Ubuntu bug hunters and users in general have discovered a severe bug in the Debian-derived distribution. The bug is rated as ‘critical’, and is said to prevent Ubuntu from gaining any significant ground in the computing world. This bug can be observed everywhere in the world, at companies, in shops, in people’s homes. It’s Ubuntu’s bug #1.
what a bunch of crap.
Seriously! If anything, this fluff news story is detrimental to the distribution.
They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but really – do we want to test that out? I don’t think so.
(minor update: Note that I don’t think the bug is detrimental, I just think the phrasing of this article is. The bug itself is kind of amusing.)
Edited 2006-08-20 07:11
…till some Windows/BSD fanboy states that Linux is “dead! Dead! DEAD!” because of this? I say five minutes to an hour.
…Whoops; read the article and that’s exactly what it say anyway. And I thought it was going to be a real article, at least. Hahah.
Edited 2006-08-19 22:16
This should have the pumpkin icon…..
1) This was posted two years ago 2004-08-20
2) Thank you captain obvious
Indeed; I don’t often wonder why OSNews bothered to link such-and-such an article, but this time, OH boy, what a waste of webserver space.
We just stumbled upon it, and found it funny. That’s all. There is no law that says we should not have posted this
.
Edited 2006-08-19 22:19
Ah; well, I stand corrected. It’s certainly funny!
How about the same law that keeps you from selling old fish or old bread or old chee… wait, no, old cheese is sometimes better, so scratch that. Not the cheese, do NOT scratch cheese. Scratch the comment ABOUT cheese, since old cheese is good sometimes. Old bread, however, should be illegal. Unless you need penicillin.
…which should be illegal anyway, since some people are allergic to it 😉
Personally I’d rather be allergic to penicillin than chocolate.
Worst. Article. Ever.
That’s what Digg’s for. Trawling up all the freakish old fish from the bottom of the Internet.
This bug report was posted on digg a couple of hours ago but has since left the front page with good reason — its over 2 years old and its been dugg/slashdotted/other verb here too many times. I’m guessing thats where Thom and crew saw it.
Posted by Thom
We just stumbled upon it, and found it funny. That’s all. There is no law that says we should not have posted this
.
Raises a semi interesting point: what is OSNews’s constitution on such things? I went to the ‘submit news’ form and found this:
“OSNews.com is always interested to hear from you the latest news on a vast range of Operating Systems and related technlogies, from the well-known mainstream OSes, down to small, amateur, personal or embedded ones.”
A story that is 2 years old cannot be considered the latest news on an OS (or related technology). So, in the absence of any other information, I would suggest that your link is, at least, against one of your own guidelines.
Edited 2006-08-19 23:12
> what is OSNews’s constitution on such things?
There is no constitution. We are just a bunch of dudes and gals having fun. That’s all.
Haven’t you all realized this all these years?
They would never realise it. Basically, the majority of people who hang around this sit nit-picking remind me of “comic-book-guy” grom the Simpsons…
Nuff said
They would never realise it. Basically, the majority of people who hang around this sit nit-picking remind me of “comic-book-guy” grom the Simpsons…
Possibly that is the correct characterization, or more generously it might be because of the double standards and hypocrisy occasionally displayed around here by staff.
Now I’m not normally one to say this but dear god is this old and while funny, largely irrelevant:
“Reported on: 2004-08-20 “
Yes, it is a slow news day. It’s weekend.
Nothing like a good sense of humor. Great link; good laugh.
Thanks.
This sort of thing makes me feel very old…
🙂
My new rule is that if you think this is boring, then you are boring. And yes, I speak i favour of everyone on this planet, except you boring people obviously.
I hope they fix it soon!
It has been around for a long time now.
Please, use the pumpkin icon when you link to something that you think is funny. This is a very old joke and it’s been around for a long time now. Many Ubuntu fans are well aware of its existence. And old jokes aren’t really that funny…
If you haven’t spotted it before and you think it’s still funny, please use the pumpkin icon.
old jokes are not funny ??????
ok, try this old joke
two cows in a field, one says, “its hot today, isn’t it?”
the other cow looks at him and says “f@8k me ! a talking cow”
cow jokes are in today ? ok, 2 texas a & m football players are taking their mid term college exams. player one says question 1…old mcdonald had a _______ ? so, he leans over to player # 2 and asks the answer. oh, that’s easy…old mcdonald had a farm, said player # 2. huh, what you know about that, says player 1, and how you spell that ? damn, boy, you’re stupid, everybody knows you spell it with E I E I O, says player # 2
UT AUSTIN, HOOK ‘EM HORNS !!!!
it really is funny, and of course it is a problem. It’s just a nice way to state the obvious, Ubuntu’s bug #1 is very relevant indeed.
