Or "Linux users are mostly developers and thus are more capable of filing good bug reports."
Or "Linux users are mostly developers and thus are more capable of filing good bug reports."
It's sad that bug reports are considered a developer thing instead of a user/power user thing. I think the big issue is that most people have no idea how anything actually works. They aren't really users. At least not like users of old. They are just consumers that don't use the OS, just consume it.
It’s not sad at all. Modern life is complex and we all know some stuff more than others.
Should doctors think it’s sad when you don’t know enough about your body to self diagnose?
What about legal disputes? You are a power user of society and you still need to hire a lawyer to navigate its laws?
100% this. Also, I have been making software for over 30 years. There was never a time in my life when end users were more competent and understood the systems better. In fact, for baseline technical literacy, you really can't beat Gen Z. They are by far the most technical generation of users I have seen.
for baseline technical literacy, you really can't beat Gen Z
I disagree pretty strongly with this. I think Millennials were kind of the sweet spot in technical literacy. They grew up in a time when they still needed to understand computers, and tinkered around with them a lot out of necessity (computer viruses all the time, Napster/Limewire, etc..). They also saw the start of the internet and cell phones becoming ubiquitous, which provided a lot of forced-learning opportunities.
Gen Z'ers, in my experience, have had almost no computer experience. They are great at using the apps on their phones, but phones have become so polished and easy from an end user perspective that they haven't done any tinkering. They've often never downloaded an mp3 file, torrent, fixed internet issues, etc.. because things just work now. Obviously there are exceptions to this, and really technical Gen Z'ers (like with every generation). But in my experience, that isn't the norm.
phones have become so polished and easy from an end user perspective that they haven't done any tinkering
I don’t get the complaint, as a dev myself. Everything being easy and just working is what we intended for. The future! It’s here.
Yes, it's nice that everything is easy and just works. But now we can't even look under the hood on phones to tweak things.
I have a grandma and I absolutely think Apple has done the right thing with the so-called “walled-garden” aka App Store and the lack of tweaking ability/a terminal/root access. Tech-literate people like us drastically underestimate the harm scams have (and would have if tweaking was allowed) on people. I am in college, and Gen Z is scared to install anything on their Windows laptops. Except they do anyway when a scammer tricks them. They are in a hurry and they need to do this specific thing. install_more_ram.exe, bam. Pay $X to unlock your hard disk.
Don’t get me wrong, it also hurts me that I need to install an app to ssh to my server on my iPhone. Or when I can’t have a long-running process in the background. Or when I can’t automate things with shell scripts. It really does hurt. But this appliance form is really how things should be, at least until the day each and every user understands their devices, a day which will never come. Because why? They are tools. They are a means to a real life end. It’s a waste of human time to make everyone “tech-literate”. Users should not have control over their devices, because social engineering and scams will always be a thing. No matter how many “DON’T ENABLE THIS UNLESS YOU ARE A SOFTWARE ENGINEER” warnings you put grandmas will continue to be scammed.
Then what can let me have a native shell with root access on my iPhone, without jailbreaking? I don’t know, maybe a small on-device software knowledge exam to prove you are a software developer and understand what you are doing by Apple? Separately sold root access enabled devices for devs? Putting a big red warning in front of the root access “IF YOU ARE NOT A SOFTWARE ENG. YOU ARE %100 BEING SCAMMED RIGHT NOW” which is read by TTS ten times until one can dismiss it?
Or just get the Linux on mobile to feature parity with iOS and we won’t be beholden to corporations. Not saying it’s easy obviously. Still I’d like to see one organized FOSS mobile Linux project instead of a hundred desktop and a dozen mobile distros going on at the moment. OS lacks organization. Enormous amounts of available skilled human time wasted. Sad.
Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
I wasn't raising a complaint. Just an observation and a side effect. I love that my phone just works! But that doesn't mean a phone that just works is the best way to learn about how phone's work.
The difference between a tool and a mere appliance is whether you can make it do unplanned things. Whether it offers a payoff for being smart.
Everything being easy and just working is what we intended
The problem being that if it doesn't just work, people just shut down.
To me it's almost a double edged sword. If I have to make something work, I learn about how it works, and I can solve problems if they happen.
If it just works, it's magic, and I have no idea why the magic stopped.
Well, yes, but that wasn't the point. It's not a complaint, just disagreeing with the premise of Gen Z being the most technologically competent.
Exactly my experience as well. Gen Z are super good at "finding an app for that" or showing you how to do something on your phone, but give them a mouse and keyboard and many start to resemble Boomers. (Of course there are tons of exceptions, this is generational lumping after all).
The hacker mindset just doesn't seem to be present in Gen Z like it was for Millenials and some Gen Xers. We took crap apart as kids to see how it worked, and we could still. Now things are so integrated and miniaturized, it's much harder to do that.
Add on top of that how Gen Z is almost all iPhone users and actually looks down on Android (the platform where you can dig in if you want to), it's no wonder the default is only an inch deep. Their tech providers and advisors have been telling them their whole lives how scary the world outside of the walled garden is and putting technical controls in their way to prevent them should they decide they want to.
