Comment 6 for bug 417758

fabio,

thanx for the inquiry.

at the moment i cannot comment on the most recent versions of ubuntu.

last year i had enough trouble with regressions, bugs, and the bug reporting system to make me feel like i was spending at least as much time fixing ubuntu as using it. my dissatisfaction was compounded by my changes to the desktop user interface that struck me as gratuitus or even counter productive while fundamental features like the clip board were not yet working consistently well. therefore i switched distributions. i am currently using centos and fedora. these have not been entirely trouble-free either, but overall the experience has been better.

enough time has passed that i'm ready to give ubuntu another try. unfortunately the machine i would install it on is down with a hardware problem (CPU or MB). therefore my re-evaluation of ubuntu will have to wait until that box is back up. i'm looking forward to it as there may be benefits to working with variants of the same distro. if i learn anything that may be helpful to you at that time i'll let you know.

my suggestion re this particular problem is to assume that the problem still exists unless there is convincing evidence that the cause has been identified and fixed.

i can also offer three more general suggestions, which you're welcome to pass along as you see fit:

 1. developers should really use the software they're developing. once i got somebody to pay attention to this bug it was verified quickly. the question is why wasn't it noticed before. anyone using the GUI for a couple of days would be likely to encounter this problem, which conjured up visions of programmers hacking up GUI code in emacs and not actually using the code they're writing. that may well be wrong, but that's how it seems from the outside.

 2. fix the update process. some of my attempts to report problems were dismissed as being due to the update process rather than the package. if the update process is breaking packages then the update process needs to be fixed. bug reports resulting from update problems should be reclassified as updater bugs not rejected.

 3. apply resources more intelligently. there are few things so annoying as introduction to new, non-essential features while existing features don't work consistently well. IMHO the priority should be on making existing features work before adding new ones. the change that finally got my goat was the so-called improved alerts feature. the alerts that had stayed put until they were read and dismissed were replaced with alerts that had to be read before they faded away. to me not only was this worse rather than better, it suggested that bugs that really concerned me might never be fixed because adding new features and making gratuitus changes seemed to be higher priorities.

it has been said that the long term goal of ubuntu is to be as good as mac os x. i should point out that the outstanding, perhaps defining feature of mac os x is not any one particular GUI feature. it is that for the most part it "just works". IMHO ubuntu will only achieve this kind of overall user experience if there is extreme focus on making everything work smoothly including updates and upgrades.

as points of comparison, i've found that simply mepis really "just works" (and may be the only linux distro that can be said of), and installing and maintaining flash and java on 64 bit fedora has been much smoother for me than doing the same on 64 bit ubuntu when i was using it. xfce works better on the fedora xfce spin than it did on xubuntu when i tried it, and the applications i am most concerned with for both of these distro families seem to be more up to date yet just as stable. however, i am having problems with transfer speeds between centos and fedora hosts that i did not have between ubuntu desktop and server versions, so it's not as if these alternatives are better in all respects.)

thanx again for checking in. i wish you success in your endeavors.

-- ef

----- Original Message -----
From: "Fabio Marconi" <email address hidden>
To: <email address hidden>
Sent: Wednesday, August 18, 2010 3:30:37 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: [Bug 417758] Re: Intermittent problems with copy and paste

** Changed in: ubuntu
       Status: New => Incomplete

--
Intermittent problems with copy and paste
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/417758
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Status in One Hundred Paper Cuts: Invalid
Status in Ubuntu: Incomplete

Bug description:
Intermittent problems with copying text from web browsers and pasting elsewhere. First noticed problem while using Epiphany. First thought I might be highlighting and forgetting to copy (a mistake I occasionally do make) but ruled that out after being very careful and double checking. Then thought it might be an application problem so stopped using Epiphany but have since had the same problem with Firefox.

So far I haven't noticed this problem with other types of applications but as it's intermittent and I've been using browsers more than anything else lately it could be the system clip board and I've only had problems while using browsers just by coincidence.

this is no duplicate of Bug 11334 because the source is not closed before the paste.

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