any support

[timomak]

Dear all,
I’ m almost new with Linux Lubuntu desktop(16.04)since March 2017 and i can say i’ m satisfied.
However this year i faced two issues that last about 5 months and are still not solved. I don't report here the specific issues as this is a general discussion.

I post this because i would like to notify here that especially Ubuntu and flavours are great, but from the support point of view there is a gap to be solved.

I don’t know how. But i refer to (various) issues that may turn any system "almost unusable".
Reporting a bug is not so easy, not all can.
There should be another, more immediate support option.
If i miss something, please let me know about. As about IRC i haven’t tried yet

Hopefully some day this will occur in order that Linux os will be more attractive and friendly for people/end user with not much knowledge of computer technology.

[mörgæs]

I don't know if you want advice or not but my first suggestion is always to try a later / the latest release to see if any given bug is fixed. I can't imagine how many unfixed bugs that are present in 16.04.

Speaking of which, thanks for being interested in reporting bugs but a report created for 16.04 will get very little attention.

I hope your Ubuntu journey onwards will be less bumpy.

[yancek]

There should be another, more immediate support option.

There is. Pay for support. You pay for support from other operating systems so if you need more than is available at "volunteer" forums such as this, you have the option for paid support. After all, you likely got the Ubuntu OS at no cost.

[timomak]

Thank you very much for your advice. You are right indeed, 16.4 is near the end, however is a nice os i believe.

I don't know if you want advice or not but my first suggestion is always to try a later / the latest release to see if any given bug is fixed. I can't imagine how many unfixed bugs that are present in 16.04.

Speaking of which, thanks for being interested in reporting bugs but a report created for 16.04 will get very little attention.

I hope your Ubuntu journey onwards will be less bumpy.

[timomak]

Correct. We have to pay if we need more. I'will check out the cost for paid support.
Thank you.

There is. Pay for support. You pay for support from other operating systems so if you need more than is available at "volunteer" forums such as this, you have the option for paid support. After all, you likely got the Ubuntu OS at no cost.

[mastablasta]

Reporting a bug is not so easy, not all can.
There should be another, more immediate support option.

Bug reports are quite automated and easy to do.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs

still the important thing is to know it is a bug. this is the hard part.

As about IRC i haven’t tried yet

IRC is faster. there is also Ask Ubuntu. all are volunteers offering support.

often issue is in drivers. and often the makers of Ubuntu do not have control over them. sometimes they do. they make a patch and that patch messes up something else. in this case the only way to solve it is bug report from users. this is the same in all operating systems. but if you are not involved with it in for example Windows then you might not know about it.

anyway - free fast support - try IRC channel, slower free support try forums or Ask Ubuntu; paid support - purchase it from Canonical.: https://buy.ubuntu.com/

but Canonical doesn't seem to offer any users support (except for enterprise). i mean the first with call support is 150 USD and ment for min 20 desktops.

[timomak]

Thank you very much for answering.
Very useful informations.
I will get involved with bug reporting and IRC method.

[PaulW2U]

I’ m almost new with Linux Lubuntu desktop(16.04)since March 2017 and i can say i’ m satisfied.

Depending on the nature of your problem with Lubuntu 16.04 you maybe too late in getting support or an issue fixed.

See https://lubuntu.me/downloads/ which shows that after three years the support for Lubuntu moves from the Lubuntu Team to the community. This can be taken to mean that if the issue is with the LXDE desktop then support has ended but if the problem is with packages shared with mainstream Ubuntu then support and the possibility of bugs being fixed continues until April 2021.

You might also note that Lubuntu 16.04 is no longer offered as a download as it is now considered to be unsupported by the Lubuntu Team.

[timomak]

Depending on the nature of your problem with Lubuntu 16.04 you maybe too late in getting support or an issue fixed.

See https://lubuntu.me/downloads/ which shows that after three years the support for Lubuntu moves from the Lubuntu Team to the community. This can be taken to mean that if the issue is with the LXDE desktop then support has ended but if the problem is with packages shared with mainstream Ubuntu then support and the possibility of bugs being fixed continues until April 2021.




You might also note that Lubuntu 16.04 is no longer offered as a download as it is now considered to be unsupported by the Lubuntu Team.

This is correct. However from the above link you are able to download 16.4 version, see down at the end of the page : previous releases are here (being updated)

Just for info, the issues i faced for 16.4 is:
After updating lubuntu 16.04.6 to kernel 4.15.0-48 3g modem is not detected properly and
USB_ModeSwitch • zte k3565z on Lubuntu 16.04.6
for 18.4.03
Bug #1770129 “G_IS_DBUS_CONNECTION (connection)' failed” : Bugs : leafpad package : Ubuntu

[guiverc]

Being available for download, does not mean it's supported. All Ubuntu releases ISO can be downloaded in fact, so if you'd like to see Ubuntu 4.10 you could in fact look at the 2004-October release of Ubuntu - but it wouldn't be recommended to actually use a system that old.

If you look at the Lubuntu release notes for 16.04 (2016-April release) https://lubuntu.me/xenial-released/ you'll note it does only come with 3 years of support, as it's a community (flavor) release, and 5 years applies only to 'main' Ubuntu with packages coming from the 'main' repository (as Paul White has already stated). The Lubuntu Team doesn't support 16.04, which is not unique - all flavors (excluding Kylin for 16.04) came with 3 years of support.

If you enter `ubuntu-support-status` on your actual box, you'll see what % of packages are still maintained (these will be Ubuntu packages supported by Canonical), and what % (such as all LXDE/Lubuntu flavor specific packages) are no longer supported or maintained. I would suggest upgrading to a supported release of Lubuntu (18.04 LTS if you don't like release-upgrading every 6-9 months as required by non-LTS releases).

If you were to report bugs on Lubuntu 16.04 LTS relating to Lubuntu packages, I would expect you'd be asked to re-test on a supported release (ie. 18.04 LTS) with your bug marked 'incomplete' (as 16.04 is an EOL/unsupported Lubuntu release).

Lubuntu also has it's own discourse forum (https://discourse.lubuntu.me/) if you don't want to use IRC. It's watched by Lubuntu team members & devs, but you'll likely only get told what I'm saying here for 16.04 LTS (ie. move to a supported release). Your alternative is use the main Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (with Unity 7 desktop), or Ubuntu 16.04 LTS server (no desktop) or Ubuntu Kylin 16.04 LTS as all other flavors only offered 3 years of support (http://fridge.ubuntu.com/2019/03/01/...-lts-released/)