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I use Ubuntu on my desktop and have sent a number of patches to them and their upstreams when I encountered problems. One thing about Ubuntu is that, if you pu

by Ologn 13y ago

I use Ubuntu on my desktop and have sent a number of patches to them and their upstreams when I encountered problems. One thing about Ubuntu is that, if you put Android to one side (Android basically uses the Linux kernel, but does not use things such as libc etc.), Ubuntu is the largest Linux desktop by far. Wikipedia web logs show them coming at 77 times the number of their nearest competitor, Fedora ( http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOperatingSystems.htm http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOpera... ). Combine this massive user base, which often is not of the traditional Unix user background, with its automated bug report tools like apport, and traditional bug reporting trouble ticket web sites like Launchpad, and you have a massive exposure of the traditional Linux/X/fdo/Gnome ecosystem to users. Which means many of the "eyeballs for bugs" can, and sometimes does, come from Ubuntu. I have mostly looked at the evince/poppler/cairo applications and dependencies, and it seems to me that far more bugs are discovered on Ubuntu than in any of the other distro bug trouble ticket systems. If apport reports were more carefully maintained, that number would increase by some multiple. I have also noticed that Canonical is good for patching bugs reported anywhere on Ubuntu. For example, if a patch or bug report is languishing in the Debian trouble ticket system, Ubuntu will sometimes grab it and apply it to Ubuntu. So reported unfixed bugs in Debian, with patches languishing in its trouble ticket system, will be patched in Ubuntu. For example, this ( http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=570904 http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=570904 ) bug report was never touched by any Debian developer, but it was patched downstream on Ubuntu. The thing about Ubuntu is it seems to have bad relations with so many of its upstreams in the FLOSS community. Linux. X. Gnome. Debian. Banshee. And I guess in this specific case KDE. It is too bad that things are not working more smoothly, where the massive user base exposing bugs is not flowing upstream more smoothly, and making Linux, Debian, Gnome better products. However much Ubuntu forks things, it is still very dependent on these upstreams, Gnome included. Yes, Gnome included - take a close look, Unity changes some things, but there are still tons of dependencies on Gnome. And Ubuntu really is dependent on the FLOSS community. When Ubuntu finds a massive fd.o or Gnome bug, it tends to get patched quickly. The entire ecosystem of all distros is looking at it. I have seen a lot of Unity only bugs languish. Basically, 99% of them have to be fixed by a Canonical engineer. Usually this does not happen, even if it is a major bug you sometimes have to wait a long time. Ubuntu has the user base but it does not have the developer base.

joeyh 13y ago
http://bugs.debian.org/608996 http://bugs.debian.org/608996 is the (duplicate) bug that was fixed by Debian developers. (I'd say more, but I've long ago stopped commenting on Ubuntu for similar reasons as Martin Gräßlin.)
- Ologn 13y ago
  The bug was reported in February 2010 to the Debian bug tracker, where it was forever ignored, although the fix was trivial (replace the vol_id comment with blkid). In May 2010 Ubuntu downstream is syncing with Debian ( https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/partman-target/67ubuntu1 https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/partman-target/67ubuntu... ), sees the bug report and fixes it in Ubuntu. Then in February 2011, a duplicate of the original bug is reported and gets fixed in Debian. I was impressed by the fact that Ubuntu fixed this within three months even though the bug report was in the upstream ticket system, where it had not been fixed. Debian fixed it nine months after Ubuntu. I appreciate the fact that Canonical has done things which help Ubuntu which sometimes, inadvertently or not, hurt Debian. For example, Canonical hiring so many Debian developers helped make the sarge release late. As I said in my post, Ubuntu is not that good about sending patches upstream. For a while, I was of the mind that Ubuntu was a mixed bag that in some ways helped and in some ways hurt the FLOSS community. Although over the past year or two, it seems the trend has been more toward the latter way.
ta_koudeeu 13y ago
wikipedia user agent based logs are not a reliable source, and from this source it seems to me the closest competitor is linux other with 4 times more hits than ubuntu. Funny that distrowatch stopped being used as reference by ubuntu followers since ubuntu fell from the top to make room for mint and debian, /r/linux survey data doesn't corroborate wikipedia data either.

by Ologn 13y ago

joeyh 13y ago

http://bugs.debian.org/608996 http://bugs.debian.org/608996 is the (duplicate) bug that was fixed by Debian developers. (I'd say more, but I've long ago stopped commenting on Ubuntu for similar reasons as Martin Gräßlin.)

Ologn 13y ago
The bug was reported in February 2010 to the Debian bug tracker, where it was forever ignored, although the fix was trivial (replace the vol_id comment with blkid). In May 2010 Ubuntu downstream is syncing with Debian ( https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/partman-target/67ubuntu1 https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/partman-target/67ubuntu... ), sees the bug report and fixes it in Ubuntu. Then in February 2011, a duplicate of the original bug is reported and gets fixed in Debian. I was impressed by the fact that Ubuntu fixed this within three months even though the bug report was in the upstream ticket system, where it had not been fixed. Debian fixed it nine months after Ubuntu. I appreciate the fact that Canonical has done things which help Ubuntu which sometimes, inadvertently or not, hurt Debian. For example, Canonical hiring so many Debian developers helped make the sarge release late. As I said in my post, Ubuntu is not that good about sending patches upstream. For a while, I was of the mind that Ubuntu was a mixed bag that in some ways helped and in some ways hurt the FLOSS community. Although over the past year or two, it seems the trend has been more toward the latter way.

ta_koudeeu 13y ago

wikipedia user agent based logs are not a reliable source, and from this source it seems to me the closest competitor is linux other with 4 times more hits than ubuntu. Funny that distrowatch stopped being used as reference by ubuntu followers since ubuntu fell from the top to make room for mint and debian, /r/linux survey data doesn't corroborate wikipedia data either.