>
> If you have not, you can try to convince or to understand why it is so
> hard or so important to fix in 8.04, doing some research before, or at
> least trying to be nice.
>   
I had written an explanatory text that I finally erased in fear of 
reading again that this is no place for rambling.
But opinions vary.  Well, if I'm asked...

I'm not asking for support. I'm *doing* support of a "community" in 
Belarus who received free computers on which I chose to install Ubuntu, 
and that's 8.04 right because of its LTS tag.  Those poor Чернобыль 
victims refrain from spending their few rubles on Internet phone calls.  
The main goal of my setting up their Internet connection (not a given 
thing) is communication with their Belgian friends and my e-mail 
support, after tests on my mirror system. 
I don't know a word of russian (well, I did learn a fair amount of 
amount of Russian in the process; actually, I might well even be able to 
install Russian Windows :-)) but those who know the meaning of the word 
Ubuntu can cope with anything with the help of a good словарь. And 
Ubuntu was my choice also because of the i18n thing, I can send them 
explanations in the form of screen shots in Russian. The one who said "a 
picture's worth a thousand words" must have been counting bytes :-)

I was hoping I would be able to extract from 8.04 updates the minimum to 
send to Belarus over e-mail to solve their problems. What I'm being told 
here is that it's not exactly the meaning of the word "support".
My questions are not particularly focusing on Bug 196277, which was 
particularly harmful to them, but fortunately, other Ubuntu lovers 
posted a workaround that Belarus applied. I thanked them a lot, but I 
will never do it enough.

I usually do not just report bugs, but I analyze the problems deeply 
before reporting.
I expect to see someone come, to help him solve the problem, but it 
never happened.

One big problem that remains is Bug 202456, an awful behaviour of Wine 
on Ubuntu.
Wine is important for Ubuntu. My experience (supporting Belgian users 
too) is that many a one regret Windows because some particular 
Windows-only program they like is missing. I'm repeatedly solving 
Windows integration problems and I found that the best is to package 
them in DEBs directly with a front end script taking care of any problem 
and, in particular, automatically selecting the language when feasible, 
that's often Russian of course :-)
It takes from half an hour work to a few days delay to repackage many 
(moderately complex) Windows programs. It's EASY and those who have 
experimented that find totally shameful to see distribution Web pages 
full of long lists of Windows-only programs when a deb file could exist 
right next to them, be it only for anyone to wonder where it's there for 
and get interest.  The worst is the amazement of the programmer when you 
tell him that his program works on Linux, or almost. Especially when he 
begins to fancy programming for Linux as well.
Ubuntu-heading people should consider Wine better.  From experience, I 
call it the Portal to Unix.
Regarding my desire to cooperate, the only answer to 202456 so far is 
"have you tested Intrepid?".
You know why I'm running 8.04.1 on a mirror system.

I may even elaborate a patch. See Bug 29743. The guy wanted to hang my 
patch to the Questions peg. Until someone else came to say "hey, I've 
had a similar problem which had me devise exactly the same patch".
But now look where my patch is : that obvious bug is not even set to 
Confirmed (could as well be Incomplete and expiring in 10 days).
Ubuntu support (bug system) will only work well when the flow of 
information with developers will work.

Now, be very cautious regarding the advice to, as the saying says, 
"upgrade to the latest version". You may well see people come back 
saying their system no longer works at all. This happened to me with an 
advice to upgrade to 7.10, see Bug 197514.  Once again, I came down to 
what amounts to almost a patch and look, we're into the fourth release 
in which the problem still exists.

These are very general considerations in a hurry, no proofreading, not 
my language, sorry.
Unusually, they were not made for my own purpose, but for the benefit of 
the community (Ubuntu).

Regarding 196277 & 8.04 proper, the least that could be done is 
officially releasing the patch that has been found.

And, "regarding the general", to start a patch publication policy which 
is a much better way to solve particular problems around the world than 
to request people to download 700 MiB of new system upgrades over phone 
lines.

I have tried to contact Canonical to send them such remarks.  They did 
not reply my e-mail.
Please someone try forward this and I tell them I love so much what 
they're doing?
I've spent months after months in their tracks and sometimes scouting 
ahead !!!

Did I answer your questions?
Am I being nice enough?