I've been on Linux for a year, here's my biggest complaint: Bug reporting
Posted by Liarus_@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 137 comments
First i'd like to start by saying that i am glad i switched to Linux, is had been one of the best decisions i did in a while, Linux has shown me what it feels like to be in control of my computer again, using Windows felt like a constant PVP battle i couldn't win, as i was in microsoft's own arena, no more "no you can't do that because we decided it's bad" no more "please upgrade to our newest and latest" no more ads being shoved in my face.
I learned the filesystem structure of Linux, packaging formats, what makes / differentiate distros from one another, did my fair share of distrohopping to then end up with Fedora as my main daily distro. and i was finally surprised by the state of gaming on Linux, all of my games worked perfectly fine, except one, that i simply decided to not play until they properly implement Linux support (which they plan in the future thankfully!)
I'm definitely not moving back to windows now that i've seen how it feels like to use an OS that gives you control, and doesn't actively try to get in your way, my main PC will definitely stay on Linux from now on.
Now, to the main topic:
Bugs: bugs bugs bugs
So when i moved to linux, i expected to face bugs, i knew the road couldn't possibly be smooth all the way, that was a compromise i was fine with, since i love community projects, i thought i would report some of the bugs i faced, and that's where problems started:
- I once faced a bug with OBS's flatpak crashing when you opened a file selector of any kind, i went to the github repo of OBS, reported it, and it was fixed later, neat!
- I faced an issue with KDE's taskbar, went to the KDE's reporting tool, turns out to report a bug there, you need to know exactly which component is at fault, something which is pretty much impossible if you're not a KDE / Linux developper, i found some help from a friend which told me what component was at fault, oh and yeah, to report stuff there, you need an account, and your email shows up in plaintext there... the issue was later fixed in a QT update.
- When Fedora 41's KDE spin released, i noticed that on the live image, the function to change your keyboard layout doesn't work, which is quite problematic to type a password / set up encryption, turns out to create a bug report for fedora, you need to go to fedora discussions and make a topic there about your issue (and hope someone notices you ?), yay, another account needed ! that issue was never fixed, i'm not sure if i'm doing it correctly, and honestly i don't think it should be that complicated.
- I recently started facing a new Issue with OBS, where every time i used the FFMPEG VAAPI encoder, the footage would have skipped frames / frames being played backwards, basically making footage just straight up unusable, so i went on the OBS github repo like i did before, reported the bug, and i was told the following: "This is likely an issue with Fedora and or RPM Fusion packaging. Please report to them, thank you." so i went to the RPM Fusion bug reporting page, and turns out, you once again, need to create an account on their own bugzilla, i never bothered to but i might after posting this, since it's something that's starting to get in my way.
I have a couple more examples i could give, but you guys understand that my point is that while the bugs themselves aren't a dealbreaker, reporting them is so convoluted it really discourages people from doing so, it's honestly been my biggest complaint, i love community projects, i even see KDE's monthly updates going out and encouraging people to try out newer versions of KDE and then report the bugs they face, which is funny because KDE has one of the most complicated bug reports forms i have ever seen.
How should be expect broad adoption for linux is bug reporting is always behind a wall that prevents the average joe like me to help / give feedback ?
I love linux but really wish there was an easier way to do this.
dafzor@reddit
For me the worst part is when you don't even know where to report.
I have graphic corruption on chromium when using my laptop with arc GPU.
Do I report it to chromium? Kwin? Mesa? Linux kernel?
All with very different bug report systems.
cyber-punky@reddit
I don't think this is ever going to get solved in any nice way. It is the side affect of choice.
Julian_1_2_3_4_5@reddit
yess ahhh... first of all i would recommend seraching their bug tracker for similar bugs. Going from application to window manager, to driver, to kernel. If none has a similar bug, report it to chromium, and then if one says it's not their bug you go further.
If you want to spend some time helping find the problem, you could also try to find out where the problem lies, by trying another window manger, or driver (maybe also just the version).
Liarus_@reddit (OP)
I feel you on this one, i feel you so much...
