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Despite having just 5.8% sales, over 38% of bug reports come from Linux

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Re: Despite having just 5.8% sales, over 38% of bug reports come from Linux

#101

Post by css »

marcodiego wrote: post #98
cs702 wrote: post #21

Notably, of those bug reports, fewer than 1% (only 3 bugs) were specific to the Linux version of the game. That is, over 99% of the bugs reported by Linux gamers also affected players in other platforms. Moreover (quoting from the OP): > The report quality [from Linux users] is stellar. I mean we have all seen bug reports like: “it crashes for me after a few hours”. Do you know what a developer can do with such a rep…

Conclusion: want good testing and bug reports of your game? Support linux.

Possibly, but how many of the bugs are rare edge cases (i.e., attempting to break the game) versus problems players actually face in normal gameplay? Without knowing what priority or severity these bugs take, it is difficult to say how useful the increased volume of feedback is.

Re: Despite having just 5.8% sales, over 38% of bug reports come from Linux

#102

Post by Kye »

cs702 wrote: post #21

Notably, of those bug reports, fewer than 1% (only 3 bugs) were specific to the Linux version of the game. That is, over 99% of the bugs reported by Linux gamers also affected players in other platforms. Moreover (quoting from the OP): > The report quality [from Linux users] is stellar. I mean we have all seen bug reports like: “it crashes for me after a few hours”. Do you know what a developer can do with such a rep…

Sometimes I forget my detailed bug reports with steps I took, even if I can't reproduce it--since it might provide a hint to someone with insight into the programs internals--, are a weird outlier.

Re: Despite having just 5.8% sales, over 38% of bug reports come from Linux

#103

Post by shultays »

cs702 wrote: post #21

Notably, of those bug reports, fewer than 1% (only 3 bugs) were specific to the Linux version of the game. That is, over 99% of the bugs reported by Linux gamers also affected players in other platforms. Moreover (quoting from the OP): > The report quality [from Linux users] is stellar. I mean we have all seen bug reports like: “it crashes for me after a few hours”. Do you know what a developer can do with such a rep…

I am not sure why would one expect more linux bugs in a game made using a game engine (I couldn't find any info and I am assuming this game is one, correct me if I am wrong). If it is not working in linux, then it must be an engine bug, not a game one. If I am wrong then props to devs for having such a consistent game engine

Perhaps other option is using cpp, and having UB that behaves differently in different compilers. But I doubt that as well

Re: Despite having just 5.8% sales, over 38% of bug reports come from Linux

#104

Post by oblio »

ajvs wrote: post #69
oefrha wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition, in my experience maintaining a developer tool, an outsized source of bug reports is Linux users reporting already fixed issues in their outdated distro packages, or even problems introduced by their packager (e.g. flatpak/snap permission problems). And they typically won’t identify the version despite clear instructions in the issue template asking for the debug output containing everything I need, inclu…

Don't blame the user here - your bug reporting template should have users declare what package version they're using so that you can easily tell them they're on an outdated package. Flatpak is usually a boon in this regard since you can ensure your users are all on the latest packages, though you're making the tradeoff of having to deal with any Flatpak-specific bugs (which I'd say is a decent tradeoff for solo maint…

Congratulations for acting exactly like his bad bug reporters.

Re: Despite having just 5.8% sales, over 38% of bug reports come from Linux

#105

Post by oblio »

terafo wrote: post #87
dotancohen wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why I've stopped reporting LibreOffice bugs. I have had literally hundreds of bugs filed, with test files and reproducibility instructions. Then they changed bug trackers - twice - and all that is lost. With KDE and Mozilla, I'm still seeing bugs fixed a decade after I stopped reporting them. So I might be inclined to file egregious bugs to those two projects, if I feel inclined at the moment to wait a decad…

I saw recently twitter complaint about emacs bug filed almost 15 years ago finally getting a wontfix responce(bug was about undo history loss or something). And then they write articles about their new and shiny bug closing process[1]. [1] https://lars.ingebrigtsen.no/2021/08/14/10x10/

https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html

Copy paste the link. Or:

> I'm so totally impressed at this Way New Development Paradigm. Let's call it the "Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers" model, or "CADT" for short.

