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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

#151

Post by freedomben »

shultays wrote: post #103
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 compil…

OP was not saying that 38% of the bugs are Linux-specific, he was saying that Linux users report many more bugs per capita than windows users (and he sees that as a good thing).

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

#152

Post by midasuni »

donatzsky wrote: post #94
tyingq wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting. Most of the WP devs I encountered are deploying on old-school shared Linux hosting, like BlueHost, GoDaddy, etc. Maybe some use Windows for local dev stuff, but I doubt many deploy their "prod" there.

Not a lot of Windows in the shared hosting space. And what little there is tends to be more expensive, from what I have seen. And, perhaps other than knowing about permissions, you don't really need any Linux knowledge to use these hosts.

Back in 1996 I had a website running on a shared unix of some sort. I could barely upload files in the correct binary/ascii mode, or copy and paste a “chmod” command.

My 1996 self would be the exact nightmare wordpress user today, although I guess I wanted to learn even though I didn’t know what I was doing, which is different to many comments I’ve seen on places like GitHub.

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

#153

Post by godelski »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #124

Negative feedback is insanely valuable. I write about that here:[0]. Here's what I wrote: > It can be mighty unpleasant to read negative reviews and comments about our work, but it’s worth it to do so, as long as we’re doing it to improve said work. I often say that positive affirmations feel good, but negative feedback is required to improve a product. Negative feedback, even if it’s uncouth diatribes from unpleasan…

There's another piece of advice I've heard along these lines.

> Listen to the users complaining. Users are very good at identifying problems that you missed or can't see because you're too close to the project. But be careful listening to users about solutions to the problems. They can't see the whole picture.

I think this is good advice. You should want to make the best product you can. Some users have good ideas and can see things you can't. But it is hard to get the signal out of the noise and this can be very frustrating.

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

#154

Post by atomicnumber3 »

lordnacho wrote: post #150
reginold wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe there's a better term to throw at this. "Even though just 5.8% of userbase, Linux users contribute 55% of helpful QA feedback"

Makes total sense. You're unlikely to use Linux if you're not something of a power user, at least. I would guess there's a lot more developer type people who use Linux, and they are the people who appreciate a good bug report. Same people also have a better idea of what might be causing the bug, how to get more information, logs, and so on.

They're also probably more used to the development process. With proprietary software, if you don't pay for a support contract, you basically can't submit a bug report - not really. You just ignore the bug and hope it's fixed in later versions.

This applies to big AAA games too, so games aren't necessarily special.

But indie games are in a weird spot where:

1. They're clearly artists. Nobody who want to make tons of cash becomes an indie game developer. If you have the aptitude to grind through the docs and make a game, you have the aptitude to grind leetcode and get a comfortable job somewhere that pays benefits and cash. And since they're artists, and they're making games, people empathize deeply with them.

2. They get a bit of a pass on the whole free software zealotry thing. I'm sure some people are still hard-line about it, but like, if I had to rank software in terms of freedom-threat-if-proprietary, something like Office or a compiler and towards the top, and Valheim is rather closer to the bottom.

3. They really have to listen to their players to survive, so they end up operating a lot more in the open.

So they end up looking a lot more like an Open/Free project than you would expect.

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

#155

Post by heywire »

simion314 wrote: post #112
dathinab wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be surprised how many people are out there which can't even read a wiki close enough to follow instructions in it. Plus in my experience a lot of Arch users don't just "copy past instructions" they also somewhat understand why this instructions are needed, the Arch Wiki is grate as a resource for setting up things when you understand what you do, but it's often terrible when you just want a step by step gui…

>Any way the main benefit of Arch is that it's close to stable upstream repose, instead of sometimes lacking not just month but even years behind wrt. the version of libraries they ship. There is a downside that most Arch users omit intentionally, when you get latest GNOME/App with the cool new bug fixes and cool new features you also get the new not cool bugs and the new redesign/feature removal. This can cause the…

I’ve been using the Arch Linux Archive as a way to stick with a known stable system for a few weeks until I have time to dedicate to a system upgrade and correcting any issues that arise.

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

#156

Post by perl4ever »

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.

I'm not a gamer, but from what I've read, the whole industry has been transformed by the incredible lengths people go to, to cheat.