We absolutely could have had the Gen Z that is more technical than Millenials, but we ruined it. It's not their fault, any generation raised like them would have been the same way.
Side note: If you're a Gen Z hacker (of which I've known a few and they are super impressive), I consider you a gentleperson and a scholar.
Interesting. I used to think along the lines of most of the other responders, but seeing the ritualized nature of the response I'm starting to think this is our generation's "you don't know how to use a band saw".
If someone said "Millenials are the best generation of band saw users this world has ever seen" I would completely expect the resounding response to be something along the lines of "..uh.. what?". There isn't anything ritualistic about that.
In other words, there is a big difference between disagreeing with a statement that doesn't match what you've observed in reality at all, and being entrenched in your ways and insisting that the rising generation isn't "up to snuff". I don't see anyone dunking on Gen Z or insisting that they get their act together because they didn't have as many opportunities to dig into computers growing up.
I think there is a real argument to be made that nobody will ever need to be technically savvy again if AGI ever becomes a reality.
Edit: Gonna plug the book Scythe if anyone wants a fun read about an AGI run future that isn't the typical "evil AI" trope.
Complete opposite of my experience. What field are you working in today? They know their way around apps, might know how to side load, but other than that have no deeper understanding of how things work under the hood, nor the desire to find out, because the phone itself usually works well enough and doesn't completely roll over every couple months like Win9x did back in the day. There is absolutely no incentive nowadays to dig into this for people other than tech enthusiasts. Their knowledge about computers is often close to non-existent, to the point where they get visibly confused by more involved user interfaces of professional software.
Can you expand on the last point from experience? My gut reaction is to disagree, thinking about the level of familiarity required to adopt and deeply leverage an early 80s PC vs a modern smartphone. Do you mean higher average level of google-fu? Do you mean lower likelihood of collecting an egregious number of viruses?
Should doctors think it’s sad when you don’t know enough about your body to self diagnose?
Well one of the takeaways was that Windows users often didn't even report crashes in the first place, or have completely generic descriptions that didn't help at all. So a better analogy would be:
Should doctors think it's sad when you ignore some part of your body acting up, or you suddenly passing out during the day out of nowhere? Or, if you do go to the doctor, all you say is "doctor I'm sick"?
I think they should.
Windows suddenly passing out in middle of the day is normal windows behavior though.
Windows is so broken that Windows users just assume that that's how all software is. No amount of complaining or bug reporting will ever get Microsoft to fix a problem, so why bother at all?
I'm not even kidding, this is what software has become for the common layperson.
2000 called and it wants its meme back.
Modern Windows is pretty resilient. I've had a Windows 10 install going for three years that hasn't BSODed, force-rebooted, or otherwise hung.
Also call me when Linux gets proper HDR and HIDPI support. The first 'Retina'-class Windows laptops were released in 2013, ten years ago.
Call me when Windows gets proper HIDPI support lmao.
As for HDR, that's here or coming in the next couple months.
Call me when Windows gets proper HIDPI support lmao.
Has been here for nearly a decade now. It's pretty straightforward, and even Win32 programs can be made DPI-aware[1].
[1]: https://building.enlyze.com/posts/writing-win32-apps-like-it...
Add Ubuntu to it
Pattern recognition is a critical skill for good bug reports, and for software developers. Not surprising that there's a lot of overlap, and that people who aren't developers may not have honed that skill when it comes to computers.
doctor I'm sick
Misinformation is more costly than no information. Disinformation is actually more informative!
No, but people are expected to know when they need to go to a doctor - i.e. they spot the bug, then the doctor debugs.
But in software, it’s more like “they spot the bug, the doctor says ‘ok, we’ve forwarded your feedback to our product team,’ and they never hear another thing.”
Maybe that a reason why Linux users are more likely to report bugs? At last with issue trackers for most open source projects (and Linux users use a lot more open source) you know whether developers have any response, there is often discussion, and you know when a fix happens in response to your bug because it gets closed as fixed, often with a link to the commit that fixes it.
A lot more motivating than not really getting any response.
in both of your examples it's still undoubtedly better to be educated on the topic. A person with medical or legal knowledge can advocate on their own behalf.
So, swinging this metaphor back to where it came from -- yes, it's not unsurprising that ignorance is the norm, but we must advocate for great enough personal education so as to empower the non-professionals. Bug-reporting is ultimately a user-empowering experience, designed to facilitate the user and make their tools better. This improvement feedback loop isn't developer-only, nor can it ever be; thus all of the reporting tools that are now common-place for the users.
Actually I think yes, to a certain degree a mature person should be able to self diagnose and navigate basic laws. And of course, know enough to know your limits, when it is the point to go see an expert.
Bug reports are a developer thing because they are also the ones at the receiving end. It means that they know from experience what is useful and what is not.
Or maybe if you are QA, in this case, filing proper bug reports is literally your job.
