I don’t know why problem exists, but submiting bug reports is a bit like pulling teeth. Sure, the process is necessary and time consuming but there is no reason that ‘some’ of the people handeling the bug reports need to act as if they have a bug up their asses.
At first I thought there was a language barier, but now i am certain it is because they are, truely, taking bug reports personaly and are unwilling to admit problems where they clearly exists.
Because of my experience thus far, I have jumped ship to Linux Mint. The bug reports i have read through for Ubuntu seem much more civil.
When Openesuse matures, with both its developers and its software, I might try it again.
I don’t agree. … I think that is a generalization that is inaccurate and not fair. Especially when it comes to the packagers.
About 2 weeks ago I had a bug pointed out to me in kdenlive. I checked it out, agreed, and sent an email to the Packman packager. He had already contacted the developer, and within a day there was an update to mlt (the problem) and kdenlive, with a good fix.
Within the last couple of days yaloki has helped sort a missing codec from the packaging of MPlayer’s mencoder.
My view is the developers for one Linux distribution are mostly the same developers for another ! And as already noted, we get fast response from various openSUSE packagers.
Far be it for me to disparage another distribution.
I’d say Mint has the best bug tracking of all distributions - seeing as it has none - I guess it’s easy to leech the work of others and stamp it as your own…
ooooh, stop it… You’re all just mad that Mint has a better slab menu than openSUSE…
I’ve not had any problems submitting bugs for either OS or Ubuntu. All the replies were smart and courteous. In fact maybe the OP maybe mistook the intensity of getting to the bottom of the issue on the part of the respondent that it was looked at as condescension or whatever. They seem rather like, “look, what was on the screen when this happened!!! Tell me now!!!” kind of thing…
Ubuntu’s forums (and the Kubuntu forums) were the worst Linux forums I’ve ever dealt with. Their irc channels were the worst I’ve ever dealt with. And the distro was the worst I’ve ever dealt with.
I’ve heard Mint is much nicer than Ubuntu, but frankly I rather like openSUSE.
Being a developer of some web software for work (sorry, no OSS stuff), I can sympathise with developers who get frustrating user reports along the lines of “Hi, feature X doesn’t work. Can you fix? Thank you.” My colleagues can hear me yell at my screen from rooms away “What exactly happened? Send me some error messages, some screenshots, whatever.”
Since I sometimes am tempted to fire off incomplete error reports too but stop myself, I have come to the conclusion that this is a fundamental human trait, that we think other people know more of what’s happening to us than they really do, and that humans need to communicate more. Perhaps there’s a moral there for bigger issues in life than software bug reports.
It has been my experience, in every instance, that when approached politely, with forethought, and prepared to relay needed information, that the developer values input and feedback.
Every case that I have witnessed that has gone bad was the result of a childish, immature person ranting on (often erroneously) about a problem they have encountered but are unwilling to help correct.
Most of these comments are pretty similar to what I have seen on the WoW forums O.o. I think you guys can do better by admitting fault rather than ignoring it. Then again, those types of comments only further support what I am talking about.
Thus far you have offered only complaints and no evidence to support your complaints. Given this is an opensource community, where we progress by contributions, I think your view on the comments of others is more applicable to the comments of yourself. And if you really want to see something fixed sooner, contribute to the developers best you can.
You’re absolutely right. I have re-read the thread, and I apologize. A night of sleep has cleared my mind. Re-approaching this thread with my new outlook, I wish to amend my earlier post to the following, while leaving it up (instead of editing) so that all may see the entirety of the conversation.
What you have written is, unfortunately, very similar to what other frustrated users have written here, at justlinux.com, and linuxquestions.org. I don’t know why, but getting useful information out of new users is like pulling teeth.
At first, I thought that many of these posts might have been the result of miscommunication. Now, I see that I am wrong, and many users just take things too personally when asked to provide information that could help developers solve the problem. Instead, it is much easier to rant and flame away.
Because of such things, this will be my final post helping you. I have now jumped ship to other posts, ones that are written by people who would rather solve a problem than be part of it.
When you mature and provide the information which has been repeatedly requested, I might decide to change my mind. Until then, I think you can do better by admitting that you are not perfect, and might have even caused the “phantom” problem that you have not even yet specified. Until then, your behavior only furtherly supports what I have been talking about.
> Being a developer of some web software for work (sorry, no OSS stuff), I
> can sympathise with developers who get frustrating user reports along
> the lines of “Hi, feature X doesn’t work. Can you fix? Thank you.” My
> colleagues can hear me yell at my screen from rooms away “What exactly
> happened? Send me some error messages, some screenshots, whatever.”
True. But OTOH, the way some developers expect details that the user never
even heard about, gets me wild, too. The number of times I’ve seen requests
like “what’s the status of daemon xyzz”, “is this running”, etc… without
ever indicating how to obtain those informations!
Is it so difficult to ask "what’s the status of daemon xyzz? (run xyzz
–staus -verbose --tell-me-all). Or "what the is the output of “that”
command?
–
The sand remembers once there was beach and sunshine
but chip is warm too
– haiku from Effector Online, Volume 1, Number 6
Hmm, it seems that there is no place in this world for a soapbox section in a linux forum while there are still loony linux evangelists.
Lets try to keep the good ones and weed out the super fanbois/girls. Then we can all win!
p.s.
Thank you to the people that read this thread and considered what i said in my first post. Also, sorry to keep you all waiting… i got busy perfecting my mint install.
And that, I agree with 100%. All developers want everyone submitting bug reports, but most aren’t willing to deal with the 90% of submitters who have no clue what they’re doing. Those users just know it’s broken and need their hand held when filing… and the devs don’t want to do that. That’s where the forums come in.
You are right about one thing - indeed you are a glaring example of the WoW forums - 99,9% of the posts there are utter trash where they whine how their view of the situation is the only right one - how this or that class is so much better than theirs.
I’d love to see how YOU have contributed to the Linux landscape - other than posting vague cries into random forums with no intention other than to grief the users there who are actually into helping others.
I do believe I use in the sense that Wikipedia for example defines it;
“An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who posts controversial and usually irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the intention of baiting other users into an emotional response[1] or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion.[2]”
Which, seeing as he has less than 10 posts and many of them regarding this particular subject, leads me to believe that his only intention is to agitate the regulars and thus cause disruption - rather than contribute anything useful.
Trolls really want to instigate people. Sunscape expressed an opinion in the Soapbox area. The opinion wasn’t necessarily volatile. Sunscape feels that the Ubuntu bug reports seem more civil. I dig the openSUSE community, and had bad experiences in the Ubuntu community. Am I troll if I state that?
We had different experiences, and have different opinions.
Sunscape later states that communities are better off without fanbois. Well, I tend to agree that fanaticism is rarely good.
I don’t see any trolling.
What got me about your post was the inclusion of the term clueless. Identifying trolls so other people don’t feed them I really don’t have a problem with. Attacking people without just cause is another thing.
