This forum has gone to hell in a handbasket!

[groundpounder]

When I first joined this forum (back when I first installed Warty), it was great. I found many answers to issues I had with relative ease. The way the forum is organized these days, I waste more time that I care to think about digging for answers and only sometimes find what I'm looking for. And the search function is all but useless. If I'm lucky I can find my needle in the haystack of threads that have nothing to do with what I was searching for.

Kinda like the operating system itself where things that were good in the past, aren't anymore. Like I used to be able to plug my digital camera in (on 7.10) and browse to it and work with my photos. Not anymore. Hell, I don't even have all the choices for screen resolution that I had with 7.10. wtf?! I'm getting very frustrated with things getting worse instead of better with each release (and the forum being harder to use to top it all off). It's like microsoft all over again. I'd just really like to be able to spend more time using and enjoying my system than I do trying to get <stuff> to work. I used to be able to do that, but not anymore.
[end of rant]

[steveneddy]

[end of rant]

Thank you.

[sirebral]

Just curious. Who is your computer manufacturer?

I started running with Ubuntu during 7.10 and I have found 8.10 to be the easiest most stable version to run.

[groundpounder]

This one is a Dell.

[sirebral]

weird. Mine too. What kind of Dell?

[groundpounder]

Dimension 4600

[sirebral]

Thanks. I was just curious. I would think that with DELL offering Ubuntu on their PCs they would offer more support and their PCs would be more ready to run a Linux OS.

I am running a Studio Hybrid which could not even install 8.04 without Safe Graphics mode.

[Rhubarb]

I agree that the search function in the Ubuntu forums is quite poor.
The best way I've found is to use google:

search_for_this_expression site:ubuntuforums.org

This will often bring up more relevant search hits.

As for screen resolutions, yeah, it can be a bit more of a pain.
Most of it has to do with Xorg evolving and binary closed source graphics drivers.
Intel's open source graphics drivers are also evolving with Xorg, so all of this is really just a temporary hiccup that should hopefully be resolved in future.

[jimmy the saint]

I second the google option. The forum search certainly could use some work (replacing?)

[poebae]

@groundpounder: the problem is not with Ubuntu per se, but the fact that it has to be configured to run on thousands of different hardware combinations.

Every time a new release comes out, there are people who absolutely love it because it works perfectly and fixes problems that they couldn't work out before (as it did in my case).

On the other hand, there's the "Everything was fine in $adjective $animal" camp, who unfortunately end up with a raw deal after upgrading to what they thought would be a superior distribution.

Unfortunately it will always be the case (in the foreseeable future, anyway).