[Leaplist] Ubuntu rant - addendum

[Dan Cherry]

Dan Cherry wrote:
> Hi,
> Thought I'd let off a little steam about Ubuntu;-)
> 
> A couple days ago, I set up a webDAV server on my home intra net to 
> share bookmarks, calendars, and address books between desktop, laptop 
> and wife's computers.
> Bookmarks from Firefox, calendars from Sunbird were a breeze to set up 
> and took maybe 15 minutes each to get working, and another 15 to share 
> and tweak the configs.  Thunderbird took the rest of 2 days, and still 
> didn't work.
> Long story -> short... download Thunderbird from Mozilla website and it 
> took 15 minutes to set up etc. etc. and success.
> 
> The problem - The Ubuntu development team apparently made changes to the 
> thunderbird packages they distribute to enhance security (I gather this 
> from comments and faq's found on various lists regarding problems with 
> thunderbird and quite a bit of other software used on Ubuntu systems - 
> not from identifying the changes).  This philosophy is fine, if the end 
> user has at least of fighting chance of finding out what's been changed.
> A similar fiasco was found in a minuscule one line warning on the CUPS 
> admin page indicating something disabled.  Then all subsequent CUPS 
> admin pages work and display as normal CUPS, but simply don't do 
> anything.  There was a major waste of troubleshooting time.  If they're 
> going to make changes, make them really APPARENT, and explain how to 
> return them to normal.
> 
> Ubuntu is not ALWAYS to blame for problems, but they sure do add an 
> inordinate amount of troubleshooting time by quietly making changes and 
> not taking the time to adequately document the changes!  Anything that 
> behaves in a quirky manner now makes me take the knee-jerk reaction to 
> remove the Ubuntu flavor, and install the original flavor.  
> Unfortunately, if you want the benefit of repositories, you have to 
> troubleshoot both flavors to determine the real problem.  Mega waste of 
> time.
> 
> There... I feel better ;-)
> 
> I guess the real purpose for this rant (the constructive one) is to 
> suggest anyone using Ubuntu only put a minimal amount of time into 
> dealing with quirky software behavior.  At that point, try downloading a 
> copy of the vendor version and seeing if the quirks remain.  May save 
> you a lot of time debugging intentionally disabled software.
> 
> Dan

Now, the clincher!  I go to remove the ubuntu supplied mozilla-firefox, 
and find xubuntu-desktop is dependent on it!!!  Why in heaven's name is 
the desktop basis for the distribution, dependent on an email client? 
This is the kind of thinking I used to find coming from Redmond.

Is this stuff common in FC6?  Methinks it may be time to overcome my 
laziness and make some changes.  Ubuntu is up to about strike FIVE, and 
isn't it 3 strikes and yer out ;-)

I'd seriously appreciate hearing if there are similar software changes 
within the Fedora distribution.  I'm not up for changing for the sake of 
changing, but it might be worth it, if I can be confident that the 
repositories will contain the same software available from vendor sites.

Thanks again,
-- 
Dan Cherry
dscherry (@) bellsouth.net

Finding a solution to a problem doesn't solve the problem...
Implementing the solution solves the problem.