Do you like it when your operating system “just works?” I do. This does not happen easily or without hard work. Ubuntu has a wonderful QA team that has a systematic method of testing releases on diverse hardware platforms. However, they don’t own every piece of equipment out there. This doesn’t have to be the end of the story. Anyone who is willing to do a little bit of work and follow some very clearly outlined procedures may become a part of the team and help make releases better. Interested? Take a look at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing for ways that community members can join the Testing Team and http://qa.ubuntu.com/ for information on the QA Team. These two groups work together toward the common goal of making Ubuntu releases the best they can be through finding bugs, reporting them, and helping find problems on an even wider set of hardware.
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Matthew, repeating to yourself often enough that ‘it just works’ …………
If you look at the number of bug fixes/updates post release and the number of issues being raised on support forums, the reality is that for most none technical people (like me) it is still good advice to wait a couple of weeks after a new release (any flavour) for the techies to shake out the wrinkles!
That said, Ubuntu rocks!
tony: I think you are misinterpreting what I said. When I suggest we want our OS to “just work” I was pointing out that this is only certain for those who have the same hardware as what has been used for testing. That means there are pieces of hardware out there that may or may not “just work” and we have no way of predicting this because those particular hardware bits are not available to the testing team. However, if more people are interested and available to assist, we can see the amount and types of hardware that will be tested expand and this will make it more likely that people installing Ubuntu will find that their hardware “just works.”
Anyway, I’m agreeing with you. Not all installs currently “just work,” but we keep trying to get closer and closer to that goal. We are doing well, but we are not perfect. We are pursuing the goal, but have not reached universal “just working.”