--- In linux@yahoogroups.com, Scott <scottro@...> wrote:
>
> On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 10:25:49PM -0500, Jye Nigma wrote:
> >
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/business/11ubuntu.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=t\
echnology
> >
> [...]
> Ubuntu is a bit more responsive, but some of their decisions border
> on moronic.

I wouldn't be so harsh as to call some of their "decisions" moronic
but I would say some are not well thought-out -- they seem to overlook
the concerns, needs and wants of their user base.

> I saw an interesting example the other day. Researching why my
> computer clock kept getting set back to UTC, (which, AFAIK, doesn't
> use daylight savings time) it turned out to be a Ubuntu install.
> Researching a bit further (eventually I found that one edits
> /etc/default/rcS) I saw a developer saying, "It's the only sane way
> to do it, and we're not going to change it."

Now THAT decision is moronic. :-)

As an astronomy buff for nearly 60 years, I use UTC in my programs
because that's what is used as a time base for astronomical calcs.
But I do not use, or want, UTC for anything else, especially the
clock on a system that multi-boots.

The Ubuntu team has made some other recent questionable assertions and
assumptions. I now have to manually update /boot/grub/menu.lst because
it's no longer done automatically for kernel updates in 8.04LTS.

And the wireless fiasco with the recent 8.10 release is legion.

And the absurd 6-month release cycle with its incompatibilities just
boggles my mind. Compare that (Ubuntu) with Arch's "rolling release
model" which truly makes sense to me, and is akin to Sun's Solaris.
Solaris programs I wrote and compiled 10 years ago still run fine on
the latest Solaris 10u6 released in October 2008.

With that written, I use Ubuntu 8.04LTS for all my astronomical apps,
but when support for 8.04LTS ends in April 2011 I may move the apps
to another distro if things haven't improved with Ubuntu's policies.