Ubuntu is a fucking trainwreck


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    I've been an Ubuntu user for years. I've dealt with and have ultimately accepted most of its problems:

    • The NIH attitude and the shitty Ubuntu-specific software.
      MIR is still mostly vaporware, fortunately. I don't use Unity, but it's also become stable after a few years of "testing". (Packaging the latest trunk and waiting for bug reports from users.)
      At least the upstart maintainer had enough humor to call his C utility library libnih.
    • The behemoth Launchpad, basically unmaintained for years.
      Sometimes I think the sole reason why the Launchpad bug tracker was developed is to make the incredibly user-hostile Debian bug tracker look more appealing, because at least bugs don't get lost and ignored there for decades and at least you can't accidentally file a bug against an umbrella project whose administrator is a bot than against the actual, (sometimes) actively maintained package.
      And if you've ever had the misfortune to have to use the Launchpad translation interface, I feel sorry for you.
      Not to mention the fact that Launchpad still requires you to use Bazaar, a version control software discontinued years ago. (To be fair, Bazaar itself is/was not that bad.)
      But hey, there's a web interface, there are PPAs, so that's something, right?
    • The broken patches.
      They would frequently introduce bugs into perfectly fine Debian packages when trying to make them compatible with their NIH bullshit software. Just remove the patch, upload the fixed package to your PPA and use that. Or use the PPA of the person who has already done that before you. "Easy", right?

    But this latest release really makes my blood boil.

    First of all, their release upgrade script didn't even work at the time 16.10 was officially released. And I don't mean "doesn't work" as in "had a bug", I mean "doesn't work" as in "contains invalid Python". Let that sink in for a second: They're releasing a new version, and the upgrade script doesn't even fucking compile.

    Then, I noticed I had a new subfolder in /usr. It has the beatiful name /usr/@DATADIRNAME@. I wish I was making this up. How can you break your packaging scripts that badly and not even fucking notice it within one month after the release?

    Today I found out that their libc++ packages are completely broken as well. It is impossible to successfully link a program against the packaged libc++.
    You simply install clang and libc++-dev and everything is alright, right? Wrong! Because of course they forgot to include an internal header, so you get the awesome error message:

    /usr/include/c++/v1/cxxabi.h:21:10: fatal error: '__cxxabi_config.h' file not found
    #include <__cxxabi_config.h>

    You then have to figure out that there's another package called libc++abi-dev, which libc++-dev of course doesn't depend on, because FUCK YOU, that's why. And then maybe, after a few minutes of pulling out your hair and looking at weird error messages, you can start to compile your program with clang and link against libc++, right?
    Wrong again! Haha, nope, it still won't find the header. Maybe the package installed it in the wrong directory? Who knows, and at this point I honestly don't care anymore.

    How can you be that bad at packaging? How can you fail that badly at creating a usable Linux distro?


  • area_can

    I stopped using Ubuntu because I kept getting error messages about programs that I had no idea were running and that I didn't really need crashing (grammer hard). also it takes a while to boot.

    but i run debian testing on my laptop with a minimal install, so it's another world of crazy. i think the lesson to learn from all this (also from our forums) is that software is terrible and will never be any good


  • Banned

    I stopped using Ubuntu after it fucked up the installation of NVIDIA drivers and left me with only 16 colors. That was day 2 of my Linux journey, and I gave up for a few years after that.


  • BINNED

    I stopped using Ubuntu ... wait I just never left Windows ... OMG!


  • :belt_onion:

    Years ago, I was in the local CompUSA and bought a copy of RedHat Linux. (Yes, there several :wtf: in that sentence). Installation went smoothly and I thought "OK, this isn't so bad".

    The first time I tried to access my CD-ROM drive I got a message saying I didn't have permission. I threw the RedHat CD in the garbage and went back to Windows.



  • All linux desktops are terrible. And they are not likely getting better anytime soon.