Also nice pfp color scheme =)
alga@reddit
So how does Microsoft handle that? What's the process to report the bugs on Windows?
killersteak@reddit
Feedback app, and as I understand it, has a pretty hefty backlog and currently not much incentive for any employees to go through it sorting out whats a bug and whats someone angry at a cloud.
alexatheannoyed@reddit
i can’t critique linux without saying something bad about windows 😤
redddcrow@reddit
Lol, you should try Mac OS, if you have any bug, well that's too bad it's never going to get fixed. Everything "just works", you're just using it wrong!
alga@reddit
No, OP is essentially saying that after migrating to Linux they faced a problem with bug reporting, implying the problem did not exist before the migration. So I'm trying to figure out what they mean.
BubblyMango@reddit
Open a microsoft account (of course!!!), create a post on the forums, get an ai response and be marked as solved.
E-werd@reddit
Post to the forums and get "helped" by someone with little grasp of the language you asked in, then post gets marked as "solved" without waiting for your response. If you report directly through their software, it goes into a black hole--you will never be contacted.
Best case scenario you find some documentation, and it was updated in the past month, but is already (or still?) out of date and unhelpful.
T8ert0t@reddit
Woof.
Thinking you found your answer when searching and then pulling up a thread link of a Microsoft rep feigning helpfulness and providing a non answer to a question no one asked or saying "It's Being Worked On! Check our dev roadmap here!" and it's like 3+ years from Preview.
klyith@reddit
sfc /scannow
dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
It fixes 100% of windows problems! You just have to believe.
Signal-Ad-8399@reddit
My system completely broke and all the help on forums was literally this. Tried the first one: didnt work. Tried the second one: didnt work. Gave up after some poor guy on a forum faced the same issue and tried almost everything without succes, so i just reinstalled Windows. It broke again after second boot up.
Hovilol@reddit
I guess my faith in almighty mc was just never high enough to fix my problems. Last time I tried that a few months ago it broke my os even more leading to me switching finally switching to Linux after postponing it for months.
jojo_the_mofo@reddit
This was another straw that broke the camel's back for me. I realized Windows wasn't for me. They don't respond to them as bug reports. Their "fixes" rarely worked. Your problem is closed whether or not it works for you. 'We said it worked so bye bye, go now'. I actually paid for Windows 10 but they don't care, you're treated just like any other pleb and have to rely on a corporation, you can't just modify the code yourself or in my case for OSS, I've paid a coder to implement a certain feature and can do the same to my OS if I wanted. That's the kind of freedom I want with an OS.
MatchingTurret@reddit
The OBS issues OP mentioned aren't even a "Linux" problem. It's a third party application.
alexatheannoyed@reddit
lol. how often does someone encounter an application breaking bug on windows?
ZeeroMX@reddit
There is a bug in windows with that makes it impossible to use a gap of unused space above the taskbar, when you use the maximize button that gap of space is not used and you can't click anything in that area.
You need to lock your computer and unlock to be able to use that space but even then most apps don't detect clicks in that area. That bug has been there since early 2023 and it's still there.
monsieurlazarus@reddit
A bug from 2023, that's a cute little baby!
drfusterenstein@reddit
The feedback app which requires a Microsoft account. Which is also the only place to see feedback
MdxBhmt@reddit
Oh it's easy, add them in feedback hub (a.k.a you shout into the void).
CecilXIII@reddit
Why bring up windblows at all?
MrHighStreetRoad@reddit
Oh that's easy. You easily find the team behind the application causing the problem, and communicate directly with the developers of the application by posting an issue on their public issue tracker. In doing this, you will probably see a discussion of how the bug can be fixed and pull requests to fix it. You can probably download a patched pre-release version of the fix, or even build the software your self with the fix, to test if it works. And the best part is, this is all free, you don't have to pay a cent or have the costs subsidised by ads on your desktop or the harvesting of your personal information and internet usage.
PDXPuma@reddit
daninet@reddit
KDE's bug reporter is a beast. The DE does so many things and so many people are contributing it would be really hard to track in a github style bug tracker. I do agree tho that it is intimidating and I also agree sometimes it is hard to tell what component is faulty. However you can post it in a general category and someone will move it.
PointiestStick@reddit
Specifically, right here: https://i.imgur.com/TwDdhiY.png
And then it will be moved to the right place by someone soon.
daninet@reddit
This is nice. But to be fair needs some UI/UX review. First time I notice it and seemingly op did not notice it also.