So I would expect that edge cases might be really relevant to mainstream use because everybody is trying to break the game.

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

#157

Post by simion314 »

heywire wrote: post #155
simion314 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Any way the main benefit of Arch is that it's close to stable upstream repose, instead of sometimes lacking not just month but even years behind wrt. the version of libraries they ship. There is a downside that most Arch users omit intentionally, when you get latest GNOME/App with the cool new bug fixes and cool new features you also get the new not cool bugs and the new redesign/feature removal. This can cause the…

I’ve been using the Arch Linux Archive as a way to stick with a known stable system for a few weeks until I have time to dedicate to a system upgrade and correcting any issues that arise.

How do you undo an app or subsystem after an update you don't like?

For example I upgrade my IDE but not in place, I keep previous version just in case the new one is buggy or they again moved shit around. For my main system I am on LTS and I upgrade if there is a need and not to get high on version numbers. For example I tested new versions of kernels and video drivers and end up on what feels right for me and stopped there. Sometimes the new video driver is more unstable then the older ones so I would never do a driver update without having a good reason and time to evaluate it.

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

#158

Post by mariusor »

5e92cb50239222b wrote: post #11
gpm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is for all practical purposes a singluar linux. Why? Because you can bundle your own "userspace" to support your game, and that's what steam does for you with it's runtime: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime It has to pick up a few things from the surrounding environment, but steam entirely standardizes the vast majority of it, and the rest of it is really really similar between every linux-running…

TBH this runtime can be replaced, and Arch ships a package which makes it very easy to do https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Steam/Troubleshooting#Steam... Sometimes it works better than what Valve ships. It saved me a couple of times.

The value of the steam runtime is not in how well it runs for users, but that it provides a singular target for game developers. I'm not sure if you witnessed any discussions around why most game developers are not willing to port their games to linux. From what I've seen the main complaint is that linux is too fragmented and nobody wants to package a binary for X versions of glibc, Y versions of sound libraries, and Z versions of graphic APIs. Having the steam runtime to target solves all of these issues, even if it doesn't represent the best that a user can run on their individual configuration.

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

#159

Post by Arch-TK »

oefrha wrote: post #31
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…

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…

If you support distro packaging of your software (which you should, since it should ideally reduce the load on you when it comes to triaging bugs) and users are coming to you with distro specific bugs then you should:

- Immediately close issues where the user has indicated that they did not test against the latest version or where the user has not answered the question "did you reproduce this issue with the current version of the software built from source?" (You should just automate this)

- If users continue pestering you and they seem to come from a specific distribution: complain to the maintainers of the distribution and ask that they inform their users of the proper bug reporting channels.

New users are coming to linux on a regular basis and they're coming in with a windows mindset. It is important for the smooth functioning of both linux distributions and software projects to make users aware that the proper channels for reporting bugs they experience when using software which was packaged for their distribution is the distribution's maintainers.

Users need to be made aware that unless they're compiling directly from source and using a supported version then they have no business going to upstream with their bug reports.

You may think this is harsh but if you get backlash, distributions should have your back on this (they usually do have information somewhere to inform users that bug reports should go to them first). I recommend any open source project take this stance when it comes to bug reports. If someone finds a real bug and they are certain it's not one caused by their distribution then they can easily build your project and reproduce the bug there.

(Aside: If you are providing a library then an appropriate level of API stability is a must have if you want people to be able to actually test bugs in a newer library version.)

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

#160

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

godelski wrote: post #153
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #124

Negative feedback is insanely valuable. I write about that here:[0]. Here's what I wrote: > It can be mighty unpleasant to read negative reviews and comments about our work, but it’s worth it to do so, as long as we’re doing it to improve said work. I often say that positive affirmations feel good, but negative feedback is required to improve a product. Negative feedback, even if it’s uncouth diatribes from unpleasan…

There's another piece of advice I've heard along these lines. > Listen to the users complaining. Users are very good at identifying problems that you missed or can't see because you're too close to the project. But be careful listening to users about solutions to the problems. They can't see the whole picture. I think this is good advice. You should want to make the best product you can. Some users have good ideas an…

Agreed. Like Henry Ford is quoted as saying:

    "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have told me 'A faster horse!'."
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