  • Dupa

    I stopped using ubuntu because they lie about fixing bugs.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @asdf said in Ubuntu is a fucking trainwreck:

    Today I found out that their libc++ packages are completely broken as well. It is impossible to successfully link a program against the packaged libc++.

    E_NO_REPRO

    $ cat stuff.cpp 
    #include <iostream>
    
    int main()
    {
      std::cout << "hello\n";
      return 0;
    }
    
    $ clang++  -stdlib=libc++ stuff.cpp
    $ ./a.out 
    hello
    $ lsb_release -d
    Description:	Ubuntu 16.10
    $ which clang++
    /usr/bin/clang++
    $ clang++ --version
    clang version 3.8.1-12ubuntu1 (tags/RELEASE_381/final)
    Target: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
    Thread model: posix
    InstalledDir: /usr/bin
    $
    

    Did I do something wrong?


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    TIL Scott Adams made Ubuntu.

    He should merge it with a newer, younger branch.


  • area_pol

    @asdf I use Mint which gives you the benefits of Ubuntu but has nicer desktop environment and generally works. The only problem is that they are based on LTS releases so lag behind on package versions.



  • I mostly stopped using Ubuntu (Xubuntu because I don't need unity) in 2014/2015 because a kernel update (in the LTS release!) broke my Nvidia drivers. And before that my Dualshock3 didn't work properly with it for multiple months.

    A shame, Ubuntu in 2013 was pretty great.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Luhmann said in Ubuntu is a fucking trainwreck:

    I stopped using Ubuntu ... wait I just never left Windows ... OMG!

    Um, actually, Microsoft is shipping ububtu with Windows these days.



  • I'm running Windows 10, which includes an Ubuntu installation, and I have three SSH sessions connected to an Ubuntu machine in the other room.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @bugmenot Your example doesn't compile on my system, I get another weird error message about basic_string. I'll post the details later. (I'm on mobile.)

    I reinstalled the packages a few times, though, and still have the same problem. Also, this is the first time I tried to install libc++, so I doubt that I fucked up some configuration by myself.

    Edit: Ah, I see the difference now. Can you add a -std=c++14 and try again?

    For the record, this is what happens:

    > cat test.cpp
    #include <iostream>
    
    int main() {
    	std::cout << "Hello world!" << std::endl;
    	return 0;
    }
    
    > clang -std=c++14 -stdlib=libc++ test.cpp
    In file included from test.cpp:1:
    In file included from /usr/include/c++/v1/iostream:38:
    In file included from /usr/include/c++/v1/ios:216:
    In file included from /usr/include/c++/v1/__locale:15:
    /usr/include/c++/v1/string:1938:44: error: 'basic_string<_CharT, _Traits,
          _Allocator>' is missing exception specification
          'noexcept(is_nothrow_copy_constructible<allocator_type>::value)'
    basic_string<_CharT, _Traits, _Allocator>::basic_string(const allocator_...
                                               ^
    /usr/include/c++/v1/string:1326:40: note: previous declaration is here
        _LIBCPP_INLINE_VISIBILITY explicit basic_string(const allocator_type& __a)
                                           ^
    1 error generated.
    


  • @asdf welcome to windows, enjoy. the surveillance features are nothing to be too happy about, but at least they don't waste your time.
    forced updates that sometimes can't be postponed are not necessarily good as well, but at least you don't have to be solving packaging problems instead of the devs.

    And there's no python to be invalid.



  • @Adynathos said in Ubuntu is a fucking trainwreck:

    @asdf I use Mint which gives you the benefits of Ubuntu but has nicer desktop environment and generally works. The only problem is that they are based on LTS releases so lag behind on package versions.

    I remember they also have long history of security concerns (update server got compromised and loaded with "meddled" ISO images).

    Will not recommand for any production environments.

    It also makes me wonder... what have they done to hackers so they keep going after the distro? It's something that rarely seen on other distros, especially the bigger ones like RedHat, Suse or Debian.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @cartman82 said in Ubuntu is a fucking trainwreck:

    All linux desktops are terrible. And they are not likely getting better anytime soon.