No, pollution is a problem. Cancer is a problem. Nuclear arms are a problem. Autism is a problem. Ubuntu not having a larger marketshare really is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Pointless lame joke…wish I hadn’t read it.
Thinking this was important. I run an Ubuntu-based server, and my alerts went off on seeing this.
I see how it could be funny, but there at least should be some kind of lead in the article title. Some of us have heart problems.
Also this kind of thing starts minor flamewars.
This scared me until i saw the link said bug#1. cuz i already knew what bug#1 was. I thought
it was security related. didn’t u write a column against people that post stuff like this? I agree u should use the jackalantern joke icon for this one.
Edited 2006-08-19 23:25
…I’m still on Windows 95. I won’t be hit by this Ubuntu bug.
What the ….. ?!
[begin_rant]
To the person that posted this article(????) and administrators of OSNews.com, if you want the public to take you serious, use the right icon, namely the pumpkin icon for articles like this. Or simply say some where in the summary that it is a joke or funny/irony type article.
[/begin_rant]
What an idiot and irrelevant article!!!!!!!!!
Edited 2006-08-19 23:43
It seems Ubuntu is now god of the OSS world.
Why aren’t more big-name desktop PCs shipped with a user-friendly version of Linux? In the past, I was always told that it was because of Microsoft strong-arming the OEMs .. and that if MS were to stop this behavior, the floodgates would open and the masses would all convert to Linux.
But after the whole Justice Department lawsuit against MS, are they no longer allowed to do this, or is this still going on?
My theory is that the reason why big-name OEMs aren’t shipping Linux is because it would be another OS they’d have to support. I suppose they might do it if the demand were high enough, but how many people out there are demanding that Linux be pre-installed on their system?
My theory is that the reason why big-name OEMs aren’t shipping Linux is because it would be another OS they’d have to support. I suppose they might do it if the demand were high enough, but how many people out there are demanding that Linux be pre-installed on their system?
The answer: Very few
Not much less than the amount of people whom have even heard of Linux, which again, is very few.
Having to port drivers, support the customers (ie. hire Linux support people), etc etc probably raises costs enough to offset any potential gain at having the whole whopping 1 or 2% of the desktop market that uses Linux buy their products. Supporting customers that don’t know how to right click is hard enough, imagine supporting the same customer while getting him to issue bash commands…. *shudders*
It’s simply cheaper and easier and more cost effective for the OEMs to ship Windows and tell the Linux users that if they want to use Linux, they are on their own. If the OEMs actually saw shipping Linux as increasing their bottom-line, they would have done it already.
And I think Linux is a great OS, and used it for years. I’m simply being realistic here.
I went looking for a new laptop some time ago. I found a UK maker who seemd to have just what I wanted.
I went to their store and booted knoppix and it worked like a dream.
The conversation with sales sort of went like this.
Ok, I said I’ll have one.
Thank you sir. Do you want XP home or XP pro with that.
Neither. I have my own software I will be installing.
I’m sorry sir we have to sell an operating system.
How about I buy it with no hard drive?
We still have to sell you an OS
Why?
Its the law.
How about I install my own licensed copy of XP? (This was not an OEM license but a full buy in shop license and the key had never been activated)
That is illegal as well i’m afraid
This was before I got wise to the MS strong arm tactics and just left the store a bit bewildered.
Now I wish I had gone back and recoded the conversation again this time with the sales manager and then made it public.
No company should be able to force you to buy software like what happens with OEM version of XP etc.
When this happens, the number of systems sold with no os or with linux will go up considerably.
“Its the law.”
Cute. I’d ask him to look up whatever municipal or federal statute he was referencing
This is soooooo old, and has been mentioned many a time of developer blogs. Well it is still better than some fanboy/bashing op-eds.
