Comment 145 for bug 332945

@Matthew:

I neglected to say something I think is pretty important: I do recognize how very frustrating it must be for you, Mark, et. al to have put so much work into this and to have received so much criticism, even hostile criticism, when you of course believed (and believe) you were introducing a significant improvement. Allow me to say that I honor how well you've handled that overall; the restraint you've shown has been admirable.

I also wanted to reply to your suggestion:

>> It's not particularly productive to be covering,
>> in bug report comments, exactly the same points
>> as were covered in the mailing list discussion
>> six weeks earlier. So if you could read the mailing
>> list discussion first, that would be awesome. :-)

Point taken. Before I posted the previous I read most of the thread that contains,

<https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2009-February/027568.html>

including every comment you or Mark made. I'm a user of Ubuntu, not a developer, and I wasn't really much aware of the mailing lists – I don't subscribe to any of them – until I followed your helpful link; thank you.

Parenthetically, I arrived “here” after my acceptance of an Ubuntu-generated “updates available” prompt broke my ability to watch streaming video on fancast.com, something I'd done without problems many times before, and was, in fact, engaged in immediately before installing the Hardy updates. I interrupted watching a video there to install the updates, actually, found I couldn't watch videos there immediately afterward, and I've spent at least 30 hours since, without success, trying to regain that ability. I hoped the problem would be solved by an upgrade, and I was inclined toward Jaunty until I learned about the intention to use this new method for updates.

I really have only one specific comment re the thread and the post you directed me to. You replied to Aigars Mahinovs' in this way:

>> Linux is about user being in control.
>
> Any sentence of the form "Linux is about <noun phrase>" is a fallacy.

Perhaps; here's something that's irrefutable, then: For me, anyway, Linux is substantially about being in control. I didn't abandon the market leader because their products didn't work, or because of their effective monopoly, or because I objected to paying for software. I left because I felt their programs too frequently challenged and interfered with my ability to exercise sovereignty over my own computer, and that frustrated and angered me.

It's no secret that many users of commercial software feel similarly. If “bug number one” is ever to be solved, I think Canonical will have to support a radically unequivocal alternative to that user experience. I absolutely intend no disrespect, and I'm genuinely sorry to say it, but it's my opinion that the 'persistent interruption' model for updates in Jaunty doesn't provide such an alternative, nor does it even come close.