If you use Ubuntu Dapper as your primary OS, you’ve undoubtedly been hit or are blissfully unaware of the serious X.org problem with the most recent update offered by the ‘notifier’. I say blissfully because the fix was out before I could count to 3.
In the world of software this is a bit of a paradox. One one hand — “How dare they not test their fixes!” and the other…”They fixed it already?!” The folks that are used to commercial software get a little nervous when patches don’t work as advertised or seem to cause more system problems than they solve. Why is that? It could be because they have been burned by companies that are too slow to correct problems and realize that a bad bug will be around for a long time.
I’ve been involved with Gnu/Linux now for about 7 years and during that time I’ve seen dramatic progress towards Joe Sixpack. When I started, I felt like Joe (that from a SW Eng). But now things really are looking good for Joe.
What is the point? Sure the update was a serious infraction, and many probably reinstalled because they didn’t know what to do. However the community rallied and found a fix in a matter of minutes. Maybe Ubuntu (and Linux in general) needs some kind of rollback or “restore point” that will allow Joe to undo any “damage” that may have been done by a bad update. This would really help out Joe.
Until that time, the community is there and ready to help (And perhaps you shouldn’t do an update as soon as it is available :)). Next time, don’t reinstall, just go to the www.ubuntuforums.org and see what you need to do.
j
My Life... My Blog 
August 22, 2006 at 5:43 pm |
How to see http://www.ubuntuforums.org if there is no display?Do you know that this flaw still exists as an update?Having a community support doesn’t happen only for ubuntu, even commercial products have great community support.Windows2000 have an option for unistalling updates, Ubuntu is very slow to follow. I am using Ubuntu in a testing networking environment and I think this is the only place where linux has advantges,
August 22, 2006 at 6:07 pm |
Using the Ubuntu CD will boot a LiveCD, which will most likely allow the poor soul a web browser (or use lynx, not a Joe Sixpack fix tho). I don’t deny that some people are still having problems, however the fix is there. The issue is how much damage did someone do to their system when it first broke by overreacting. My system broke too.
August 23, 2006 at 5:46 am |
I never got hit by this bug, but I think that’s indicative of just how difficult it is to test patches before they are sent out to the world. Canonical and the entire Ubuntu developer community cannot possibly have every combination of hardware and software at their disposal. Even mighty Microsoft, which has enough people and money to test at least a goodly portion of their target systems, has sent out dozens or hundreds of updates that broke things.
The fact is, most of the develpers who create this stuff are probably running their systems the Right Way. Everything is likely done as it should be. Then there are the real users who Just Don’t Care, and are probably running all sorts of things that should probably have already broken their systems. Don’t be too hard on the packagers, though. They obviously did a good job of fixing the problem quickly once they realized what they had done.
You do point out something that is probably true: an emergency rollback feature for updates would be a handy thing to have. But do you know just how many times I’ve turned off Windows XP’s rollback feature simply because it was the cause of the problems? We don’t need that kind of thing in the Linux world. Oh, look… I have more updates to install now. 😉