PointiestStick@reddit
This page could definitely afford to be presented better, yeah. This is a case where web hacker contributions would be welcome!
Capable-Reaction8155@reddit
Just put it in bold. as a bandaid
Dick_Souls_II@reddit
I haven't reported a big with KDE yet but it sounds pretty approachable.
Keely369@reddit
To add.. they triage all new bugs within a week or two, so it won't be long before it gets where it needs to be.
CaptainObvious110@reddit
Interesting
zlice0@reddit
sounds like an upstream issue - closing (wont fix)
daemonpenguin@reddit
I think your main problem is that you're trying to go to upstream to report bugs. Which would be okay if you were a developer, but you're not. You're a user and users should be using their distro's reporting system.
Almost all Linux distributions, all the big ones anyway, have their own bug reporting system. This saves you from setting up multiple accounts or trying to track down specific components. Just file a report with your distro and let them deal with upstream, if necessary.
pkop@reddit
This won't work and has been commented on by various subsystem maintainers that they don't like this, and distro maintainers don't like this. It creates a huge burden to triage all issues funneled through distros and there's not enough people to do this. You're advocating failure mode.
equeim@reddit
That's the point. If the problem is "too many bug reports" then the solution is clearly a convoluted multi-step bug reporting process with many failure points where 99.9% of reports simply disappear.
monsieurlazarus@reddit
In practice, you'd be told to report the bug directly to upstream, unless it's their packaging issue.
Buo-renLin@reddit
You should always report to the distros' tracker first, the maintainer of that package will proceed to file it upstream whenever necessary.
undrwater@reddit
Personal experience;
Had a problem with Inkscape. I was wondering whether to file a bug with upstream or the distro (Gentoo).
I asked on IRC, and was told to file on Gentoo bug tracker, because the issue might be due to packaging. As an end user, I couldn't tell.
not_perfect_yet@reddit
They will never do this.
There is not.
Otherwise, prove it.
Please show evidence of distro maintainers following up on vague bugs in their bug tracker, taking them upstream and getting them fixed there. With some percentage of success after getting successfully triaged and identified and confirmed.
Because I'm 99% certain that kind of data doesn't exist, because nobody bothers to collect it.
Which, I'm not entitled to it, volunteer work, etc. etc. and it's not angry person rage complaint, I value what maintainers do.
But they don't do this.
davis-andrew@reddit
Here's a story of this problem and being unable to reach a maintainer.
A friend of mine, was using an Ubuntu derivative, and recurring events weren't working in the calendar applet. Now my friend is a developer and has some experience working on calendaring software so he dove to debug. The calendar app wasn't at fault but a bug in an underlying library dependency. They found the bug, wrote a patch and it upstream and it was merged.
Then they they opened a bug on the Ubuntu tracker (which was basically "hey this bug exists and it was fixed upstream, can you please pull in the fix) and spent months waiting for a reply from the package maintainer until they eventually gave up and moved distros because not having a working calendar was a deal breaker.
I've also seen bug reports go into a black hole, or hit a bug and found it has already had an issue opened months beforehand but none as crazy as "i wrote a fix, it got merged, can you please pull it in" and it disappear into the black hole.
The only distro i've had a fantastic experience with re bug reports has been Arch, where my issue has either been resolved within a week or they've accepted my fix to the pkgbuild.
But i'll also throw it the other way around. Some software we run at $dayjob that i'm an occasional contributor to (and a colleague is the primary author), will get people rocking up with for example bugs on OpenBSD saying "$software isn't working on $latest_openbsd_release. Often they're super weird, take non trivial time to debug and the vast majority of the time the bug isn't us but a dependency that is functioning incorrectly in OpenBSD. And what was really needed was to have it triaged a layer down by the OpenBSD maintainer who should ideally be able to 1. track down dependency issues specific to their platform, and when the bug is in our software specifically, assist us with handling any special cases in OpenBSD.
autra1@reddit
I've seen example of this in the ubuntu bugtracker (too lazy to look for it now, as I'm not a ubuntu user any more). On nixpkgs/nixos we definitely forward bug upstream.
cwo__@reddit
FWIW, Debian explicitly recommends filing bugs there instead of upstream:
GrouchyVillager@reddit
right, and then it disappears in a black hole and you never hear anything again other than automated bots asking if the bug is still relevant
jbicha@reddit
I wish Debian had automated bots like that
GrouchyVillager@reddit
then why does the kde bug reporter thingy pop up when it crashes (again)?
