Ubuntu Closes Longstanding Bug #1 267
dargaud writes "Mark Shuttleworth of Ubuntu fame has closed the primal bug on Launchpad, standing since 2004 and titled 'Microsoft has a majority market share,' due to the 'changing realities' of tablets, smartphones, and wearable computing."
Let me be the second (Score:5, Funny)
the 80s are back (Score:2, Insightful)
Microsoft + IBM and then cheap Compaq clones were a natural reaction to the closed nature of the computer market pushed by the likes of Apple in the 80s. The closed software was a problem of the PC, with the expectation that it would be replaced with either Linux or some other laxly licensed, source and support available OS.
And now we're supposed to celebrate we're back in the 80, only that instead of Amstad, Amiga, Apple, IBM, Sinclair, Attari, ... etc. all we have now is Google and Apple.
Re:Let me be the second (Score:5, Informative)
How is this bug fixed? From the initial bug report, reproduction instructions:
Steps to repeat:
1. Visit a local PC store.
2. Attempt to buy a machine without any proprietary software.
What happens:
Almost always, a majority of PCs for sale have Microsoft Windows pre-installed. In the rare cases that they come with a GNU/Linux operating system or no operating system at all, the drivers and BIOS may be proprietary.
What should happen:
A majority of the PCs for sale should include only free software.
I can still reproduce the bug in its entirety. Nothing has changed since 2004.
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I can still reproduce the bug in its entirety.
Yeah, that Microsoft tax is a bitch. I beat it by buying demo units where possible. The Acer S3 ultra I'm typing this right now is a demo. Got it for $400 under msrp.
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I think Microsoft collects the full tax even on heavily discounted systems and refurbs. Am I wrong?
Re:Let me be the second (Score:4, Insightful)
In my experience, the only people who laugh at Windows Phones/Tablets are people who feel the need to define themselves by the products they use or don't use (also known as fanboys).
Such people are fucking pathetic and aren't worth caring about.
This is a compatibility issue (Score:5, Insightful)
I think Microsoft fixed this bug by creating a compatibility issue that prevents its OS from functioning on devices that people actually like to use.
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More people use something other than a PC.
That's kind of the whole point of this little bit of hair splitting.
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I wouldn't call Windows not functioning properly on PC's a compatibility issue.
No, it's a feature.
Closed as WONTFIX (Score:2, Insightful)
since the last moves of Ubuntu seem to indicate 'refile for Android' as a solution?
New Bug Report (Score:5, Funny)
New bug posted.
Android has too much market share.
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That'll be found on Microsoft's public bug tracker. Oh, wait... they don't have one. That's a bug!
Re:New Bug Report (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, they have one.
https://connect.microsoft.com/ [microsoft.com]
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It can accurately report when people are watching programs for free - which is apparently an unintended side effect of home entertainment.
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I said public. I can't see anything at all on that site without a Microsoft Account (which I do have, by the way). It can't even be browsed without special privileges.
And also, I see lots of smaller pieces within Windows there... but what about their entire operating system? Even just one complete OS? Or core parts of one? Is that off-limits to even Microsoft Account holders? Something more than just IE and the Powershell...
That site not only looks closed, but restricted even to those privileged accou
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Eh, they actually have that too.
http://nuget.org/ [nuget.org]
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New bug posted.
Android has too much market share.
Closed: This is a feature, not a bug.
Closed Platforms (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft is losing market share to tablets and smartphones, but these are shut tighter than the PC platform ever was. I'm not sure that's something to celebrate.
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There is no monopoly like microsoft and that is progress not an ideal.
Re:Closed Platforms (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes the walled garden of iOS, controlled by one company absolutely and completely, is definitely progress over the open world of the PC.
Re:Closed Platforms (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, you can buy alternatives to iOS, just like you can (and have always been able to) buy alternatives to Windows. But one lets me install any software I want to on it. The other doesn't. And that ain't progress, brother.
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Because people aren't buying the devices because they're closed, they're buying it because the user experience is good. It does not follow that being locked down is also good.
People vote with their wallet, but they also vote against their own best interests. Repeatedly.
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It absolutely was for the vast majority of people there, at least briefly. Most of the really awful stuff didn't come until Statlin came into power. Lenin's NEP only lasted a couple years though, so it's not clear how fast it would have fallen apart if continued.
Note: I'm not endorsing Leninism as the best choice, just that it lacked the brutal tyranny that both Stalinism and Czarism had.
Re:Closed Platforms (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft is losing market share to tablets and smartphones, but these are shut tighter than the PC platform ever was.
