The "find" function in the gnome clock applet has always sucked, it could use some work. However this isn’t what I had in mind:
World’s worst dropdown. Seriously. It does succeed at me saying "Wow, screw this, I’ll just shoot myself in the head."
Note: development GNOME version in Intrepid, so don’t judge it just yet. What scares me is the amount of bugs I see that are like "My town is missing in the clock, please put it in there" and an unscaleable design like this. Surely there is a way to do this without an Xbox-huge list in the UI ….
EDIT: Why is it lists like this start off with the entire top half empty? And then you have to scroll down to fill them in? Is there some study that justifies this or something?
Actually, the new word-completion in the list just makes me happy.
It is really frustrating that many ubuntu developers are preparing release parties while they didn’t fix the friendly code. Why should we have 2 buggy releases every year?
I am considering ditching ubuntu for some stable distro.
Must agree with Look.
Both the bugs Jorge described are there for years (really, years). It’s even visible in the installer, so nobody can say it’s hidden and must be reported precisely. I’m so sure it was. Everyone will have seen it once they installed Ubuntu.
Ubuntu manages to screw up every single release, in the one functionality1 doesn’t work, in the next it’s fixed (or worked around..) but functionality2 does not work anymore that did work previously. Bugreports never really go forward. “Will fix if this and that happens or released or the moon stays in the right position” or “it works here” or so. I’m talking about main functionality like audio.
I am getting myself a Mac and will see if it works better for me (personally), since I have no time anymore taking care of bugs that others will just ignore for the next couple of years. Not for basic functionality! Those times are just over, they didn’t use my help when it was available, so that’s it from my side.
Network manager has the same problem with many wireless signals. Bug report?
@Look, @Cat…
Perhaps I’m wrong (having done no checking of my facts whatsoever here; feel free to provide screenshots proving me wrong) but I don’t think this is just an Ubuntu problem. It’s a GNOME desktop issue and has been for years.
@Graham: partially yes. I forgot to mention this particularly, the dropdown thing is of course a GTK issue. Fixed that one simply by using KDE for a time (but compiz changed everything :>)
Screwing up releases is however an Ubuntu thing, as so is the really bad handling of bugreports (and people who *try* to help). The launchpad discussions are way too much lengthy, speculating too long on how and why and probably. And then *maybe* proposing a change for the next release.
On the other side, they must have more than what they can handle. I don’t know, I just don’t have the free time anymore to look deeper into the problems. When I could have helped, they did not care much. Too bad for all of us I’d say.
Don’t get me wrong, I like a lots of things Ubuntu does (bleeding edge software, PPA etc). Just have a bad feeling when my friends I installed Ubuntu for (or who did on my advice) have stupid problems that shouldn’t be there. With stupid I mean things that worked in previous releases and will work in the next. But I know for sure, they will not get help for the current release (even if they know what to do, would take forever). I do really hope it will change…soon!
Bug report about the GTK bug here:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=135901
(even though it is closed as a duplicate)
Not fixed for FOUR years.
Another one here:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=324091
also marked as a duplicate, which it is not.
And it goes on and on.
Very frustrating.
“I do really hope it will change…soon!”
Soon? Not a chance.
Get yourself a Mac and be happy forget about bugs in basic functionality. I hate Mac but it’s all over for me, I think I will use some other distro (probably Debian) or switch back completely to Windows.
I don’t understand why switching to another distro will automatically fix this GTK problem, but whatever.
Look,
Debian is definetely better quality, no doubt about it.
A long time I was looking forward to bleeding edge and found debian too slow-moving for my taste.
However, once you realise the drawbacks for going too fast you’ll appreciate that slow down a lot.
There are some issues however that even debian can fix. Like the GTK bug or the stupid audio issues. I think a Mac is better; maybe a BSD variant will also work for you. At least with BSD there is only one audio system (OSS as far as I know) so it probably works
@jorge: You think I am switching only because of this single bug?
This GTK bug is probably the least annoyance you will experience during your story with ubuntu.
Doesn’t seem to be that much of an issue.
Great to see KDE fans use a single issue as a reason to switch your DE though!