But "regular" power users who have no experience in development work (I actually mean work, not just knowing how to code) simply may not have the skills, because yes, writing bug reports is a skill, the kind of skill that takes actual learning and practice, that not that many people have, and that can get you a job if you are good enough at it.
Bug reports are a developer thing because they are also the ones at the receiving end
From my time working in shared platform technologies and open source I beg to differ. The fact that someone is a developer does not mean they'll make a quality bug report. There's probably something else about Linux that makes the self-selection clearer or increases the ease of generating quality bug reports.
Having a deep technical understanding (which is likely due to using Linux) is a prerequisite for good bug reports.
Do you think you could file a bug report about the mistimed light signals at an intersection between a highway frontage road and a commuter rail crossing?
Would you include the time and date? The names of the roads? The sequence that the lights follow? The length of time of each signal? The max length of cars at each signal during the sequence? Generally attempting to provide what the person who might receive such a bug report would need?
Tell me, what qualities are actually required to communicate the details of a system deemed to be operating incorrectly? Perhaps empathy, gumption and intelligence, that is, qualities that are not limited to those experienced with moving Jira tickets to the right?
All those qualities are indicative of a detail oriented mind that have the ability to imagine more than just their immediate desire and actions.
These qualities are what you would consider to be "technical understanding". Most people don't have these qualities, unfortunately. Not because they aren't _capable_ of obtaining them, but because they don't care to want to.
I think a part is also motivation - there aren't many devs that care to support Linux so when someone does provide a Linux version I am more inclined to help out in making it work.
The other part is culture. Linux users are used to having access to bug trackers where they can get responses from actual developers of the software in question. Not that this means you will always get your issue fixed or are even guaranteed a response but IMO the experience is much better than having to dig through a help desk that only answers trivial things that any competent user can figure out on their own before being allowed to interact with a corporate support drone who can't do anything except repeat scripted answers. The latter is just so demotivating that if you have go through it enough end up not bothering in the future even if some developers might have better systems in place.
Being used to having access to developers also encourages you to make good bug reports because those will often get you a fix quickly. E.g. I have had cases where it took only a few hours from a bug report with a game trace reproducing the issue to a working graphics driver patch.
Lastly, actual bug trackers - as opposed to bug black holes like support systems where you don't see other people's reports or bug report forums that quikcly become a mess of already resolved issues and duplicates - provide an opportunity for the users (especially powerusers) to help each other out by sharing details to narrow down the bug as well as workarounds. All of that also makes the bug reports more useful for any dev looking at fixing the issue.
aren't really users
Gatekeeping being a real developer wasn’t bad enough, we’re gatekeeping being a user now?
I’ve worked with plenty of developers who would have no idea how to generate a core dump, never mind users. Let’s calm down a bit.
Its not gate keeping its an observation on the usage patterns of users.
In the early days of computing most users had strong technical skills (shocker), over time the commercialisation of technology and its entrance into everyday life has shifted the amount of users who can even start to understand how their software/hardware works. In contrast Linux is still a very technical OS to use, even installing ubuntu requires a certain __type__ of user, so the amount of Linux users who are capable of understanding their computer is much higher.
Of course it’s gatekeeping. The point about how technical users used to be may or may not have any truth to it, but that’s orthogonal to whether saying people who can’t take core dumps are not users.
If you’re saying that not meeting some bar makes you not a member of a group, that’s gatekeeping.
They are just consumers that don't use the OS, just consume it.
I'm a customer. If you want detailed bug reports, speak to your qa staff.
Thank you! Try telling Slack that. Report a bug, and they get back to you asking you to change this and that, try again, take a screen recording, blah blah blah - No! I've pointed out to you where there's an issue, described it, have your QA team attempt a reproduction, maybe get back to me if they can't and I'll be more willing, but why do they think I would have time for or care to do their QA, especially when in all likelihood I am a user via my own work.
Not really a developer thing but some cursory understanding of software and it’s lifecycle thing
Users should just use the software. I wouldn't expect the typical user to know about or interact with the internals, much less understand them.
Good bug reports requires at least some understanding of how software works. I'd consider those to be power users.
To over-generalize, Linux users are by necessity power users. When you interact with the internals of your operating system regularly, you get a better sense of how software in general works. Particularly when things go wrong. You have to know how to find and read log files to use Linux. IMO, it's inevitable that Linux users give better bug reports because that's a large part of what it's like to use Linux.
I’m a developer and I’m happy if I have a vague idea of how the software I work on functions. I admit that for almost everything I have no idea hier it works.
For what it's worth, I've found (mostly non-dev) customers of one of my e-commerce businesses to be pretty good at filing "bug reports" when they receive faulty (or "faulty") hardware.
About 50% of the time a complaint will be accompanied by the steps they performed, what they saw and what they expected to see. Often there'll be photos too, and enough information to diagnose remotely.
I think the difference with bug reports for commercial software is that it's invariably unacknowledged and unactioned by the developers. Why would you take the time to write out a clean report when the reasonable expectation is that it's ignored?