IchVerstehNurBahnhof@reddit
Distributions really should do a better job at communicating this.
Packages break downstream all the time, whether it's because Debian maintainers insist on using bespoke not-tested-by-upstream sets of build flags or Fedora breaking not just RPMs but also Flatpaks by building them from the broken RPMs.
This would be fine but the first place most users look when something breaks is upstream which then has the choice between wasting time debugging distro specific idiosyncracies or aggravating their users (or both).
ipsirc@reddit
How does average Joe report bugs for Windows softwares? Give us some examples from the dark side of the world.
Liarus_@reddit (OP)
Well, since windows stuff is 90% proprietary stuff, your only ways to report a bug is to send an email to support@company.com and they handle the rest themselves.
While for a Foss project, you might have to dig up way more info, know what you need to report and how and find where the report form itself is.
ipsirc@reddit
Then choose Debian. The preferred way of reporting bugs is sending an email to submit@bugs.debian.org .
KilnHeroics@reddit
Usually by writing an angry email to support, which forwards to PM, which then identifies if it's inane full moon ramblings or valid issue, which then forwards to QA, they try reproducing it and then create the ticket and communicate to PM which decides whether it's a hotfix, next version or whenever release and then developers fix it.
As usual - you get what you paid for - either countless of bug trackers, documenting bug, dealing with arogant devs when it's free, or just yell and get it fixed if it's not free.
klyith@reddit
*If you are a large business with direct support access
If you are an individual user, lol no.
KilnHeroics@reddit
lol no
Narishma@reddit
What does that have to do with anything?
KilnHeroics@reddit
Your experience is that this works only if you're large business client. And I just posted my experience. Clearly you're not using products I've worked on. That's what id does have to do with something.
stevorkz@reddit
I only hope that one day we will get to be as cool as you and work on all those amazing products. Perhaps the “arrogant devs” as you put it, aren’t really the arrogant ones here. Also if you think that an individual writing an “angry” email to Microsoft about a bug will be taken half as seriously as a large business that has issues with its software/product/workflow which is affecting the business, then perhaps despite all your impressive work you do for these large businesses you still have much to learn.
KilnHeroics@reddit
It’s not a question of hope. And no hope for you.
stevorkz@reddit
Cool story bro.
PDXPuma@reddit
You report it within their report a bug software. It then gets added to and tracked on a bug tracker. Depending on settings/whether you put email in/ etc they contact you with a link to it and if it gets roadmapped, a resolution. This can take any amount of time and is product dependent, different teams at Microsoft have different roadmaps and features and targets that could make responses faster than you'd expect or slower than you'd like.
veritable_squandry@reddit
it's weird. i have zero experience using linux as a home operating system and years using it at work. to me that's how it's meant to be but i can't explain why.
acemccrank@reddit
My biggest gripe, though I understand why, is that every single common free email service seems to be blocked from actually making accounts to even make bug reports. Gmail, Hotmail/Live/Outlook, Yahoo, etc.
Oh, and good luck if the site actually tells you that, or just refuses to send the code when it told you it did.
cwo__@reddit
You don't. If you have absolutely no idea whatsoever, you can choose the "I don't know" link on the bug reporting page and it will file it against
kde/general. The bug team will move it to the correct spot. If you're fairly certain it involves Plasma (and not a specific app like e.g. Kate or Dolphin), I'd recommendplasmashell/general. Again we will move it to the correct place.This is not unusual, and there are good reasons for it. Bug reporters are very appreciated, but low-quality bug reports are often negative value – they take up contributor time that often ends up being wasted. We need to be able to contact you for follow-up questions at the very least. Making an account is the minimum effort you need to put in.
That is a bit unfortunate, but I think that's how Bugzilla works. It'll only be shown to logged-in users though, and the signup page recommends using a secondary account.
