Comment 42 for bug 197537

I wanted to check the status of this ancient bug, but on this particular machine I only have a VMware Player with Ubuntu as a guest OS. It runs, but I am unable to get the Japanese support to work properly for Japanese input now that I have upgraded it to the newest version of Ubuntu. I can confirm that some of the Japanese display is definitely broken now, but I can't check the status for the PDF files specifically. It will not allow me to switch to Japanese input mode, which is necessary to find the PDF files for testing.

Perhaps some parts of the problem would be fixed by installing the XPDF package on this machine, but my main conclusion is that I should not have to do such things, and I am agreed with the comments that Ubuntu seems to be going backwards. However, for me, the new problems with the sound are much more significant, and completely a show stopper in terms of recommending Ubuntu to anyone at this time. I'll go check the status of that bug report, but I know that the sound problems are unresolved on several machines that I have tested.

I want to close on a constructive note, but the only thing I can think of is to suggest that Ubuntu needs to consider a better financial model. I suggest something like what I describe in the blog entry at the URL below this paragraph. The goal is to align Ubuntu's new features with what the users want and need. In this case, they should be getting funding for fixing this specific bug, but in the more general case, they need to include feature-related funding for proper regression testing to avoid such massive failures as completely breaking the sound system... I have been using Ubuntu for several years now, and I mostly like it, but it is getting more broken with each new release. This is bad.

http://eco-epistemology.blogspot.com/2009/11/economics-of-small-donors-reverse.html

Ubuntu people: Are you listening? Ubuntu is NOW on the road to failure. Can you turn things around?