And/or "Linux users are less likely to have a bug fixed, unless they submit a bug report"
It seems obvious when you think of the numbers. When you have 100 users, 1% of them has to report a bug for it to get fixed. When you have 100k users, .0001% have to report a bug for it to get fixed.
Except many bugs are cross-platform so the probability that it will be fixed is the same for both groups.
or “more vocal” / more inclined to “burn/invest/spend/waste” time tinkering
I would also add that that the FOSS bug report experience is in some ways better.
And in FOSS, reporting a bug is more worth it since without a QA department it probably won't be fixed unless it's reported.
Definitely! Case in point, I reported a bug in the iOS ePub reader I was using (crashing on the iOS beta I was running), and the developer responded to say they were working on it.
Contrast that with the little bugs I’ve reported to Apple; they’ve not been fixed, and I don’t know if they ever will be. It’s disheartening and has undermined my trust in my phone’s OS and the company behind it.
What I know from years of dealing with customers is that listening to their problems and acknowledging them, even if you can’t fix anything, works wonders (1).
I once talked with a man who’d been utterly let down by our phone system as he waited outside to get his groceries: we’d told him he could come in early as we had his order done, but the system didn’t know that. When I went outside he was super frustrated, and rightly so. I heard him out and acknowledged that we’d dropped the ball, then asked him if he still wanted his groceries. It’s amazing how just being willing to listen can turn a situation from one where no one is happy to one that you can laugh about together (at how stupid software can be!).
1: part of listening and acknowledging is becoming the customer’s advocate and elevating as needed; this was something I did. Sometimes the answer was still “we can’t help”, but seeing that you did your best might be all they need.
Windows will do that "Generating a report to send..." thing which gives the impression it's already taken care of.
The author considers the bug reporting to be a benefit, it's a contrast from this post last month "One game, by one man, on six platforms: The good, the bad and the ugly" [0].
The Ugly
Linux accounts for less than 1% of the total players, so from a business perspective, it is not worth it. And the platform has the highest percentage of players who run into platform-specific issues - the time used for customer support only makes the economy worse. Also, I don’t own a Steam Deck, so adding support is not always easy: Valve does not provide a SteamOS image to test. So Steam Deck-specific code (like controller support, starting the game in full-screen, making the UI bigger, etc) is not tested end-to-end. I’ve used HoloISO with limited success.
TL;DR: Even worse economy than Mac but less annoyance perhaps
I believe Valve is working on a SteamOS 3 image for general purpose PCs and confirmed it publicly, but we don’t know the release date.
This is great news, have to say i love they keep taking whacks at it.
Just remember its not out of altruism. It's very beneficial to Valve to be able to eliminate their Windows dependency. I will say, it is good when incentives align for the benefit of the consumer.
Just remember its not out of altruism.
I’ve always been curious what point is being made when people say this. Care to expand on it?
At least in my case, the point being made when I say "Just remember it's not out of altruism" is to remember that it's not out of altruism.
Why is it important to be reminded of that?
I don't think many people expect companies to do things out of altruism, but, as you say, we are happy when our interests and theirs align.
That’s the point of markets.
Three ways to get someone to do something:
* make them love you
* pay them
* make them fear you
Markets incentivize behavior that would otherwise require altruism or fear.
If it's based on Arch (insane rolling release crap idea) then I won't be using it.
I've been using Gentoo Linux (which is also a rolling-release distro) since the early 2000s (maybe 2002?).
Even taking into account the libpng upgrade disaster in the early-to-mid 2000s, it's the most sane, most stable, least-trouble-free distro I've used.
I've wanted to find some other good distro, but all the ones I've tried either
a) Only ship ancient packages in their official repositories, requiring me to go to unofficial sources to get oh so many up-to-date versions of things.
b) Inevitably do something pants-on-head retarded as part of normal operation (nearly always during upgrades) and require me to bust out my Linux sysadmin skills to unwedge the system
or (sometimes) both "a)" and "b)".
You don't like rolling-release distros? That's fine, more power to you. They've been working fine for me for (oh dear god, I'm so old) ~20 years.
Gentoo stable (aka not ~arch) might be rolling release but can also be surprisingly conservative, often getting new versions even after Debian stable.
Gentoo testing (aka ~arch) does come with occasional surprises (although most common is some package update failing to build) but still worth it compared to having to deal with big updates or even reinstalls.
Of course it will be, that's what the Decks run now. They don't update in the same way or pace as regular Arch, though. pacman is basically disabled. You're encouraged to do everything through flatpak and appimage, and then the occasional blessed system update comes through for the other parts.
Using a non rolling release distro as a desktop makes 0 sense. You're holding off on upgrades, forcing 1 gigantic upgrade at once that will never be tested. Do you have a dev or staging environment for your desktop upgrades? Why not do small incremental updates all the time?
It's almost self defeating. Seems like developing games for linux is harder.
less people play games on it, so it get's less dev attention.. so quality suffers.. so less people play games on it.
I'm not blaming game devs, linux devs or users for this nor am i blaming Microsoft etc.
