Comment 223 for bug 196277

>
> If you have not, you can try to convince or to understand why it is so
> hard or so important to fix in 8.04, doing some research before, or at
> least trying to be nice.
>
I had written an explanatory text that I finally erased in fear of
reading again that this is no place for rambling.
But opinions vary. Well, if I'm asked...

I'm not asking for support. I'm *doing* support of a "community" in
Belarus who received free computers on which I chose to install Ubuntu,
and that's 8.04 right because of its LTS tag. Those poor Чернобыль
victims refrain from spending their few rubles on Internet phone calls.
The main goal of my setting up their Internet connection (not a given
thing) is communication with their Belgian friends and my e-mail
support, after tests on my mirror system.
I don't know a word of russian (well, I did learn a fair amount of
amount of Russian in the process; actually, I might well even be able to
install Russian Windows :-)) but those who know the meaning of the word
Ubuntu can cope with anything with the help of a good словарь. And
Ubuntu was my choice also because of the i18n thing, I can send them
explanations in the form of screen shots in Russian. The one who said "a
picture's worth a thousand words" must have been counting bytes :-)

I was hoping I would be able to extract from 8.04 updates the minimum to
send to Belarus over e-mail to solve their problems. What I'm being told
here is that it's not exactly the meaning of the word "support".
My questions are not particularly focusing on Bug 196277, which was
particularly harmful to them, but fortunately, other Ubuntu lovers
posted a workaround that Belarus applied. I thanked them a lot, but I
will never do it enough.

I usually do not just report bugs, but I analyze the problems deeply
before reporting.
I expect to see someone come, to help him solve the problem, but it
never happened.

One big problem that remains is Bug 202456, an awful behaviour of Wine
on Ubuntu.
Wine is important for Ubuntu. My experience (supporting Belgian users
too) is that many a one regret Windows because some particular
Windows-only program they like is missing. I'm repeatedly solving
Windows integration problems and I found that the best is to package
them in DEBs directly with a front end script taking care of any problem
and, in particular, automatically selecting the language when feasible,
that's often Russian of course :-)
It takes from half an hour work to a few days delay to repackage many
(moderately complex) Windows programs. It's EASY and those who have
experimented that find totally shameful to see distribution Web pages
full of long lists of Windows-only programs when a deb file could exist
right next to them, be it only for anyone to wonder where it's there for
and get interest. The worst is the amazement of the programmer when you
tell him that his program works on Linux, or almost. Especially when he
begins to fancy programming for Linux as well.
Ubuntu-heading people should consider Wine better. From experience, I
call it the Portal to Unix.
Regarding my desire to cooperate, the only answer to 202456 so far is
"have you tested Intrepid?".
You know why I'm running 8.04.1 on a mirror system.

I may even elaborate a patch. See Bug 29743. The guy wanted to hang my
patch to the Questions peg. Until someone else came to say "hey, I've
had a similar problem which had me devise exactly the same patch".
But now look where my patch is : that obvious bug is not even set to
Confirmed (could as well be Incomplete and expiring in 10 days).
Ubuntu support (bug system) will only work well when the flow of
information with developers will work.

Now, be very cautious regarding the advice to, as the saying says,
"upgrade to the latest version". You may well see people come back
saying their system no longer works at all. This happened to me with an
advice to upgrade to 7.10, see Bug 197514. Once again, I came down to
what amounts to almost a patch and look, we're into the fourth release
in which the problem still exists.

These are very general considerations in a hurry, no proofreading, not
my language, sorry.
Unusually, they were not made for my own purpose, but for the benefit of
the community (Ubuntu).

Regarding 196277 & 8.04 proper, the least that could be done is
officially releasing the patch that has been found.

And, "regarding the general", to start a patch publication policy which
is a much better way to solve particular problems around the world than
to request people to download 700 MiB of new system upgrades over phone
lines.

I have tried to contact Canonical to send them such remarks. They did
not reply my e-mail.
Please someone try forward this and I tell them I love so much what
they're doing?
I've spent months after months in their tracks and sometimes scouting
ahead !!!

Did I answer your questions?
Am I being nice enough?