    I can deal with the oddities of Linux. I can deal with the occasional bug as well, Windows 10 is not much better in that regard.

    Linux is not the problem here, it's Canoncial's incompetence that annoys me.



  • @sh_code said in Ubuntu is a fucking trainwreck:

    And there's no python to be invalid.

    Actually there is, just not included in the installation.



  • @asdf said in Ubuntu is a fucking trainwreck:

    Linux is not the problem here, it's Canoncial's incompetence that annoys me.

    It's very instructive to hunt down an interview by some of these OSS people from Canonical or Mozilla (for example, this episode of Bad Voltage podast: http://www.badvoltage.org/2015/05/28/1x43/).

    You listen to them talk for a while, they way they think... and you realize: these people are bush league. They have NO idea what they are doing. Compare it with any interview with Apple's top tech people, their level of organization and competence, and it's night and day.


  • BINNED

    @bb36e said in Ubuntu is a fucking trainwreck:

    but i run debian testing on my laptop with a minimal install, so it's another world of crazy

    They don't joke with the testing bit. I feel like every time you use apt-get / aptitude it should say, in red letters:

    SHIT'S LIKELY TO BREAK, YO! KNOW YOUR STUFF OR GET OUT!

    That said, if you do know what you're doing it's fine. And Debian stable is almost boring with its indifferent Just fucking Works™ shtick.

    Needles to say, I use Debian these days. Pretty much the same reasons as OP, except for the weird library thing of course.



  • My first experience of trying to install Ubuntu was in the days of dialup (broadband existed but it was scarce, and I didn't have it), where I got a shiny-biscuit (CD? DVD? I don't remember) of Ubuntu, and put it in a machine with no modem, not that I had any machines that did routing anyway.

    The installation went fine until, as part of the installation, it insisted on upgrading all the packages. Not "Hey! After we finish the installation, we'll upgrade these for you!", but "Right now, before we let you finish the installation, we INSIST that you upgrade these packages, and if you don't have any way for us to do that, well that's your hard luck because no Ubuntu for you!"

    Morons.



  • I stopped using Ubuntu after Lucid Lynx (10.04 LTS) moved all its window controls from the top right of the title bar where God intended them to go to the top left, but didn't even put them in the same order as OS X (the only other notable OS with window controls at the top left).

    It wasn't so much the window control repositioning itself as Shuttleworth's attitude to the ensuing howls of complaint: essentially "suck it up buttercup, I'm paying these designers a fucking fortune so what they're doing must obviously be the Right Thing".

    Dumped Ubuntu for Debian Testing on the grounds that Debian has its problems but at least it's a democracy. Only ever been properly enraged by it once (a careless aptitude full-upgrade replaced the completely usable GNOME 2 with the hideous and broken GNOME 3 and all its associated GTK3 misery); since switching to Xfce I've been quite happy with it.

    Also happy to see that LXQt is now part of Debian Testing. With any luck it will be fully usable by the time Xfce runs aground on the rocks of GTK{3,4,5,...}.



  • @sh_code said in Ubuntu is a fucking trainwreck:

    welcome to windows, enjoy. the surveillance features are nothing to be too happy about, but at least they don't waste your time.
    forced updates that sometimes can't be postponed are not necessarily good as well, but at least you don't have to be solving packaging problems instead of the devs.

    The "I upgraded to that version of Windows, OH GOD WHAT HAVE I DONE" thread is :arrows:.



  • @Steve_The_Cynic said in Ubuntu is a fucking trainwreck:

    I got a shiny-biscuit (CD? DVD? I don't remember) of Ubuntu

    It was a CD.

    we INSIST that you upgrade these packages, and if you don't have any way for us to do that, well that's your hard luck because no Ubuntu for you!"

    Well, how do you think they fit the whole system on one CD?!?!