It just is. Efforts like Wine and Steamdeck go above and beyond to maybe changing this.
Developing ANY user-facing application for Linux is harder. Linus himself explained why.
TLDW: Linus speaking in 2014, lamenting that there isn't binary compatibility between distros, or even between major releases of a given distro.
This was before the Snap project though. (Somewhat related: I hadn't realised until today that Snap isn't fully Free and Open Source.)
Snap is yet another Canonical NIH copy of others' solutions. There's already Flatpak as well as AppImage or just-ship-your-damned-dependencies before that. Lack of binary compatibily of random libs shipped by the distros is not a real problem in practice - base libraries (libc, opengl/vulkan, libasound/pulse) etc all have backwards compatible interfaces and the rest you can and should just include with your binaries. This has been known as far back as Loki back at the start of the millenium but somehow there are still people spreading FUD.
Seems like developing games for linux is harder.
This is not because of some property of Linux, but mostly because of game developers' unfamiliarity with it. Sure there's some issues with window servers but if you're building a game using any mainstream engine or even simpler frameworks like SDL that shouldn't be much of an actual issue.
It's almost self defeating. Seems like developing games for linux is harder.
Except that the parent's point is refuted by the OP's article (that brought us all here to discuss):
"Do you know how many of these 400 bug reports were actually platform-specific? 3. Literally only 3 things were problems that came out just on Linux."
From talking with some indie devs, the worst platform is Mac, the rest depends on one's preferences and experience - some people feel more comfortable on linux.
I don't think that they should release for a platform they can't test.
So no one should release on linux? Because no one can test every linux distribution.
There's a difference between
- marking it as officially supported and asking the full price when it has never been run on a special hardware device running a custom OS (the steam deck that the person you're responding to mentioned)
and
- saying "we've tried on Ubuntu 24.04 default install with AMD drivers as well as Fedora 82, but ymmv obviously we know you love to tweak your setups just like us <3"
They probably never said they explicitely support steam deck. It's probably steam deck users that are interested in it, and valve doesn't provide a testing platform.
Sounds like the difference is whether it's about platform-specific issues.
Do you know how many of these 400 bug reports were actually platform-specific? 3. Literally only 3 things were problems that came out just on Linux. The rest of them were affecting everyone
vs
And the platform has the highest percentage of players who run into platform-specific issues - the time used for customer support only makes the economy worse.
Also:
Fixed that and added a debug log there to just make sure it worked well, and after reviewing unrelated reports from windows I found that it would hit these players too, they just didn't report that.
Wouldn't surprise me if a lot of the unreported bugs were Windows-specific and they're just not seeing reports of them, or not managing to find the cause because the reports are so nonspecific.
And the platform has the highest percentage of players who run into platform-specific issues
Except that in the case of the OP's posted article, their Linux bugs were few:
"Do you know how many of these 400 bug reports were actually platform-specific? 3. Literally only 3 things were problems that came out just on Linux."
The author considers the bug reporting to be a benefit, it's a contrast from this post last month
> Linux accounts for less than 1% of the total players, so from a business perspective, it is not worth it.
These actually don't need to contradict. The current post specifically suggests that at a cursory glance it looks like a bad decision to support linux users and instead triage those bugs but that in reality the bugs they report are more universal. We can call this a colloquial paradox because the simple reasonable assumption is in direct opposition to the nuanced one.
Let's call it Koderski's paradox since that's the Reddit user's name.
One is built with webgl and typescript, the other with Godot.
It shouldn't surprise anyone that a tech built for a specific purpose (video games) with Linux as the first class platform, performs better and is more stable than arguably the second most complicated piece of software engineering the humanity has ever devised - the browser.
The more complicated your stack is, the more problems you will have. The Linux specific bugs also tend to increase (and become nigh unsolvable) with Unity. Godot is much leaner, and tends to wield this fact as its strength. As an unrelated example, there are multiple community plugins for implementing different physics engines in Godot, when such a thing is an exercise in frustration in Unity or Unreal, for varying reasons.
Windows users have been sending crash reports for decades and nothing happened.
Bugreport for headline
Linux users provide more and better bug reports. Which helps developers improving overall quality.
Developers of closed-source applications historically avoided to provide open bug trackers. The literally trained their users not to report bugs. In best case there is a forum. Most of the time only an E-Mail address is available.
System tooling for reporting bugs on Windows is also less advanced.
Windows has plenty of solid diagnostic/post-mortem tools. They also have ETW (Event Tracing for Windows), and they're pioneers in vacuuming up crash reports at scale with invasive telemetry.
If for instance someone tries to run an exploit against you and they cause any instability whatsoever in Windows, the stacktrace can end up on someone's desk at MS and vulnerabilities are regularly discovered and fixed that way.
That doesn't replace a user giving good bug reports, but their tooling is not less advanced at all.
As a salient point of comparison, the most advanced tooling for bug reporting that the Linux kernel has, is "printk a warning into the log and hope someone looks at it"
the stacktrace can end up on someone's desk
This is chillingly scary and one reason why I use Linux desktop.
