What Do You Dislike or Hate About Ubuntu?

[Awesomeness]

• Bleeding edge / Unstable
• No actual developers involved to fix bugs (reliant on Red Hat for bugfixes)
• Upgrades always break something
• apt / deb
• Dickhead as boss

[karl]

= Software =
(1) PulseAudio problems (in the process of being fixed)


I find that PulseAudio consumes too much CPU.
I had a basic PC (Athlon64 3200+) with Ubuntu 8.04 (using ALSA) that used 0% CPU for playing back sound. Skype was using 40% CPU.
Now I have a i5-2520M (2 cores, 4 threads) CPU, Ubuntu 11.04, and I see PulseAudio using between 2 and 6% CPU when playing back music. And when I use Skype I get 65% CPU usage (40% skype and 25% PulseAudio). I've tried all kinds of tweaks found online but none helped.

I wish ubuntu would make it easy to switch between pulse and alsa (ATM is a PITA to switch).

[PsynoKhi0]

Hate: inclusion of mono as default on the vanilla Ubuntu release CD. Main reason why I moved away from Ubuntu, and why I prefer to install Xubuntu or Kubuntu on new users' computers. That can of worms is best left closed.

I don't dislike Unity. It sure is flaky still, but I think the concepts are sound, and I'm prefectly ok with not being the intended audience.

As for marketing and advertising, I DO think increasing the mindshare of Linux is as valuable a contribution to FOSS as plain code. Wasn't it for that Ubuntu wallpaper I saw on someone's computer back in 2007, I'd still think of Linux as a black screen with a penguin in the top left corner, and a text prompt, only good at operating servers through arcane commands.

[BlackStar]

Dislike:
- the fact that they are using an outdated version of Mono that doesn't support .Net 4.0
- the fact that the Mono packaging is extremely convoluted (this problem is actually inherited from Debian)
- the performance and instability of closed-source applications like fglrx, flash or skype (this issue is common to all linux distributions)
- lack of smooth/pixel-perfect scrolling (this affects all current linux distributions)
- the copyright assignment requirement for contributions to core applications
- high-visibility bugs and feature requests being ignored and/or closed without communication
- too centralized development process that turns away opportunistic delevopers and outside contributors

Like:
- the new Unity interface. It is a large step up from Gnome 3 in usability and prettier than KDE4.
- the new installer. My line of work involves formatting/re-installing systems and Ubuntu is significantly simpler and faster to install than Windows and all other Linux distros I've tried.
- good touchpad / multitouch support
- Launchpad & Bazaar are awesome
- Ubuntu One for backup and file sharing
- great and far-reaching community
- nice fonts, font rendering and general appearance
- the fact that Ubuntu has converted many friends away from Windows. This includes people that I didn't expect to like Ubuntu (e.g. hardcore gamers)

[curaga]

Hate how they do changes for the worse just for the sake of being different. Yes Pulse Mono Evolution Unity looking at you, just for the starters. edit: Oh and gotta mention networkmismanager as well.

[BlackStar]

How can people stand to use ALSA without PulseAudio in this day and time? It's awful. I had nothing but trouble in my recent KDE tests (low sound quality, high CPU usage, applications bypassing kmix) that were magically solved as soon as I installed Pulse.

Why don't you like NetworkManager? I think it's awesome both in its gnome and kde flavors (the gnome flavor is a bit more mature, so I tend to have both installed).

[sabriah]

Taps Debian but creates incompatible .deb files.

[dfblogic]

It really bugs me that there are "-dev" versions of packages. That is a Debian feature, of course, and other distros have the same. While not a violation of the letter of the GPL, it seems to me to be a violation of the spirit.

Here's why it bugs me: I work on an free game derived from Quake2 GPL'd code. Like many open source projects, for Linux, we distribute a tarball with an Autotools build, and have a Subversion repository with read-only public access. I would guess that most of our Linux user base are Ubuntu users and, it is a good (even great) thing that Ubuntu makes Linux more accessible. However, it is a pain that the user cannot build an open source program with the default library install; they have to make a special effort to get build tools and the "-dev" versions of libraries. Like many open source projects, we do not have a lot of resources for pre-release testing; we really depend on our regular user base for this. The "-dev" version thing just makes that a little harder.

Some would, and have, pointed out that it would be a dangerous thing for regular users to be able to build programs. But, isn't that what the GPL is about? I concede that there are environments where that restriction would be needed. However, seems to me the default should be the other way around with "non-dev" packaging being the special case.

No doubt this is not going to change, but, having ranted, I feel better now.

[HoboJ]

I first started my linux experience with ubuntu 6.06. It was buggy but by and large it worked perfectly fine. I continued to use ubuntu until they decided arbitrarily move the min/max/close buttons to the left by default. A change that is to this day still a huge mystery to me Anyway, here's what I don't like about ubuntu.

Dislike:
Min/Max/Close buttons on the left by default
networkmanager
pulse audio
their obsession with social networking integration
bloat bloat bloat bloat bloat bloat bloat
unity interface

Like:
the startup jingle, I still miss it

[sabriah]

It really bugs me that there are "-dev" versions of packages. That is a Debian feature, of course, and other distros have the same. While not a violation of the letter of the GPL, it seems to me to be a violation of the spirit.

Here's why it bugs me: I work on an free game derived from Quake2 GPL'd code. Like many open source projects, for Linux, we distribute a tarball with an Autotools build, and have a Subversion repository with read-only public access. I would guess that most of our Linux user base are Ubuntu users and, it is a good (even great) thing that Ubuntu makes Linux more accessible. However, it is a pain that the user cannot build an open source program with the default library install; they have to make a special effort to get build tools and the "-dev" versions of libraries. Like many open source projects, we do not have a lot of resources for pre-release testing; we really depend on our regular user base for this. The "-dev" version thing just makes that a little harder.

Some would, and have, pointed out that it would be a dangerous thing for regular users to be able to build programs. But, isn't that what the GPL is about? I concede that there are environments where that restriction would be needed. However, seems to me the default should be the other way around with "non-dev" packaging being the special case.

No doubt this is not going to change, but, having ranted, I feel better now.

Tell the Debian developers this.

I guess some automated install of missing -dev files may fix it.

But it is also a matter of size for a default installation.