ubuntu's worrying decline in quality

[urlwolf]

Is it just me or, There's been a sharp decline in ubuntu's quality?

For example:

http://www.mail-archive.com/ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com/msg1969132.html

Confirming, I was able to reproduce the issue by plugging in a brand new
Sandisk Cruzer 8G.

Also, I'm marking this one as Medium since it *will* affect a
substancial number of users, because most USB keys for sale at this
point are already formatted in FAT32 and will trigger this bug.

** Changed in: usb-creator (Ubuntu)
      Status: New => Confirmed

** Changed in: usb-creator (Ubuntu)
  Importance: Undecided => Medium

--
Error "Unable to mount #.#GB Filesystem. A job is pending on /dev/sd?#"
displayed when inserting fat32 drive while usb-creator is open
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/506577
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Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu.

That means, the OS cannot mount a new USB stick.
If that's not sucking as an OS, I dunno what is...

[zridling]

Interesting, and confirms my campaign for new Linux users to stay far away from Ubuntu and its variants; it simply has too many bugs that will drive you crazy, and it's been that way for years! Not sure what "usb-creator" is. Is that a program of some sort? I could be wrong, but the user seems to be confused about the way Linux handles various filesystems.

FAT32 and FAT16 don't have a native permission structure per se so Linux grafts one on it in order to make vfat compatible with Linux. With vfat, you change access permissions by changing the "umask" option in the fstab entry for the vfat partition. You can't use chmod or chown on a vfat filesystem since it has no native permission structure, only an emulated one created by the Linux kernel for compatibility reasons. If you try to chmod or chown a vfat filesystem -- even as root -- you will get a "permission denied" error message.

Native Linux filesystems like ext3, ext4, reiserfs, xfs, etc, have native support for Linux file permissions built into the filesystem. You change the permissions on a partition with a Linux filesystem by running chmod or chown on the partition mount point while the partition is mounted. It will not work if you run those commands while the partition is not mounted. If (or rather why) Ubuntu can't do this is beyond me.

[f0dder]

zridling: what does FAT's lack of permissions have to do with this?

[zridling]

Here's what little I've learned about disk mounting. Mounting of the filesystem permissions is different than permissions of the files on a vfat filesystem. The permissions are established on the mount point. Without user permission/s, your [e.g., EXT4] filesystem won't be able to read that vfat drive. The following pages on chown and chmod explain the options better than I ever could. And don't miss mounting via fstab as an option.

Most distros like openSUSE, Mint, Mepis, PCLinuxOS, Mandriva, et al. will easily mount vfat USB sticks. I don't run Ubuntu, so I've not run into this problem. Wish I knew more.

[f0dder]

zridling: yeah, I know about that - but how do you get the impression that it's related to the bug? Might just be me who's dull, but reading the error report doesn't hint at this being the cause?

[zridling]

Good point, which makes me wonder why the bug still exists... like most bugs in Ubuntu. Don't mean to trash Ubuntu, but the [Ubuntu] forums have been filled for years with complaints about the same bugs over and over. Since most people use USB sticks to move data around among their systems (esp. when traveling), I'd figure this to be more urgent than "medium."