The reason why the list is half empty is GtkComboBox tries to show the currently selected option in the same place as the combo box is. This means if you have selected a entry near the top, you have to “fill” the space above by scrolling down.
The whinging about Ubuntu is unjustified, and shows that people don’t know what they are talking about.
“The whinging about Ubuntu is unjustified, and shows that people don’t know what they are talking about.”
lol @ Bruce Cowan
Unjustified…eh?
lol @ Bruce (sorry dude)
It’s not so hard. Gnome and GTK are buggy to hell. We try to help them, they too often just ignore lots of us who try to do so.
Ubuntu? They mark everything as duplicates because THEY have no idea (too much newbees do things for which experience is needed.
I just say what engineer starts a serious project in PYTHON? (*khm* miro *khm*, *khm* ubuntu all over *khm*). That’s my opinion though. If you like buggy and @ss slow programms, go for it. I would for nothing in the world touch a project like that, so they lose me as an experienced coder. I guess they just don’t need anyone else to help so it’s ok.
Anyway, as a good friend said a long time ago: The choice is yours, take the distro that has its bugs in the part you actually don’t use. Perfect, it is all not..
@Look
Just for info, I will buy a Macbook not because bugs like this. I just simply want a good laptop solution: small but powerful. I want to go to holiday with it without praying that the system manages to go to standby this time, if possible, unter 2 minutes. Want to play a movie for my girlfriend there without jiggling with 4 media players to see which one handles files with matroska HD container. Fsck it.
I want OSX too because Linux is just not there yet in e.g. image processing. It’s coming nicely along, but I just need more and I can drop some money for it nowayads.
I will have a partition for linux for sure and use the distro that works best on that particular machine. Maybe Ubuntu, maybe not. Something that works with minimum hassle.
Cheers
I was just pointing out most people say GNOME when they are really referring to Ubuntu things (for instance, the Python obsession is with Ubuntu). People then say Ubuntu when it’s GNOME (for instance, this “bug”.
Cat,
If your solution to this bug is to buy an entire new computer then good luck with that.
I don’t know why you had to tell me though, I don’t really care.
@Bruce: agreed, that thing is mixed up way too often. But how can we blame the ignorant?
My 2 cents: If my project has a this much visible bug that is caused by a library I’m using, then it’s pretty much my bug aswell. Or could I just say to my users: “Well it wasn’t me. GTK dropdowns are a little buggy. It will be fixed sometime. Maybe.”
Thinking 2 seconds brings me to the question: Who came to the idea to present items in a single dropdown?
Please let me kick that guy in the nuts… from different angles if possible.
@Jorge
It’s not my solution for one bug. I’m trying something different because I can, because I want to, and because some things are possible only that way. But I mentioned that earlier.
And I did not tell you personally. I mentioned it only so others can see what might happen to users who feel their work and help is not appreciated. If users’ contribution is ignored too often (see those x-year-old duplicate bugreports), they might just aswell as change to something that they *can’t* contribute to but works out of the box. Which is bad for linux and the communities of course.
Why is that unfriendly tone of yours against me? You are reporting this bug/problem/whatever on your blog! Not in launchpad! Not proposing a fix for it! You are just writing your thoughts about it so people can learn about it. So do your commenters. We are on the same side, trying to make a change and take over the world.
Regards
Why not just have the user click a point on the map then type the name of the location he has chosen? Could be filled automatically, perhaps lat & longitude snapped to the real location when user input matches the app’s own dictionary of locations, but done very quietly!
This way, the user gets full control but the application can still be helpful without pretending it knows best. Most people know where they are on a world map, and anyone who does not won’t be able to navigate these huge lists of cities either. (Especially since they often must choose the nearest major city).
Further, this would stop being so high maintenance; locations would only need to be updated in the event that time zones or the Earth’s orbit change. With the location snapping to known areas based on user input, it could be later plugged in to GPS data.
Oh, and the interface would be way simpler. (This is also how Ubiquity’s “select your location” should work).
As for weather, that could (And SHOULD) be done completely automatically. For example, the OMWeather applet for Maemo finds the nearest weather station via GPS location data. Is there a weather service yet that can give forecasts based on coordinates, or weather maps, or are is the limit of only getting weather for specific locations still deeper than the applet itself?