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I’m Not Loving Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex
Posted by isecore on November 26th, 2008
I’m a fan of free/open source software. This does not mean that I’m a fanboy and that I don’t dole out hearty doses of criticism where such is due.
Intrepid is in my opinion the worst version of Ubuntu I’ve used so far. Hardy (8.04 for those of you who prefer versions over names) had it’s issues but was overall a solid effort. Intrepid… not so much.
So far I still have a completely non-functional bluetooth. Not because of my bluetooth-dongle having been in a hardware regression - but rather since Canonical decided to go with Bluez4 rather than 3. Bluez4 seemingly is a complete trainwreck and is a dud for a lot more users than me. I guessed (wrongly) that these issues would be smoothed out, but we’re coming up on a month since release, and my system feels less stable than an Alpha-build.
As far as I’m concerned, the Ubuntu that I’m running as production shouldn’t have been let out the door. I have several minor showstoppers and some major.
Some of the minor showstoppers include:
* Sometimes my computer simply decides that I don’t have a network-adapter. I don’t run off wireless, I’m a pro-ethernet kind of guy, and my cable never leaves my computer. Yet occasionally Ubuntu will boot up and say that there’s not network adapter in my system.
* Various Samba/CIFS-related error messages. I mount a few network-shares from my server using Samba. This is a vestigial arrangement from back when I ran Windows on my workstation. I have no intention of exchanging this for anything else; I’m not in the mood to find a new solution for mounting shares.
* Minor glitches. Sometimes the usplash doesn’t load, sometimes it takes very long. Sometimes the volume is amazingly loud when I log in.
* Occasionally sound will simply stop. It will be as if I’ve pressed mute. Sound apparently “plays” but I never hear anything. Reboot fixes this.
Some of the major showstoppers:
* My computer has a tendency to freeze/lock up. I’m kinda blaming this on Nvidia though, so it’s not all Ubuntus fault. But it is annoying when you’re doing something, and suddenly the screen freezes and after that the rest of the computer follows suit. I can still move the mouse-cursor, but the rest of the computer is locked. I can’t even restart it using a skinny elephant, I have to push reset. This is not good.
* Bluetooth is still dead, as mentioned earlier.
Finally, I know this is NOT some fair and balanced criticism. I’m enormously frustrated at how my computer has become an unreliable and slow mess. If I wanted that, I would run Windows. I’m annoyed at how bug-reports are being filed yet nothing is happening.
I’m just plain frustrated, is all. This is ventilating.
License
This work is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5 Sweden License.
December 4th, 2008 at 18:06
You’re not the only one. 1 out of 2 Intrepid users report “many problems that I’ve not been able to solve”, and 4 out of 5 had problems of some sort when installing or upgrading. It’s the worst release I’ve seen. I think Canonical needs to rethink their release priorities.
January 4th, 2009 at 16:43
Same problem with the mouse-cursor-exempt system freeze. I’ve had enough of Intrepid forgetting settings, also, that I think perhaps we need to rechristen it “Alzheimer’s Ibex”, although that would blow the alliteration. Saw a claim in an Xorg-related thread that removing compiz-wrapper would fix the system freeze problem. I have no clue how to remove compiz-wrapper, however. -Don’t know if I can, since I want to keep my Big-Desktop setup, and I understand that this hinges on having compiz installed.