Hoary: second system syndrome?

[burlap]

At first, a kind of disclaimer: these are my impressions after half an hour in Hoary. I'm a very happy user of Warty (in fact I use Linux only), but nevertheless I wanted to test Hoary (double boot) before going for an upgrade. Maybe my remarks would rather fit into different forums, but looking for answers is not my intent (well, if there are any I'd appreciate them anyway), and only this forum seems appropriate for trolling.

So, in short, my impressions. Some problems have obvious solutions (like usb mounting) but the main purpose is to compare some things to Warty.
- It was not possible to create a user during install. I had to get a regular root account (or is it intentional?) and make myself a user later.
- CDs won't eject from Gnome (they do with "eject" on CLI)
- My usb key doesn't get automounted (but, on the other hand, I can mount it manually several times what is not possible on Warty without restarting hotplug services)
- My digital camera is not recognized (it's PTP but works without problems in Warty, and BTW it's one of the most popular ones - powershot a510)
- It's minor, but I was hoping for the new gtk file selector in openoffice (featured in Fedora 3).

My point is: what improvements justify problems with cameras or cds? It took me only a couple of minutes to get annoyed, or at least disappointed, and to give up upgrade at least for some time. I can't resist an overstatement - is it a second system in life syndrome? Of course, I'm sure that at least some developers released a lot before Ubuntu, so it shouldn't be the case, but...

I was really hoping for Beagle and other state-of-the-art goodies in Hoary, but as they were dropped I was convinced that there were reasons. One of the biggest advantages of Warty is that simple tasks are simple and simply work (one notable exception is cd-rw burning in Nautilus but finally I've found out that it's a hardware-specific issue), which is basically what computers are for. First contact with Hoary gives typical (still typical, unfortunatelly) Linux experience: looks nice, promises a lot but if you add up all these small errors, it turns out to be unusable in daily life.

[UbuWu]

Your first four points: they didn't happen to me, everything works fine... about your last point: I think you will have to install openoffice.org-gtk-gnome for that.

[zenwhen]

I am sorry that you have these issues, but you are going the wrong way about getting them solved.

Rational, considerate people make threads asking for help with their problems. They provide as much info as possible in the initial post and make it easy to help them. I will go out of my way to help these people.

Other people make whiny little half baked flame bait rants which seem to suggest that we should somehow convince you to provide us with information to help you with.

What do you want out of this? Do you want us to help you? Do you want us to apologize to you that you are having issues?

Why not just ask for help? Why not help us help you? When I open a help thread and see no information provided about the issue, I write it off as a person who does not deserve to be helped. You wrote yourself off with your last comment. Making broad statements about the general usability of Linux without asking for help first is both stupid and juvenile.

PS: I could have helped with four of your five issues. :)

[poofyhairguy]

At first, a kind of disclaimer: these are my impressions after half an hour in Hoary. I'm a very happy user of Warty (in fact I use Linux only), but nevertheless I wanted to test Hoary (double boot) before going for an upgrade. Maybe my remarks would rather fit into different forums, but looking for answers is not my intent (well, if there are any I'd appreciate them anyway), and only this forum seems appropriate for trolling.

So, in short, my impressions. Some problems have obvious solutions (like usb mounting) but the main purpose is to compare some things to Warty.
- It was not possible to create a user during install. I had to get a regular root account (or is it intentional?) and make myself a user later.
- CDs won't eject from Gnome (they do with "eject" on CLI)
- My usb key doesn't get automounted (but, on the other hand, I can mount it manually several times what is not possible on Warty without restarting hotplug services)
- My digital camera is not recognized (it's PTP but works without problems in Warty, and BTW it's one of the most popular ones - powershot a510)
- It's minor, but I was hoping for the new gtk file selector in openoffice (featured in Fedora 3).

My point is: what improvements justify problems with cameras or cds? It took me only a couple of minutes to get annoyed, or at least disappointed, and to give up upgrade at least for some time. I can't resist an overstatement - is it a second system in life syndrome? Of course, I'm sure that at least some developers released a lot before Ubuntu, so it shouldn't be the case, but...

