Comment 901 for bug 1

In my opinion, for Ubuntu to be able to really do damage to microsoft, we need far greater support for hardware that is otherwise supported under Windows. Yes, I understand that Ubuntu is generally refusing to use anything that is closed-source, but the average joe user does not care how his hardware is working- just that it's working. 8.10 is the first version of Ubuntu that i've even bothered trying to get working since I refused to do ndiswrapper hacks which were required with earlier versions of Ubuntu to get Broadcom wifi working. And simply refusing to include basic codecs just because they are closed-source is just plain asinine.

Second, Ubuntu needs to take a more proactive approach against bugs. Looking at all of the ones here, it seems only a fraction of legitimate ones get fixed. Instead it appears the developers are more interested in pumping out new and pointless features (ala Vista). Even right now I have 2 bugs and quirks out that shouldn't be present in an OS this mature (connecting to a WPA2 network and MAC address changing)....both of these have no problem in XP. For further example, look at the *giant* bug right now with HP users having to hold down a key to boot the OS. The kernel developers upstream have yet to even respond to the bug thread there and the only solution here is to do more config hacking and temporary fixes.

So I'm sorry, if Ubuntu wants to get competitive we've got to start getting serious about making a "just works" OS like Windows has been for years