Congratulations, you just downloaded and somehow managed to install a new version of the Linux distro of your choice! As you use your distro, you soon discover that something is not working or is missing! OH NOES what could be wrong? Why the distro shipped with broken software, it was BrokenForYourInconvenience™! Something may have been present and / or worked in previous versions but now it has been broken and / or removed due to library incompatibilities. And guess what, there is no fix available for the foreseeable future! You are forced to UseEsotericWorkarounds to try and regain some functionality. Welcome to FOSS development, now bend over and feel the source.
Lets have an example, shall we?
Bring back the Gnome Font Viewer, please
“The Gnome Font Viewer has been removed from the repositories of Intrepid Ibex. Due to an unresolveable library conflict (libdb3) the program can’t be installed manually from existing .deb files. The only program left to preview uninstalled True Type fonts is the font editor Fontforge [update: and Fonty Python].
There is no thumbnail preview of fonts in Nautilus any more and the standard reaction of Gnome after doubleclicking a font file reads
Missing “application/x-font-ttf”
Looks as if I had to stick with IrfanView/Wine for some time, still…”
Comments
There’s a similar issue with XMMS. 'twas popular a few years back as a simple Winamp clone for Linux, but it no longer appears in Ubuntu, due to dependency issues. Of course, ask for it and you’ll probably hear UseThisInstead™ in the form of Audacious. Too bad Audacious crashes when you load large directories and certain settings are stored in folders which need root access.
The Linux motto: If it ain’t broke, fix it!
“Fix” as in what you do to that brand-new puppy you just got.
Of course, brand new puppies have other striking similarities to Ubuntu.
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