Agreed, It's essentially a Phyrric victory. We didn't get all worked up about Microsoft back in the day just because it was Microsoft, but because their monopoly threatened the open nature of the PC platform. Now we have a mobile platform with two major players, one of which is closed in a way that Microsoft could only dream of.
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That's the bad news... the good news is that you can find unlocked or unlockable Android devices that are way more mainstream than any of the Windows and OS X competitors ever managed to be. Yes, certain apps that require DRM won't work but on the whole you're way, way more mainstream with a rooted Android phone than a Linux desktop. And Android is making the OS a commodity because if you don't need to be on the bleeding edge you can always download the last released Android version for free, even cheap Chi
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Re:Closed Platforms (Score:5, Insightful)
Android is pretty open. They let you run just about anything that can't screw up the drivers without even batting an eye (at least on Sprint they do). And rooting your phone is a simple 10-minute process. I'm not really seeing the problem.
That's not ENTIRELY accurate. The grandparent's point transcends "Microsoft" and speaks a lot to "ecosystem" as well.
Amongst the thing that gave Compaq and the IBM clones their rise was their level of openness. You could buy any commodity x86 box (or pieces and DIY assemble said box), and run DOS or Windows or OS/2 or Linux on them, upgrade when Microsoft released stuff, and be in charge of exactly what software did and didn't end up on our machines. Now this level of openness came with a cost, namely all of the problems that naturally came with giving users complete control: viruses/malware/toolbars, the necessary routine maintenance not being performed, incompatibilities, teaching users to "click next until the installation is finished" and ending up with a dozen pieces of software that weren't wanted, and people actually believing the FBI holds their computer for ransom unless they use Greenpak to send money to "pay the fine".
You can SOMETIMES root in ten minutes. My Toshiba AT200 has a locked bootloader and since Toshiba hasn't released a means of unlocking it (and hacking said bootloader doesn't have the same sex appeal as being the one to crack the Galaxy S5), so I'm stuck in an unrooted state. Even if I had an unlocked bootloader or Nexus 10 or Transformer Prime, I can't install Windows RT on it if I wanted to. In its present state, I can't remove the unwanted applications that came with the machine. Sure I can 'disable' them, but they're still taking up storage space I would rather use for other things. I'm at Toshiba's mercy as to whether I'll ever get Jelly Bean, Key Lime Pie, or Taramasu, and none of them look promising. Sure, I can install most applications on said tablet even if they don't come from the Play Store, but for quite some time this ability was disabled on AT&T phones running Android. I doubt I need to say more than "Kindle Fire" and "Nook Color" to make my point in those cases.
Android, the operating system, as uploaded to source.android.com, is indeed a "pretty open" system. This doesn't make Android-as-98%-of-the-population-run-it a system as open as Windows-as-98%-of-the-population-run-it, the hardware it shipped on, and the ISPs that shuffled data to it. It might not be Google's fault that Android is twisted in the form that it is by some of the OEMs and carriers, but it is a product they put their name on.
LMFAO, seriously? (Score:3)
For a second I was expecting the "bug" to be some actual major bug or security issue that has existed for years. But all it is... is Microsoft's marketing dominance? I mean, I agree that their monopoly is/was a bad thing, but I find it ironic and funny that it was classified as a bug.
Re:LMFAO, seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, I agree that their monopoly is/was a bad thing, but I find it ironic and funny that it was classified as a bug.
BUG DESCRIPTION
Binary package hint: launchpad
Description: Slashdotters seem to not understand sarcasm.
To reproduce the bug follow these steps-
1. Raise a sarcastic bug
2. Make some reference to it in slashdot
Add Sarcasm tags to the bugtracker:
Possible Fix:
Add sarcasm tags to the bug summary
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Nice one, but it still doesn't make the Ubuntu team seem any more mature. And I get the joke, but it's still funny... in a very dumb way.
They must not have been trying to be too sarcastic though, considering they were serious enough to close this "bug" after what it was describing became less true...
Wait what? (Score:2)
Microsoft has a majority market share in the new desktop PC marketplace.
from TFA : https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1 [launchpad.net]
He obviously missed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems [wikipedia.org]
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Oh ok, I get it, but an equally fitting article title would've been "Ubuntu gives up on desktop market due to increasing mobile presence".
ha (Score:4, Funny)
Bug #1 (Score:2)
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Windows 8 made it even more complicated to install Linux. Not only because of UEFI but also because of Fast Boot.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTM4MDY [phoronix.com]
The stupid thing is, it also makes it harder to fix Windows.
It might even make it legally very complicated to get a refund from Microsoft if you want a refund for the pre-installed software.