  • @Onyx said in Ubuntu is a fucking trainwreck:

    Needles to say, I use Debian these days

    Debian stable? I'm not sure what distro I should use if changing OS wasn't too much work for my taste.



  • @fbmac Debian Testing is generally broken no worse than Ubuntu, which given that Ubuntu is based off snapshots of Debian Unstable while Testing is a rolling update from it generated by scripts that examine bug counts, makes a certain amount of sense.


  • Garbage Person

    @cheong said in Ubuntu is a fucking trainwreck:

    @Adynathos said in Ubuntu is a fucking trainwreck:

    @asdf I use Mint which gives you the benefits of Ubuntu but has nicer desktop environment and generally works. The only problem is that they are based on LTS releases so lag behind on package versions.

    I remember they also have long history of security concerns (update server got compromised and loaded with "meddled" ISO images).

    Will not recommand for any production environments.

    It also makes me wonder... what have they done to hackers so they keep going after the distro? It's something that rarely seen on other distros, especially the bigger ones like RedHat, Suse or Debian.

    The morons run WordPress.


  • Considered Harmful

    @Gąska said in Ubuntu is a fucking trainwreck:

    I stopped using Ubuntu after it fucked up the installation of NVIDIA drivers and left me with only 16 colors. That was day 2 of my Linux journey, and I gave up for a few years after that.

    Reminds me of that friend who brought me his laptop to fix some time around 2010, thinking the screen was broken. The picture was a porridge of colorful pixels with some faintly visible rectangles and something that moved when you touched the trackpad. Turned out the graphics driver had somehow decided that 16 Colors Should be Enough for Everybody[tm], but Windows helpfully tried to dither the display to avoid telling any programs that their output was anything less than 24-bit. Apparently nobody had ever tried the gradient-filled default controls with anything less than 8-bit so the result was utterly unusable. I had to look up the layout of a screen properties dialog on another machine to turn the display depth back up basically blind.
    Most Linuxes would least least stay usable if ugly.


  • BINNED

    @fbmac said in Ubuntu is a fucking trainwreck:

    Debian stable? I'm not sure what distro I should use if changing OS wasn't too much work for my taste.

    I'm on testing since I know how to deal with its occasional "carp, half of dependencies broke!" tableflips. I was on Debian stable for a while and yeah, it worked as a charm. I just like the shinies.

    Also, an interesting thing was that Mint (which, being based on Ubuntu should have "easier and better driver management", right?) gave me a cold shoulder with some WiFi hardware recently, while on Debian it Just Works™. YMMV on that front of course.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @sh_code said in Ubuntu is a fucking trainwreck:

    And there's no python to be invalid.

    Actually probably not true. Most OEMs ship at least one driver configurator or something that uses Python these days.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @flabdablet said in Ubuntu is a fucking trainwreck:

    I stopped using Ubuntu after Lucid Lynx (10.04 LTS) moved all its window controls from the top right of the title bar where God intended them to go to the top left, but didn't even put them in the same order as OS X (the only other notable OS with window controls at the top left).

    I'll continue to maintain that 9.10 was the last good version of Ubuntu. After I got tired of Ubuntu's crap I switched to Xubuntu, and then when I had a dist upgrade, which always used to work, break all sorts of stuff, I tried a bunch of distros and eventually hit upon Mandriva, which I liked but eventually discovered that the distro had gone through an explosion and was going to sit on a 2 year old release for a long time. Then I went to Linux Mint, which is really gloriously well done from a UX perspective, until it came out that they didn't know what they were doing at all as far as security goes. Plus they were about to release LM 18 using systemd, which was something I decided I didn't want. So I looked at maybe switching to Devuan, but then, last December, I heard about this awesome new Arch-based distro called Manjaro that was doing all the right things that Arch doesn't and had an i3+openRC edition, so I checked it out and found that it was quite as good as promised. Here's hoping that doesn't change like Ubuntu did after just a few years of existence.


