that new features rise new wishes (e.g. I would like to change the usplash picture and colors).

[geearf]

Only minor problem I discovered so far is that artsd segfaults after a few hours -- I have to start it to get sound in Enemy Territory (not Ubuntu's fault, ET's).

But since I rarely play for hours, thats nothing too serious. Just wondering if it's just me or if Kubuntu users experience that too. Then that would be a bit more serious. ;-) Most important is that all my hardware and hardware devices work flawlessly. Plug in my pen drive or MP3 player, Nautilus opens, plug SD card into card reader, Nautilus opens, insert blank CD, dialog pops up giving me a choice to burn an audio, photo, data CD. Plug in digicam, an application to import photos onto HD pops up. PSC, Nvidia, Soundblaster, all working, zero problems. Wonderful!


Same problem with artsd here, and it can happen with no sound playing too :(

[WorLord]

I have to second the stability idea, although stability doesn't mean "lack of crashing" in this case.

Breezy has been, for me, the least stable of the three main releases. What's more maddening is that the two huge bugs I have found with it (dpt_i2o kernel panic and non-working evolution-exchange) are apparently regressions... neither was a problem in the other main Ubuntu releases, and I did not previously think that Ubuntu would ship with these problems still unresolved.

Especially not a kernel panic. Especially not when both bugs were in bugzilla before Breezy's release.

This is very disappointing.

[awaldram]

Thats strange evolution-exchange fine here was fixed 4 days prior to release.

Now Alps touch pad don't get me started, kernel that doesn't give toggle events and xorg-synaptics driver regressed to keep synaptics users happy but breaks Alps (guess the developer have synaptic pads) both report months before release...

But all in all good work thanks guys

[WorLord]

Thats strange evolution-exchange fine here was fixed 4 days prior to release.

I didn't upgrade until after the official release of Breezy. Evolution Exchange is very, very broken. It crashes every time I open Evolution.

(This was a fresh install).

[awaldram]

start evoution from a terminal windows to see whats actually happening.


It works ok here against a 2003 exchange server.

paste your results

[joepotter]

I have to second the stability idea, although stability doesn't mean "lack of crashing" in this case.

Breezy has been, for me, the least stable of the three main releases. What's more maddening is that the two huge bugs I have found with it (dpt_i2o kernel panic and non-working evolution-exchange) are apparently regressions... neither was a problem in the other main Ubuntu releases, and I did not previously think that Ubuntu would ship with these problems still unresolved.

Especially not a kernel panic. Especially not when both bugs were in bugzilla before Breezy's release.

This is very disappointing.



I just put a new hard drive in a computer here in our lab. I grabbed a Breezy disk (colony 3) and installed without a hitch.

I then upgraded to current Breezy, and it killed off networking. I was able to get going again by disabling the hotplug mapping in /etc/network/interfaces.

That is moving backwards to me.

[nocturn]

Balance?

One example. Just days before breezy went finale an update stopped thirty machines of mine from using the floppy drive. This is *not* stability.

I also see various other issues discussed that lead me to think working on a "very stable bug free" Dapper would be a good thing for the users. Plus, a good thing for Ubuntu's reputation.

The question is, was this fixed at release time? If so, the goal of a stable release has still been reached... Even 5 minutes before official release you are using a product that is clearly labeled as development.

[nocturn]

Ah - So my hard drive light constantly lit is a figment of my imagination then?

And I actually do get sound when I play quake3, it's just that I've become deaf since installing Breezy ](*,)

What azz said is that all outstanding bugs had been fixed. This issue is not something I have on Breezy, it may be related to some piece of hardware you use.

Have you filed a bugreport about this?

[nocturn]

File a bug- anything that stops working, even if it can be fixed by the user, is bad for the OS.

I have had one problem- My almost unused exept for backups USB Zip drive. Everything else is perfect! :) Even firefox is fast! Could be because I am on an older IBM Thinkpad, T23, with no floppy drive :rolleyes:

I had a number of problems with Breezy after updating. But, then again, I upraded just after the RC. A couple of days before release, a big update fixed most of them (the only one remaining being ndiswrapper, which needed a reinstall of the drivers).

