The price of plymouth progress, advice goes mainstream

As Ubuntu becomes more mainstream, and development decisions reflect the new populist as opposed to humanitarian goals of the project, we find our problems resembling problems in other mainstream software.

An example is Plymouth, which has presented all sorts of troubles for the community. Fresh installs tend to do well, while upgrades vary in the kind of problem experienced.

Being one of the people affected by Plymouth's tendency to load with black screen, blinking curser and low resolution, I found it slightly disheartening that the solution at Ubuntuforums was incomplete. A page set up by the community providing known workarounds and solutions provided part of the puzzle, but the actual fix was sitting at Softpedia.

This meant, while Softpedia was winning readers, those who were relying on the forums and ubuntu wiki were losing. Surely there is an obligation to report a bug fix or workaround to the community which produces the software before using the information to drive advertising and revenue on a site which probably paid the person who provided the solution?

Then again, maybe this is just a wake-up call. As Ubuntu becomes more mainstream, so do its problems. Softpedia is therefore doing us a sterling service by catering to those users affected by an incomplete Plymouth which has yet to mature.