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Posts in stability
This morning I went to find the name of a piece of software through Add/Remove programs, only to find that there was only one category (“All”) and there were no applications listed at all. It took me less than 10 minutes to find and implement the solution, but I shouldn’t have to deal with this stuff. Worse, I find that these sorts of little problems are almost common. They don’t take long to fix, but they happen way too often. Not every day by any means, but still often enough to be annoying.
Ubuntu has all the features it needs for the moment. The best thing that could be done right now for Ubuntu would be to create a less-frequent highly stable, well supported release. Oh wait, that’s called a Long Term Support release. And it’s what I’m using right now.
What I am suggesting is really just a change to the way LTS releases are treated. There are four things I would like to see change about LTS releases:
- Each LTS should focus almost exclusively on improving stability and fixing bugs. The point of regular releases should be to introduce new features. LTS’s on the other hand, should have their number one feature be less bugs.
- All feature changes should have to be essential to the long-term usability of the release. In other words, the approval process for new features should be very strict. In fact, the only case in which a new feature would be approved would be if it were something like .docx compatibility that users are almost certainly going to need in the near future.
- Make it easier to continue using the LTS release. Right now, by the time the next LTS release comes along, the old one feels really out dated. Sure there are the backports, but staying with an LTS release should be much easier. Ideally, there would be selected application updates and new features made available after some time for the LTS release. Not everything, but highly important applications, popular improvements that are easy to bring back, and new artwork. All of this should be on an individual opt-in basis, so you don’t get anything new (other than regular maintenance updates) unless you specifically ask for it.
- Recommend new users download the LTS. Considering how the current system works, recommending the latest release to new users makes a lot of sense, but if the above changes were implemented, it would be a great idea to encourage everyone to use the LTS.
These chagnes would hopefully make Ubuntu much more stable without sacrificing the ability to rapidly add new features.
Making Everything Smooth
Quick Note: I am not trying to confuse Ubuntu and Linux here. I realize this could be done on almost any distro, but the recent news part is related specifically to Canonical, so I am focusing on Ubuntu.
For most geeks, the key advantages of Linux are stability, security, and Compiz Fusion, but these advantages (excluding Compiz Fusion) are not visible to the average user. How can you tell LInux is more secure or more stable just by using it for a few days. Sure it didn’t BSOD on you, but does that really tell you anything? The point is that you can talk about security and stability all you want, but, in the end, it is very unlikely to be those advantages that pull people to Linux. This is why I am such a big fan of Compiz Fusion and making everything happen smoothly. This, possibly more than anything else, not only looks cool, but also gives you a sense of the system being stable. It may not make sense technically, but if everything is smooth with no flashes of black or anything, it looks like the system is more stable. Because of this and a recent news story I am very excited about the next Ubuntu release.
Ars Technica recently reported on some development being done by Canonical’s (Canonical the company behind Ubuntu) Mirco Müller. He has created a proposal and basic example of a new login screen for Ubuntu featuring slick animations thanks to Clutter (Which is, according to the Clutter website “an open source software library for creating fast, visually rich and animated graphical user interfaces”.)
Now with this, I believe all the tools are in place for a completely smooth, animated Ubuntu experience from start to shutdown.
The Fedora project has already worked on creating a startup experience that is smooth and completely graphical. Some of this should be able to be used by Ubuntu (which is what is so great about FLOSS) to deal with startup and shutdown. Then at login, the recent login screen proposal will take over. Finally, a well configured Compiz Fusion can make the desktop slick, too.
In this way, the next version of Ubuntu should be able to be 100% smooth, slick, and polished, giving Ubuntu a much more cool and professional feel to it that should help convince even more people that Linux is the right way to go.