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My Ubuntu Saga (Score:2)
I describe a similar, (but tangential) problem with Ubuntu [livejournal.com] on my blog. The first comment misses the point that while my email was annoying, it was still good-intentioned, and that I should be treated with more restraint.
But the problem was that Ubuntu kept thinking I owed them something and that I should jump through hoops to try to remedy their problems. I'm a happy Mandriva (Cooker) user myself, and while I'm trying to promote FOSS in general, I'm glad I have enough options to choose from.
Whenver someone reports a bug, I know well-enough to say: "You're right, it's an issue in my code (or an undocumented/counter-intuitive/not-perfecly-allowed behaviour. It's my fault. I'll fix it." Ubuntu on the other hand, claimed that I should bother enough to go through their red tape trying to fix an issue I know they have.
The user is king, and many people don't realise it. Ubuntu messed royally with Ubuntu Hardy (which I call "Ubuntu Hardly") which I've heard some horror stories of. In Israel alone, two famous FOSS developers and bloggers have happily switched to Mandriva (and blogged about it), and another one said she's planning to switch to Debian. I also tried to help two people on #perl with installing perfectly good CPAN modules on Hardy, which failed from some reason. (One of them now owes me a beer, if I'll ever come to Rome. )
I don't know if it's related to the problems I've encountered, but it seems likely that Ubuntu will lose mind-share among the power users/developers and evidently among more mundane users too.
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Re: (Score:1)
In English, we call this a "hasty generalization".