Microsoft has good protocols around this to respect people's privacy and devs can only temporarily have access to them.
But this is all according to the goodwill of Microsoft, who may very well use it for other purposes for any reason and you'd never know.
But this is all according to the goodwill of Microsoft
No, there is a privacy policy and they would get in legal trouble if they violated it.
How would anyone know that? Is anyone checking on them? There’s been plenty of instances of companies breaking their own, even legally binding, word
So devs can see what I've been upto on my own computer.
I assume the problem is the default is "send" rather than "don't send"?
So devs can see what I've been upto on my own computer.
If you consent to sharing the error with Microsoft. It may contain some information about what was running to assist with finding the issue. There is a strict privacy policy for what this data is allowed to be used for.
I assume the problem is the default is "send" rather than "don't send"?
No, unless an admin changed the policy.
Ahh, if the default is don't send and it's just an option then I don't see what the problem is
It certainly is. And every time a program is forced to have the crash reporting be opt-in because of the region I live in, I sing Ode to Joy. Don't get me wrong I'm no invasive telemetry enthusiast.
But I wouldn't mind being _able_ to make that choice for some projects I trust. If it were up to me, Linux maintainers would be looking at enough (opted-in) user stacktraces in their code that they'd start thinking of syzbot* fondly.
(* Fuzzer that Linux maintainers love to complain about due to the deluge of rare bugs and crashes it drops on them)
A number of Linux distros and software have automated bug reporting tools, they just tend to require an explicit confirmation before submittingn anything.
E.g. there's Ubuntu's Apport, Fedora's ABRT, KDE's Dr. Konqi.
If anything, tooling for analyzing and fixing bugs (as the developer) on Windows is so much better it's not even comparable.
This is a matter of what you are used to more than anything else. Personally, I'm much happier with debugging tools on Linux.
I wonder if those metrics would be the same regardless of whether the game was officially supported on Linux or unofficially supported through Proton.
If it's emulated I'd assume it's unsupported and not report anything.
This is what I do. Running under an emulator is a signal to me that I'm on my own. Now I'm rethinking that interpretation, though. Is this an incorrect stance?
Well if there is an official Mac/Linux package with wine+the game from the developer, we could presume they want feedback.
If it's just the Proton built into Steam, then I don't know.
But then I haven't tried gaming on Linux, either desktop or a Steam Deck, lately so I don't know what the atmosphere is. Atm I only run a Mac Mini (I have Linux and Windows boxes but I only remote into them) and a PS5. On Mac OS you run games in spite of Apple, and on the PS5 games just work.
Some developers explicitly indicate that Linux is officially supported via Proton, in which case I think it makes sense to report bugs, otherwise similarly I wouldn't bother.
I got plenty of uninvited hate from random users just for posting bug reports (for obvious game bugs) on steam. Might got better with proton being more popular, but I for sure stopped wasting my time and just return the games.
Steam forums are notoriously spotty. Some are ok, others are terrible. And at least half the time the developers don't read it, because they have their own forums that they can moderate and maintain themselves.
I would guess it's somewhere in the middle, but with most of the bug reports going to whoever's maintaining proton rather than the developer.
whoever's maintaining proton
That would be Valve and yes they do fix game-specific bugs.
I'm curious if this has to do with people's day job.
I'm guessing that software developers make a bigger fraction of Linux gamers than of Windows gamers.
I think it has to do more about the fact that people using Linux are more educated about software, sharing knowledge, and working for fr... Sorry I meant, working for the community
I think it has to do more about the fact that people using Linux are more educated about software, sharing knowledge.
So you're saying they're software developers (and sysadmins)?
So you're implying those are one and the same set?
Usually, developers, or people aware that actual real humans are behind software, that it's not all magic.
I think Linux users will try to help themselves, will check for the application output, find the logs, ask for help and help each other to troubleshoot.
I made an app for Windows, and it was hard to explain the user how to find the log file in %appdata% , after a few support cases I just made a wizard for the users to use it and send the logs to us because it was to hard for them to find and submit a log file.
after a few support cases I just made a wizard for the users to use it and send the logs to us because it was to hard for them to find and submit a log file.
There must generic libraries for this?
Whats the standard way to do it? Do they get sent as email? as Post request to a server? or does it create a ticket or github report?
In my mind that’s a good feature to build in anyway. Even as a technically capable individual and software dev, I’m more likely to send in bug reports if I don’t have to go digging for logs. Path of least resistance and all that…
As a Linux user I was trained to never report any bugs if you use the proprietary Nvidia drivers, because the report will just be dismissed (no matter if the stack trace indicates the crash being Nvidia's fault). Though I guess for a game this would finally be different!
In fact I submitted a fix for a crash in a game (you can compile it yourself, but not open source license) that affected all OSes before.
I've never tried it personally, but Nvidia has support forums for users experiencing bugs. They have a support script to collect additional information for reporting problems
The bugs I'm referring to never where Nvidia bugs. Bugs in some kind of GUI programs, but because I used Nvidia drivers they just dismissed the bug. It's a long time ago and I got that response from multiple projects, so I stopped reporting bugs of any GUI programs.
