Ubuntu

Bug #578045
Comment #14

Comment 14 for bug 578045

Revision history for this message

Mike O'Donnell (mikeodonnell) wrote on 2011-09-29:

#14

Ok, my 2 cents worth, from an new, casual user's perspective. I agree this is a bug.

History:

I bought my first computer 3 years ago, and struggled along with Vista for six months, until I was infested with the "conficker worm" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conficker after going on an online banking institution, April 01.2009. I had all the newest anti-malware applications. My installed version of Kaspersky;s went nuts reporting to me the infection, but became unusable. All the Microsoft anti-malicious software removal sites, for me couldn't contend with it. In desperation I bare-boned installed Hardy ... Great I learn no real concerns about malware in Linux and Ubuntu, if one is cautious. :^). I make a conscious decision to remain with LTS, for being more secure and less chance of things going "screwy" with new code. I start to learn my way around linux and Ubuntu slowly (new and casual user right) and inevitably break it multiple times, winding up re-installing Hardy as last resorts, for lack of knowing how to fix. Theses were complete new installs, a lot of configuring. Now I keep a separate ~/ partition, that save a lot of configuring in new installs, bringing it forward during manual installs. (Starting to learn a bit of the "'nix way"). I learn I need a backup solution in place the "hard way" and finally settle on Deja-dup; for lack of better understanding ... a front-end configuration for duplicity back-end. By this time I have learned to enable PPA's for my preferred and often used apps and do so for "DD". I use DD as it's an Ubuntu featured app in the Software Sources and is going to be included for the next release. Also, the dev (Michael Terry) works for Canonical, I believe. Seems a good choice for a newbie's backup solution. I ran into a problem, with DD and contacted and received help for the concern, at Launchpad. MTerry, in our conversation states:

"So, there is a theoretical concern that if duplicity changed something, you'd want a newer Deja Dup that knew how to handle that change (which you won't be getting from the deja-dup PPA because Lucid's version won't be getting updated, as newer Deja Dups require more modern dependencies). But for the current duplicity, I don't believe that is the case. I believe 14.x can handle the latest duplicity. Also, there are a couple bugs fixed in at least duplicity 0.6.14 that you will really want. They potentially introduce data corruption if a backup is interrupted. I have backported the fixes and would love if you could test them: So I would highly recommend you either install my backports or use the duplicity PPA.

Backports". Well I never used backports because of this warning here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuBackports
"Backports candidates are tested by several Backports developers and community contributors before they are allowed to be placed in the repository. Backports packages are thus safer to use than the development distribution. At minimum the packages should be usable in a manner that the average Backports developer could test. However, given the nature of introducing newer versioned packages from a development distribution into a stable, released distribution, problems can arise. The most common side-effects would be a bug that escaped testing, or a new configuration file format (or other kind of incompatibility). If you have problems with a Backports package please report it in the Backports bugtracker and not the main Ubuntu one.

Due to the nature and purpose of Backports, it is not as "stable" as the previously mentioned update repositories, for a variety of reasons.

    Backports are designed to provide new features. These new features may be unfamiliar to users and require a period of re-learning to become familiar with their favorite application again.
    Backports may introduce differing configuration file options or behavior that may catch an administrator off guard. For this reason it's not encouraged to upgrade backports as a part of an automated procedure on high-stability production environments.
    Backports are newer software by definition, and newer software tends to be tested by fewer people. The risk for an uncaught bug is increased.

In assessing the "stability" of backports, it's important to define the term stability first. In terms of "the behavior I see today is the same as the behavior I'll see after applying a bunch of backports updates", Backports is fairly unstable. New apps introduced via backports may have significantly changed behavior or interfaces. In terms of "applying a backport will completely break my system", Backports is fairly stable. A great deal of work goes into testing backports and it's highly unlikely for a backport to be a severe regression from the version it replaces.

The user should judge for himself if Backports are appropriate for his purposes".

So, how does a No0b know, if enabling the Backport repos are "appropriate for his purpose", or if he can fix it if is not. I don't!

Well great, I want security, stability and a good backup solution and I am a (remember casual, new and I should add "older" user), and because the version of Deja-dup included in Lucid is version 14.X and the dev has version deja-dup-20.0.tar.bz2 out. I think I should try compiling it; but am afraid I will wind up in "dependency-hell" and break things again ...

So, if Canonical and Ubuntu want to court new users, I believe fixing this bug, would make things a lot easier and potentially safer for me and those other No0bs.

:^)

Ok, my 2 cents worth, from an new, casual user's perspective. I agree this is a bug.

History:

I bought my first computer 3 years ago, and struggled along with Vista for six months, until I was infested with the "conficker worm" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conficker after going on an online banking institution, April 01.2009. I had all the newest anti-malware applications. My installed version of Kaspersky;s went nuts reporting to me the infection, but became unusable. All the Microsoft anti-malicious software removal sites, for me couldn't contend with it. In desperation I bare-boned installed Hardy ... Great I learn no real concerns about malware in Linux and Ubuntu, if one is cautious. :^). I make a conscious decision to remain with LTS, for being more secure and less chance of things going "screwy" with new code.  I start to learn my way around linux and Ubuntu slowly (new and casual user right) and inevitably break it multiple times, winding up re-installing Hardy as last resorts, for lack of knowing how to fix. Theses were complete new installs, a lot of configuring. Now I keep a separate ~/ partition, that save a lot of configuring in new installs, bringing it forward during manual installs. (Starting to learn a bit of the "'nix way"). I learn I need a backup solution in place the "hard way" and finally settle on Deja-dup; for lack of better understanding ... a front-end configuration for duplicity back-end. By this time I have learned to enable PPA's for my preferred and often used apps and do so for "DD". I use DD as it's an Ubuntu featured app in the Software Sources and is going to be included for the next release. Also, the dev (Michael Terry) works for Canonical, I believe. Seems a good choice for a newbie's backup solution. I ran into a problem, with DD and contacted and received help for the concern, at Launchpad. MTerry, in our conversation states:

"So, there is a theoretical concern that if duplicity changed something, you'd want a newer Deja Dup that knew how to handle that change (which you won't be getting from the deja-dup PPA because Lucid's version won't be getting updated, as newer Deja Dups require more modern dependencies). But for the current duplicity, I don't believe that is the case. I believe 14.x can handle the latest duplicity. Also, there are a couple bugs fixed in at least duplicity 0.6.14 that you will really want. They potentially introduce data corruption if a backup is interrupted. I have backported the fixes and would love if you could test them:  So I would highly recommend you either install my backports or use the duplicity PPA.

Backports". Well I never used backports because of this warning here:  https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuBackports 
"Backports candidates are tested by several Backports developers and community contributors before they are allowed to be placed in the repository. Backports packages are thus safer to use than the development distribution. At minimum the packages should be usable in a manner that the average Backports developer could test. However, given the nature of introducing newer versioned packages from a development distribution into a stable, released distribution, problems can arise. The most common side-effects would be a bug that escaped testing, or a new configuration file format (or other kind of incompatibility). If you have problems with a Backports package please report it in the Backports bugtracker and not the main Ubuntu one.

Due to the nature and purpose of Backports, it is not as "stable" as the previously mentioned update repositories, for a variety of reasons.

The user should judge for himself if Backports are appropriate for his purposes".

So, how does a No0b know, if enabling the Backport repos are "appropriate for his purpose", or if he can fix it if is not. I don't!

So, if Canonical and Ubuntu want to court new users, I believe fixing this bug, would make things a lot easier and potentially safer for me and those other No0bs.

:^)