GrouchyVillager@reddit
let me just sign up for yet another account so I can get right to making that account!
cwo__@reddit
I'd expect a lot of people to already have a secondary account they don't mind being used for something like this.
And if they don't, it's likely still a lot less of a time investment than fixing the issue or implementing the requested feature will be for the developers. It's also only a fraction of the time it takes to write a good bug report, and you only need to do it once (per project, or sometimes for multiple projects at once that use the same infrastructure).
Lowering the barrier of entry from "quite low" to "practically non-existent" would be very important if we had lots of developers and bug triagers sitting around twiddling their thumbs with nothing to do. But we have too few of all of them, and their plates are very full already. So I don't see a lot of point of spending effort to make them even more overworked and less productive at the same time.
GrouchyVillager@reddit
Just support "sign in with google" and don't leak people their email address.
cwo__@reddit
You mean "Just spend a ton of time implementing Google auth in Bugzilla so you have more, less productive work".
schumaml@reddit
... and do this for people to then paste all of their personal data - name, address, phone number, kids and pet names - at the end of their bug reports without being asked to do so, just like they do it with every email they send, too :)
Flash_Kat25@reddit
Gonna borrow this one
stevorkz@reddit
Same. I havnt heard it explained in such an accurate way.
Ingaz@reddit
I suggest you're using Fedora.
I don't have experience with Fedora but I had experience with Ubuntu.
I'm 5 years now on Manjaro (Arch Linux).
My feelings after switching: it was somewhat similar to switching from Windows to Ubuntu - I got less garbage and more control.
Zero problems all this years on several laptops and even Manjaro ARM on Raspberri Pi.
I never tweaked a lot default installation (although I'm i3wm user).
Main pluses:
- much less systemd services installed by default
- the *best* distro documentation (arguably: Gentoo has excellent documentation too, but you frequently see in Gentoo wiki links to arch wiki :))
- it's Arch without problems :) (don't listen hardcore Archers :)
I never posted bugs for Manjaro but I heard that community is kind (but never tell them you're on Manjaro :))
Good luck!
stevorkz@reddit
MaNjArO iSnT aRcH yOu SoN oF a….. \
Kidding 😅. I love Manjaro.
stevorkz@reddit
Just posting to thank you for taking the time to report these bugs.
Average_C_Programmer@reddit
RedHat Bugzilla (the place where Fedora bugs are reported) is an abandoned desert.
Nowadays I go straight to upstream and forget about the Fedora Bug Reporting Tool.
Corporate overlords at IBM RedHat have silenced the community within, it's very sad to see.
Recipe-Jaded@reddit
these are all examples of bug reporting for OBS and KDE, not Linux.
MrHighStreetRoad@reddit
:) Linux the kernel, you mean. That is the apex of bug reporting, dealing with the most god-like developers with some pretty basic tools ... and the few times I've done it, the experience was actually pretty good.
Recipe-Jaded@reddit
sorry, yes. the Linux kernel
Danny_el_619@reddit
I once came across with "please reeport the bug in discord". No thanks.
de_argh@reddit
If you want a bug free DE try xfce or twm :D
Liarus_@reddit (OP)
Sure does it support Wayland great? Does it do HDR? Does it have adaptive sync? :p
Monsieur_Moneybags@reddit
No you don't. Who told you that?
To submit a bug report for Fedora you should always go to Red Hat's Bugzilla. That's the official way to do it.
Liarus_@reddit (OP)
Oh, interesting, i'm not sure why, i could swear i saw that on a fedora related website, but now that I check the docs, i must be remembering wrong, as it's indeed clearly written there on the fedora docs.
Thank you!
kwyxz@reddit
This is such a weird rant. On commercial operating systems, you report issues on forums where people who don't work for the company that's shipping you the OS are going to give the worst possible answers and never solve anything, and then you either give up or format and reinstall.
Mister_Magister@reddit
I'm still waiting for people to reply to me in kde bug reporter
MrHighStreetRoad@reddit
Maybe you should be brave enough to link to some of your bug reports. You might, if you're lucky, get some feedback about the quality of your bug reports.
KilnHeroics@reddit
report better! >:)
zeanox@reddit
I tried reporting a bug once, i have never been so confused. I just stopped and now i just pray that stuff will get fixed instead.