Nvidia kind of expects everyone to adapt to them rather than play nice with the community so I won't blame anyone for not volunteering their free time to deal with them.
I submitted a bug + instructions to fix for an Nivida project and it got fixed in the next release
They where never Nvidia bugs. Just that if you use Nvidia drivers many GUI projects will ignore your bug report. It was a long time ago so I don't remember the details. Happened with multiple projects (not the same bug, the same response by the devs when they found out I use Nvidia drivers).
Clearly these users aren't profitable. If people on the other platforms don't notice or care about these bugs, they're better customers.
free QA seems pretty valuable
Perhaps you have not read the article? In your defense, the title is a bit misleading.
The article states that the Linux users report more bugs, but these bugs affect other platforms as well. Hence, the Linux users are probably even more profitable, because they provide free QA.
Clearly QA isn't profitable. If people using the software don't notice or care about these bugs, they're better customers.
It's not that they don't care about the bug its that they don't care about you. Users will just use a competitor, spread bad word of mouth, and be hesitant to try again - all without telling you a thing about their decision.
And this attitude is why most software is mediocre and not fun to use.
I would disagree. Windows users care about the bugs, but not about reporting them. How many times do I see reviews on steam like "great game but too many bug / game breaking bug X" so 2/10.
Most users just experience the bugs, get mad about the game and move on. Being able to fix the bugs fast and early means less users will experience them in the long run, which in turns means a better gaming experience and very likely better player retention and higher review/player attraction
Honestly I think the whole "having a title that leads to the opposite conclusion as the details" move is a very bad idea. I think it likely most people will not read the article or the comments and the outcome of writing and sharing this article in that case will be increasing anti-linux sentiment, the exact opposite of what the author would have hoped for.
The title is as factual as it can be. If you were expecting a different conclusion, it may have been due to prior biases.
If the title said "Mac users" instead of "Linux community", would you have expected a different conclusion?
The pre-existing cultural context is that "everyone knows" this fact that Linux is "garbage" and has "way more bugs." This is a title that directly feeds into that. You can fuel misconceptions with pure facts - that's 50% of politics. If it had been amc sinstead the conclusion would have been "oh wow, Mac gaming really must not be ready yet" if seen int he context of a gaming forum or "oh wow, Mac must be worse than I thought" otherwise. The average common fool on the street and the average highly successful corporate executive both think bug reports are bad. The audience of people who will actually read the article isn't the majority of the audience that'll be influenced by it.
Also the title might be factual but the actual article is about Linux users, not Linux, which is one way it's very easy to mislead with "facts"
Interesting. I didn’t misinterpret this title as you did. I assume if the content is really about what you think, the title should be something like “38% of bugs comes from…” or “38% of crashes comes from…” instead of this
I think the point is that ultimately, only 3 bugs were platform specific and most of the additional reports were bugs that affected everyone.
My experience shipping the Slack Desktop app was similar - the Linux bug reports were always insanely specific, detailed, and sometimes literally had the fix to the bug in the report! A huge contrast to the macOS and Windows users (who naturally, were often not IT professionals and were instead good at Law, or Public Policy, or a hundred other things that aren't filing software bug reports)
Yeah, part of it might be because as Linux users we flagellate each other over not RTFMing or missing the obvious. And with everything always broken you get a lot of experience debugging. Certainly that has its upsides too.
In Linux' defense - I switched to Linux in a large part because I was interested in the inner workings and wanted to tweak them, and Windows isn't nearly as friendly to that.
So I do run into problems with Linux, but a very large percent of them are due to me doing really weird things with my computer.
There is also a "launched in terminal" factor, at least to me, especially when talking about desktop app that do not launch via an app store.
When i'm running FF, discord or when i used Slack, i launch the App in a terminal that i let in the background (because of habit: I only have to know one shortcut, ctr-Alt-T, type 2-3 letters, tab, and voila, the stuff is launched, its like macOs Spotlight).
That mean that each time the app crash or have an issue, i have the basic log output under my eyes. I just have to copy paste the interesting stuff into the bug report window with basic context clues. And if the bug is persistant, 90% of the time i can find the complete logs easily (tbf it happened once, so i'm lying about the 90% :P).
When i'm on Window playing Anno (or using discord), or on MacOs jamming, i don't think i ever submitted a real bug report, because i just don't have the logs easily accessible, and when the bug is persistant and prevent me from doing X, since i don't have a clue where i can find the /var/log equivalent, i just boot linux and do something else.
Unfortunately, Apple doesn't value developer's feedback higher than normal-user feedback
Apple values feedback?
touche
Frequently when I encounter a bug in a consumer web app, I de-obfuscate the JS, find the bug, and contact the support team with the reproduction steps and a suggested patch. They fix it much faster this way.
what is your procedure for de obfuscating the js
I usually give them a review that reflects the quality of their product. They can hire more qa people and developers or managers that prioritise bug fixing and thus customer satisfaction. I only send bug reports to open source products.
