Or, rather, a comment on Ubuntu 8.04 updates.
*sigh*
So, the OS/distro works like a champ… or did until I clicked the “updates are ready to be installed” (or whatever) button about a week ago. (Before that, an update to WINE apparently “broke” it enough that Encore no longer works properly *arrrgggghhh!*) Now, other issues. I had gotten sound configured like I wanted it (conf to use the old SBLive! Platinum card instead of the onboard nVidia sound), but after last week’s update, nothing I have done in the past does diddly to get it wrking that way again. Now, it’s a crapshoot as to what sound “card” will provide sound for any given application.
Yeh, yeh, disable the onboard sound in the BIOS setup utility and force the OS to use the only chipset it can then see, but that’s soooo… brute force.
Other than that and a weird STOP error in WinXPP/VMWare Server (VMWare doesn’t have a problem; it’s something in the VM/WinXPP interaction), everything’s hunky dory. Oh, wait, not. Flash player no longer works after the last OS update, either.
OK, at one point I was all set to (and IIRC actually did) pronounce Ubuntu 8.04 “Aunt Tilly” ready, assuming someone who knows how to find their own posterior with a stick and a mirror installed it for her. Now, if OS updates are going to break commonly used apps/plugins/components/configurations, I’m not so sure. Canonical had better get its @$$ in gear on this.
Oh, and before anyone points out that I can configure sound preferences via the Control Center, NOT! Oh, it says it’s configured corectly and even (sometimes) tests properly from within the sound applet, but it lies. And the Control Center is a palid, weak, poor analog of the configuration tools built into just about any version of Windows. In order to really manage hardware configuration, it’s often necessary to use the command line. Now, I have few problems with doing that, apart from having gotten away from the (DOS) command line, for the most part, for some few years now and haviung minimal experience with tghe Linux command line (I’m getting better, but there are only so many hours in the day).
But.
What’s not all that big a deal for me is just not “Aunt Tilly” friendly. Heck, “Aunt Tilly” can often not even find Control Panel in Windows without “a mirror and a stick” and approach radar and someone who knows a bit talking her down safely, so maintaining an Ubuntu 8.04 Linux box may well be beyond the “Aunt Tillys” of this world.
Sad. It has so much promise, and it’s perfectly fine for me (as long as I have the time to track down where the buggering updates screwed up my configuration files), but if the the “Aunt Tillys” of this world were to jump on the Ubuntu bandwagon, they’d fall right off lickety split.
Oh, well.
