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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

#71

Post by emersion »

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…

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

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

#72

Post by dathinab »

simion314 wrote: post #32
atomicnumber3 wrote: post #19

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 well enough to result in a bootable system" results in a community with a base level of competence, care, and patience that puts it at least two standard deviations above the other distros and at least four (I know how small th…

>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…

There is a even simpler reason:

A lot of people gaming of Linux are either software developers or system administrators.

People buying a "Linux gaming system" are the rare exception, instead it's often "buy a powerful computer for use case X, and hey why not go for a slightly better/tweaked spec and also also game on it".

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

#73

Post by krisoft »

jraph wrote: post #50
elliekelly wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> At worse it's harmless

I wish. It happens very often that such speculation derails the whole investigation. It really shouldn’t, but people are people. If the title of the bug report says that the foobar is broken it might take weeks until someone realises that they were wrong and actually the problem is in the frobnicator which feeds the foobar.

Especially when because of this we assing the investigation to the wrong team. The foobar people don’t want to appear as if they don’t take the bug seriously, but all they check everything looks normal on their side.

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

#74

Post by wheels »

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.

We do that. In bold. Still doesn't stop people from writing to us at least once a week asking for something else or reporting that the Ubuntu package doesn't work on their distro.

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

#75

Post by wheels »

emersion wrote: post #71
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…

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.

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

#76

Post by tyingq »

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…

Bug templates help, of course. But people do still just dump the wrong stuff in until the report is accepted. Like some kind of OS version in the App version field, for example. Or some ambiguous thing like "latest". Or copy/paste from an existing bug report from some other person. You can see this on many public repos.

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

#77

Post by simion314 »

rpmisms wrote: post #55
simion314 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I'm assuming you don't generally do front-end work, because many many users are complete [insert PC word for zero capacity for rational thought].

I do interact with customers, but I would rather get a bug report from a Kubuntu users that knows the difference between a compiler and a linker then from a 12 years old that managed to copy paste instructions into a command prompt.

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

#78

Post by dathinab »

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.

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 guide.

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.

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

#79

Post by oefrha »

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…

> 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

Of course I do that, and I said so. I do everything I can to make it trivial for users to give me all the information I need. They just don't give a shit. Some people won't read.

(And the extra irony here is that my original comment already mentioned issue template asking for everything, yet you didn't read it and jumped in to tell me "don't blame the user".)

Edit: I should also mention that this is FOSS work. I’m doing free support for these users who supposedly shouldn’t be blamed for wasting my time.

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