[HN Gopher] Despite just 5.8% sales, over 38% of bug reports com...
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Despite just 5.8% sales, over 38% of bug reports come from the
Linux community (2021)
Author : sohkamyung
Score : 379 points
Date : 2023-11-23 14:11 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (old.reddit.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (old.reddit.com)
| elkos wrote:
| 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.
| jjgreen wrote:
| I do the same for smaller projects, for larger ones that is not
| always appreciated
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37672074
| vikramkr wrote:
| 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.
| blahgeek wrote:
| 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
| manicennui wrote:
| I think the point is that ultimately, only 3 bugs were
| platform specific and most of the additional reports were
| bugs that affected everyone.
| ot wrote:
| 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?
| flotwig wrote:
| 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.
| 0x38B wrote:
| koderski on the details (1):
|
| > There are not so much low-level details, really. I got a bunch
| of reports ("game is crashing when I have geologists, here are
| logs/versions/cores"), I send out huge binaries with debug
| symbols with them, got a core back that pointed exactly to the
| problem.
|
| > 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.
|
| 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...
|
| ---
|
| 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.
| tester457 wrote:
| 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
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37862606
| dangus wrote:
| 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.
| lawlessone wrote:
| This is great news, have to say i love they keep taking
| whacks at it.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| 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.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| 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.
| stavros wrote:
| 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.
| abtinf wrote:
| > 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?
| throw555chip wrote:
| If it's based on Arch (insane rolling release crap idea)
| then I won't be using it.
| opan wrote:
| 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.
| simoncion wrote:
| 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.
| lawlessone wrote:
| 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.
| treyd wrote:
| > 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.
| throw555chip wrote:
| > 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."
| fanatic2pope wrote:
| Developing ANY user-facing application for Linux is harder.
| Linus himself explained why.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pzl1B7nB9Kc
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| 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.)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap_(software)
| p_l wrote:
| 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.
| lallysingh wrote:
| I don't think that they should release for a platform they
| can't test.
| rat9988 wrote:
| So no one should release on linux? Because no one can test
| every linux distribution.
| Aachen wrote:
| 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"
| rat9988 wrote:
| 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.
| ben0x539 wrote:
| 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.
| Izkata wrote:
| 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.
| throw555chip wrote:
| > 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."
| FoodWThrow wrote:
| 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.
| godelski wrote:
| > 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.
| tensor wrote:
| Or "Linux users are mostly developers and thus are more capable
| of filing good bug reports."
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| or "more vocal" / more inclined to "burn/invest/spend/waste"
| time tinkering
| jowea wrote:
| 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.
| 0x38B wrote:
| 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.
| bhhaskin wrote:
| 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.
| gretch wrote:
| 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?
| santoshalper wrote:
| 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.
| datameta wrote:
| 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?
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| 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.
| spiderice wrote:
| > 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.
| freedomben wrote:
| 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.
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| > 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.
| doubled112 wrote:
| > 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.
| spiderice wrote:
| 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.
| LegibleCrimson wrote:
| 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.
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| 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.
| wolpoli wrote:
| 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.
| burnished wrote:
| 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".
| spiderice wrote:
| 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.
| serf wrote:
| 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_.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| 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.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| > 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.
| macintux wrote:
| 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.
| bordercases wrote:
| > doctor I'm sick
|
| Misinformation is more costly than no information.
| Disinformation is actually more informative!
| Fatnino wrote:
| Windows suddenly passing out in middle of the day is
| normal windows behavior though.
| calamari4065 wrote:
| 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.
| delta_p_delta_x wrote:
| 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.
| graemep wrote:
| 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.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| 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."
| c0pium wrote:
| > 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.
| miningape wrote:
| 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.
| c0pium wrote:
| 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.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Not really a developer thing but some cursory understanding
| of software and it's lifecycle thing
| GuB-42 wrote:
| 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.
| oooyay wrote:
| > 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.
| adrianN wrote:
| 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.
| calamari4065 wrote:
| 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.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| 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?
| red75prime wrote:
| And/or "Linux users are less likely to have a bug fixed,
| unless they submit a bug report"
| LegibleCrimson wrote:
| 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.