MrHighStreetRoad@reddit
there is a learning curve to bug reports, one that no one talks about when encouraging users to migrate to Linux. Bug reports, good ones, approach developer-level skills, and it;s easy to get intimidated by discussion which quickly gets very technical: many bug reporters are technically strong and for sure upstream needs to downshift when dealing with a new contributor. Mostly that is what happens, if you are making an good effort.
Also, 80% of the time you are reporting a known bug, which is mostly wasteful for upstream. But in doing the research to make a good bug report, you will see that your bug is already reported, and a lot of the time you will then see workarounds to the problem. So it is worth the effort.
Of course, you don't have to report bugs, but it is a contribution you can make. In my experience, open source projects will try hard to help new bug reporters who who they have read the documentation on bug reporting and willing to help. Everyone has to start somewhere.
MrHighStreetRoad@reddit
I think your complaint is not that bugs should be reported, but that it is hard. This is also why after a while people have a small number of their mainstay distributions: if you;re going to use Fedora for years, you only have to make an RPM Fusion account once. It's very overwhelming at the start, but changing to an open source operating system is a big thing. Make that account, and obviously that's one thing you won't ever complain about again.
Of course there is room for improvement. But if you've done any development with users, you'd know that junk bug reports are incredibly wasteful of time, and in an open source project time is scarce. Every project under the sun evolves to more complex and formal bug reports to raise the quality of bug reports. And to be honest, perhaps also to raise the threshold of bug reports. If you get 50% fewer bug reports but the bug reports you do get are 1000% better, it's a fair trade off ... You only need one good bug report per bug, the 10 rubbish ones don't add much value. For instance, look at Reddit. There are a lot of "bug reports" on reddit, and they are mostly terrible.
Good bug reports are hard, but valuable. They are very valued contributions. Maintainers and open source developers hate bugs and love to fix them.
HatBoxUnworn@reddit
Filing a bug for a piece of GNOME software was challenging, it took awhile to even find where to report it.
Elementary OS does a pretty good job of telling users where to go.
nicman24@reddit
kde bugreporting is actual trash fire. one tells to go to discuss one tells you to go to bugzilla one tells you to go to gitlab
PointiestStick@reddit
The use cases are different and fairly well differentiated:
nicman24@reddit
man what decides who is a developer and what is a bug? for me something from my point of view something might be a bug, from yours bit might not be and as it so happens, you might close my bugreport and tell me to go to discuss
PointiestStick@reddit
I think it's pretty clear; see https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved/Issue_Reporting#Step_1:_Make_sure_it's_a_valid_bug_or_feature_request
nicman24@reddit
i think it is a very good way to make people to decide they do not care enough to report said bugs.
but again deciding what is ie broken functionality or working as intended is inherently subjective
klyith@reddit
If you don't have enough respect for the community or the people who are doing a lot of free work to follow the rules, that's probably a good thing.
nicman24@reddit
lol elitist much?
klyith@reddit
I'm not a developer. I'm a user who respects the people who make things for me. That's the opposite of elitist.
If I was a kde dev I'd probably be nicer to you, like nate was. And then ignore you entirely when you got aggro about it.
nicman24@reddit
Lol then respect me as well. I am a open source developer.
cwo__@reddit
Here's how it works in practice: the developers decide. They're doing the work.
You can make your case that a particular thing should work differently. Developers are not unreasonable, if you have a good argument you may well convince them. (Having discussed the issue on something like Discuss or Reddit can help here.) On the other hand, they often have thought more about this than a random user, may know of important use cases that would completely break with the user's approach, may have implementation concerns etc.
nicman24@reddit
i mean yeah, i have engaged multiple times both here and in the various other platforms but it is honestly annoying to have to remember where the actual discussion is.
imbev@reddit
Thank you for giving your perspective.
You should also post this to r/kde and r/fedora
GrouchyVillager@reddit
and don't forget to to the kde bug trackers so the developers will see it
E-werd@reddit
(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
Amnesiaphant@reddit
That's why i'd love for some distro to push telemetry. Every bug will get sent to the distro devs.
The situation we have now is frustrating. Devs desperately need feedback on how to improve their os but a very small amount of hardcore users report bugs.