[WorLord]

There are already bugs on the 'zilla, but if you think it'll help:


worlord@computer:/home/worlord$ evolution
adding hook target 'source'

(evolution:25604): camel-WARNING **: camel_exception_get_id called with NULL parameter.

(evolution:25604): camel-WARNING **: camel_exception_get_id called with NULL parameter.

(evolution:25604): Gdk-CRITICAL **: gdk_gc_set_foreground: assertion `GDK_IS_GC (gc)' failed


After a couple seconds, a dialog box appears on top of evolutoin. It reads:

The Application "evolution-exchange-storage" has quit unexpectedly.

You can inform the developers of what happened to help them fix it. Or you can restart the application right now.

[joepotter]

The question is, was this fixed at release time? If so, the goal of a stable release has still been reached... Even 5 minutes before official release you are using a product that is clearly labeled as development.

I think you misunderstand what I was trying to say.

Using a Colony 3 disk, I installed perfectly. Then I used "apt-get dist-upgrade" to grab the official released Breezy. Upon reboot, the Official Breezy Badger failed miserably.

Since I have used Debian for a long time, I was able to get it going but I wager most newbies would not be able to do so. (edit the /etc/network/interfaces file)

So, it is the *official* breezy that killed networking. A quick check of the forums would tell you that this is a problem with more than just me.

[macleod199]

I think you misunderstand what I was trying to say.

Using a Colony 3 disk, I installed perfectly. Then I used "apt-get dist-upgrade" to grab the official released Breezy. Upon reboot, the Official Breezy Badger failed miserably.

Since I have used Debian for a long time, I was able to get it going but I wager most newbies would not be able to do so. (edit the /etc/network/interfaces file)

So, it is the *official* breezy that killed networking. A quick check of the forums would tell you that this is a problem with more than just me.

The question is whether that would have happened on a fresh install or an upgrade from Hoary to Breezy. I don't think they ever promised anyone an upgrade from a development version to final would be problem free.

I know I had problems with networking after I installed NetworkManager and after I uinstalled it, but I eventually did a fresh install somewhere along the development line and that took me all the way to final just fine.

[joepotter]

The question is whether that would have happened on a fresh install or an upgrade from Hoary to Breezy. I don't think they ever promised anyone an upgrade from a development version to final would be problem free.

I know I had problems with networking after I installed NetworkManager and after I uinstalled it, but I eventually did a fresh install somewhere along the development line and that took me all the way to final just fine.



Do you really think that an upgrade from Hoary to Breezy would go better than an upgrade from a perfectly working colony 3 ?!?

If that is so, then Ubuntu is in very sad shape. Sad indeed. I have worked with all branches of Debian for years and years, and find that idea to be hard to swallow. However, I'll give that a try tomorrow. I will wipe the working box and install Hoary. Then kill networking by upgrading to Breezy. (how do I know it will die?)

I know because it is the hotplug mapping in the latest Breezy that does it; just as it has for many others if I am to believe their words on the forum.

[ember]

I am quite sure that upgrade won't make a difference. At least it would be highly illogical.
Well - actually it confirms my feeling that Breezy is the least stable of all three Ubuntu finals I tried. A pity.

[macleod199]

Do you really think that an upgrade from Hoary to Breezy would go better than an upgrade from a perfectly working colony 3 ?!?

If that is so, then Ubuntu is in very sad shape. Sad indeed. I have worked with all branches of Debian for years and years, and find that idea to be hard to swallow. However, I'll give that a try tomorrow. I will wipe the working box and install Hoary. Then kill networking by upgrading to Breezy. (how do I know it will die?)

I know because it is the hotplug mapping in the latest Breezy that does it; just as it has for many others if I am to believe their words on the forum.

What I'm suggesting is they dicked around with the network settings during development to accomplish whatever unclear goal they were trying to accomplish, and when they arrived at a final state they hopefully made sure it was one you could upgrade to from Hoary. Interim users may not be so lucky.