| Kye wrote:
| Windows will do that "Generating a report to send..." thing
| which gives the impression it's already taken care of.
| Seanambers wrote:
| Windows users have been sending crash reports for decades and
| nothing happened.
| branon wrote:
| ... because Linux users are better at filing bug reports! ;)
| CivBase wrote:
| I wonder if those metrics would be the same regardless of whether
| the game was officially supported on Linux or unofficially
| supported through Proton.
| nottorp wrote:
| If it's emulated I'd assume it's unsupported and not report
| anything.
| JohnFen wrote:
| 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?
| nottorp wrote:
| 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.
| Adverblessly wrote:
| 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.
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| 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.
| herbst wrote:
| 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.
| db48x wrote:
| 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.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| 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.
| TheRoque wrote:
| 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
| oblio wrote:
| > 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)?
| TheRoque wrote:
| Usually, developers, or people aware that actual real
| humans are behind software, that it's not all magic.
| bruce343434 wrote:
| So you're implying those are one and the same set?
| simion314 wrote:
| 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.
| lawlessone wrote:
| >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?
| jwells89 wrote:
| 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...
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Unfortunately, Apple doesn't value developer's feedback higher
| than normal-user feedback
| byyll wrote:
| Apple values feedback?
| jbverschoor wrote:
| touche
| dangus wrote:
| The game in question is a great game, by the way.
| brycewray wrote:
| (2021)
| panzi wrote:
| 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.
| nijave wrote:
| 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
| panzi wrote:
| 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.
| charcircuit wrote:
| I submitted a bug + instructions to fix for an Nivida project
| and it got fixed in the next release
| panzi wrote:
| 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).
| danilocesar wrote:
| Windows players prefer to complain on twitter :)
| ho_schi wrote:
| _Bugreport for headline_ Linux users provide
| more and better bug reports. Which helps developers improving
| overall quality.
|
| I still wonder why Valve didn't provided _Counter-Strike 2_
| earlier for Linux. The average user of Windows doesn't know where
| and who to reports bugs. System tooling for reporting bugs on
| Windows is also less advanced.
|
| 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.
| tux3 wrote:
| >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"
| throw555chip wrote:
| > the stacktrace can end up on someone's desk
|
| This is chillingly scary and one reason why I use Linux
| desktop.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Microsoft has good protocols around this to respect
| people's privacy and devs can only temporarily have access
| to them.
| ta1243 wrote:
| 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"?
| charcircuit wrote:
| >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.
| ta1243 wrote:
| Ahh, if the default is don't send and it's just an option
| then I don't see what the problem is
| themoonisachees wrote:
| 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.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >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.
| nrabulinski wrote:
| 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
| tux3 wrote:
| 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)
| andersa wrote:
| If anything, tooling for analyzing and fixing bugs (as the
| developer) on Windows is so much better it's not even
| comparable.
| pierat wrote:
| And 95% of those reported software errors affect windows and
| Linux both.
|
| And fixes to those defects benefit both OS users.
| arnaudsm wrote:
| 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.
| gumballindie wrote:
| 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.
| swyx wrote:
| what is your procedure for de obfuscating the js
| fortran77 wrote:
| Clearly these users aren't profitable. If people on the other
| platforms don't notice or care about these bugs, they're better
| customers.
| AStrangeMorrow wrote:
| 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
| wardedVibe wrote:
| free QA seems pretty valuable
| miningape wrote:
| > 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.
| smokel wrote:
| 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.
| incomingpain wrote:
| 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.
| themoonisachees wrote:
| 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.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Are members of the Linux community more likely to file bug
| reports?
| db48x wrote:
| 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.
| dspillett wrote:
| 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.
| outside1234 wrote:
| 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.
| eurekin wrote:
| Wouldn't be surprised, if triple A studios jumped on linux for
| that sweet free QA
| hprotagonist wrote:
| _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.
| godelski wrote:
| 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.
| anaisbetts wrote:
| 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)
| RGamma wrote:
| 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.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| 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.
| orwin wrote:
| 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.
| jw_cook wrote:
| 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.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| 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.
| paulmd wrote:
| Despite making up just 5.8% of the population...
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