Then the devs try to implement some feedback fetching tool and make it opt-in. So naturally noone opt's in, because "ew telemetry" just to turn around and complain why the devs won't fix their issues.
LigPaten@reddit
I always opt in. I really don't care tons about telemetry data and KDE isn't gonna do Microsoft/Google type things with it.
JEDZENIE_@reddit
Fedora does telemetry and you have full Control of it same kde I even go out my way to push it up cause its off by default and you can disable telemetry from fedora if you don't like it, bruh I think reasone why kde lately been able to repair some many Bugs is cause there are more people like me who has it on which deffinitly helps them a bit.
Zamundaaa@reddit
For crash reports specifically, when some KDE app or Plasma component crashes, you get a prompt that allows you to make this and future crash reports automatically with Sentry. This works quite well.
Outside of crash reports though, automatic bug reporting is impossible. 99% of non-crash bugs can't be automatically detected and requires a human to both explain the issue and then follow up on the bug report when more information is needed.
visor841@reddit
KDE has telemetry (it's under "user feedback" in system settings). But it's opt-in of course, and I just discovered I had it off, oops.
monsieurlazarus@reddit
Manjaro tried that recently, and as expected had a massive lash back from that.
https://forum.manjaro.org/t/mdd-opt-in-vs-opt-out/170462
linuxhiker@reddit
This isn't really any different than a closed ecosystem, though. If you are running windows and Photoshop, you don't report a bug in notepad to Adobe.
LvS@reddit
It's very different.
Most closed apps don't even have a bug tracker. You're just out of luck.
If you pay tons of cash, you get an improved version where you have a representative that you can email and then explain to them what your problem is and hope that they will file a bug report in a secret bugtracker that you don't get access to. And then they will Chinese whisper the comments in the bugtracker to you and your replies back to the bugtracker so that it's slow and annoying for both you and any managers trying to judge if they should assign an engineer to fix your problem.
a1b4fd@reddit
I had to file a bug report for MS Edge once. The experience was surprisingly good. A user-friendly form inside of the app itself, and the bug actually got fixed!
aawsms@reddit
Have a look at gpu-screen-recorder if you have never heard of it, it completely superseded OBS for me.
https://git.dec05eba.com/gpu-screen-recorder/about
https://git.dec05eba.com/gpu-screen-recorder-ui/about
AntLive9218@reddit
Yeah, this was an interesting blast from the past, but I understood it as it simply staying that way from a time when that was considered normal.
https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?component=general&product=bugs.kde.org&resolution=--- is likely the right section to poke this matter.
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=181987 already suggests that people weren't fond of providing real email addresses quite a while ago which could be related.
/u/PointiestStick , what would be the appropriate way of discussing the possible impact of public email addresses on keeping privacy-conscious users away from bugzilla? Is a bug report in the bugs.kde.org the right way?
I wish we would have a better notification system than piggybacking on the often abused email system, but we don't have that, and I wouldn't compromise on at least NEEDSINFO notifications, so emails are needed, addresses just don't necessarily need to be publicly visible.
Flatpak Firefox does something like that when ffmpeg-full package is missing. Even the Flatpak OBS Studio package seems to include ffmpeg instead of just having a silly extension point like Firefox, so maybe not the same issue, but likely good to know that missing components can result in silly playback instead of complete failure.
PointiestStick@reddit
I'm not sure there's a solution; to my knowledge it's just the way Bugzilla works. Most of the institutional and business worlds run on email.
AntLive9218@reddit
Oh, you are right. I thought the Mozilla bugzilla had this, but apparently they only have a tiny fraction of what's desired.
Ancient planning: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Bugzilla:Email_Change_Design
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=218917 got implemented, so there's at least protection from crawlers not using accounts.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=163551 isn't implemented, and indeed it's possible to see emails once logged in.
Outrageous_Trade_303@reddit
It has to be that way, otherwise there will be a tone of "bug reports" which are actually users errors.
Keely369@reddit
I feel your pain but thanks for doing your bit by reporting those bugs. I've little patience for those who complain but don't report.
pkop@reddit
You shouldn't expect broad adoption. The ecosystem is too fragmented and decentralized, and your examples illustrate this. There is no one Linux there's a bunch of disparate parts. Broad adoption could only possibly come if there was some singular vertically integrated distro that the masses could look to for all their needs.
