It’s been a few days since the official release of the Dapper Drake Ubuntu 6.06 distribution. It was actually not a huge change for me, because I had installed the Beta distribution six weeks ago and so got the upgrades in increments (sometimes, it seemed, every single night). Overall I had no glitches, save one in which my NetworkManager installation got uninstalled in the initial switch to the Beta distribution.

In any case, the transition went very smoothly for me. I’ll be honest, though. I’m a fairly lightweight user and I have an aging laptop (only in computer land is a two year old product “ancient”) so I did not see performance improvements — or degradations for that matter — during beta and final installationst. I use a locally run USB printer, and my wireless works although I’ve gone back to the command line iwconfig for now. I also haven’t actually gone in and double checked what the upgrade did to my LAMP installation. I should do that…

But for others the upgrade did not go so well, and it’s been enlightening, to say the least, to read the various discussions. For a bit of background, it’s important to know that Ubuntu initially started out by promising six month distribution releases. An important feature of a linux distribution is its timely release. In open source, the pace of upgrades, security plugging and bug fixes is high. A distribution not only collects a particular set of linux tools but also integrates particular versions and fixes together which can be nontrivial. Not every linux user wants to fiddle with package dependencies of which there can be hundreds. In addition with regular distribution releases, other projects and business can plan their own releases around the distribution.

So, when Ubuntu announced a six week delay with the Dapper Drake release, it caused some consternation but inasmuch as this was an intended LTS release, most seemed to settle on “wait and see” on whether the delay was justified.

Problems have surfaced quickly, though, and Ubuntu will need to resolve them given the double barrell of having delayed this particular release and of its being the first intended for long term support. The problems include the following:

1. Issues between CUPS, Gnome, and certain printers as documented here. What’s very interesting to note is if you scroll/search down the comments, look for Pascal’s comment, a little more than half way through (searching on the term “Project Ridley” in Pascal’s comment should work) where he says “The problems described here are because gnome-print libraries are not maintained and buggy. […] Until then we are stuck with gnome-print in dapper (GTK+ 2.8). ” However, many of the comments describe how the printers worked in 5.10, and then partially throughout the beta Dapper releases until they stop working altogether in the final release, so it still appears the issue could be addressed from wthin Dapper until these libraries are upgraded. Even if it’s not Ubuntu’s fault, the point is that people can’t use the printers in this distribution.
2. A live CD that doesn’t boot is downright embarrassing.
3. More troubling are assorted wireless issues, here, and here. In particular check the dates through the comments on the first bug report. Reading through them, it’s clear that this was discussed for three months.

Most of these do appear to be external library and hardware issues, but they were not present in Breezy (5.10). That makes this distro appear a step backwards for those users hit by these bugs. It also raises the question of how Dapper could work around these issues anyway since the systems experiencing these problems are the same ones running 5.10 (which further undermines the appearance of these bugs being hardware related). I’m very curious about what exactly happened in the last set of releases to expose the bugs from the penultimate beta Dapper to the final Dapper.

Now there are several issues that Linux gets to deal with that Windows doesn’t, at least from the user perspective. Most people purchase their computers with Windows already loaded (and tuned for their hardware — think of all those extra CD’s you get from Dell/Gateway/Compaq/etc with the drivers, etc) so they don’t see problems. And if they just purchase another computer when done with this, they may never notice. But, as practically anyone who has reinstalled Windows can attest, you can not simply reformat the hard drive, pop that CD back in and go your merry way. You often have to go searching for the latest drivers and such to install (and if you were unlucky enough to have your internet access disabled along with the rest, you’ll be searching on someone else’s computer and transporting the results back on your flash drive…)

And of course you can’t readily purchase a computer with Linux installed on it for you. I’ve heard it’s theoretically possible. For example supposedly if you request it of Gateway, they’ll do it, although that was a few years back and of course I have no idea what distribution it would be. And of course, given that there’s hundreds of distributions available, the chances of your favorite Linux being available preinstalled on a computer you plan to buy is remote. But I don’t see this as a bad thing, so much. It forces the Linux distributions to constantly improve how they self-install. Windows doesn’t have to worry about this; most of their installations are done by techs before the computers are shipped out. And over the years of lack of competition, they’ve never been forced to improve that process.

Anyway, the one thing I’ve been searching for and not finding is any announcement of patches or releases to fix or address these problems. I’ve had a few upgrades come through since the Dapper final release, but these appeared to be relatively minor fixes. Hope these are addreesed in some official way soon.