Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala): Installation/Upgrade Success Rate
Filed under: Computers, Software
Following the amount of replies on my previous post (Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala): Are You Experiencing Problems?), I thought I would research just how many people seemed to have problems with the release.
There seems to be a wide-range of problems associated with the new version, most problems seem to be associated with video playback and display-related issues, and by the look of it most problems seem to have occurred during an upgrade rather than a fresh install.
Within Ubuntu’s official forums a poll has taken place, which at this point had 2541 votes, the question asked was “What is your Karmic Koala install/upgrade experience ?”, of the 2541 votes 1392 had carried out upgrades, 471 of these said that the upgrade worked flawlessly, 494 of these said the upgrade worked but had few things to fix, nothing serious though and the remaining 427 reported that the upgrade resulted in so many problems that users have not been able to solve.
The remaining users carried out fresh installs, of these fresh installs 420 users reported the install worked flawlessly, 319 users reported that the install worked but there were a few things to fix, nothing serious though, the remainder of users (410) reported that a fresh install resulted in problems that users have not been able to solve.
I would imagine that the results of this poll are a nightmare for Ubuntu, as there seems to be no pattern what-so-ever, currently from what we can see Ubuntu have not officially addressed the issues with the release, therefore we cannot help you yet, our best advice is to avoid the OS verison for the time being.
What do you think Ubuntu should do about the problems? Do you think their support has been adequate?
Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala): Are You Experiencing Problems?
Karmic Koala (Ubuntu 9.10): List of Tweaks and Fixes
Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala): Popping Audio Fix
Ubuntu Lucid Lynx: Will You Upgrade?
obviously, this is not a reliable way of getting numbers with any representative numbers. Have you ever heard of self-selection?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-selection
I bet there are thousands of users without any problems. These polls have no value, I’m sick of seeing everyone picking them all over the internet. Some critical thinking would help.
I did a fresh install of Ubuntu 9.10 and too many bugs plagued me back to an older Linux distro on my PC. I liked all that Ubuntu was trying to do and now I have to see them implement it from the first day of release. They (or the positive news reviews that is) compared Ubuntu 9.10 as a worthy alternative to Windows 7 but from my hands on approach, it was not that at all. I am still a fan of Ubuntu and the Linux world.
What Ubuntu needs to do is at least address us in general terms advising that they are working to fix the bugs seen since the 1st day of release. The only things I saw was this “100 days of no paper cuts” or something like that – a very generic term to win over more user base. They will get there – I have faith they will.
I think that it’s expected to have more of these problems as 9.10 had many major underlying changes unseen in previous editions, like the introduction of Upstart and GRUB 2.
Tomass above has hit the nail on the head regarding this article. Whats surpising is that you (Jamie, the author) has not even cared to read whats written underneath the very poll he is citing in bright red font:
“*** Disclaimer for those willing to analyse this poll ***
Most of users voting here are users with issues.
Users with painless experience are not likely to come here.”
The poll was merely to gauge how many people had issues and NOT to gauge the percentage of people who had issues. You are completely misrepresenting the poll and drawing invalid conclusions.
My apologies, yes I agree this isn’t a un-biased means of finding exact figures, as lets face it most people wouldn’t be on Ubuntu’S forums if they didn’t have issues.
However the fact still remains that the release is causing problems, whether its a fresh install or an upgrade.
I believe that Ubuntu should address the issue properly, not just in their forums.
Yes, we’re still waiting for Canonical to respond. Just hope they fix some of the major problems. I had no problems with the installs or upgrades as I did it on 3 PCs and one notebook. However, some things that worked in 9.04 either did not work or were degraded,
For example, I could no longer share files and folders on my home network with other Ubuntu PCs. Firefox took 7 minutes to go through the booking process for sports facilities whereas they were almost instantaneous in 9.04.
Mobile broadband setup and access became a hassle and unstable in stark contrast to 9.04. Why? Couldn’t they have just kept some of the old stuff working?
Canonical may have made a vista-type error of judgement when designing 9.10 but for me, at least, the problems are not huge but just making my computing experience less smooth and pleasing.
C’mon Canonical. Try not to shoot for the stars too fast. Make Ubuntu rock-solid first and we can help you really spread the word. For now, I’m afraid to recommend 9.10.
I’m sick of Ubuntu fanatics trying to claim the polls are invalid just because they make Ubuntu look bad.
If they showed most people having a great experience, you know the fanboys would be going around pointing to the polls as irrefutable evidence for why you should switch to Windows.
Compare this poll with those for previous releases. It’s a little better, but 1/3 to 1/2 of users have major problems with EVERY RELEASE. If this is the best Linux distro there is, then there are some fundamental issues that need to be fixed before Desktop Linux will ever be relevant in the real world.
I have been a linux user for over 10 years, I’ve used SuSE, RedHat, Debian and others. I have used Ubuntu since 8.04.
I performed a clean install of 9.10, it went poorly. Graphics problems like many other users. I am one of those who had unfixible problems and did NOT take part in the poll on their website. Dismissing the poll is a worthless defence.
A six month release cycle, sloppy testing and poor drivers would appear to be the problem.
I’m writing this from a fully-functional Ubuntu 9.10 distribution, I guess I’m one of the lucky ones.
In terms of the polls, they cannot be taken as fully representative data, but might give some insight into the situation.
As other posters have pointed out, the ubuntu forums are mostly there as a service to those having issues, therefore the majority of people who visit would be effected by some problem. You don’t go to the mechanic just to tell them that your car is working great do you?
The problem with this release is simply that Canonical tried to put too much cutting edge stuff into their operating system…most of which were unnecessary. Even EXT4 was said not to be ready yet by most of it’s developers.
Everything from the HAL and JAVA alternatives to the new Grub created such a variety of minor issues, it is simply too overwhelming to the Ubuntu contributors to address in a convenient amount of time, at least with respect to the new LTS coming in 6 months. It is simply more convenient and efficient for the user to downgrade back to 9.04 like I and a few others already have.
I hope Ubuntu focuses more on what’s broken than changing what isn’t, like switching out Pidgin for Empathy with it’s terrible and non-adjustable default settings. I hate to say it, but it looks like Karmic may be Ubuntu’s Vista.