Ubuntu, Linux, GNOME and Xorg: This Intel-video user is tired

I'm reading one of my very favorite FOSS writers, Ryan Paul, on the changes afoot for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (codename Lucid ... and I hope so), and before I continue, I heartily recommend reading everything Ryan writes in Ars Technica's Open-Ended blog, but this comment (among the many) leapt right out at me:

"I'm looking forward to this release. 9.10 is mostly stable, I could use a good update that breaks my intel video and wireless chips even though they were fine, plus overhauls the USB method so not much works anymore."

That's exactly where I'm at. I had a pretty good thing going in Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. Everything that was ever going to work pretty much did. Yeah I had a bit of instability with one of my wireless adapters, fixed in 8.10/9.04, and I fairly quickly figured out how to tame the new NetworkManager (upgrading with wireless from 8.04 is NOT recommended, by me anyway, if you plan to use a wired interface after the fact).

And I did the upgrade from 8.04 through 8.10 to 9.04 in a single weekend solely to be ready for 9.10. As I've said more than once, I wanted newer apps, and I had no idea so many things would break.

But break they did.

If I hadn't suffered through similar problems — all since solved — in the transition from Debian Etch to Lenny on my Intel video hardware, I'd be more critical of Ubuntu than I already am. (Hard to believe, you say? I agree.)

I realize this is one of the problems inherent not in software distributed under free, open-source licenses and developed by the community.

No, it's due to one thing and one thing only: Hardware manufacturers.

These hardware manufactures have spent untold hours making sure their equipment has the proper drivers to function under an increasing number of Windows operating systems. I've seen drivers offered for everything from Windows 95 through 98, 2000, XP and now Vista and 7.

If these hardware companies paid the same kind of attention to Linux, and in addition didn't just push binary blobs out the tube but offered open-source code that could be used in any number of operating systems, from those based on Linux to BSD and beyond, then we'd be getting somewhere,

I spend a lot of time bitching, moaning, complaining and rending garments over the problems I have when Ubuntu or OpenBSD does a six-month update that takes my X video compatibility and rips it apart. And while I think the lion's share of responsibility for the huge regressions in Intel video compatibility belongs to the Xorg developers, I really don't know how and why Intel either aided or allowed this to happen, as well as why so many operating-system projects just took this code, rolled it into their OSes and made me and so many others suffer so much (and again ... this has been going on for me at least since Debian Lenny was in Testing).

I've had a few comments that my now-8-year-old, most-likely-crappy-from-inception Intel hardware is being cast adrift to make things "better" for the newer video hardware out there. To that I say, bullshit.

My 2001 laptop with 1 GB RAM and a 1.3 GHz Celeron is perfectly capable of running "today's" Linux and BSD operating systems, as well as Windows XP (which I wiped from this PCs hard drive many months ago).

As I've said before, I don't know if there's any way of telling just what the mix of machines running Linux and BSD is out there, but I have a very good feeling that there are a whole lot more "older" machines than "newer" ones running FOSS operating systems.

If I knew more about Xorg, Intel video chips of a certain age, kernels and drivers, I would no doubt be better equipped to place blame for what I and many thousands of others have gone through over the past 2+ years.

I'll leave Ubuntu's seemingly silent decision to change the way it deals with USB drives (as the commenter mentions, as have I) since that's yet another issue I've dealt with (I had to modify all of my rsync shell scripts).

Would I do better with a Thinkpad? More developers use those than Toshibas like mine, so that would be a good choice.

But for what I pay for hardware (and that's as close to nothing as I can), I pretty much run the machines that find their way to my doorstep.

All I want are upgrades that don't completely break the OS. That's it. I like new apps, but what happened to this Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101 with Ubuntu 9.10 is not OK.

Like I said in a recent entry, there's a lot about Ubuntu to like, and many things about the operating system itself and the project philosophy have kept me using it in one form or another since 6.06 LTS. (And if OpenBSD hadn't blown up on me between 4.4 and 4.5, I probably would've stuck with that even longer than the six months I did; different story, different circumstances.)

I realize this is free software, but I don't think most developers and users think we're in this for anything but victory over the ways and means of proprietary software and the conglomerates behind it.

And I also realize I'm not a developer, just a user with logorrhea.

But come Lucid time in April of next year, the way I feel now I'm not going there in any kind of rush. Maybe three months, maybe more ... maybe not.