> It hardly seems worth even having a bug system if the frequency of from-scratch rewrites always outstrips the pace of bug fixing. Why not be honest and resign yourself to the fact that version 0.8 is followed by version 0.8, which is then followed by version 0.8?

> But that's what happens when there is no incentive for people to do the parts of programming that aren't fun. Fixing bugs isn't fun; going through the bug list isn't fun; but rewriting everything from scratch is fun (because "this time it will be done right", ha ha) and so that's what happens, over and over again.

In your case, replace version "0.8" by "new bug tracker" or "new bug handling process".

Re: Despite having just 5.8% sales, over 38% of bug reports come from Linux

#106

Post by bluepizza »

css wrote: post #101
marcodiego wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conclusion: want good testing and bug reports of your game? Support linux.

Possibly, but how many of the bugs are rare edge cases (i.e., attempting to break the game) versus problems players actually face in normal gameplay? Without knowing what priority or severity these bugs take, it is difficult to say how useful the increased volume of feedback is.

Even if someone is not attempting to break the game, they might accidentaly hit those rare edge cases.

Of course, you could infer the usefulness of the increased volume of feedback from the fact that a game author is extremely happy about it.

Overall, I don't see any particular problems with having reported issues. We definitely don't pay cloud storage per open issue or anything like that. Initial assessment of a bug report is not particularly difficult either.

I'm not sure if your concerns translate to actual negative impact.

Re: Despite having just 5.8% sales, over 38% of bug reports come from Linux

#107

Post by oblio »

wheels wrote: post #75
emersion wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Packages aren't supposed to be submitted and maintained by the developers themselves. The distribution maintainers and community is supposed to do it.

That only works for open source packages.

Ah, I know that one!

Easy! Just make it open source and get rid of your livelihood. Make it open core so people will hate you just as much (bonus points if your software can be ripped off by a hyperscaler) or go Red Hat and be 100% open source and basically turn into a consultancy which is not what a lot of people want to do with their lives.

I'm just being sarcastic, in case anyone was wondering.

Re: Despite having just 5.8% sales, over 38% of bug reports come from Linux

#108

Post by edflsafoiewq »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #62
wheels wrote: post #35

For an audio app that I work on, it's similar, but different: around 1% of the users are on Linux, and around a third of the bugs / complaints come from Linux, but they're virtually all Linux specific. We're having to seriously consider dropping Linux support because the support / maintenance load is so high. (This comes significantly from the libraries we're using having worse Linux support, and a lot from the Linux…

I would think you can deal with platform-specific issues by saying "we support Ubuntu [or whatever you're willing to do]; anything else you're on your own" up front. But yeah, audio is a general weak spot.

I won't buy closed source programs with "Linux ports" anymore for this reason: it seems to always mean "some dev got it working on one Ubuntu version once". The last bug of this form I hit was a program trying to read a hardcoded path that apparently exists on Ubuntu and blissfully segfaulting if it didn't exist...

Re: Despite having just 5.8% sales, over 38% of bug reports come from Linux

#109

Post by [deleted] »

ArloL wrote: post #30
elliekelly wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any good articles on writing helpful bug reports? Whenever I submit a bug I try to give as much detail and be as specific as possible but I always imagine some dev somewhere reading it rolling their eyes at the unnecessary paragraphs I’ve submitted.

I can recommend https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html

[deleted]

Re: Despite having just 5.8% sales, over 38% of bug reports come from Linux

#110

Post by chias »

tyingq wrote: post #16

Great article, though he's benefitting from a specific slice of Linux users that are great to work with. On the other end of the spectrum, try releasing a php plugin for Wordpress, OpenCart, Magento, etc. I released a mildly popular, open-source, free add on in this space. The Linux users there are decidedly less technical, but still doing it themselves. What I got for "bug reports" was mostly terrible, few details/l…

I think the difference is:

With a game that supports Linux, you get people who have chosen to run Linux instead of Windows because they prefer it. They have also worked enough with their system to get their Linux system capable of running games well, which may not be trivial for the given distro.

With a Wordpress plugin or whatever, you get people who are running Linux because they "have" to. Trying not to sound "true Scottsman"y here, but most of the time these are not actually Linux users, these are Windows users who are further confounded by having to use an unfamiliar platform.

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