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Could "Press F12 for boot menu" on some boards still be offered by UEFI? I assume since you can still press F2 for "Setup" that this would work too. If so, you can just initialize USB after hitting that. Wanting your bootloader to handle a one-time boot without bypassing it is not really worth slowing down every other boot for me. I think Microsoft's recommendation is sound. Especially if it can be turned off optionally.
Bux not Fixed.... (Score:2)
I'm not against the closing of this bug; however, the closed status should be something like "Can't Fix" [0]. While, technically speaking, Microsoft doesn't have the majority of the marketshare anymore, the originally prescribed goal of this bug was:
A majority of the PCs for sale should include only free software.
Note that *even if* we count Android/Linux, and also count every type of device like mobile phones and tables, nearly all of those devices -- even those running Android/Linux or Ubuntu -- include
Abuse of bug tracking systems (Score:2, Insightful)
Cute entries like that wouldn't be tolerated in some workplaces. I prefer a professional attitude in the bug tracking system. They should purge anything else similar to this that isn't an actual bug.
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It is a bug. That's the whole point. It may not be a bug that exists in some source code on a computer, but it is still a tangible issue that can be 'tracked'
Reports of the death of PC... (Score:2)
Have been greatly exaggerated. Phones and tablets have largely been a distinct market. I don't think it has really had any particular effect on PC or laptop market.
I'm willing to beleve that *sales* of x86 systems to the consumer market have slowed. I think though that *usage* hasn't decreased appreciably. x86 ecosystem got 'good enough' for the vast majority of market and performance needs no longer drive demand. I think this would have been the reality with or without android/ios/etc.
It does reaffirm
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At home, we used to have two PCs, then a PC and a laptop, then 2 laptops and we've since replaced one laptop with a tablet. That arrangement works pretty well, especially when you consider that my son has his own tablet through school and my daughter has an iPod touch that she uses for email, games, messaging, and watching shows on netflix.
My point is that there are things that we use
Plenty of purile stuff left in the list... (Score:5, Insightful)
Like this one:
#461000 General populace ignorance of Ubuntu
Easy fix; stop doing stupid things that are driving people to Mint etc. and get back to what a lot of people, (including me) were hoping for at the beginning - a decent distro that "just works" that we would could confidently install at friends, family, neighbours, SOHO whatever, without support nightmares at evenings and weekends. (Yes, I've been dicking around with BSD etc. for years, but I do need some time with my family...)
With MS busy pissing people off with Win8, they've missed a great opportunity.
I had some success 'converting' people with Linux skinned as XP; c'mon Mark; where's Ubuntu Win7 edition?
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I mean... No fallback mode when graphic acceleration is missing? Seriously???
So here's the story. There's an HD 4670 in my dad's PC. Because of AMD (so the root of the problem isn't Ubuntu, but please bear with me), there are issues with using the legacy version of the Catalyst drivers. That's on Ubuntu 13.04. First, I added a well-known PPA to circumvent the problem (that is, get back 3D acceleration),
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c'mon Mark; where's Ubuntu Win7 edition?
Boy, that's quite ironic, isn't it?
Shuttleworth's very first bug was Microsoft's dominance on the desktop.
But then, just when he was finally given his best chance to convert those Windows desktop users to Ubuntu, Shuttleworth alienated almost every desktop user by forcing Unity on them.
And to compound the irony, Unity's mistake was exactly the same as Win8's mistake: unnecessarily forcing desktop users to adopt a touch-mobile paradigm.
Just imagine how different things would have been if Shuttleworth had foc
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Mod up...
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Because it negates their entire current direction, which btw is also in opposition to their original published values.
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Priort to that, the printers worked fine, and they still work with Android, Win 7 and *BSD (I have never even seen WIn8). In fact, there is a command line install process that works too. Given that at least two of the users I support could not even spell "Command line" this is not exactly user friendly.
Silly rabbit... (Score:5, Interesting)
....trixs are for kids
I've been on Slashdot for a while now and I'll never understand the fanaticism that drives the UNIX culture that would spawn the
1. Creation of a bug report that is, essentially, a political statement
2. One that is left open for 9 years just because they are that childish
3. Reporting said bug/political statement has been closed as if some monumental success has been achieved.
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Closed how? "Wontfix?" (Score:5, Insightful)
The typical "bug fixing" strategy for open source seems to be
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Yep, for me the worst example is akonadi, which is enormously complex, and crashes every now and then in strange and different and difficult to track down ways on pretty much every system I've used it on. I have a fair amount of sympathy with them because I'm not sure how these kind of bugs would ever get fixed. Unless of course the person reporting them likely being the only one who can reproduce due to the cause being some obscure spam in their gmail goes digging and fixes it themselves.