  • Garbage Person

    @pydsigner said in Ubuntu is a fucking trainwreck:

    @flabdablet said in Ubuntu is a fucking trainwreck:

    I stopped using Ubuntu after Lucid Lynx (10.04 LTS) moved all its window controls from the top right of the title bar where God intended them to go to the top left, but didn't even put them in the same order as OS X (the only other notable OS with window controls at the top left).
    

    I'll continue to maintain that 9.10 was the last good version of Ubuntu. After I got tired of Ubuntu's crap I switched to Xubuntu, and then when I had a dist upgrade, which always used to work, break all sorts of stuff, I tried a bunch of distros and eventually hit upon Mandriva, which I liked but eventually discovered that the distro had gone through an explosion and was going to sit on a 2 year old release for a long time. Then I went to Linux Mint, which is really gloriously well done from a UX perspective, until it came out that they didn't know what they were doing at all as far as security goes. Plus they were about to release LM 18 using systemd, which was something I decided I didn't want. So I looked at maybe switching to Devuan, but then, last December, I heard about this awesome new Arch-based distro called Manjaro that was doing all the right things that Arch doesn't and had an i3+openRC edition, so I checked it out and found that it was quite as good as promised. Here's hoping that doesn't change like Ubuntu did after just a few years of existence.

    So you've been through... Six entirely different distributions since 2009?

    And you guys think us Windows people are nuts putting up with rebooting once a fucking month?



  • @Onyx said in Ubuntu is a fucking trainwreck:

    I'm on testing since I know how to deal with its occasional "carp, half of dependencies broke!" tableflips. I was on Debian stable for a while and yeah, it worked as a charm. I just like the shinies.

    I'm on Debian stable because, fuck shiny, give me It Just Works™


  • FoxDev

    @Weng said in Ubuntu is a fucking trainwreck:

    Six entirely different distributions since 2009?
    And you guys think us Windows people are nuts putting up with rebooting once a fucking month?

    technically Xubuntu is Ubuntu, just with a different initial package set.

    also LinuxMint has a really nasty habit as a Ubuntu derivative of devolving to using only the Ubuntu repositories after an update, leading to the install slowly becoming a shattered amalgam of Mint and Ubuntu.

    beyond that... yeah.

    now me? i play with the ubuntu derivatives, and arch, but my servers all run debian stable, because it's fucking STABLE

    i think i have a debian server around here somewhere with close to 10 years of uptime now?

    where did i put that box again?



  • @Weng said in Ubuntu is a fucking trainwreck:

    And you guys think us Windows people are nuts putting up with rebooting once a fucking month whenever the fuck MS decide to update something and even if I'm in the middle of a presentation in front of a client ?

    FTFY

    And yes, we think you are nuts to put up with this shit.


  • BINNED

    @TimeBandit said in Ubuntu is a fucking trainwreck:

    I'm on Debian stable because, fuck shiny, give me It Just Works™

    That's fair. You know, realistically...

    SHINY SQUIRREL!



  • @Weng FWIW i think he's nuts too...



  • @pydsigner said in Ubuntu is a fucking trainwreck:

    using systemd, which was something I decided I didn't want.

    i'm assuming that's for desktop. so.. why would you care about systemd? it makes almost no diference IME



  • @Onyx said in Ubuntu is a fucking trainwreck:

    SHINY SQUIRREL!

    You made me look, you bastard !


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @Weng said in Ubuntu is a fucking trainwreck:

    So you've been through... Six entirely different distributions since 2009?

    Ubuntu: 2007-2010
    Xubuntu: 2011-2012
    Mandriva: 2012-2013
    Linux Mint: 2013-2016
    Manjaro: 2015-present

    Or something like that. That's 5 I mentioned, although I tried some massive number of others (Puppy Linux, KNOPPIX, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Google Chrome OS, Zorin, Arch....) in there as well. But you have to realize that I was trying different distros for fun until 2013 when I went to college — Linux and Python were basically my life in high school — and it's not like people haven't had to go between XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10 in that span either.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @Jarry said in Ubuntu is a fucking trainwreck:

    @pydsigner said in Ubuntu is a fucking trainwreck:

    using systemd, which was something I decided I didn't want.

    i'm assuming that's for desktop. so.. why would you care about systemd? it makes almost no diference IME

    I lived with systemd setups at home and at work, on different distros, for a few months. In both instances systemd made my life miserable.

