I know this kind of stuff, but the average user isn't required to know this. Even if the product is free, having a default setting that shortens hardware lifespan instead of an automatic configuration for best lifespan/performance is to me simply cheating the customer. You may wave in may face the "no guarantee to be fit for a particular purpose" or whatever is written in the license, but when you are a commercial company that actively promotes a product, you are responsible to make it "just work", "by default" and to "not require me to think."
...and generally thinking, I think that we as software developers should take the "don't make me think" philosophy more seriously and ditch the "RTFM" mindset, even if we write libraries or tools that are to be used by other programmers. "RTFM" simply can't work at scale: when you use tens or hundreds of devices, apps and technologies, you just don't have the physical time to "read the manual" for all of them, so you should just be able to assume "sane / mostly optimal" defaults. And no, not even a large company can't just hire one professional that is expert in each particular technology they use, open-source or not: nobody can afford this, most shit should just work by default, and when we'll have technology that will be able to "read our minds" or "know stuff for us" we should actively demand that is does so.
You become a customer, when you start paying them. Until then you are just a user. The license which most of the packages included in Ubuntu use says: "BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES", so what did you expect?
^ The problem with free software: you're not supposed to expect it to work correctly.
TRIM isn't mentioned in what you call "the instructions" [1].
The design still sucks, that's what matters.
...software, especially vital things like OSs should be "designed for reality" and unfortunately this also means to be "designed for stupidity, ignorance and thoughtlessness".
News to me, and I've been using linux since I downloaded SLS floppies from a BBS. As it happens, I'm running Samsung's "flash friendly filesystem" (f2fs) on this machine; I hope I don't need to make sure _it_ is issuing trim instructions.
I was going to reply with "I'm a customer, so why should I be expected to know this?"
...but then I realized you wouldn't understand the concept, since Linux is "free", I paid $0.00 as a "customer", and therefore I should shut up because I have no right to be complaining.
Right?
(1) you're not the customer until you pay money and since I assume you haven't paid them for support, which is available btw, you can't be the customer.
(2) trim on Linux was known to cause problems with certain SSDs, not to mention for encrypted volumes (with dm-crypt, which is now offered as a painless option in Ubuntu's GUI installer) it's a security risk. For this reason, I really hope Canonical does know what they are doing, because such features are always problematic if you don't really know the hardware it will run on top of.
(3) no, the customer is not always right and as proof of that fact, pick any 2 customers and marvel at their different opinions on the same topic. Obviously, trying to please everybody cannot work, ergo there is no such thing as "the customer" if by that you refer to yourself and your own opinions and that phrase is just bullshit used in marketing campaigns, as there is no company on this earth that actually believes it.
2) Well that horrifies me even more
3) "there is no company on this earth that actually believes it" well I'm glad you've checked every company
Yeah, and that's also how your provider convinces you to switch to a different provider.