I have memories, clouded by sorrow

Today I decided to upgrade Kubuntu from 7.04 to 7.10, and wondered what problem I'd hit this time. Answer: it runs into this lovely bug, where the installer crashes, apparently due to version mismatches between the C runtime libraries and the Perl language. The fact that these are 2 of the most commonly used and tested parts of the operating system has not stopped this problem from arising, nor has it meant anybody has been able to fix it in the year it's been known about. *sigh*

Now I have to try and work out how to get around it. A fun way to spend a day off.

EDIT: I managed to grab all the packages at the command line and install them as intended. Then I rebooted, and it now hangs at 'running local boot scripts (/etc/rc.local). If I switch to another terminal, and try to run 'startx', it fails with the 'no screens' error that means it's trashed your drivers and/or settings. Disappointing but not at all surprising.

Fucking hell, if Kubuntu is the cutting edge then Linux on the desktop is truly doomed.

Why can't the wallet manager remember any passwords? ITS ONLY JOB IS TO REMEMBER PASSWORDS. IF IT CANNOT REMEMBER PASSWORDS THEN IT HAS NO REASON TO EXIST.

And why does the Disks and Filesystems GUI not have a reasonable and obvious setting for "allow any user (or at least this user) to read or write this Windows drive"? THAT IS TYPICALLY THE FIRST IMPORTANT THING ANY NEW LINUX USER IS GOING TO WANT TO DO. Why does the help menu item for "System Settings Handbook" bring up a window saying "There is no documentation available for /systemsettings/index.html"?

And why the hell are the settings scattered across the System menu, the Settings menu, and the System Settings application? Windows had this problem mostly solved well over a decade ago. It really isn't that hard.

This is shit. And it makes me very angry.

EDIT: It's even worse - g++, the standard C++ compiler, doesn't even appear in the Development section of the packages you can install. It'll give you useless shite like an XSLT debugger or 2 different versions of Python, but no g++! (NB: g++ is definitely in the updates repository, it just doesn't show it from the GUI). Piece of shit.