    • hard to get good documentation for
    • hard to stickily set a custom keyboard layout
    • hard impossible to make NVIDIA Optimus work at all
    • often had to wait a minute for reboots while systemd waited for a local session to terminate (:wat:)
    • full of security holes
    • evil and invasive

  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @asdf said in Ubuntu is a fucking trainwreck:

    I reinstalled the packages a few times, though, and still have the same problem. Also, this is the first time I tried to install libc++, so I doubt that I fucked up some configuration by myself.

    Edit: Ah, I see the difference now. Can you add a -std=c++14 and try again?

    I get the same error you're getting when I use -std=c++14. Given that I installed libc++-dev and dependant packages from apt-get, it's unlikely that either of us fucked up the libc++ installation.

    This seems both relevant and completely fucking stupid:

    Maybe we should all just switch to Gentoo?


  • :belt_onion:

    @asdf said in Ubuntu is a fucking trainwreck:

    First of all, their release upgrade script didn't even work at the time 16.10 was officially released. And I don't mean "doesn't work" as in "had a bug", I mean "doesn't work" as in "contains invalid Python". Let that sink in for a second: They're releasing a new version, and the upgrade script doesn't even fucking compile.

    Sounds about right. I hit Bug #1361951 last night (at least I thought I did at the time, now I'm pretty sure any write to a Hyper-V disk causes a kernel panic on 32-bit Debian [LATEST!]) and just gave up) and my favorite comment was:

    "Installation completes successfully if partitions are created prior to performing the installation, so I think it would be reasonable to set a milestone for Beta 2 or even Final as long as we mention this in the release notes." (emphasis mine)

    Yes, the installer being stuck at 33% "Formatting..." shouldn't be a problem for end users, just tell them to create their own partitions first! In the release notes, which everyone reads! Shouldn't be a problem at all! Year of the Linux Desktop! So simple Grandma will switch!

    Fucking idiots.


  • FoxDev

    @pydsigner said in Ubuntu is a fucking trainwreck:

    XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10

    1. i skipped Vista enturely

    2. if i had to do it again i would have skipped 8 and 8.1

    3. ...... touche.



  • @heterodox said in Ubuntu is a fucking trainwreck:

    Yes, the installer being stuck at 33% "Formatting..." shouldn't be a problem for end users

    If only the installer was bullet-proof like the Win10 installer


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @bugmenot said in Ubuntu is a fucking trainwreck:

    This seems both relevant and completely fucking stupid:

    So it's even worse than I thought: Not only did they fuck up the dependencies of libc++-dev and make libc++abi-dev install its headers into the wrong directory, but the packaged headers are also broken?

    BRILLANT!


  • area_pol

    @pydsigner said in Ubuntu is a fucking trainwreck:

    impossible to make NVIDIA Optimus work at all

    I can make it work but it is still causing problems.
    Does anyone know a laptop that has an Nvidia GPU but without the Optimus/Primus GPU switching system?
    (That is: uses Nvidia GPU all the time. I would be grateful for a recommendation)


  • Java Dev

    @asdf Aren't the default installed headers intended for gcc, and incompatible with clang?


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    Funtoo is best.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @PleegWat said in Ubuntu is a fucking trainwreck:

    Aren't the default installed headers intended for gcc, and incompatible with clang?

    I think you're confusing libc++ (clang) with libstdc++ (GCC). My problem is exactly that the clang standard library is broken.

    BTW: clang can link against libstdc++ just fine, it's almost 100% compatible with GCC.


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