[Info-vax] BASIC compiler in the hobbyist distribution

[seasoned_geek]

On Sunday, May 31, 2015 at 3:25:06 AM UTC-5, li... at openmailbox.org wrote:
> 
> Mobility/agility does not translate to good support for a large client base
> or large, complicated software ecosystems. It can be a good development
> model. It is rarely a good support model.

Agreed. When the doo-doo really hits the fan you need masses of *sses. Everyone who calls wants a human on the other end of the line. Someone that __NATIVELY__ speaks their language not brokenly stumbles through a script.

> 
> Linux has thousands of developers and tens of thousands of applications
> developers. Anybody can report a bug. But Linux and 99.9% of the apps that
> run on it are still crapware. And those guys are motivated! They're just
> mostly clueless and wrong.

Oh, it is faaaaaaaaaaaaaaar worse than that. Having been working with Qt and dealing with Ubuntu, Mint, and half a dozen other distros. I will leave out the years of living in RPM hell dealing with OpenSuSE, Fedora, and that ilk.

Those developers aren't "motivated" much beyond putting "Linux Package A maintainer" in big bold letters on their resume followed in very small print by "for distro x". Yes, anyone "can" report a bug, unless you are talking about Ubuntu where they periodically lock bug reporting out and only report bugs via a specific channel for people who subscribe, then install and run full debug versions of everything (makes my 6-core with 24G of RAM run like a 286 with DOS 4.0)

Yes, there are __some__ who might genuinely care and be qualified, but most are just looking for the title. Let's discuss some specific cases.

Apple, for some stupid reason, has been allowed to maintain CUPS. The genetic missfits in charge of that decided to take it upon themselves to throw out the mature and well tested PostScript communications method/support making all PPDs and drivers now support fuzzy and bug ridden PDF. Why? A lot of smoke came out, but nothing justifiable. It broke every printer except those for raw ASCII. 

Oh, but they couldn't stop until all were broken, they also took it upon themselves to drop both serial and parallel support from CUPS. Why? Because Apple hadn't made a computer with those in years. I kid you not, that was the answer!!!! Despite the hundreds of thousands of parallel and serial impact printers out there printing scale tickets and other things legally required to be on multipart form (especially those customs tickets).

That debacle happened with an LTS release.

Ubuntu allows an individual from Egypt or some place like that to be the maintainer of the modem software for the non-hardware we-owe-it-to-dumb-arse-Microsoft fake modems, most of which slip into those tiny slots. The dude has to drive to another town and borrow his friends computer to test anything. He repeatedly turns in fixes which do not compile. You know what they heads of the Ubuntu support forum said?

"I don't use a modem so I don't see a real problem with this."

I kid you not.

While we are on the modems, let's bring this back to HP who had a volunteer maintainer for the faxmodem stuff in Linux. Another LTS release came out with new kernel and completely busted faxmodem support. None of the fax software packages would work. When I contacted the maintainer he sent me back a bill for thousands of dollars. Said once I had paid it he would fix it. I proceeded to explain to him "volunteer maintainers" don't get paid by bug reporters and even filed a complaint with HP.

I kid you not.

My all time favorite is the Konsole package maintainer. Supposedly VT-100 and several other VT levels of compatibility. When I was writing one of my books I was actually trying to use this emulator with EDT/LSE. It was about 80% there. I contacted the maintainer. Reported what wasn't working. He responded that he was just a maintainer and didn't have the hardware to test it. I then offered to create him an account on my DS-10. Not interested. I then pointed him to Death Row Cluster where he could get a free account, test to his hearts content, and make the product work. "I know nothing bout that platform and don't want to learn."

Wait for it. Someone hacked some more features into VIM which used the keypad. The VT scan codes messed it up. He deleted them.

I kid you not.

My current favorite LTS tragedy happened with Mint 17's current release. All was well for months then an update caused the lovely Apple PDF stuff to send illegal page size commands to my Lexmark (and many other) printers. It also causes the "Export as PDF" function in LibreOffice to gag a luggie. Filed bug report with Mint 17. They kicked it up to Ubuntu and closed it. Ubuntu closed it as not reproducible. The Mint maintainer did not reopen it or even follow up. I had to create a shiny new bug and paste in all of the Ubuntu information. It now languishes. After months of not being able to use that printer I poked around to find another driver which almost-kind-of-works if I don't do much with color or duplexing. The export function is still gagging.

I cannot tell you just how many bug reports I get emails from with text along the following lines:

"Your bug report for X is being closed as that version is no longer maintained."

Roughly 80-90% of the bugs I and others file get "handled" that way. I haven't used OpenSuSE in nearly a decade and I got 3 of those just a few weeks ago from them.

What is severely lacking in the Linux world is professionalism. All of the little script kiddies actually coding want to put "Added feature X to package Y" on their resume and not one of them wants to fix bugs with other people's code. Even if you can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt the bug is theirs they will let the bug report rot in bugzilla while they go off adding new stuff, unless they can kick the bug to an up-stream maintainer so they get credit for closing it and still avoid doing anything.

The Ubuntu team gets slammed by nearly every other distro for "providing so little to the community" meaning they contribute very little code back. The reality is most of the hacks "fixing" things which get done there simply can't be rolled back into the baseline.

I mean seriously, nobody wants that wretched Unity code creeping into anything. People have to use Mint if they want a KDE YAU (Yet Another Ubuntu) release because Ubuntu doesn't test KDE. KUbuntu is always a train wreck.

The Linux package maintainers have learned well from Microsoft.