I'm sorry if that's too harsh. It wasn't my intention to insult anyone.
My patience with Ubuntu finally snapped with 11.10 (after using it as
the main OS for three years), and Ubufox has since its appearance seemed
like one of those bad ideas which are allowed to remain because someone
has too much invested in it to remove it (like Unity).

The project page <https://launchpad.net/ubufox> simply describes it as
"ubuntu tweaks and extensions" with no more explanation, and the three
first pages of a Google search didn't seem to show any pages explaining
what this means. After uninstalling it I never noticed any difference in
Firefox, so it seemed like unnecessary stability / security / [quality
measurement du jour] risk for no discernible gain.

If it's just a meta-extension, then why not install the extensions
themselves? If I read the open source community right, it's considered
very bad form as a software distributor to install by default a package
which installs and removes stuff behind the scenes with each release.

If the tweaks are visual (which is totally understandable to keep a
unified graphical experience) why not put them into a theme instead of
an inscrutable (except for very paranoid programmers who actually read
the code) extension? If the tweaks are more fundamental, why not spend
the effort on including them in the Firefox base? I assume the Mozilla
developers would be eager to incorporate useful changes by Ubuntu
developers.

Maybe this is caring too much about a minor piece of software, but after
the Golden Years 2008-2010 Ubufox and Unity seem like symptoms of a
reckless approach to improve "shine" while ignoring actual usability. I
was expecting to be able to recommend Ubuntu whole-heartedly to all
family members in 2011, but with the recent developments that's more
unlikely than in 2008.

With regard to keeping bugs open, what difference should it make how the
request was worded? As a developer I'm used to dealing with swearing and
what looks like snarky and sarcastic text in bug reports - It's a
natural deficiency of the medium that we can't feel the frustration of
the user who loses the panel shortcuts (11.10 upgrade), has crash bugs
without any simple way of reporting what precisely went wrong (Banshee,
Pidgin, Evolution et al), or who has to jump through hoops to get to
commonly used software (Unity). I don't know whether there exists any
communications channel to report such major issues *and* come up with
solutions to the improvement of what I still deem (because of 10.04) to
be the best distro ever, but I'd be happy to work with the developers
rather than just submitting bug reports.

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/877993

Title:
  Help -> Report a Problem... does nothing

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/877993/+subscriptions

-- 
ubuntu-bugs mailing list
ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs

Reply via email to