Re: [Banshee-List] Banshee from Intrepid repository not up to date

[bornagainpenguin <bornagainpenguin gmail com>]

Let's see.  Here we go...


>Your support from Canonical for Ubuntu Hardy is good until April 2011.
Correct.
>However, Canonical supports only packages within the official repositories.
As I
>mentioned in my previous e-mail, the PPA is a third party repository, under
the
>PPA maintainer's jurisdiction, i.e. me, in the case of all the
~banshee-team PPAs.

Why should I as an end user not expect to be able to upgrade to the latest
versions of the applications in the PPA, in this case that application being
the 1.5.x version of Banshee?  The whole reason for the PPA is to allow
users to be able to run application versions not in the default
repositories!  If my version of Ubuntu is supported and there is a PPA, why
wouldn't I expect there to be a recent version of the application for me to
install?

>Yes, and it still won't compile correctly. Perhaps the next version of
Banshee
>will. Frankly speaking, maintaining Banshee and all related packages for
three
>versions of Ubuntu in a PPA single-handedly is not an easy task to do, and
three
>releases back is as far as I can go.

Then it is inaccurate to say that Banshee is supporting the LTS releases,
isn't it?

>I am a student who needs to spend time studying after all.

While yes, I **do** appreciate that students need to study and that Banshee
like many other FOSS applications is done by volunteers, this is still an
excuse.  One that wears thin quite frankly...  If Linux ever hopes to be
able to become a mainstream desktop operating system it needs to be able to
provide applications that work and are current.  Telling users to upgrade to
fix bugs when the only way to upgrade is to install a more recent edition of
their operating system is not something that goes over well!

>You're welcome to help maintain the Hardy and Intrepid bits if you feel
sidelined or ignored.

Really?  And what if I am not a programmer?  What if I'm merely a prodigious
end-user whose managed to slowly learn enough about Linux, FOSS, *NIX, etc
to run his desktop?  What then?

I love how if there's a complaint non-programmers are invited to fix it
themselves or shut up...

>Ubuntu Karmic 9.10 is not bleeding edge. It is a stable version of Ubuntu
>released in October this year, and it has current Banshee packages in the
PPA
>uploaded by me.

That's great--but I'm on a netbook, (an eeepc to be specific) and if I
upgrade to Karmic I get hit with a bug that causes my system to crash hard
if I turn off my WiFi.  This was a known issue that was ignored in the rush
to get the Karmic release out the door on time.  The canonical developers
promised a quick fix would be made once the system was released, now they've
decided to let "upstream" fix it.  Then there's the removal of battstat, the
awful theming issues (hint defaults should not break *other* defaults),
issues with Grub2, etc etc...

How is something with that many problems NOT bleeding edge?

>If you consider Karmic as "bleeding edge", and are not "willing to ride the
>bleeding edge", then there is no reason for you to use Banshee 1.5.2
>either, because by your definition, that would be "bleeding edge" as well.

Well, yes--but supposedly there is support for the nonstandard resolution of
netbooks in the more recent editions of banshee, so I'm eager to try it out
to see if I can get the netbook "skin" to work for me so I don't have the
application doing squats on me whenever I plug in my mp3 player.  Then
there's the fact due to banshee no longer being updated for Hardy it is
nearly impossible to get the lyrics plugin to install thanks to dependency
hell--something I thought I'd seen the last of when I left Windows behind.
 
>Please understand that it takes time and resources to continue supporting
old
>versions of software. We at Ubuntu try to extend our support as long as
possible
>for our releases, but there is also a limit to how much we can support.
Ubuntu's
>policy is that once we have released, we will only push bugfixes to the
users,
>not new upstream releases. New upstream releases will go into the "latest
and
>greatest version of Ubuntu" as you have put it.

That's not my issue--my issue is when features get lost in the shuffle--like
the lyrics plugin for example.  The lyrics plugin was perfectly installable
until about six months ago when suddenly the application was updated, but
the plugin wasn't.  Since I'd lost my backup of Ubuntu while testing out
Jaunty (which had its own issues) I had no choice but to reinstall Hardy
from scratch, which is when suddenly I found myself unable to install the
lyrics plugin.  Before I trashed my working Hardy install for the "upgrade"
I had that plugin working fine for Banshee, installed from the PPA like
Banshee itself--now it was no where to be found!

Bugfixes only you say?  Fine--but don't remove features when you do so!

>If you've begun distro-shopping, good luck, and have fun with your next
distro
>and next media player. I think you'd be hard pressed to find another media
>player as good as Banshee, or (in my opinion) a distro as good as Ubuntu.
 
Chances are I'll ride Rhythmbox again the next time I install, since it has
a working iTunes podcast handler, a lyrics plugin installed by default,
doesn't go nuts when I plug in my mp3player, gives me summaries of the
podcast episodes, etc etc...  Sure it isn't as pretty as Banshee, but it has
less hassles in the long run.

As for Ubuntu itself?  I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't be missing it. 
I've been using Ubuntu since Warty, and have been a major fan of it since
then.  Many of the things in Ubuntu "just work" the way I'd have done it
myself.  It feels like home.

But I can't keep on running an operating system that is several releases
behind precisely because applications like Banshee aren't supported.  I
can't upgrade because of hardware support and application needs issues.  It
looks like my only choices are to move somewhere else.  I don't **want** to
move, I just don't seem to have any other choices.

--bornagainpenguin
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