Ubuntu Jaunty Update Pop-Under

[Craig White]

On Fri, 2009-05-08 at 14:43 -0700, Joseph Sinclair wrote:

> I think you misunderstood the thrust of my rant, I probably wasn't as clear as I hoped.
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seems to be the case...I pondered whether to respond at all because I
defer to your knowledge on just about everything
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> 
> 1) This isn't a Gnome change, it's an Ubuntu change.  It affects KDE just as much as it affects Gnome.
> 2) I'm not complaining about the release of updates that don't update anything, although that's generally stupid anyway, it's that if I don't apply EVERY update I get constantly nagged by a blasted full-screen program about an update I don't want and may never apply.
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that does suck
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> 4) UI changes may/may not upset people, if they do, then they should be thoughtfully re-evaluated.  The purpose of a UI is to make the users' lives easier, not upset them.
> 3 and 5) This isn't about agressive/experimental changes, it's about harming users without cause.  All releases have beta periods, and part of the purpose of a beta period, in addition to finding show-stopper bugs, is to get early feedback on UI changes.  In this case there was a TON of negative feedback during beta, a user-focused UI team SHOULD pull a feature when that happens and do more UI testing to determine how to address the users' concerns in a clear and effective manner.
> The devs who made the change *ADMIT* that it's half-baked, not necessary, and probably disruptive without reason.  WHY would any sane dev team throw out a half-baked change that has a lot of negative feedback in beta?  There's no logical reason not to hold it back one release to finish the changes and address users' concerns.
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and the only Ubuntu I have currently installed is still 8.04 LTS which
obviously doesn't suffer from those issues but also leaves me pretty far
behind your experiences.

It is encouraging that much work is being done on the Desktop
integration these days but of course, without feedback, the local
packagers and developers up stream might never know that their changes
are appreciated or scorned. I try not to vent frustration on user lists.

For the first time, I am participating in Beta releases for Fedora
(using my Acer Aspire One) and that means that I probably have a better
chance at influencing some of these decisions before they hit final
release. I don't know about 'testing' versions of Ubuntu, as to whether
they have sufficient participation to get people kicking these things
around before it becomes an official release but with Fedora and timed
releases, there does seem to be some amount of chaos and it is sort of
fun to participate in the frenzy. I suspect that what they say about hot
dogs and laws (if you want to have respect for the final product, you
don't watch how they are made), might also apply to Linux distribution
packaging.

Craig


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