Will Ubuntu significantly improve in the future?

[AlesUbu123]

Hi all!

I have been using Ubuntu for about two years now.
I have noticed how nicely it evolves. I remember having to manually mount USB drives in the past, manually installing a bunch of drivers in Xubuntu 6.10 to make things work. In Hardy, all my hardware is perfectly recognised and all media codecs installed with one click of a mouse.

Still, there are many things I greatly miss and I have noticed little progress in some areas.

First, for example the synchronisation framework for mobile devices, such as Pocket PCs has not improved at all over time. (at least not for the regular user).
Second, my bluetooth headphones are still a pain to use in Ubuntu. Also other bluetooth devices are badly lacking support. The sad thing is that this actually works but with a lot of work and a lot of manual configuration.
I am greatly thankful to Wine developers, but some programs are still far from working in wine, and I would really like for that to change.
There are other areas better implementation I could talk about but they are nicely summarised on Ubuntu Brainstorm site.

I know that all these areas originate from problems caused by lack of open standards and they are not actually Ubuntu's (or Linux) problem but I would like to hear your opinion. Do you think it will ever be possible to just click the bluetooth icon in the tray and select my headphones and voila... I can hear the music? Or will there ever be a time when I connect my Pocket PC which will be automatically recognised and synchronised. Or will I ever simply run the some XY windows program and it will just work?

Can Ubuntu users hope to have these wishes realised in the near (or distant) future?

[jespdj]

Ofcourse Ubuntu will improve with every release as you (and I) have noticed the past few years.

Remember, however, that this is an open source project built largely by volunteers. Unlike proprietary software, you don't have to sit back and wait for some company to improve or fix things - you can actively help yourself and the community to improve things.

File bugs in Launchpad (https://launchpad.net/ubuntu) or get involved (http://www.ubuntu.com/community/participate) in some other way, there's lots to do, not only for people who know how to program.

Also, note that not everybody has the same kind of problems as you have with for example Bluetooth devices. My Bluetooth mouse works perfectly and was easy to connect. If you have problems with specific hardware or software, search and ask a specific question in one of the support forums.

[andamaru]

Linux in general will significantly improve, and so will Ubuntu

[Dremora]

My view is that it has gotten much buggier since 6.10, the new features like Pulseaudio and Bulletproof X probably cause as many problems as they solved.

Still worth using, even despite the bugs.

[linuxguymarshall]

Ubuntu will improve along with most other open source software. The glory of open source is that M$ has ~1000 Windows 7 devs. Ubuntu has pretty much the entire community helping. Even if you don't know it you probably are helping

[VitaLiNux]

Ofcourse Ubuntu will improve with every release as you (and I) have noticed the past few years.

Remember, however, that this is an open source project built largely by volunteers. Unlike proprietary software, you don't have to sit back and wait for some company to improve or fix things - you can actively help yourself and the community to improve things.

File bugs in Launchpad (https://launchpad.net/ubuntu) or get involved (http://www.ubuntu.com/community/participate) in some other way, there's lots to do, not only for people who know how to program.

Also, note that not everybody has the same kind of problems as you have with for example Bluetooth devices. My Bluetooth mouse works perfectly and was easy to connect. If you have problems with specific hardware or software, search and ask a specific question in one of the support forums.
'nuff said. :)

[napalm brain]

I've only been using Ubuntu since the Gutsy Gibbon and I've noticed significant changes in just about everything. Added to that, I've learned so much about Linux is such a short period of time. I'm just thankfully I was able to cut my teeth on a distribution like Ubuntu. I am not sure I would have been able to do so on any other distro. I can't imagine myself, a year ago, trying to install ArchLinux on my laptop.

[bruce89]

My view is that it has gotten much buggier since 6.10, the new features like Pulseaudio and Bulletproof X probably cause as many problems as they solved.

That's the nature of software. New = buggy.

By the way, Ubuntu hasn't improved, I'd say it's got worse. Upstream projects have improved however.

[AlesUbu123]

Unlike proprietary software, you don't have to sit back and wait for some company to improve or fix things - you can actively help yourself and the community to improve things.

...there's lots to do, not only for people who know how to program.

I completely agree, and I feel much more willing to help in development of Linux, knowing that the efforts I put into it aren't transferred into bank accounts of same large company leaders for their yachts and caviar. \\:D/

Still sometimes I fear that once I got used to some particular software - its developer would stop supporting it. I was quite disappointed when I noticed that Streamtuner development stopped in December 2007. (http://www.nongnu.org/streamtuner/) This little app represents what I liked about linux and open-source from the beginning - it serves its cause perfectly, being incredibly light-weight and reliable.
The other thing I am worried about is that some of bugs I posted take quite a while to be looked at or let alone fixed. I would say that only about 5% of things I posted on various bug-tracking sites did any change at all. I especially hope this will change in the future.

I understand that open-source break their backs sitting in front of the computer just to make bluetooth or any other system work better - so I can't complain. At all. I would like to help, but not being a programmer, I do not even know where I would start to help with linux bluetooth support.

So my mission should be to post bugs. OK. No problem. :)

What is funny - now that I am writing this post, I have just tried to run Blueman program again - it has a nice gui for making bluetooth connections. (http://www.gtkfiles.org/app.php/blueman) In a few easy steps it found my BT Headphones, I have set the connection with BT audio sink, and used Audacious with alsa output set to bluetooth. Wow. It worked. In about 5 easy steps :D So maybe this is in part the answer to my question? Hope this happens to PocketPC synchronisation and other areas. [-o<

PS.

By the way, Ubuntu hasn't improved, I'd say it's got worse. Upstream projects have improved however. I disagree with you on that, I feel very reliable with hardy, and in general it has had the most wide tolerance for hardware from my experience. Also the ease of configuration and installation in Hardy has improved significantly for me.
But about pulseasudio - I couldn't agree more - it's implementation in Hardy is not working for me too.