I was really hoping for Beagle and other state-of-the-art goodies in Hoary, but as they were dropped I was convinced that there were reasons. One of the biggest advantages of Warty is that simple tasks are simple and simply work (one notable exception is cd-rw burning in Nautilus but finally I've found out that it's a hardware-specific issue), which is basically what computers are for. First contact with Hoary gives typical (still typical, unfortunatelly) Linux experience: looks nice, promises a lot but if you add up all these small errors, it turns out to be unusable in daily life.

Sounds like a mess. Stick with Warty then. Upgrading every year instead of every six months isn't a big deal. Windows XP and Debian Stable users have an OS over three years old. I have a few computers, and some are having trouble with Hoary. I might run warty on them. No big deal...

[jdong]

I don't think these are Hoary problems, but rather issues that appeared during the upgrading process.

Can you please describe to us exactly how you went about the upgrade? ;)

[burlap]

Yes, I know it's flame bait. That is why it did not go to "desktop support" or anywhere else. I know that this is not a place to ask for help neither this is the way to ask for help. I will ask anyway when I'm ready, file bugs or whatever is necessary (I know what information to provide), this was not the point.

And this was not an upgrade - have it been an upgrade, I would've been silent and solved issues myself (I use some extra repositories and custom packages, so there would be a lot to blame). This was a clean install (not clean in fact).

And yes, maybe I got prematurely annoyed (like with openoffice thingy), but the point I wanted to raise is that for me there is no progress in usability (I pretend to be a regular user so I pretend I don't look under the hood, but I know that the changes go there). Well, I don't have to upgrade every half a year, I don't have to use Ubuntu either. I'm interested so I'm loud and I have a right to be wrong (democracy-related, in the US they call it "First Amendment").

I know that everything is in development (I like those posts that give you one-sentence solution "this is in development" for problems with basic components of gnome-desktop). But I wonder - why things as simple as (or as difficult as?) cd-ejecting cease to work?

I shouldn't have started with my problems as they just obscured the point: I was trying to refer to Brooks' Mythical Man Month - Debian got lost somewhere in its development process, I was just thinking where is Ubuntu heading?

Second system in life effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect) is a concept that may be related here: may, as there are so many developers that it is impossible to tell, for whom this is fisrt, second or nth system.

But - looking at Ubuntu development in general - how would you judge it? Is it well disciplined? Features under control? Please, forget about my cd-ejecting and camera, I can find some solutions later. Please forgive me if I was too offensive. And please forgive me I expect Linux to work out of the box... :wink:

[UbuWu]

For me it has been the best out-of-the-box experience for linux ever. First time I kept linux installed for more than a month :-P Still I also get annoyed sometimes with all the small problems you keep running into... ](*,)

[burlap]

Well, in Polish we say, in situations like this one, "I give [you your] honour back" ("zwracam honor"), which means that I am to blame. So I do apologize.

Maybe one day I'll come back to these meaning-of-life type of questions on the future of Ubuntu development, being on schedule and working well... In a more friendly chat-like post...

The solution: (optional)
The most suspicious thing about the whole install process was that it was impossible to create a user account. I suspected it had something to do with the mess later (due to sudo), and it did. However, this was still not my mistake (I think so) - I have installed Hoary exactly the same way as Warty (and as Sarge, Fedoras, Red Hats, Mandrakes, etc. - considering different setup methods accordingly), and my name did not change in the meantime... Yes, I suspect that the problem is my Polish name with Polish-specific letters, that seem to be impossible to implement since DOS 3.30, which was my first OS on a PC. But as I wrote: I used my full name in Warty and it did install (I mean full name, not login, which was without any specials both in Warty and Hoary). Hoary did not want to recognize my Polish letters (although it is supposed to be even more locale-universal, at least more into UTF as far as I understand it), but wanted me to change my login (which was ok). On my second install I tried to go back in the process and correct my full name, without any results. Only on the third run (each from scratch) I input "clean" name and it went well.

So - cd, camera, usb work. Still no gtk selector for openoffice (is it there at all?), with both openoffice-gnome-gtk (it seems to be default anyway) and openoffice-gnomevfs installed - but I haven't restarted yet (only hibernated). Well, hibernate: this is the "killer app" for me, so nothing will stop me now from upgrading. (I used to use software-suspend-2 with 2.4.x kernels but never had patience to compile own working 2.6, it somehow became more difficult comparing to 2.4...)