I have never done this before. As a part-time blogger I have the utmost respect for people with enough passion to write IT on a full-time basis.

This is not an attack, yet I cannot sit idly by and not answer this story by Gavin Clarke of The Register.

If you read the article by The Register about the Karmic Koala upgrade experience you get the distinct impression that upgrading to, or even installing Ubuntu Karmic Koala is a bad idea.

Several users are quoted from the Ubuntu Forums who complain about certain issues, and then of course a poll on Ubuntu Forums is used as reference to illustrate how many problems there really are when you upgrade to Ubuntu Karmic Koala.

Let me be specific, and I quote:

Ubuntu 9.10 is causing outrage and frustration, with early adopters wishing they’d stuck with previous versions of the Linux distro.

Reading that you would expect widespread uproar and indignation.

Simply put, there isn’t.

Yes there are users with insurmountable problems. Their problems need to be addressed by the community and by Canonical as soon as is possible. The users with these kind of showstopper problems are not in the majority as the article would have you believe.

If you go and read the forums quoted you will find a discussion skewed towards an unsatisfactory experience because that is what the specific forums are about.

The very first post in one of the quoted threads notes this:

<font size=”2″><font color=”Red”>*** Disclaimer for those willing to analyse this poll ***<br> Most of users voting here are users with issues.<br> Users with painless experience are not likely to come here.<br> If you want to compare Karmic release with other releases based on this poll anyway here are the previous polls :</font></font>

That makes perfect sense. I had absolutely no problems with my Ubuntu installation experience across three installs. One is on my laptop, and the other two where for my mother and my wife. The only reason I read that forum was because it was quoted in the Register piece.

One of the problems singled out is “Flickering Screens.”

Further investigation and reading of the forums point to proprietary drivers. There is little Canonical or the community can do to fix a problem they have very little control over. I agree that this is an area that needs attention, and urgently so.

Then there are the polls. The trump card of this piece – if a poll says Karmic Koala is bad then it certainly must be bad, right?

Wrong.

If you take the polls from previous releases as a reference you will see a definite trend when it comes to early adoption.

Here is a short summary for you: (For a prettier version follow the links in the stats)

Gutsy Unsolvable Upgrade Issues: 16.94%
Gutsy Unsolvable New Install Issues: 17.08%

Hardy Unsolvable Upgrade Issues: 15.64%
Hardy Unsolvable New Install Issues: 15.69%

Intrepid Unsolvable Upgrade Issues: 24.57%
Intrepid Unsolvable New Install Issues: 19.78%

Jaunty Unsolvable Upgrade Issues: 18.20%
Jaunty Unsolvable New Install Issues: 14.65%

Karmic Unsolvable Upgrade Issues: 18.86%
Karmic Unsolvable New Install Issues: 19.27%

I have left out the figures for “Minor Problems” and “No Problems” since either of those aren’t showstoppers. “Minor Problems” is a given with Windows installs in any case, just read my experiences with Windows 7 for an idea of the issues I had.

Unsolvable issues with either upgrade or clean install are in the minority. It is definitely unacceptable that it is so high, but I am sure the graph will normalize as the installbase grows. If you take the poll with the caveat that people who have no issues are less likely to vote then a less dire picture emerges than what the article leads one to believe. It is a small slice of the installbase, the Karmic poll for instance has been voted on by only 1681 people at the time of writing.

I have not voted. If I wanted I could vote for three clean installs no problems, and I am sure that if everyone who has installed Karmic would take part in the poll the results would pan out rather differently.

To summarize my opinion about The Register’s story: The Karmic Install Experience is not as bad as the story makes it seem. If anyone looks at a previous Ubuntu version with bliss and “if only Karmic was as good as that” they should take a look at the comparisons of the install experiences.

That said, I believe strongly that stories like the one that has been told by The Register are necessary. If only for the outrage they cause due to (perceived) bias or inaccuracies. It gets the community all aflutter and causes all of us who make part of this community – be it a user, developer, maintainer or a friendly helping hand that assists someone with issues – to focus on the issues instead of basking in the glory of a new release.

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