[LaserJock]

I would just like to point out that some major "under the hood" changes took place in Breezy. Breezy uses Python 2.4 and gcc 4.0 by default and Xorg was modularized. All of those things added a huge amount of work because the devs had to go back through and make sure that programs would work with the new python and gcc and that with the package shuffling in Xorg that all the files ended up in the right places. There are ~30 Masters of the Universe (MOTU) that are in charge of the Universe packages (~15000 or so) and when the toolchain gets changed there is a lot of work to be done. Lots of people (myself included) tryed to do the best we could to help the MOTU to just get the Universe packages to build, let alone be bug free. That said there are some truely amazing people in the MOTU that worked virtually without sleep for the week before Breezy was released trying to squash bugs and make sure everything was as good as they could get.

That said, I think that Dapper will rock (both coolness wise and stability wise). There has been a lot of discussion on #ubuntu-motu on irc.freenode.net since Breezy was released about what things are going to change for Dapper. I am pretty positive (unless something dramatic happens) that the Universe Version Freeze will be earlier (perhaps a couple weeks after the main Version Freeze) and it will be harder (less getting things in at the last minute) . This will increase stability a lot since there will be almost exclusive focus on testing and bugfixing after the UVF and there should be a minimal number of big changes (ideally none). Also, there is some changes in the infrastructure (Malone for bug reporting and the general use of Launchpad for most development activities) that I think will help.

[joepotter]

What I'm suggesting is they dicked around with the network settings during development to accomplish whatever unclear goal they were trying to accomplish, and when they arrived at a final state they hopefully made sure it was one you could upgrade to from Hoary. Interim users may not be so lucky.



Well, you are wrong. Your idea makes no sense to anyone who understands Debian and Apt, but heck science is about testing, eh?

If you upgrade from Hoary to breezy this box still has it's network stop. You then fix it by not letting hotplug do mapping in the /etc/network/interfaces file. The box works fine as long as hotplug does not kill off networking. (a lot of work just to prove this silly point)

It is not like this is the only bug out there. This release needed more polish, and still needs it. Heck, many are having repository troubles to boot.

The upshot of all this is simple. I hope that Dapper is much, much better at release than Breezy. If not, I for one go back to pure Debian.

[joepotter]

I would just like to point out that some major "under the hood" changes took place in Breezy. Breezy uses Python 2.4 and gcc 4.0 by default and Xorg was modularized. All of those things added a huge amount of work because the devs had to go back through and make sure that programs would work with the new python and gcc and that with the package shuffling in Xorg that all the files ended up in the right places. There are ~30 Masters of the Universe (MOTU) that are in charge of the Universe packages (~15000 or so) and when the toolchain gets changed there is a lot of work to be done. Lots of people (myself included) tryed to do the best we could to help the MOTU to just get the Universe packages to build, let alone be bug free. That said there are some truely amazing people in the MOTU that worked virtually without sleep for the week before Breezy was released trying to squash bugs and make sure everything was as good as they could get.

That said, I think that Dapper will rock (both coolness wise and stability wise). There has been a lot of discussion on #ubuntu-motu on irc.freenode.net since Breezy was released about what things are going to change for Dapper. I am pretty positive (unless something dramatic happens) that the Universe Version Freeze will be earlier (perhaps a couple weeks after the main Version Freeze) and it will be harder (less getting things in at the last minute) . This will increase stability a lot since there will be almost exclusive focus on testing and bugfixing after the UVF and there should be a minimal number of big changes (ideally none). Also, there is some changes in the infrastructure (Malone for bug reporting and the general use of Launchpad for most development activities) that I think will help.


I would like to point out that the users appreciate the hard work done by the developers. The average user rates Ubuntu on how stable and bug-free the finale releases are. I see many more folks having real problems with Breezy that I did with Hoary.

It was a real bumpy ride with Breezy during developement, and I hope the developers will fix any problems left behind before they more on to Dapper. Then I hope they make real sure that Dapper is the most stable bug-free release that the Linux world has ever seen.

Good luck in your work.

[PsychoTrauma]

To anyone having problems with breezy I would suggest they get the official 5.10 iso and install from that and not a colony disk. It has been said many times that dist-upgrade might not be perfect. I would also like to add that there was other bugs that were not fixed for breezy the (wavpack gstreamer plugin crash when playing files with the -h string bug) but thats a upstream problem.