Despite having just 5.8% sales, over 38% of bug reports come from Linux • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by tyingq » Sun, Oct 24, 2021, 3:57 PM UTC

rubyist5eva wrote: post #39

tyingq wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WSL is somewhat similar in that installing it was harder than installing most other things on Windows. They've made it easier in Windows 11, and will probably continue that direction. I wonder if MS knows where that leads for them.

You can literally just do `wsl.exe --install` on the newest builds of Windows 10 and it enables the hypervisor feature and downloads Ubuntu in one command. AFAIK it's the same in Windows 11 (I'm still on 10 and don't plan on upgrading for a few years at least).

Yes, as I mentioned, they made it easier only very recently. 09/27/2021, actually. And you still have to open cmd.exe or powershell with "run as admin". It is not as easy as installing, say, GitBash.

Also, some things are still under documented, or hard to do. Like that "wslg.exe" can be used to make Windows shortcuts to launch graphical programs. Or how to make various systemd things work (pid 1 is not systemd), and so on. Or how to add all the Windows fonts to the Linux distro. I'm saying they will likely improve all this over time.

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

#42

Post by dotancohen » Sun, Oct 24, 2021, 3:58 PM UTC

wly_cdgr wrote: post #7

I don't know about you - you might be insane for all I know - but I'm MUCH more likely to report a bug if I think there's any chance of it being fixed

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 decade for a resolution.

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

#43

Post by croes » Sun, Oct 24, 2021, 4:00 PM UTC

I think Windows users are used to live with bugs and work around them. Linux users prefer to adapt a system to their needs, Windows users adapt to the system.

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

#44

Post by dotancohen » Sun, Oct 24, 2021, 4:00 PM UTC

drdrey wrote: post #38

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.

Use this template: 1. When I do this 2. Here is what I expect to happen 3. But instead, this happens

...4. And this is my software version and Linux distro.

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

#45

Post by wildrhythms » Sun, Oct 24, 2021, 4:03 PM UTC

thrwyoilarticle wrote: post #20

On the other hand, a Windows user is trained not to report bugs, especially in games. There's rarely a channel for reporting things & simple bugs go unfixed unless the community can work out some hack to do it for themselves. Games are abandonware monoliths on day one. Secondly, if a program crashes in Windows and you try to force kill it, you get blocked waiting for the 'report' to be sent do Microsoft. Users are tr…

Do you think this has something to do with how many Windows programs (not just games) handle errors and crashes? Even Windows still uses the "Error code: " scheme. I can't even think of the last time I even attempted to get crash logs for a Windows program; however, on Linux I can usually find where logs got dumped and debug without as much of a headache.

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

#46

Post by swalls » Sun, Oct 24, 2021, 4:12 PM UTC

Kudos to them. I remember reading a report from a game dev a few years ago that said basically the same thing and came to the conclusion, "... and that's why we're ending our Linux support," which utterly baffled me.

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

#47

Post by simion314 » Sun, Oct 24, 2021, 4:16 PM UTC

dotancohen wrote: post #37

simion314 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In a similar vein, I think the biggest value-add that Arch has over other distros is that it turns out having the filter of "can follow well written instructions through mildly tricky commands What is the value of "is competent enough to copy paste commands from a wiki?". Honestly I think the best bug reports might be because some Linux users probably understand C/C++ and can understand crash reports and error messa…

> What is the value of "is competent enough to copy paste commands from a wiki?". Because without that filter you are getting feedback from, at best, people who cannot even copy paste commands from a wiki.

That is still a pathetic filter , "I know to read and I know to copy paste", I still believer that the good reports are not from the copy-paste ,I run Arch to be cool group but from technical people that run Linux(any distro).

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

#48

Post by FpUser » Sun, Oct 24, 2021, 4:23 PM UTC

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…

>"we have all seen bug reports like: “it crashes for me after a few hours"

Here is a gem from my collection of user "bug reports". The email with this exact words and nothing else - "something is wrong, what do I do?". I was biting my fingers trying not to reply with the first thing that came into my head.

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

#49

Post by justicezyx » Sun, Oct 24, 2021, 4:24 PM UTC

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…

God damnit... Clickbating is ruining any shred of useful information...

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

#50

Post by jraph » Sun, Oct 24, 2021, 4:26 PM UTC

elliekelly wrote: post #40

ArloL wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Thank you! I’m definitely guilty of mongoose-ing and diagnosing in my bug reports so this is very helpful!

> diagnosing in my bug reports

It's probably fine, if you put it in a separate section, clearing indicating that you are guessing.

At work we have an optional "diagnostic" section in our ticket template, mainly intended for the team, but I'd be happy to see a user try to fill it. At worse it's harmless, at best it gives the actual reason, somewhere in the middle it can give ideas even if it is wrong.