Re:Closed how? "Wontfix?" (Score:4, Informative)
Who says they even need to claim that so-and-so change fixed it? One time when I looked around Launchpad, a common way I was seeing issues getting closed was someone coming several months later and being like "this was reported for 12.10, can you reproduce it in 13.04?" and then closing it as incomplete when the user who has probably switched to a similar package or another distro at that point no longer cares.
WINE also does the same, if you want a bug to stay open you have to babysit it. But to be fair they're often dealing with closed source software that they might not have a copy of themselves.
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Well if there where unlimited resources (developers and available hardware) then all reported bugs would probably be investigated with much greater care, but since that is not the case you have to understand that they have to prioritize.
That said, I do find some maintainers to be somewhat lazy, I filed a bug report together with a patch that fixed the problem to Gnome once and it took three years for the maintainer there to accept the patch. But then another bug+patch that I filed for Gnome but for another
Ubuntu has always been about hype (Score:3)
I cannot disagree that Ubuntu (and Canonical) have done a good (no, great) job at bringing Linux more into peoples' hearts and minds. To say that Ubuntu is a poster-boy distro, however, would be a crime. Ubuntu stood on the shoulders of Debian to gain its traction, but past the initial push of getting better hardware/driver support, it seems like the roadmap of Ubuntu has been about as scattered as darts thrown by a drunken barfly. A bunch of ambitious "tries" at different angles, with very little attention to actually fixing bugs to maintain their stability/usability ("Won't fix" as new release is out, LTS: Long-term-suffering, ...). I really, really tried loving Ubuntu for the long term, even bet my biggest contract on them to bring LTSP to schools (one of their ambitious "tries" back in the day) but their coordination with outside OSS projects and communities were disappointing to me.
I'm not trying to bash Ubuntu, like I said they have done a lot of good. But I'm typing this on my Debian workstation, which I left to go to Ubuntu for a number of years, and now I'm back. And I couldn't be happier, because I haven't had such a stable system in years =) None the less, congrats on fixing the infamous bug #1 I guess. It is a very sentimental thing, I'm sure.
6% to go (Score:3)
according to Wikimedia [wikimedia.org]. I agree with the trend sentiment, but they still have a majority.
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6% to dip under 50%, but they'll still have the largest piece of the pie over all the other players individually (even if you group them into corporations instead of OS), and thus will continue to have market dominance for some time yet.
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Agreed, they should update the bug title to say 'plurality'. :)
A slight problem with bufix (Score:4, Insightful)
"enables malicious anti-features such as DRM, surveillance, and other monopolistic practices."
Apparently so does ubuntu's integrated search by default.
WONTFIX: Works on my machine (Score:4, Insightful)
Not sure why this wasn't closed ages ago.
Microsoft has a majority market share (Score:2)
Funny (Score:2)
I have three reasons for reading/posting this. The first is that eog is broken since I recently upgraded Ubuntu; I should be wading through thousands of pictures right now, but can't. The other is that I cannot switch virtual desktops anymore since the upgrade so I'm stuck on this one.
I've been using Ubuntu for years on multiple boxes and I've never experienced an upgrade that did not totally kill my tediously constructed desktop configuration and a handful of applications I Just Need.
Which brings me to the
Mark Shuttleworth here (Score:3)
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It's a self-righteous organization proclaiming that they're more ethical and free than evil corporate computing empires, while at the same time lead by a moronic billionaire who wants to be as cool and smart as Steve Jobs, but continuously throws tantrums when no one takes him seriously because he is not actually Steve Jobs.
Re:Ubuntu? (Score:5, Insightful)
More money follows 'more evil' more frequently than it follows "smarter". Adolph Hitler had plenty of followers as well if you're looking to get this thread appropriately Godwin'd. Mr. Jobs was a marketing genius and general douche-bag. I don't think Mr. Shuttleworth's greed is at nearly the same level if it exists at all. He may want to be famous, but what he wants to be famous for seems a little more altruistic. I've questioned that a bit lately, but I think it mostly still applies.
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Ubuntu? Could the editors at least provide a link or a short explanation in the summary about what exactly "Ubuntu" is? I've never heard of it, and I think many others here haven't either.
Also, what's a Microsoft?
Re:Microsoft has a majority market share (Score:5, Informative)
Not in my house it doesn't. 1 Win 7 laptop 1 MacBook Pro 1 Chrome Book 3 Raspberry PIs running Raspbian 1 Android tablet 1 Android phone 1 blackberry playbook 1 Apple TV Looks like Linux wins, with Android a close second. The best part is that this is all for one person living alone. :)
Perhaps I'm reading this wrong, but it seems that they're saying that in 2004, MS had a majority, but this is now changing and thus the bug can be closed. With your enumeration you simply give anecdotal evidence to this.