Imagine you manufacture 3 wheeled cars.
1 day you decide, alright we're going to add the 4th wheel. There might be some bugs to work out. All the users who get the optional 4th wheel though... boy they complain an awful lot about problems they experience.
Imagine you manufacture HN posts.
1 day you decides alright I'm going to post an article with a title that leads people in the opposite direction of the conclusion.
All the users who only read the title though... They complain an awful lot about problems they have never experienced.
I tend to file bug reports all the time on the Linux systems I work with because that's the least I can do to assist the developers of the open source projects involved.
I do the same for smaller projects, for larger ones that is not always appreciated https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37672074
Are members of the Linux community more likely to file bug reports?
Absolutely. In fact, I have started to encounter players that regard bug reports as something they would only do if they are being paid. Never mind that they paid for the game and deserve to have as bug–free an experience as possible, they just won't tell the developers about the bugs because it’s not their job. Most of them use Windows, but a few use OSX. This makes the ratio even more stark.
And 95% of those reported software errors affect windows and Linux both.
And fixes to those defects benefit both OS users.
Despite making up just 5.8% of the population…
Are we really surprised? Linux users are just way more involved - this is the community that will spend 6 months getting a sound driver installed after all.
You're welcome. Of course if you don't want to know about bugs you can always ignore the reports, so I hope this isn't meant as a complaint.
For anyone curious about the game itself, I'd highly recommend it if you're into space sims. It's not exactly difficult, but it does get somewhat technical and gives you minimal handholding. It's fun and satisfying to figure out how the game mechanics work via experimentation, though, which I think is the kind of thing this crowd would find appealing.
Do you know how many of these 400 bug reports were actually platform-specific? 3. Literally only 3 things were problems that came out just on Linux. The rest of them were affecting everyone - the thing is, the Linux community is exceptionally well trained in reporting bugs.
A nice surprise! I was expecting the usual “distros are hard” screed, but instead it was the other reason.
This is an important lesson and a post I'm glad frequents the front page, because the lesson is far from learned.
Here's another one. The customer is always right __in matters of taste__. Users will often try to be helpful and make suggestions about how problems may be solved. This suggestion will often be bad. But remember that the system is more opaque to them so they may not see all the complexity that exists. BUT this does not mean that their issue is bad. If the user has an issue, the user has an issue and someone reporting is not just one. They're just the one to report. You can throw away the bad suggested solution and still address the issue. Read the suggestion instead as additional context in to understand what the user really is looking for, i.e. taste. Never respond with "rtfm" and instead with "here's a link to the specific section in our documentation with an explanation." Far too many developers think that simply because documentation exists that it is clear and understandable. Far too many times have I made a report, referenced the documentation, and gotten back "well you just need to <do complicated task> just rtfm." Even in instances where I've demonstrated a solution but am reporting unexpected behavior. Too many times I've gotten "well that's actually x's problem, not ours" and the cycle. If users are using your software, it's your problem and you must communicate upstream, not the user. This is why I do not contribute as much anymore. It's just too exhausting and I'm not alone.
And let's not rely on internal communities for reporting cough signal cough. I see these everywhere, places like Signal, Spotify, Microsoft, etc. If you got a github, leave it open and respond to it. I love Signal but the community forums are an absolute shithole of people who understand neither privacy or security. They are worse than the arch forums. Most internal communities, volunteer moderated, are destined for this unbearable quality. You're just creating a breeding ground for toxicity, not creating a centralized location for bug tracking and community engagement. You got to go wherever your customers are. If they keep trying to report on github you accept that that's where they come through, not send them down another channel where they must make another account. You're just hiding bugs that way and making your product worse.
I was bracing myself for another "don't support Linux because packaging is a mess" post, but was pleasantly surprised. Only 3 of the Linux reported bugs were Linux-specific - all the others were real cross-platform bugs affecting everyone. Free QA, indeed.
Wouldn't be surprised, if triple A studios jumped on linux for that sweet free QA
The headline could be read as stating this is a problem, but if you read further:
> The report quality is stellar. …
They are reporting getting many useful bug reports from Linux users, far more so than the rest of the population.
Windows players prefer to complain on twitter :)
The game in question is a great game, by the way.
(2021)
... because Linux users are better at filing bug reports! ;)
My experiences decades ago in a different domain (compilers), but with a simmilar lesson learned, was that the number of serious bugs in the product was inversely correlated with the number of people using the product. Niche cross-compiler for experimental microcontrollers had many bugs even in core features, wildly popular compiler for pc platforms might not be perfect, but typically has almost 0 bugs in common cases.
koderski on the details (1):
What stood out to me is that the Windows players often encountered the same bugs, but didn't report them, or were vague to the point of uselessness (e.g. "Game crashes after a couple hours"), in contrast to players on Linux.
1: https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/qeqn3b/despite_hav...
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Perhaps a more descriptive title would be that "Linux players are 6x more likely to report bugs than Windows players" or something of that nature.