GoldBarb@reddit
No need to provide your real email address.
You can use plenty of freely available relay email addresses to mask your real address.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/activate-firefox-relay-mask-your-email-address
https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/email-protection/duck-addresses/
nicman24@reddit
that is not the point
GoldBarb@reddit
OP has an issue with their email address being publicly visible I provided a solution.
I have reported bugs before on the tracker masking my real address it is really no big deal.
It seems you have a greater disdain for kde.bugs.org !
nicman24@reddit
yea just because i do not agree with visible to the public mails i have disdain ..
PointiestStick@reddit
See https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved/Issue_Reporting/Why_not_GitLab_Issues
dvisorxtra@reddit
To be honest the process seems logical to me.
See, your problem is seeing your issues from your side as end user, you expect a straightforward process orientated towards end customer, but Linux isn't a product, is a collaborative toolset.
Try to think about as a developer of a single tool, let's say you maintain maybe the clipboard tool for GNOME, then you receive an anonymous, undetailed email about a package issue with the volume on VLC on Arch Linux, that brings very sparse details such as "vOlUMe dOsEn't wOrK, HaLp!!" And that's it, no details at all.
None of that has anything to do with you, so you'll happily and quietly drop the issue and the problem will never be fixed.
I know, I get it, having to enter those details might be annoying for you as end-user, but try to think about why they are there on the first place, I'm pretty sure it wasn't just for the sake of annoying you.
korewabetsumeidesune@reddit
OP seems pretty knowledgeable about where and what the bugs are. I'm sure their bug reports would be an enrichment to the community. What they seem to be complaining about is dealing with different issue trackers and specifically that these aren't privacy sensitive enough or need you to become part of some in-group that you don't want to be part of. Your response thus misses the point of the post entirely.
dvisorxtra@reddit
Not necessarily, yet again he has to see it from the developer's perspective, that's maybe the issue: he hasn't.
Look at this example:
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1i2ozm2/comment/m7g7nq8/
The reason why this information is requested is, believe it or not, there are people that post trash, spam, jokes, etc on bug trackers, which is quite annoying.
korewabetsumeidesune@reddit
I mean, I'm a dev. I know users can be less than helpful. Still, it seems odd to argue that since the requirements are there, they must be necessary to deal with spam. It just seems you're pulling whatever justification you can find for the status quo out of your butt - rather than critically engaging which requirements actually help reduce spam, and which are just calcified traditions. Surely, there are both.
We should engage critically and follow Chesterton's Fence, but by the same token we should recognize that the world is run by people no smarter than you.
dvisorxtra@reddit
The spam case wan an example, and if the justification is there and not written by me, then it isn't pulled out of my ass as you put it, it is more of a real issue.
KilnHeroics@reddit
> please upgrade to our newest and latest
I'm pretty sure using 10 year old Windows installation without updates will support way way way more things than using 10 year old Linux installation. On linux literally installing any package will force you to get newest glibc and so on.
ha17h3m@reddit
I agree, it's annoying
Omnimaxus@reddit
I agree with you. I love Linux, etc., yes, but the bug reporting situation has to be simplified everywhere.
Human-Equivalent-154@reddit
ءؤ٤لؤؤبء
edgmnt_net@reddit
Technically distros could triage and relay bug reports to the right projects. But I guess the reason it's this way is that they'd otherwise get swamped with a mix of bug reports and essentially support requests. And a lot of distros and FOSS projects simply don't have the resources to deal with that.
In practice this means you have to work out what, how and where to report stuff.
It might be easier on other platforms but I doubt it's entirely seamless even on Windows unless you pay for support, which can then escalate issues accordingly.
ElMachoGrande@reddit
Well, at least it isn't Microsoft's "This behaviour is by design"...
sebf@reddit
I guess becoming an identified member of the community and work closely with some developers or community managers is the way to go.
Writing proper bug reports that are actionable and useful for the developers is very hard.
Another issue is time. There are FLOSS projects that got 15 years old bugs! It can be frustrating for users, this is some of the drawbacks of those tools. It’s possible to get faster fixes by using rolling releases, but it also means more incoming bugs.