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Not in my house it doesn't.
1 Win 7 laptop
1 MacBook Pro
1 Chrome Book
3 Raspberry PIs running Raspbian
1 Android tablet
1 Android phone
1 blackberry playbook
1 Apple TV
Looks like Linux wins, with Android a close second.
The best part is that this is all for one person living alone. :)
Perhaps I'm reading this wrong, but it seems that they're saying that in 2004, MS had a majority, but this is now changing and thus the bug can be closed. With your enumeration you simply give anecdotal evidence to this.
"living alone"
Perhaps I'm reading this wrong, but massive geek points aside, sounds like OP needs to get out of the basement more...
Re:Microsoft has a majority market share (Score:5, Informative)
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400 Androids (seems high... might be less in the US, I was lazy)
130 iPhones running iOS
a handful of feature phones and a smattering of MS Phones
And you'll find your ratios balanace out *much* more than they used to.
Source:Hint: It didn't always look like this. [wikipedia.org]
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It looked about the same in 2004 when Ubuntu bug #1 was filed.
We just didn't think that Palm and un-upgradable proprietary cell phone OSes were competing against Windows, where now we think that iOS and Android (and maybe Ubuntu for tablets) are. It's a change of perception, not numbers.
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What I would really like to see is a OS usage on a per hour basis. I bet we would see Windows (due to being used for business and on most home pcs) pull even farther ahead, simply because there's
Re:Microsoft has a majority market share (Score:4, Insightful)
The ratio of 650 Windows 7 boxes plus 75 Windows 2008 R2 boxes at work to 3 Unix machines tends to swing the balance in favour of Windows where I am.
well.. only if people had the bright idea of redefining smartphones as pc's earlier!
Then shuttleworth could have just skipped the whole fucking ubuntu. because in 2004 if you counted java running phones as computers then ms wouldn't have had the majority share to begin with.
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Couldn't find "+1 Nerd" in moderation-options.
Re:Microsoft has a majority market share (Score:4, Funny)
Don't you mean GNU/Doofus?
Re:Microsoft has a majority market share (Score:5, Funny)
Both of you are doofi.
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I believe it's spelled "doofie". :P
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GP had already suggested that, and that's just back to the Latin rules, which, as I said, may or may not apply.
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doofii, nuke'em forever
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If Android is Java and Android is Linux, then Linux must be Java.
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An apple is red and a rose is red, then an apple must be a rose.
roses have thorns blackberries have thorns :. apples are blackberries
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An apple is red and a rose is red, then an apple must be a rose.
roses have thorns blackberries have thorns :. apples are blackberries
No, because Apples are bought. Few people actually buy a Blackberry.
/troll
/flameshield
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As it happens, apples are roses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosaceae [wikipedia.org]
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I have many interests outside technology. Technology is certainly high up on the list, but I am also a singer, outdoors man, woodworker, mechanic, pet owner, motorcycle rider, Jeep enthusiast, and too many other things to even mention. I even have a lovely girlfriend.
My interest in technology has provided me with quite a good living these past 30 years or so. As well as enough disposable income to afford plenty of toys.
Re:Let me be the First (Score:5, Funny)
I would care. But I'm a long-time Linux supporter, which means I only care about my distro of choice.
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How is it that on slashdot, an admission of ignorance AND intellectual apathy is "insightful".
You might not be hip to ubuntu culture, thats fine. But don't celebrate it.
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In the case of personal computing then yes. Since personal computing is moving toward areas where Microsoft doesn't have near monopoly then they obviously don't have monopoly on the personal computing market anymore.
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Aren't bug reports mostly just complaints about something not being/doing what you want it to?
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No. They are technical descriptions of incorrect behavior of the software.
That only works in cases where there are clear and specific requirements/specifications for how this software should work or it crashes in some way no application ever should. Even then, the user won't know those he only sees what he thinks is incorrect behavior. Usually the definition of correct is just a meeting of minds, the user saying this doesn't look right, the developer agrees and the code changes since most bugs appear where the specification says nothing at all. And if the code follows the specifi
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To be fair, many people use a phone or tablet as their primary computing device in 2013, which wasn't the case in 2004. So if he's moving the goal posts, it's only to put them in a more relevant place. Also, I have seen very few tables running Linux, most tables are just solid wood or metal.
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Also, I have seen very few tables running Linux, most tables are just solid wood or metal.
Linux should be ported to tables as soon as possible, the installation base is huge. You will get the gamers interested too, as so many games are played on table platforms.