No, but maybe it should be classified as a plague instead of a bug. Windows can be found everywhere:
Examples:
Windows XP (Home or Pro)
Windows XP Media Center Edition
Windows Embeeded
Windows Mobile
Windows Server (many versions here too)
There are windows for nearly everything. And any company that tries to provide another OS prebuild in systems, it’s threaten and has to push back. Happened with OS/2, and others in the past, and the same will happened to Linux.
As a joke, at least we still have a Windows free bathroom
As a joke, at least we still have a Windows free bathroom
Sheesh, my bathroom has windows:( But I use Linux. Does this compensate windows egsistance in the bathroom?:)
Speaking of old jokes, many Ubuntu newbies may not know why apt-get has Super Cow Powers. You’ll find out if you open a terminal window and type “apt-get moo” (and then press Enter).
And here I’d been wondering all this time what in the world copy on write had to do with apt…
‘aptitude moo’ works as well, do that one over and over again and you’ll get a….well, not quite the moo cow, but something else.
Also for great fun, run ‘apt-get install cowsay’. Cowsay is great fun if you’re bored.
I prefer “cowthink” (after doing “aptitude install cowsay”). But you’re right, of course. 😉
Well, old joke or not, that bug is still very much there.
Suggested fix: build a PC yourself
I think Ubuntu is fully right with this problems.
monopols are good!
Well i could spend my time better than rant about the misleading title:-)
The commerciall apps section of Ubuntu just got better.
It now includes a 90-days trial of Panda SecureDesktop for linux.Works like a charm.An anti virus/firewall suite.Very nice:-)
…give a recommendation of a -1 for an article?
Remember when Soviet Empire crumbled? One year before, nobody expected that among the specialists.
The first task for Ubuntu people is to deliver a perfect and easy product. They really are not far from reaching this goal.
After that, things will get rolling amazingly quickly. “Give me a good lever and I will move a planet”.
I am optimistic. The bug is about to be solved even if now nobody expects that.
Unless most people simply prefer Windows instead of Linux. Most probably do.
Can you spell H-Y-P-E?
Edited 2006-08-20 09:35
I don’t think this is a bug- this is feature! If there would be no Microsoft then we never got this hilarious Ubuntu (GNU/Debian)Linux. This bug is not a joke, this is just pathetic…
Well i for one am glad you posted it, i never saw it before, thank you
a) It is still “valid”
b) The comment thread of the bug, is still pretty much alive, and it’s interesting to read through all the comments. So those who say “this is old story” did you actually read past the Bug description and the 1st three comments?
Waste no time banning this article with comments like “this is old”, go ahead and read. If you don’t like it or think that this is a “waste of webserverspace”, then don’t waste MySQL Space with useless comments.
Thank you.
A reader.
How about we all take a step back and lighten up? Its funny. I had no idea that MS had a sense of humor.
Nice flame-war starter Thom. You might want to use that flamethrower of yours in a job that actually has some use for it…
I found it funny. even though it is couple years old. i have never seen it. so, it’s new to me.
…well I found this one quite a while back, while searching for info on an entirely unrelated potential bug.
It’s slightly amusing, however the article title and summarization should be modified to give a clue as to the nature of this problem, as well all KNOW that 99.999% of readers NEVER bother to follow the links…
On a more serious note, fore me it’s going to remain a bug as long as most of the good PC games only target DirectX & Windows, i.e. always dual boot, play with WINE, or use a virtualized environment. (I first tried VMWare YEARS ago when it first came out, but limited disk space and all, plus the fact that back then the virtualized video wasn’t the ever “popular” virge series… still requiring a real deal windows environment to run games…)
Linux is ready for the desktop and its usable as a desktop. The problems Linux has are far from being ready or not. Take the most non-technical user and ask them to install Ubuntu and ask them to install a Windows driver through ndiswrapper. They cant, Ubuntu and other Linux distributions dont make the configuration tools seamless and easy to use. With Linux we are still basically back in the early 90’s as we still have to edit text files to just make a simple thing like hardware work. Also, the seemingly never ending fight between the groups and the desire to kill and label illegal proprietary software. The Linux community and distributors will need to learn to work with proprietary software makers, they are around and are not going anywhere. Now go ahead, call me a stupid, idiotic, Windows loser, Im ready for it.